For those who haven’t been to the Sonoma County Fair, The Hall is in fact a hanger, measuring a massive 180 feet by 350 feet by 35 feet.
The Hall was built during the war to house the mighty Boeing B-17 “flying fortress”—that heavily armored long-range bomber, whose distant thunder meant lightning to the cities and military bases of the Axis powers.
This hanger was bought in San Diego war surplus by building magnate Hugh Codding and transshipped to Santa Rosa in ’49. There is, therefore, a certain monumental poetry in that the hanger is now and forever “The Hall of Flowers.” That poetry is captured in the fragment, “swords beaten into plowshares.”…