Once Upon a Time in Santa Cruz

A rendering of Don McCaslin (center) and his band Warmth circa 1975. This glass mural appeared as a backdrop on the outdoor wall of the Cooper House, formerly the Santa Cruz County Court Building, located in the center of Pacific Garden Mall. Locals and visitors alike flocked to the scene, drawn by the swinging sound centered around the tall, slender hirsute man with mallets in his hands playing the vibraphone.  Those afternoons were parties of dancing bodies and grooving musicians who sat in with the master, a studied jazz musician and ex-basketball star at San Jose State. The local jazz scene had burgeoned under the direction of Lile Cruse of the Cabrillo College Music Department. McCaslin took it a step further with his so-called Sidewalk School of Jazz.

In the mid 1970s Santa Cruz was groovin.

Music. Theater. Art. Feminism. Rainbows. Sailboats. Waves. The town hummed with a joyful vibration.

The weekly tabloid's masthead said it all: Good Times. 

A new progressive City Council would declare its boundaries a Nuclear Free Zone. 

Visitors to the little burgh on the sunny side of Monterey Bay thought they had entered a time warp, backwards. The Sixties were alive and well. Long live the hippies! 

It wasn't always like this. Not before or after. Maybe it was only a minor blip on the geo-political-subcultural radar. Maybe the coming of a new University of California campus on the virgin hilltop above town had something to do with it. Maybe it was meant to be. 

I know for absolute certain that I was meant to be in Santa Cruz at that time. 

Rewind about two decades to the late '50s, during a period when Vern Hampton met regularly with a group of city boosters who wanted to bring year-round business to town.

Vern owned a gas station on Ocean Street, the main drag into town, where he pumped a lot of gas into the tanks of visitors who tooled gas-powered motor vehicles here to enjoy the sandy beaches and take the kids to the Boardwalk during the summer. Problem was, during wintertime, nobody came. It was hardly worth staying open. Vern needed year-round traffic to survive.

This group of business old boys were a sharp and hungry lot. They learned that a University of California Study Group had been formed to investigate potential sites for three new UC campuses, including one somewhere in the Central Coast region of the state. A local committee was formed to evaluate potential sites for such a campus in Santa Cruz County*.

They were led by their chairman Gordon "Scotchy" Sinclair, the irascible editor of the local daily newspaper the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the town's voice of conservatism. 

The committee recommended the Cowell Ranch, roughly 200,000 acres of pristine wooded and rolling hills above Santa Cruz. The city and county, both, vigorously supported the recommendation, with the additional assurance that "The City and County of Santa Cruz will provide roads, water supply, and sewerage to the campus," as stated in their submission to the Regents of California.

The City Council passed a resolution acknowledging its "responsibility... to assist in every possible way the solution of the many problems attendant upon the establishment of the University campus in this community." The Council voted 6-0 in favor, with one member absent. There was nary a sign or voice of protest during the entire campaign, which included a reconnaissance visit to town by Governor Edmund G. Brown. The silence signaled to the Regents that the their choice of Santa Cruz would go smoothly.

In the fall of 1965, the local business establishment's dream came true. The University of California at Santa Cruz welcomed its first students onto its new campus above town, land that had been the Cowell Ranch, named after Henry Cowell, the 19th Century industrialist who had profited from mining limestone and harvesting redwood timber found in the local hills and valleys. Cowell had purchased the land grant from Mexico, whose government was too far away to manage its northern reaches.

The S.H. Cowell Foundation, representing the city, stepped up with a nearly $1 million contribution to the Regents to seal the deal. The kickback enabled the university system to purchase the rambling, bucolic landscape of meadows and forests for $2 million. That would be $19 million in inflationary dollars today, an astonishingly good buy. 

The Santa Cruz campus was projected to see a student population of 27,000. 

"We didn't know what we were getting into," said Hampton a few years ago while lining up a putt on the seventh green of Spring Hills Golf Course in Corralitos, a sprawling rural community in south Santa Cruz County.

The city father's business decision to woo a University of California campus to town brought customers during the wintertime. Hampton's gas station could now be open year-round. The university also re-defined the community in a way they had never imagined.

The caveat, "be careful what you wish for" became an oft-heard lament for many who had grown up in what had been a sleepy little retirement town where the sidewalks rolled up when the sun went down. The city's promise to furnish roads, water and sewerage would lead to further issues. 

The new campus was based on the Cambridge model of cluster colleges that included no grades for students. It was revolutionary in a way that coincided with the new zeitgeist influenced by the cultural rebellion of the Sixties.

Everything changed

"The university changed everything," said Sonny Hankes, a roofer and native son of Santa Cruz. Sonny was my neighbor on Walk Circle. He talked about the days when salmon were so plentiful in the San Lorenzo River, "You could catch them with a pitch fork." Those days were long gone and the university was his scapegoat. The onslaught of students and professors and their liberal thinking rubbed against his very grain. It was no longer the same town of conservative values where he grew up. And it was all the university's fault.

I liked Sonny. A short man with a firm, compact body and leathery brown skin, he was recognized by local tradesmen as the best roofer in town. Many of them hung out at Sonny's house drinking coffee before work. Watching him scamper up and down a ladder or pound nails on a steeply-pitched Victorian roof was a remarkable sight.

He helped me re-roof my house -- how I got the house is another story -- and gave me a bro deal. He was a fine and generous neighbor, as long as you didn't infringe on his old-school conservative sensibilities, which turned out to be a problem during the planning of one of our famous, or infamous, block parties.

He and a few of his pals belonged to a local men's club, The Druids, who met in a clubhouse building on property near West Cliff Drive owned by the Oblate order of Catholic priests, a prime piece of real estate that has been in the hands of the Church since the establishment of California Mission Santa Cruz in 1859. The setting overlooks Monterey Bay as well as the most well-known surf break in Santa Cruz, Steamer Lane, named by the original surfers due to the steamships that cruised by to pick up the limestone and timber that made Henry Cowell a rich man.

Those Druid meetings involved an ample amount of drinking and high-spirited gambling that raised money for the men's club. "Our purpose is to deflower young maidens," one member jokingly told me.

Sonny liked to party and his newly completed two-story house that included a meticulously cared-for lawn and a couple of coco palm trees stood out like a resort on our modest, narrow block of small pie-shaped lots and dated cottages. Two smaller houses occupied his property on each side, one for his mother-in-law and the other a rental. 

Sonny's parties were rather confined compared to the event on Walk Circle that Fourth of July. It drew a wide assortment of Santa Cruz characters. A local rock group called the Waybacks set up on my front lawn, across the street from Sonny's house. 

Patti Free, the first female cable installer in town who could scramble up a telephone poll almost as quickly as Sonny could climb to the top of a house, was a major organizer of our party. Multi-talented with blazing curly reddish brown hair and a voice that could be heard several blocks away, Patti's true love was acting. She also made sure that her neighbors were hooked up to the cable.

We rarely missed a theatrical production that she was in, typically presented on the Art Theater stage, part of the Santa Cruz Art Center's low-slung building downtown that included India Joze restaurant, recognized for its inventive Middle Eastern/Asian cuisine, annual Squid Festival and peripatetic owner Joseph Schultz. Squid Row, the alley that runs behind the legendary building, still features eclectic doorways that lead to artistic creations and living quarters for at least one of Santa Cruz's longtime artists, Michael Leeds.

Patti made sure that Bruce Bratton, the town's major entertainment columnist published in Good Times, spread the word about our block party. Set loose, she was unstoppable. Not only did Bruce show up, but so did nearly anyone who read his column, which was everyone in town. There was Moo the mysterious flautist avec entourage, Wayback groupies, Jack the produce guy, John Murray of the Flower Exchange who lived on the next block, neighbors Little Ester and daughter Dominique and progressive political activist Big Ester Bradley and her sons Charles and the loquacious James, whom she referred to as her "Little Republican." 

Barbara Beverly, the attractive woman across the street, whom I had my eye on, although a different suitor seemed to show up at her door every week, was instrumental in helping to organize our block bash. Her roommate Paul Brown contributed his good looks and mischievous sense of humor to the proceedings. My brother-in-law Tony Lombardi showed up with his nonpareil comedy act to riff with Paul.

Mrs. Gray, a sweet 90-something-year-old lady came out of her tiny house to join the festivities, although her 60-something-year-old son, William Canterbury (aka Billy), often seen on his bicycle with his basket of produce and his butt-crack showing, did not attend. Word was he suffered emotional issues from the War.

Also in attendance was Crow, the resident Rastafarian who had grown up in the Circles, the only neighborhood to allow Black families after WWII. 

Patti made sure that we had a porta-potty stationed across from Redmen's Hall, a vacant faded green building with a Western-facade, where we held our Christmas-Holiday party the following year.

Neither Sue nor Ki, proprietors of the corner Santa Cruz Market, an historical landmark, where we all went when we needed a quart of milk or six-pack of beer, attended the party. Although I'm confident the little market did well that day. Nancy Cameron, who was raising two kids, Jenna and Wyatt, across the street from the market, was curious enough to pedal over on her bike.

Potluck food and drink flowed.

Molly and Vanessa joined the neighborhood pack of kids that included Teri, Sonny and his wife Betsy's daughter, and Frankie, Patti's son. They were continuously on the move.

At one point, Crow -- endowed with fetching charisma and a handsome white-toothed smile, his dangling dreads hanging from a green, yellow and red headband -- took the microphone and asked the assemblage to give it up for Kevin, who has "kindly allowed" the band to set up on his front lawn. I appreciated that.

He later told me his story about meeting Bob Marley backstage when he played at the Civic Auditorium downtown. "When I took his hand," he marveled, "I couldn't believe how small it was."

I had attended both Bob Marley concerts at the Civic, the last one in 1979. Marley never opened his eyes, as though he were channeling his lyrics and voice. He is considered the most influential voice of the Reggae genre, espousing "positive vibrations" and "one love."

Sonny played it cool at the party, carefully watching from his own perch, his soon-to-be two-story house and landscaping not yet completed. He still lived in the little house next door. Crow resided on the other side of the Circles where he had trimmed his own topiary hedges in his front yard creating a menagerie of copulating animals. 

The following year, when talk of our annual block party started, word came that Little Ester had invited Crow, who held his own annual party with a cast of characters, to merge with ours. Hearing this, Sonny went snake. 

While tensions rose within our small community of neighbors, Barbara and I walked over to Crow's house to discuss the issue. When told about what was going down, he replied:

"Okay, let's not combine parties." 

As simple as that the temperature dropped. I took it as a lesson in conflict resolution.

To be continued

* Source: UC Santa Cruz: 1960-1991, Campus Origin, and Early Program and Facility Development in the Sciences with Special Emphasis on Marine Sciences by William T. Doyle, copyright 2011.

The name Vern Hampton is fictitious based on a real person whose name I cannot recall. His story led to my investigating how the University of California chose Santa Cruz for their new campus.

 

Mothers on Mother's Day

Dorothy Herron on right with her friend Estyline Hill take on trails of Glacier Park on horseback circa 1933

She walked faster than a cheerful pony. She moved with the determination of sprinter in a 100-meter dash, pumping her arms while leaving my father empty-handed in the dust.

In the kitchen, she threw dough like a hasty pizza chef, although her pies were sweet, not savory. Sugar was her friend, a constant companion in and out of the kitchen. She stashed black licorice in her purse and milk chocolate in her top drawer. 

Her theme cakes were her specialty; large rectangular creations whose frosted toppings told her stories. On my sixth birthday, when I was deeply into the TV cowboys, my mother built a culinary Western scene complete with a fort, cowboys on horses, a village of teepees and Indians riding ponies, all on a bed of brown chocolate frosting.

I can still taste the creamy sugar frosting and the chewy chocolate cake. She always let me lick the bowl.

Baking was only a small part of a deep inventory of talents owned by my mother, Dorothy Katherine Herron Samson.

She was a registered nurse and working mom. She was well-read, often two or three books at a time, in addition to her many magazines from which she culled recipes.

She was a dynamic woman, especially for her day. She enjoyed an active single adult life that she shared with her friends Estyline Hill and Myrt Hunter. She and Myrt attended the 1938 World Fair on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay in their long tight skirts, trim jackets with padded shoulders and wide brimmed hats. 

She didn't marry until age 33. Together, she and Myrt loved to paint the city red. Myrt had a beautiful little cottage in leafy Piedmont Hills above Oakland.

She met my father, Frank Cameron Samson, for the first time while tending to him a hospital in Conrad, Montana. She was born in Havre, MT, a railroad town on the early Hi-Line. Her parents, George Herron and Katherine Courtney, were married at nearby Fort Assiniboine, where her grandmother, Mary Larkin Herron (an Irish immigrant), started a dairy to supply milk to the U.S. Cavalry. 

My father had been hospitalized after being nearly crushed to death by a runaway bailing combine. Dorothy nursed him back to the living. They reunited several years later in Oakland while my father was in the Navy during WWII. When the war ended they met in Seattle, married and had two children, my sister Mary K. (Samson) Fotheringham and me.

I didn't realize it until lately, with the passing of my matriarchal mother-in-law, Bettelu Beverly, that my mother, who died three days after my 60th birthday in 2007, was also a matriarch for her family.

She was the one who kept her far-ranging family together. This was true for especially the family members who migrated farther West from Montana. Dorothy had seven brothers and two sisters. She was the second youngest, born on January 1, 1912. 

Following her passing, the kin with whom she kept in touch, slowly faded into the new world, a diaspora of Catholic and Protestant folks scrambled across the landscape whose only shared connection  was through my mother. Her family was Catholic. My father's Protestant. She kept track of them all.

My mother took some cousins into our home when they needed a place to stay.

Where did they all go? I know a few from Facebook, but a very small percentage. Many of them I never knew except through stories my mother loved to tell.

This Mother's Day I am thinking of her. I bet there are others in the family who are thinking of her, too.

The Scent of a Matriarch

Bottom row from left, great-granddaughter Viva, Bettelu, 94. Second row l-r, great-grandson Mystiko, granddaughter Brooke, daughter-in-law Jennifer, granddaughter Isabel Bryna. Top two, Kevin and Barbara. Photo taken during trip to Kauai, September 2019.

She called me Bad Boy 

Although she was the one with the reputation.

Rocker Bob Seger sang about her. So did the 

Beach Boys.

Everyone she ever met sang her praises.

She was my mother-in-law.

Her name was Bettelu. 

She departed this world recently 

six days before completing 

her 98th year on the planet. 

two years before 100.

She was ready. Her chariot had arrived

in the form of her subjects -- those

who adored her.

They gathered round and sang

and cried and laughed 

and partied like it was 2099.

The angels sang. Gabriel blew his horn.

A moment of pure contentment lighted her face.

A shot of joy. Her family was fine. She fulfilled

her work. Her reign was complete.

God love the Queen. May we hold her

lesson of unconditional love in our hearts.

The evening I met her more than 40 years ago

I hoped to make a good impression.

I had designs on marrying her daughter, Barbara.

Bettelu came to town.

To make the most favorable introduction 

I brought my 9-year-old daughter, Molly

my eldest child thus 

proudest accomplishment.

The three of us chatted, Barbara was not there.

I did not realize the depth and magnitude with

whom I was dealing.

Always elegantly clothed, one step ahead of

the fashionistas in colors that made you melt

and baubles so brazen yet subtly formed that

you found it difficult not to study them in wonder.

She was perfume personified: a sweet

scented lotus blossom with the tongue

of a dragon and the heart of a buddha.

Her lips shaded in coral, would

part in pleasant acceptance-

cum-mischievous humor.

It was clear. She was impressed by all that life

had to offer. 

I needn’t have worried.

A talented painter and world traveler with 

impeccable taste and grace. Wife of a political 

wunderkind, a Senator she called Bob and whom

the kids called RG. In addition to 

Barbara (Bubba),

there are three sons,

William (Bill), Robert (Bobby) and Brian (Bird).

The couple were a formidable pair at parties: 

Bettelu and RG.

He called her Red, taken by the auburn highlights

in her hair.

They were gracious, welcoming and generous

to me, a hippie liberal

and my two girls -- Molly and Vanessa --

who became two of her 10 beloved

grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

The good Senator passed away too early

some years ago.

California's top legislators came to honor him

and wish his widowed spouse well. 

Who knew that Bettelu would continue

to create a legacy of love and toughness and

inspiration that would surpass all

expectations and political ramifications.

She never remarried. Too busy.

Although in her final hours, when asked

by her granddaughter Brooke for requests,

she said: "Rich cowboy."

I visited her over the years. We became friends.

I had business in LA and she offered me

a room. We attended movies together 

in the Nineties.

We sat in a dark theater in rapt attention as  

Al Pacino hooo-hahhhed his way

to his only Oscar for Best Actor

in The Scent of a Woman.

"He's a very good actor," she said.

An excellent chef, she prepared wild, 

inventive dishes so curious and delicious

that I cannot remember the names or ingredients.

"When my parents first married, 

my mother didn't know how to cook,"

said Barbara, emphasizing Bettelu's

culinary advancement.

One evening preparing dinner

I sliced into the flesh of a yellow

habanero pepper, following which

I made my natural trip to the banos.

My testicles caught fire. I screeched

and grimaced. Hopped like a jumping bean.

What to do?

Barbara said, run to the shower. Bad idea.

"I'll call Bettelu," she said.

Following a period of 

uproarious laughter,

she answered, "Apply milk."

Bettelu, of course, had the antidote.

She came to call me Bad Boy, 

an affectionate appellation 

that could have been on the label

of a bottle of wine

from her collection. 

But no. It had to do with the gin Martini

that became a Friday night ritual between us

that we repeated into her 98th year.

"You cheated me," she said on a recent occasion.

Due to her declining health, I had laced the drink

with water.

"You bad boy," she said.

Elizabeth Louise Weisel Beverly

was her full name. She preferred

Bettelu.

 

The Circle Game

And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came
And go round and round and round, in the circle game

                                                        -- Joni Mitchell

My longtime good friend Wayne Cox died yesterday. We knew the end was near but the news is hard to take. We talked less than a week ago by phone. He kept in touch with many people. I'm sure he made them feel as special and important as he did me. That was Wayne. I grieve his loss.

One reason he called is because he wanted me to hear the voice of a mutual friend from the past, Dennis Shaw, whom we played sports with as kids. Wayne's gesture was genuine love. It was a gift to Dennis and me. Wayne loved it. This was how he spent his final days, joining people together. 

His interests were many, from sports to world affairs to ballet. Two of his three daughters are dancers. 

Wayne made a point to be well-informed.

"There's nothing like having a cup of coffee and reading The Economist," he said about the simple pleasures of his final months. Which also included watching sports events on the flat screen and analyzing strategies and coaching decisions.

He was a helluva guy. There's so much to say about him, I could go on and on. I want to reduce it to a couple of stories, then listen to how others remember him.

When Wayne first became a dentist, following his graduation from the Dental School at USC, he wanted to live near the beach. I don't know where he first started practicing dentistry but he took residence in Manhattan Beach, then known for its lively parties and casual lifestyle. He figured this would be a good place to establish permanent residence, at least for the time being.

As with so much of his life, Wayne knew exactly what he wanted. For example, he knew from at least his sophomore year in high school that he was going to be a dentist.

"I want to be a dentist," he said. I wanted to be a dentist, too, but, well, maybe I'll be something else. He knew.

Rent was high in Manhattan Beach and owning a place would take some serious bank. But Wayne had a plan, a well-thought out strategy. Rather than waste his newly earned income from dentistry on rent, he would buy a house in Manhattan Beaches, invest in property.

He would do that by living at the beach and not paying rent, so he could save his earnings to buy a place.

How do you do that? 

Single guy. Bright future. What the heck! Purchase a Volkswagen bus to live in. Park said bus in the Lifeguard parking lot next to the Strand between 26th and 27th streets (currently part of Bruce's Beach). No one's going to notice. I'm sure he worked a deal with the Lifeguard authorities. He was a dentist and a rugby jock. Not a bum.

After two years of filling cavities and sleeping in the parking lot, he had saved enough to go in with a partner on a property two doors from the iconic beach Strand. That place should be worth about $10 mil today. 

The rest is history. He eventually circled back to his hometown of Claremont where he found a sweet original Craftsman house to make his home, with a big front porch to share with his friends. He made his own stained glass, including a beautiful rendering of nearby Mt. Baldy that served as his front door window.

He became his hometown dentist, and his hometown coach. He coached the Claremont Colleges rugby team, which gave him a chance to travel and see other parts of the world.

We reconnected about six years ago for a high school reunion. It was multi-class, held in Claremont and there were only five guys present from our class of '65: Danny Roelle, Pat Kady, Bill O'Hara, Wayne and me. Bill died about a year ago, a joke-filled lovable man who lived to party.

Wayne invited me to stay at his place that night, which I did. We chatted into the wee hours, sipping wine and reminiscing. Earlier that day, we began our reunion together on his front porch. I love front porches and I'm positive Wayne considered his a sanctuary for contemplation and hanging with his daughters and many friends.

Our final moments together in the flesh were spent on that porch last October. He knew he had fourth stage cancer that was eating the bones in his legs. Since then, we talked frequently on the phone. He never complained. He remained upbeat. We discussed politics, having daughters, sports, philosophy, religion, you name it. I cherish those moments with my savvy good buddy, especially seeing him that beautiful autumn day on his front porch.

Most people knew Wayne as Wally, a nickname he picked up after high school. He was Wayne to me and it was hard for me to say, Wally. I asked him about it and he said, "Yeah, some people call me Wayne and others Wally. It depends." 

"When we hung out at your house during high school, your mom called you Guy?” I said.

"My dad's name was Wayne,” he said. “I was the little guy. She called me Guy.”

He solved that mystery, which played in the back of my mind for more than 60 years.

In between Guy and Wayne, there was a period when Wayne was known as Weenie.

This was because he was physically small, a late bloomer, before he developed into a formidable athlete. We're talking olden days of elementary school rivalries: St. Joe’s vs. Our Lady of Assumption (OLA). Pomona versus Claremont. 

Wayne resurrected those days and those kids for me, including Dennis Shaw, Dick Morgan, Ron Snyder, Vince Carpio and of course my closest friend, Paul Greene. Despite our separate ways we all seemed to keep one thing in common. We remained friends with Wayne, or Wally or Weenie, the little guy with the big heart.

Well played, Wayne.

Just Another Kauai Sunrise

 

PHOTO:KCS

Some people follow sunsets

The end of the day

When our solar nexus

Goes to rest, painting

colors above the horizon

Time to reflect and be

thankful we've completed another day

Enjoy a refreshment

For unexplained reasons

or no reason at all

We are chased by sunrises

First light

Glimmers of new openings

Color shadings that change

by the second

Fluid purples to red yellow

good mornings

They're all delicious

because we're still here

Together, ready for new beginnings

Greeted by songs of island birds

and rooster crows on Kauai

Drink up.

The Tender Bar

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one tells a few stories. Behind the bar at the Old Spaghetti Factory Restaurant downtown San Jose, 1974, with Mary the cocktail waitress.

PHOTO: BOB BROWN

I spent more than two years of my life as a professional mixologist.

That's a fancy name for bartender, or as some of my most trusted clients called me: barkeep. I called them regulars.

I mixed tequila sunrises, Singapore slings and margaritas, the popular cocktails of the day, as well as traditionals like daiquiris, old-fashions, sidecars, Tom Collins's, Black Russians, Manhattans, whiskey sours, screwdrivers, Rob Roys, rusty nails, Irish coffees and of course martinis.

"Do you know how to make an extra dry martini?" an elder gentleman outfitted in a blazer and ascot asked me.

"Hold a bottle of dry vermouth above the glass and whisper, "vermouth."

Each libation corresponded to a particular glass. A martini "up" went into a stemmed glass, flared like the opening of a lotus on top to accept and cradle the alcohol. 

Tending bar was much like attending school. Although you didn't know if you were student or teacher. Roles were interchangeable. Although I'm sure I learned more than I taught. 

My first gig "dancing the slats" was in 1973 for the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Jose, a themed establishment replete with antiques, faux Tiffany lamps and an authentic, richly wooded back-bar that had been trucked down from Marysville, California, Gold Rush country. It became a nugget of conversation for antique collectors who dropped in, as well as diminishing members of E Clampus Vitas. 

Clampers, as they're called, are dedicated to the preservation of the old American West, with particular fondness for the California Mother Lode. Clampers are recognized as both an historical drinking society and a drinking historical society. 

Rule number one: A serious barkeep should not drink with customers while on duty.

Theme restaurants were popular in the 70s. As part of an effort to revitalize downtown San Jose (which continues to this day), the novel Old Spaghetti Factory attracted a broad audience of dinner-goers and downtown drinkers. The once-agrarian town and surrounding region was known as Santa Clara Valley, the Garden of Earthly Delights. Silicon Valley existed, not as a name but as an underground of brainiacs developing tiny chips that would eventually alter the world. But we didn't know that.

I did know that the oldest daily newspaper in the state of California, once located around the corner, had picked up stakes and relocated to the outskirts of town between a bucolic abandoned farmhouse and an alfalfa field. The San Jose Mercury and News, morning and evening dailies, ten editions each day, were being produced in a new, modern one-story building with a moat in front, a la Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. With a lighted abstract sculpture in its portico, the newspaper plant shined like a beacon. Perhaps it was a warning.

I knew this because for two-and-a-half years I had been employed in that castle as a promotion writer.

During that time the newspaper's voice reflected the prune-picker heritage of old San Jose, with a front page column by Dick Barrett, who spoke the voices of Ma and Pa and the good ole days. Mainstream newspapers, like the Merc, took politically conservative editorial positions, while the cultural changes of the Sixties and early Seventies remained more of a derisive curiosity.

The spiffy newspaper plant was a harbinger for the invasion of high-tech campuses throughout the region. Today that newspaper building houses Super Micro, a chip manufacturing facility from China. I have no idea where the newspaper relocated. The internet has decimated a 300-year-old industry.

On an otherwise sunny day in September of 1972, I walked away from my job at the Murky News. I had had enough, the final straw being more criticism of the increasing length of my hair. My partner Tom Graham likewise stepped away from his typewriter. Computers weren't introduced at the newspaper until 1976. Together we merrily skipped over the watery moat as we plotted our futures, which would involve Volkswagen buses, restaurant work and much longer hair. 

"If you're going, I'm going," said Tom. 

Jim Schober, personnel manager, tried to talk us out of leaving. "You don't want to do this," he said.

"Yes we do," came our chorus.

We received a write up in the Guildsman, an internal newsletter published by union members who posed an adversarial stance against management. Tom and I were referred to as an example of a continuing "talent drain" at the newspaper. 

I was married with a three-year-old daughter, Molly. My employment had been my first career job out of college. Linda, my wife and high school sweetheart, encouraged me to quit the newspaper, primarily due to my complaining about the politics, while her unhappiness seethed below the surface.

Tom, Linda and I all found ourselves employed at the Spaghetti Factory, he and Linda waiting tables, me behind the bar. During that period, Linda became pregnant with our second child, Vanessa, and quit working.

Bar Talk

In a sense, the newspaper followed us. Those bar regulars were mostly reporters and public relations pros seeking post-deadline refreshment, a place to tell stories, laugh and linger over a glass or bottle while inhaling the aroma of garlic from the kitchen that mingled with the reek of the Lysol-scrubbed floor. It smelled better than ink and the clatter of typewriters after a few.

That hour of conviviality transpired between the time we opened and the time the dinner crowd arrived for spaghetti. You could still hear the sound track piping in soft rock music. The bar served as the welcome waiting room.

The above photo was shot by Bob Brown, a two-fisted PR gadfly who bellied up to the bar with a Nikon in one hand and a vodka-grapefruit in the other. The cocktail would have been called a Salty Dog but Bob didn't want the rim of his glass salted like a margarita.

"No salt," said the salty Brown, his blue eyes searching the room below his carrot-colored brows. He wore a navy sport coat, his necktie removed, his pink lips pursed, about to spread into a chuckle or smirk. 

Most customers left loose change on the bar as a tip. Some would lay down a much appreciated greenback. Cocktail waitresses tipped the bartender a percentage of their tips, based on their own discretion.  Our roles were defined and never questioned: women served the tables and men poured the drinks.

The Electric Light Tower in San Jose, Calif., circa 1905, after which the Tower Saloon on Santa Clara Street was named.   PHOTO: SAN JOSE LIBRARY ARCHIVES

A twenty-something Tom McEnery, tall and clean-cut, with an air of privilege and the blood of an Irishman, dropped in occasionally. Tom had politician written all over him, even puffed a long slender cigar. He would later become mayor of San Jose during its period of rapid growth and booming high technology. 

"I'll have a scotch and water," he said, adjusting himself at the bar, personable and forthcoming. I had him pegged for governor.

His family owned properties downtown, including the renowned Tower Saloon, a well-appointed watering hole named after the famous tower that once hovered over the central intersection in town, at Market and Santa Clara streets. During his mayorship, McEnery properly recused himself on matters related to downtown real estate.

Local politicos met at their own table in the saloon, among them Mayor Norm Mineta, who would later serve as cabinet secretary for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The Norman Y. Mineta International San Jose Airport was named in his honor. Of Japanese ancestry, Mineta was hailed as the first Asian-American to hold those offices.

Adorned in shades of red and gold and drowned in bar chatter and the pounding of leather dice cups on the mahogany bar, the Tower Saloon served as an after-hours haunt for local restaurant staff. The real party started when the doors were locked at 2 am and the jukebox was turned up with thumping soul-funk music. I mixed a few at the Tower. 

Rule number two: Repeat rule number one.

The Jocks

The Tower Saloon had its allure, but tending bar at a popular restaurant was most fun. I enjoyed the busy atmosphere of the Spaghetti Factory and variety of customers, never knowing who might stop by. I met and became friends with Al Feuerbach, an elite track and field athlete who held the world record in the shot put. He, Brian Oldfield and Bruce Jenner worked out together at Bud Winter Field at San Jose State in preparation for the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. However, the Olympic Committee had banned Oldfield from the Games because he had competed for money in a brief, ill-fated professional track and fileld circuit.

I wrote a piece about Feuerback, an amiable, long-haired hippie jock. I tried, unsuccessfully, to sell it to Sport magazine. I interviewed Jenner with his first wife Chrystie at their very modest apartment in San Jose for a potential story that never gelled. Neither piece had a news hook. I profiled the colorful and controversial Oldfield in an article that did sell, twice. 

The following summer in Montreal, Feuerbach finished fourth in the shot put. Oldfield, also a shot putter who revolutionized the event by introducing a spinning approach-release, appeared in a televised advertisement for Kodak. Jenner, an extremely good-looking guy, won the grueling two-day decathlon that launched his celebrity. 

At the Spaghetti Factory the crowd moved through, never over-staying their welcome. The job required multi-tasking while dancing in a tight narrow space: Greeting newcomers, fulfilling orders for the wait staff, chatting with people looking to have a good time. I reveled having a stage and audience.

My final gig as a mixologist was at the nearby Laundry Works restaurant, developed by Vic Chung, a restaurateur who had started the popular Iron Works restaurant in Palo Alto, both featured a nouveau California-style cuisine. Vic had frequented the Spaghetti Factory while the Laundry Works was under construction. He asked me to come over. He drove a baby blue Porsche with the vanity plate, Bru Max, which scored a mention in Herb Caen's iconic three-dot column in the S.F. Chronicle.

I worked mostly day shifts at the Laundry Works -- a lunch crowd of mostly lawyers (bad tippers) from the nearby county courts  -- while focusing on moving away from the bar bizz. The party atmosphere had run its course. I had a family to support -- a wife and two young girls -- from whom I had been briefly separated due to circumstances of my employment and other unexpected family matters. Having married at ages 21 and 20 did not work in our favor.

Desperately seeking alternative employment, at the last minute, I turned down a public relations position with FMC (Food Machinery Corp.), a major employer in San Jose that manufactured a variety of machines, including the Bradley, a modern tank-like weapon of war. I couldn't do it.

At age 28, I felt lost and trapped.

Rule number three: Expect the unexpected.

To be continued.

Atmospheric Shiver

A couple of days ago when I heard that Soquel Creek had breached at the Soquel Grange, I experienced deja vu. In 1982 this was the scene on Monday, Jan. 4 following more than 36 hours of continuous rain in Santa Cruz County. Our Santa Cruz Publishing offices were located across Porter Street from the grange. We had to evacuate. PHOTO:KCS

"They say it's a hundred-year storm, but I say bullshit. It's what happens when you live in a floodplain." -- merchant, Soquel village, 1/8/82

                                             

"A state of emergency in Santa Cruz County was declared by Gov. Edmund Brown, Jr. and President Ronald Reagan, following the worst flooding ever in parts of the county." Santa Cruz News, 1/8/82

They called it the Pineapple Express then. Today they call it an Atmospheric River.

Front page of The News, Jan. 8, 1982

We published that week's News on the fly. Our offices were thrashed. Water had risen to four-feet on the inside walls. We did not have computer technology. Composing a newspaper for printing required several hand-operated steps including typesetting and paste-up. -- between the time the story left the typewriter until it reached the printing press. Somehow we did it. Publisher/owner Lee May found a way and we all pitched in using facilities of the Aptos Post.

The destruction throughout Santa Cruz County was similar to what happened this week, worse in the mountains: Downed trees, tons of driftwood floating into Monterey Bay and washing up on local beaches and roads. We lost power for longer periods. Ten people were were buried alive under a mudslide at Love Creek. For many old-timers, it brought back memories of the flood of '55 which submerged downtown and wiped out China Town next to the San Lorenzo River.

The loss of life from the Atmospheric River is one. A 72-year-old man was crushed by a falling tree. We have not seen the likes of the current storm in 41 years. Drought throughout California has not only kept us too dry, but dulled our memories to how powerful and destructive Pacific Ocean storms can be along our Monterey Bay coastline. Rain storms were once common winter occurrences.

Fallen tree in Lighthouse Field State Park marks spot where man died. PHOTOS:KCS 2023 

Car driver stops suddenly to avoid crashing surf.

Onlookers watch waves pelt the cliffs and West Cliff Drive.

Pedestrian-Bike path on West Cliff Drive destroyed by heavy storm surf.

Nothing but white water at Mitchell's Cove.

Another storm is due tonight with a week of rain. Here's hoping we stay safe and dry, and that our reservoir at Loch Lomond reaches capacity. Latest report is at 90-percent.