The Story Behind The Paintings :
A series of interesting and informal insights from the artist about the creation of his paintings from their inception to their completion.
Petaluma Egg Lines DC3 ” Yoke One ” at Petaluma Airport, California 1955
Following on with a similar theme from my previous Petaluma painting about Motor Racing in the downtown area, I thought that a reference about this Californian town’s past fame as The Egg Capital Of The World should be considered. When I arrived in Petaluma, California in 1980 there was little in the way of the modern town it has become. In fact, it was a very rural area in the heart of Sonoma County, not too many miles north from the Golden Gate Bridge. The western part was the original township but thereafter slowly at first and later with the housing boom, the eastern area began to flourish as well. I lived on a hillside which overlooked the Petaluma Valley on the northwestern side where the main Highway 101 carves its way through the landscape taking motorists either northbound to Eureka, Portland and Seattle or southbound to San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. It was very scenic and beautifully green in the winter months but by the summer it resembled a camouflaged terrain occupied by the US Army.
Petaluma as a town had its fame in the past. The first official airmail flight took place in 1911, when a local airman Fred Wiseman carried a mere handful of mail from Petaluma to Santa Rosa, including letters from Petaluma postmaster John E. Olmstead and Petaluma’s mayor. The Wiseman Air mail plane ended up at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC and can still be seen hanging from the overhead beams of the building. From the start of the early 1900s’ there was an influx of egg ranchers in the surrounding area. Chickens were in abundance in the area around Petaluma and at one stage, hosted the only known Poultry drugstore and is also the town where the egg incubator was first invented in 1879. The growth continued up until the time of the Second World War and then sharply declined through to the end of the 1950s’.
I wanted to portray a busy rural airport scene that really never existed as I depicted it however the outlying structures of Quonset (Nissen) huts and a Fifties style fashionable American Diner would be suitable for such a scene. The name of the restaurant Two-Niner Diner exists today as a modern prefab building beside the flight line and nearby hangers. There is a print of this painting hanging on one of Two Niner Diner’s walls.
Since the town of Petaluma has a modern, thriving airport community on the east side, a period aircraft likely to serve this fictitious airline in the fifties should be the subject. I chose the venerable Douglas DC3 Dakota as its specimen. These aircraft would be the most likely type of aircraft used for such an operation, well used army-air force surplus equipment just ten years after the Second World War and classed as C47s. The perfect aircraft for such an enterprise.
I also decided to have a dramatic moonlight scene with the surrounding eastern hills as a backdrop. You can also make out the ranches that adorn the hillsides glistening in the light. The aircraft is preparing for its late night departure with its cargo of precious fresh eggs and local passengers bound for the outlying areas. A stewardess is climbing the ladder to enter the front of the aircraft with a tray of fresh coffee and sundries for the flight crew – a big No to the Health and Safety monitors of today! A little chuckle there!
The aircraft is naturally named Yoke One and a windswept and propwashed yoke runs down the side of the fuselage below the cockpit. The tail and company logo must surely be represented as a hard boiled egg to complete this parody filled painting. A small group of onlookers stand by the fence near Two Niner Diner to watch the aircraft’s departure.
I must say that I had a lot of fun in thinking out the completed painting’s scenario. I could have put more into the scene but with my mind, it would still not be finished! On a personal note, I have always loved the spirit and adventure that the DC3 brought to air travel. I was fortunate enough to have had two separate flights in this venerable aircraft. The first was in the early seventies in England where I experienced an hour’s flight from Gatwick Airport in a Jersey Island’s Inter Airways example – fantastic time – then a flight all over Sonoma County, California in a local example from Santa Rosa during the 1990’s. Fantastic aircraft and such fantastic heritage – Petaluma Egg Lines would be so proud of her!
Huntly Maury
July 2017
Original Watercolour Painting Completed in California 2016 Painting Size: 30 x 22 inches