Quake Items Interest Historian

San Francisco earthquake memorabilia collector and historian Ron Ross explains that among the most interesting collectible items regarding the big Bay Area temblor would be the city’s official notices informing residents of the condition of their homes in the hard-hit Marina District.

“These notices would be the best thing” for a collector to acquire, he said in a telephone interview.

The 8 1/2x11-inch notices, he said, also were used as passes allowing Marina residents back into their devastated neighborhood, which had been cordoned off by police to keep out sightseers and looters.

Ross noted that there were three such types of notices--yellow, green and red.

A yellow pass allowed full access to a resident’s house; a green one, limited access; and a red one blocked access and meant that the house was almost certainly on a demolition list.

Another collector’s item, he said, would be an original six-pack of drinking water bottled by Anheuser-Busch, Inc., in regular beer cans and used for earthquake relief when water was in short supply just after the temblor hit.

Ross said he had acquired such a six-pack but was still looking for the Marina District notices.

Unlike the situation in 1906, he said, there are so many newspapers and photos available on the recent quake, that their value is relatively marginal.

Ross, 52, said he was standing in front of his San Francisco home in the city’s Dolores Park area when the temblor hit last Oct. 17, and that he could see it racing toward him like a fast-moving ocean wave while cars bounced on the pavement like toys.

Ross said the quake knocked two collectible plates off a shelf, but that these were his only losses.

For a number of years, Ross has been attempting to establish a history museum in San Francisco that would also act as a showcase for his collection of earthquake collectibles from that city’s 1906 temblor. Included are newspapers, photos, letters and the like.

Among the items in Ross’ collection is china that survived the 1906 quake, slightly discolored from the ensuing fires, but unbroken. The china was acquired from the Twin Peaks home of Beryl Trimble, a 94-year-old San Francisco resident who experienced the 1906 temblor in addition to the one last month.

She had been under the weather Oct. 17 and had been taken to a local hospital. When the quake hit a few seconds after 5:04 p.m., Ross said she looked up at her doctors and declared, “that was an earthquake.”

“She has a beautiful wood-burning stove in her basement,” Ross said. “She said if there ever was another quake she was ready to cook for the whole neighborhood.”

One possibility for his collection, Ross said, was to place it on permanent loan in San Francisco’s Pacific Auditorium near City Hall, and that the site was under negotiation with local officials.

Ross says history buffs and collectors of earthquake items can send mail inquiries to the San Francisco History Assn., of which he is chairman.

The address: 620 Church St., San Francisco, Calif. 94114 (this corrects an address we gave in last week’s column). Telephone: (415) 552-4543.

About 90 members of the history group meet monthly, he said, and the annual dues, which include a quarterly newsletter, are $20.

Mailbag

Wine label collector Roy Brady of Northridge writes that wine label collecting “is growing, but not as fast as I hoped, in view of the wine boom. I think there are two principal reasons.

“First, there is no systematic way to acquire labels.

“Second, labels are so numerous and complex that only a handful of people in the entire world have sufficient knowledge to organize a large general collection. There are no guide books.”