Jana Haehl was Mayor of Corte Madera between
1975-76 and again in 1978-79. She is a longtime
activist and waged many battles to help
preserve Marin's beauty and character over the
years. Haehl also served as a key member of
Barbara Boxer's staff during the first fifteen
years Boxer was in Congress.
I asked Haehl about her favorite Marin
restaurants during the 70's and was suprised by
her answer: "There weren't many restaurants in
Marin in those days," she says, "We used to eat
out at San Quentin a lot."
The prison???
"My husband taught at San Quentin at night,"
Haehl explains, "Outside the main walls they
had a small restaurant where inmates who were about to be released
received job training so they could support themselves when they got out.
They ran a restaurant for the families of employees."
How was the food?
"It was actually pretty good," she says. "They would only fix one kind of
thing each night. We used to like to go on Tuesday nights because it was
Mexican. Our little kids would go with us and they (the inmates) really liked
seeing little kids because that was not part of their life inside the prison. The
prisoners were very sweet and nice to them.
I had to ask: "Did they ever serve a special dessert – you know, like a cake
with a saw in it?
"No, nothing like that," she says.
Restaurants weren't the only thing in short supply in Marin when the Haehl
family moved to Corte Madera in the early Sixties, remembers Haehl. "There
weren’t a lot of parks and playgrounds," she says. "Corte Madera Town Park
wasn’t quite developed then. The land was set aside but it hadn’t really been
landscaped yet and there weren’t playground facilities. You had to take your
little kids all the way over to Ross for them to play on slides and swings at
Pixie Playground."
