Boat Packing

     My brother, Tom, and I had always enjoyed backpacking in Yosemite.  We would leave the gaping crowds in the valley and head out into the (relatively) high country.  The only requirement was that there be water nearby, suitable for swimming and drinking.  As the years went by the water sources started getting polluted with various bacteria, necessitating  the inclusion of a water filter amongst our supplies.

One year, one of my partners in the recording studio we owned, hearing of my love for backpacking, invited me on a special camping trip that he and some of his friends took every year to Lake Eleanor on the northern border of Yosemite.  “This is a serious guys-only trip we go on every year.” explained Jerry, “We take small inflatable rowboats and row down the length of the lake.  Then we climb up this rock face on the side of a cataract to our campsite at a little beach next to a small river.  We call it Camp Runamok.  I’m pretty sure you’re fit enough to make the trip as I heard you run the mountain trails of Tamalpais.”

Judging from Jerry’s physique and level of fitness I was sure that, as the old song goes; “Anything he could do, I could do better...”.  I was instructed to buy a couple of cheap inflatable rowboats; the kind with oar locks for the little plastic paddles that were included.  I already had all the other camping gear.  “We put the deflated boats on top of our packs and hike to the lake trailhead.  It’s not that far from the parking area so we don’t have to walk all that far before we unload.  We blow up our boats and tie them together and put our packs on the back boat and row down the lake.  We stash the boats at the bottom of the cataract, shoulder our packs and climb the rock face to Camp Runamok” Jerry explained.  “Hey, it sounds like fun!” I thought to myself.  The idea that you could actually pack a boat on your backpack had never occurred to me.  I don’t know which of my fellow campers came up with the idea of pairing cheap inflatable rowboats with backpacking, but I found it to be a great variation on traditional backpacking.  “The great thing about it is since the boat is carrying all the weight we can bring pretty much anything we want.  Canned goods, musical instruments, beach chairs.   The big guys hump sixty pound packs!” marveled Jerry.

         The hardy boat packer, stocked up with all the creature comforts needed for luxury camping.

       “Anything he could do, I could do better...” I softly hummed to myself as I loaded up my pack with all the creature comforts I had typically denied myself on the standard camping trek, where you walked for miles before you left the crowds behind and found yourself a little Shangri-la.  It was a really fun trip, even if we hadn’t had the magic mushrooms that were provided by the elders.  The most veteran of the Camp Runamok members had given themselves exalted titles.  I think they had attained the status of “Chief Senior Eagle” by this time, and despite the fact that I had brought two things that had never come to the camp before, cigarettes and a guitar, I acquitted myself by having an impressively heavy pack and showing superior water skills.  By the end of our stay I was named a “Junior Eagle”.  I was exalted to have the approval of the fellas...

I told my brother about this revolutionary new way to camp and he quickly came on board.  We made a couple of modifications.  We replaced the tacky little plastic “oars” that came with the boats, and upgraded to bigger, costlier “Sevylor” boats.  With the bigger boats, you could just rest your pack on the stern of the boat, doing away with a second boat.  The camping/fishing store where we got the boats also sold long hollow aluminum oars with oar blades made of a tough polypropyline plastic that screwed onto the aluminum poles.  “Now we need to find a camp site where only us boat packers can go,” I said to my brother.  After pouring over some large topo maps of Yosemite, we found a little lake that was further up the trail from the Lake Eleanor trailhead with its crowds of tourist rookie campers on guided horse trips.  We hoped that the extra hour and a half uphill hike would weed out the madding crowds; the old and infirm...

Thus began our love affair with Kibbe Lake.  Between my brother and I, together and apart with various girlfriends in tow, (“Come on!”  I would exhort to the reluctant and by-this-time petulant girlfriend, “It’s a bit of a hike but once you get to the trailhead we get in our boats and the wind pretty much does the rest!”)  My brother and I knew the drill, always cowboyed up, and never complained.  Since then we and our companions, have enjoyed our inflatable rowboats in Yellow Stone Park, Mono Lake, String Lakes in the Grand Tetons, Mount Lassen, Lake Tahoe, in our own San Francisco Bay, and probably some other venues that don’t come to mind.  But Kibbie will always be our special place.  

If you are interested, there’s more about our boat packing adventures at Kibbie Lake in my earlier blog entry called “Ursophobia”.  I made up the name to describe my brother’s attitude towards bears which we encountered on several of our camping trips.

A granite cliff near our marine camp site.  There's a narrow ledge you can climb up and jump off of.

 Your author at the trailhead.  This is where we blow up our boats and leave the rest of the campers behind.  The following pix are a brief photo journal of the joys of boat packing at Kibbie Lake.

The Neighborhood Gang Invades the Kaiser Estate

         Henry J. Kaiser was one of the original “Daddy Warbucks”.  One of his many industrial triumphs was to make Liberty ships during WWII.  He was able to crank them out at an amazing speed and was a great help to the Allied war effort.  Here’s a brief bio of the man from Wikipedia.

Henry John Kaiser (May 9, 1882 – August 24, 1967) was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. He established the Kaiser Shipyard which built Liberty ships during World War II, after which he formed Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel. Kaiser organized Kaiser Permanente health care for his workers and their families. He led Kaiser-Frazer followed by Kaiser Motors, automobile companies known for the safety of their designs. Kaiser was involved in large construction projects such as civic centers and dams, and invested in real estate. With his acquired wealth, he initiated the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan, charitable organization.

          Back in the late fifties he was probably the richest man in Hawaii.  With his great wealth he built a series of stunningly large and opulent catamarans that were used for dinner and sunset “booze cruises” in Waikiki.  They were all painted pink, his trophy wife’s favorite color.  He also bought a large chunk of Waikiki beach down at the western end and created the Kaiser Hawaiian Village.  It was designed as a sort of destination resort.  The spacious grounds were lushly planted and scrupulously landscaped.  On the grounds, Henry J (as we, his close friends called him...), also built Hawaii’s first and perhaps only movie theater/auditorium within a shiny silver geodesic dome.  The “village” also had a beach club for the local people.  My family were members of the club for awhile.  I remember swimming in the pool, doing cannon balls off the diving board (back when they were allowed), and scarfing cheeseburgers and french fries.  All about twenty yards from Waikiki beach and sublime ocean swimming.  But heck we were in the ocean all the time; to swim in a pool was cool.

                                                   Henry J. Kaiser the fierce looking mega-industrialist

A couple of shots of The Hawaiian Village as it looks today.  Mr. Kaiser sold the compound to the Hilton Hotel chain for a number of dollars that I probably wouldn't be able to comprehend.  The upper picture with the rainbow on the side (it's actually a ceramic mosaic) was under construction in 1968.  That Summer I was home from college and I had a job installing the wiring for phones.  I personally "pulled wire", as we called it, for this magnificent edifice.  We worked on the building when the floors were just cement slabs and there weren't any walls yet, just a 2X4 nailed across the opening.  We would eat lunch looking out with our legs dangling over the edge of the slab.  I remember lunching on the 30th floor in that position.  After a quick sandwich, I lay back, legs hanging over the precipice, and took a quick snooze.  I dreamt I was falling from a great height and awoke with a start.  No more lunch-time leg dangling for this wire puller!  Now I'm very uncomfortable with heights (it's not fear, yet).  I blame Henry J.

       When our family lived in the Kahala beach area, just past Diamond Head, Henry J lived just down the road.  We had a house on the water; Henry J had a bigger house on the water.  When we moved across the bay to another beach community, Portlock Road, at the base of Koko Head Crater, we lived in a lovely house also right on the water.  In a few years, Henry J followed us to Portlock Road and built himself a house on the water at the end of the road.  To use the word “house” is actually quite demeaning to Henry J’s new crib...  In truth it was a grand and opulent estate on ten acres of land.

  

     It had it’s own harbor that he had dredged out for his catamarans.  It had a dog house for his wife’s French Poodles.  This dog house was the size of one wing of our, very nice, house.  The dog house was painted pink inside and out as were the dogs.  Mrs. Henry J loved her pink!  The dog house was air conditioned and it had vanity tables...  The compound also had a basketball court surrounded by a garage that had about twenty stalls for various luxury conveyances.  On the one side of the court that was not garage, there was a lava rock wall about twelve feet high.  Above that wall stretching away from the garage/b-ball court area was a playing field the size of a football field.  

     As you can see from the photo, below, Henry J was not only a wealthy and powerful industrialist, he had the girth of Henry VIII which is not conducive to basketball and other field sports.  The basketball court and football field were built for his adopted son Mike Kaiser.  I suspect that old Henry J was much too busy building shopping malls, marinas and large housing developments and he was much too obese to be the kind of dad who’d shoot hoops with his son or throw the ball around with him.  Instead, he expressed his love by providing these sporting amenities for the prodigal son.  There were people on staff at the estate who could some times fill in as a surrogate dad and occasionally play with Mike, the lonely rich kid.  But it wasn’t the same as having a real pal-around dad; or having a ‘good kids’ gang like us to play with.

                                Probably not the kind of dad who's going to play ball with his kid.

      My brother and I were part of one of the two principle neighborhood gangs of Portlock.  We were the “good” kids who played sports during the non-school days.  By sundown, we were all washed up and in our tropical PJ’s ready to watch “I Love Lucy” during the parent’s cocktail hour.  Then it was dinner; wash and dry the dishes; and off to our bedrooms.  The “bad” kids were engaged in various delinquency projects during the day and hanging out on the street at night.  They would congregate on the grassy strip of lawn next to the road; in front of J Aku Head Pupule’s house, opposite Bill Quinn’s house.  

     J Aku Head Pupule (known by all of us neighbors  as just  Aku (Mr. Aku to us kids)) was the most popular “radio personality” in Honolulu in those days.  His real name was Hal Lewis.  He was purported to be one of the highest paid disc jockeys in the whole country.  He had five kids and the youngest, Lance, was in the bad kid’s gang.  The Quinn’s across the street also had five kids.  And despite the fact that Bill Quinn was the governor of our state, his middle son was also in the bad kid’s gang.  In fact he was the ring leader, which is probably why they hung out there; so Stinky Quinn wouldn’t have to travel far to be bad...  There was also a lady’s auxiliary that was appended to the bad kid’s gang.  The lot of them would spend their evenings smoking and drinking and making out.  They were a little older than us as a rule and we did our best to stay out of their way.  

     The two places where we commingled, was football games on the street and our neighborhood surf spot, located conveniently near our house.  So our gang of about a dozen played basketball in one guy’s driveway and football, softball and volleyball at this large expanse of lawn right on the water that was actually four large lawns with no obstacles between them.  We were fortunate to have as part of our gang a couple of kids who lived in one of the houses with the conjoined lawns.  It was the size of a football field and made a perfect playground for us ‘good’ kids.  After the yard work was done, my brother and I would join the gang for land sports, unless the surf was up.  Then we’d drop our bats and balls; grab our surfboards and paddle out.  As childhoods go, I’ll put ours up against anybody’s.

     One memorable day, the gang decided to peddle out to the Kaiser estate to peek through the bars of the gated driveway and check out the action.  Maybe we’d get a glimpse of the famous pampered pink poodles.  Instead, what we saw was Mike Kaiser taking batting practice with a pitching machine.  We couldn’t believe our eyes.  The kid not only had his own playing field big enough for baseball or football he had his own damn pitching machine!  And he had one attendant to shag down the baseballs.  He eventually caught sight of us gaping through the barred gate.  He went over to his attendant and said a few words.  All of a sudden the gate slid open and Mike waved us in.

Here's part of the gang.  I'm on the far right, brother Tom, behind me then it's Rocky, John and Shorty.

My little brother Randy is in the boat.  In this photo we're getting ready to launch little Randy out to sea for his Spirit Quest Journey.  BON VOYAGE, RANDY!

     We grabbed our gloves from off our handlebars and ran down to the  field.  My brother, who was the ringleader of the good kids gang,  introduced us all around and we decided since we didn’t really have enough for a game, one guy would bat; one guy would catch; one guy would take throws and feed the pitching machine; the rest of us would spread out in the field to catch the batted balls.  After the batter had had a few turns we’d all rotate.  We looked at each other and couldn’t believe our eyes.  Not only have we breached the gates of the great estate, we’re playing ball with the heir apparent and his marvelous pitching machine.  

     When my brother came up to bat, Mike Kaiser was playing left field, near the lava wall.  Twelve feet below was the basketball court.  My brother hits a long high fly ball to deep left field.  Mike Kaiser takes off after it.  One moment we see Mike’s retreating backside, the next moment there’s no Mike.  Oops.  Mike had fallen over the wall, while chasing my brother’s fly ball and crash landed on the asphalt basketball court, twelve feet below.  I guess it could have been worse.  He didn’t hit his head or break any bones, that we know of.  But he did severely sprain both his ankles and was carted off in an ambulance attended by many semi-hysterical estate workers.  We kids, seeing that the game was over and that all the adults were attending to poor Mike, took this opportunity to poke around a little.  I remember I was in Mike’s bedroom playing skittles with one of my buddies when someone finally rounded us all up and politely asked us to leave.  

     Despite the fact that all of our phone numbers were in the Portlock Road Neighborhood Association Phonebook, Mike Kaiser never called us up for another game.  I figure it was his loss.  We were great kids, except for my brother.

Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres

Ballerinas

My brother wrote a human interest column for many years in the Maui News.  The newspaper published a book of some of his stuff.  I have transcribed some of my favorites into my blog.  Enjoy

     Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres

Ballerinas  by Tom Stevens

     Toe shoes and tutus do not a Dame Margot make, but something special happens when little girls slip those ribboned satin shoes onto their feet, tie the gauzy skirts around their waists and become...ballerinas.
     Little boys, all "snips and snails and puppy dog tails", can never quite figure it out---even when they become fathers of ballerinas.  But to little girls and little girls grown, there is no doubt at all.
     To be a ballerina, even for a night, is to dance in a dream.
     As recital night nears, a wondrous transformation occurs.  Spirited island girls who climb trees and throw rocks at their brothers, girls with freckles on their faces and bandaids on their knees, turn into butterflies.
     Cheeks glowing with unaccustomed rouge, sparkling eyes highlighted with liner and brow pencil, they wait off-stage for the grownups to stop talking, for the house lights to dim, for the shining moment to arrive.
     The weeks of rehearsal are over.  The warmup stretches, the plies at the barre, the teacher's endless "repetez, repetez."  After patient tutoring and considerable exertion, 8-year-old awkwardness has become 8-year-old grace.
     Now, as they wait for the phonograph needle to drop into the grooves of "Swan Lake" or "Peter and the Wolf," expectation shining in their eyes, they seem like faeries from some gentler bubble world.
     They are, right now, in magic.  This is what it is for.  The afternoons of practice, the parents' many car pools from school to studio to home---all lead to this fragile moment.
     It is not the performance, really.  That will go as well as it should---a festival of bright costumes and swirling motion ending in a proud thunder of applause.
     There will be refreshments afterwards, and many pictures taken.  Praise will rain on the teacher and her pupils.  The parents will be pleased that they helped create something special for their daughters.
     But the dancer is not timeless as the wistful fantasy of the waiting dancer.  That cannot be photographed, or caught and held in the heart.
     The grownups know this, especially the mothers.  The beauty of this expectant moment stirs something deep in them, and they ache.  Time is passing.  Youth, which stretches ahead infinitely for the ballerinas, is so very short, and innocence so innocent.
     There is a moment in nature-----in the still, cool hour just before sunrise----when the very earth seems to hold its breath.  The birds sleep.  The light wind dies.  A crystalline hush settles over all.
     The waiting ballerinas are like that, in a way.  No longer toddlers, not yet women, they toe-balance between dream and wakefulness.  To them the stage is not a stage.  The crowded auditorium is not a darkened room.
     The ballerinas are not there.
     They are, right now, in magic.

     June, 1983

     A young ballerina from Makawao, Maui, waits for her call to the stage.  1983.

Hitch-hiking to Chicago for a Wedding

     In the Summer of 1971, I got word from my brother that he was getting married in Chicago and wanted me to be his best man.  At the time, my brother was toiling ignominiously in Navy boot camp in San Diego.  If he was married he would no longer have to live in the bunk bed barracks along side all the other miserable swabbies.  He and his bride would be allowed to live off base, perhaps in some little bungalow near the sea.  Having grown up on the ocean with surfing and body surfing, my brother would love nothing more.

     At the time, I was renting a spare room in a fraternity house on the Stanford campus and tending bar just down the rode at a place called "Charley Brown's Steak and Lobster".  It was a franchise from Southern California that was making their first move into Northern California and they chose a most propitious spot; Burlingame, near the airport and just across the highway from our local race track.  The place was going gang busters (Their motto was displayed on a huge plaque above the grill.  Below a colorful bas relief carving of a portly fellow cavorting with two "toothsome wenches", were the words: "WORK IS THE CURSE OF THE DRINKING CLASS").

     Somehow, I managed to wangle some time off from work.  I got it into my head that it would be great adventure to hitch-hike from my home in Palo Alto to Elmhurst, an upscale suburb of Chicago, where the bride's family lived and where the wedding was to be held.  The bride's father was the well-to-do owner of a very profitable tool and die company.  The wedding would be held at his country club; a very swanky golf and tennis club with a very impressive and very large old stone club house.  The proud father was anxious for his only daughter to have the best wedding and reception that money could buy. He was inviting all the family's friends and relatives.  The groom, on the other hand, had me, his brother as best man and one acquaintance from college who just happened to be passing through the area.  My parents and various relatives and family friends from Hawaii sent telegrams in lieu of attending.  So one one side we have the groom, his best man and one guy from college.  On the other side we have what seemed like half the Elmhurst community.  But I'm getting ahead of myself;  I'm still back in Palo Alto. 

     I borrowed an old Marine backpack and sleeping bag from a friend.  The backpack was canvas and the frame was made of wood with no waist belt.  The sleeping bag was a standard Marine issue brown goose down bag.  I had no thermal pad; I don't think I was aware of them.  All packed up, I trundled out of the fraternity and down to the street.  I was lucky because who should come along but an old fraternity brother of mine who was going to Oakland.  He agreed to drop me off at the highway 80 off ramp.  As we drove across the Bay Bridge I noticed that he was steering with one hand while the other hand deftly rolled a joint.  So I was pleasantly mellow while I waited for my next ride.  My only direction was to stay on highway 80 going East and eventually I'd end up in Chicago.

     My next ride took me all the way to Sacramento where I spent the night at my old girlfriend's family's place.  Thanks, Noni, for putting me up.  My next ride took me all the way to Reno and I'm thinking, "I'm cruising along pretty good and I should make the wedding no problem."  My next ride was from a little pixiesh looking fellow.  If he'd had pointed ears he would have looked just like an Elf.  He was a postal inspector on holiday from Southern California.  He was vacationing alone and was glad of some company.  I asked him where he was going and he said nowhere in particular he just wanted to see the country.  I told him a little bit about myself and where I was going.  "I'm hoping to get to Winnemucca by tonight." I ventured, "You might like it there.  They have this wonderful topless club and steakhouse with a huge stuffed polar bear in a glass case.  He's rearing up on his hind legs with his paws raised up.  He's about twelve feet tall and the scariest thing I've ever seen under glass!"  

     I had spent the summer after my freshman year working for the US Geological Society at the eastern edge of Nevada a bit north of highway 80, and my work buddy and I would cruise back and forth on Highway 80 on the weekends looking for fun as in "agreeable fun-loving gals" type fun.  The establishment I had described to my companion was actually in Elko, a town much further east than Winnemucca but I would worry about that when, and if, we got there.  He said he didn't care about the top-less bit (my first clue) but he'd sure like to see that polar bear and have one of those steak dinners I had told him about.  I didn't care as long as we kept heading East on highway 80.  He said he would take me to Winnemucca if we could stop and see Pyramid Lake first.  Pyramid Lake was east and north of Reno in an Indian reservation.  I had been there before and it was a truly desolate place.  The road out there was a little two lane country road with nothing and nobody around.  The significance of such a lonely, desolate place to visit escaped me at the time...

     On the front seat of his rental car he had a bunch of porno magazines he had confiscated in his roll as a postal inspector.  "Take a look at those hot pictures.  Doesn't that give you a boner?  Oh yeah, I see a lump in your pants." leered my companion.  I was not comfortable with the situation that was developing and the way he was looking at me.  I reassured myself that if things got out of hand I could easily handle him because of the mismatch in size (as long as he didn't know martial arts...).  I kept up a nervous bit of patter and soon we were at Pyramid Lake.  There is a little side road made of sand and gravel that actually takes you to the lake's edge but my companion decided to pull off the main road onto the soft sandy shoulder.  As he was spinning his wheels and looking gleefully at me, he says;  "Uh oh!  Looks like we're stuck.  If no one comes along we'll have to spend the night here in the back seat!"

     It was now painfully obvious to me that he envisioned a romantic tryst with this cute blond college boy.  This college boy was having none of it.  I got out of the car and stared down the road.  "There's no way I'm spending the night out here with you!" I retorted, "It's pretty obvious that you purposely got us stuck.  I'm going to flag somebody down to get us help."  Fortunately for me, in a few minutes I see a pick-up truck materializing out of the desert heat.  When it got closer, I jumped out onto the road and flagged it down.  The two Indian gentlemen in the truck had a rope which we tied between our bumpers and after a bit of to-and-fro-ing, the pixie's car was back on the asphalt.  I reminded him about his promise to take me to Winnemucca and inferred that things could get unpleasant between us if he didn't keep his promise.  

     He reluctantly agreed and when we got back to Highway 80 he turned eastward, much to my relief. By the time we approached the outskirts of town it was late evening.  I had him drop me off by the side of the road about a half mile out of town.  He did a U-turn and hi-tailed it back in the direction of Reno.  I, blessedly, was in the middle of nowhere in the sage brush and sand of the northern Sonoran desert.  It was a new moon and the only light was starlight.  Away from town in the desert night air, the stars shown so bright they didn't even twinkle.  I walked several hundred yards away from the highway and laid down my sleeping bag on the desert hardpan among the sagebrush.  After the day's harrowing events, I savored the quiet solitude of my surroundings and had myself a most wonderful sleep.

     As I continued my sojourn eastward, I had one more memorable ride.  Somewhere in western Wyoming, I got picked up by two teenaged guys in a pick-up truck.  I sat in the bed of the truck next to a large automobile engine.  It wasn't much company but the weather was nice and sunny and we were heading East.  Suddenly I hear a BANG!  and the truck starts fishtailing wildly; we'd probably been doing at least seventy at the time .  My engine companion starts rolling back and forth like a loose cannon on deck while I'm desperately playing keep-away.  Finally the driver is able to wrestle the truck to a stop by the side of the road.  We had had a blow-out.  While one kid changed the wheel, I had a chance to talk to the other one.  It turns out they were both sixteen and cousins.  The truck belonged to the dad of one of them.  They lived in rural northern California somewhere.  Both cousins were living with this dad whom they described as being mean and cruel.  

     They decided to steal the truck and run away from home.  They were headed towards Iowa where they had a much kindlier uncle who had a pig farm.  They were going to stay with him and work the farm.  The engine in the back of the truck was a 350 cubic inch Thunderbird engine they planned to sell when their meager funds ran short.  One of the boys popped the hood and there, nestled in the engine's intake manifold, were several ears of corn and some baked potatoes wrapped in tin foil.  The heat from the engine had steamed them up quite nicely.  After our picnic we got on the road again.  We hadn't driven much more than an hour or so when there was another BANG! and another game of dodge-the-engine.  

     It turns out that the boys, who didn't have a lot of cross country driving experience, weren't aware that when driving long distances on hot highways, you are supposed to let some air out of your tires to counteract the increased tire pressure brought on by the heat.  I said my goodbye's to the forlorn cousins and wished them good (or, should I say, better) luck on the remainder of their trip.  I walked on down the road, heading East.

     I eventually made it to Elmhurst at about three in the morning.  Two cops, on patrol, seeing a backpacking vagabond on their streets at that hour quickly pulled over and took me in tow.  When they heard that I was supposed to be the best man at the wedding of the daughter of one of the town's most prestigious citizens, they didn't hesitate to take me right to his front door.  Mr. Sutton was less than thrilled to see me at that ungodly hour but took me in anyway when he heard about my hitch-hiking journey of over two thousand miles.  I just hoped he had done something similar in his mad-cap youth so he'd perhaps understand.

     When the big day arrived, I must say I cleaned up pretty well and looked pretty spiffy in my rented morning coat best man outfit.  Everything went off without a hitch until we got to the reception.  Sitting at the wedding table, my brother and I started reading the telegrams from family and friends back home.  For some reason, this brought on an incredible feeling of sadness for both of us and we started bawling our eyes out, much to the discomfort of the rest of the guests, to say nothing of the new bride.  After the wedding, my brother had to report back to Naval Boot Camp in San Diego; no honeymoon for swabbies.  I accompanied the bride and her maid-of-honor back across the country in the new car the bride's parents had bought as a wedding present for the newlyweds.  Other than road-side emergencies, I believe that was my last voluntary hitch-hiking.

         Here's my brother at the onset of marriage and Naval career

At the end of Naval career...

             



   

Horse trailer mis-hap on hwy 101

        For most of the years I have lived here at Happy Acres, there have been horses on the property.  In 1980 I renovated the horse pasture and boarded horses at Happy Acres for about twenty-five years.  I fed the horses twice a day, rain or shine and had to put up with their pushing and jostling at feeding time while carrying a large plastic bin full of oat hay or flakes of alphalpha, often in very mucky conditions.  There were four feeding stations in close proximity and the horses spent quite a bit of time up there, thinking that perhaps if they were in attendance, more food would appear.  In the wet winters, between their manuring and general stomping around, the ground became quite a quagmire that could easily pull the Wellingtons right off your feet.

I was out in the pasture shoveling up manure for the compost pile one afternoon when I noticed one of the horses acting strangely.  She was walking in a tight counter-clockwise circle with her head bent to the left.  Upon closer examination, I could see ropes of viscous discharge coming out of her mouth and nose.  I immediately thought of the Rinderpest viral plague that had annihilated domesticated herds in colonial Africa.  I had read a couple of historical novels about Kenya under English rule (“Uhuru” and “Something of Value”).  In addition to the tse tse fly and the Mau Mau rebellion, the Rinderpest was perhaps the biggest challenge facing the colonial settlers.  

The local megafauna, over the eons, had built up an immunity that the recently introduced cattle did not have.  The virus was spread by drinking at common watering holes.  Symptoms included a drunken gait and a mucousy discharge from the nose and mouth.  The disease was extremely contagious and almost always fatal.  I feared greatly that Hallastra might have picked up something similar.  Happy Acres is proximate to the miles of trails in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which makes it popular with my horse owners as they don’t have to trailer their horses anywhere.

I have hiked all the trails in the area and I noticed that there are several cisterns and ponds that the old Portuguese and Spanish land-grant ranchers used during Marin county’s rural past.  These watering holes are shared by the many horses that are ridden on these trails as well as by our local fauna.  I feared that something similar to the Rinderpest had befallen our poor Hallastra.  I phoned Duffy, the owner, and explained what I had seen.  She was understandably upset.  Duffy was the most involved of my horse owners and wanted nothing but the best for her steed.  This meant a certain amount of work on my part to “horse proof” the property, which I didn’t mind.  I learned a lot over the years from my horse owners about horses and providing a proper equine environment.  Duffy, in particular, did a lot over the years to turn this place from an undeveloped homestead into a serviceable horse pasture.

The local vet wasn’t able to nail down a diagnosis so Duffy trailered Hallastra up to UC Davis, renowned for its school of veterinary medicine.  The diagnosis eventually arrived at by the astute horse doctors of UC Davis was “Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis (EPM)”.  No, I did not remember the name of the malady off the top of my head.  I had Google to thank for that.  All I remember Duffy telling me was that her horse had picked up the protozoa from drinking water contaminated with possum poop.  Some horses are more immune than others and it’s estimated that as many as 50% of private mounts in possum habitat have been exposed.

Due to Hallastra’s advanced age, her immune system was probably compromised, allowing for the opportunistic infection to take hold.  The UC vets did what they could but told Duffy her horse would never be totally free of the symptoms.  Indeed, on the trailer ride back to our pasture on hiway 101, the horse lost its balance causing Duffy to swerve, knocking the trailer to its side with  the horse kicking and screaming inside.  As you can see by the weathered newspaper clipping below, the poor horse and its banged up trailer were in the process of being righted.  Hallastra proved to be no longer rideable and was put out to pasture elsewhere, presumably in an equine assisted living arrangement.  The second picture is what she looked like before she became ill.

She was a beautiful horse; gentle and friendly.  And her offerings made very fine compost for my garden.  There were many other horsey adventures and misadventures over the years, including the time one of the horse owners left the gate open and our little “remuda” of four wandered down to Muir beach for an overnighter with the horses at the Muir Beach stables.  But that’s a story for another time.

Happy trails, Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres  

Here's what Hallastra looked like before her illness   

Six A.M. Cinema: Hail Britannia

     Yesterday I revisited the lovely film "Mrs. Brown" with Judi Dench playing the roll of the widowed Queen Victoria and her "friendship", if you will, with John Brown a rugged, hard drinking Scotsman who had been the gillie (game keeper) at Balmoral Castle when the queen's husband had been alive and in residence there.  I visited Professor Google to get more info.  Victoria holds the Guinness Book of Records as the longest reigning monarch in the history of the country.  (long reigns are something we could do with here in drought stricken California...).  The other record she holds is for being the owner of the most corsets with whale bone stays.  Fortunately for the cetaceans, whale bone strutted corsets went out of style.  Now we hold in our collective tummies with "Spanks".  The woman who thought up Spanks is now a billionaire as America's battle of the bulge continues to fail.

                           

                                                             

            Queen Vicky                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                King Edward

  

     

                  Mrs. Wallis Simpson     

     One person who would never have needed Spanks or corsets was Queen Victoria's great grandson David, better known as Edward, Prince of Wales, the man who abdicated the English throne to be with his great love Wallis Simpson.  Edward stayed trim by chasing married women around.  This I found out when I started watching a BBC mini-series from 1978 called "Edward and Mrs. Simpson" in this morning's 6 AM Cinema.  During the prologue screen credits, a voice (I strongly suspect Julie Andrews) is heard singing:  "Glory, glory hallelujah I'm the luckiest of females, for I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales."  I believe this little ditty was probably written to tweak Edward's nose about his proclivity for pursuing dalliances with married women.  Judging from what I saw, there were several before Wallis came along.  Each of them appeared all too willing to throw her husband under the bus in order to canoodle with Eddie; society wags be damned.  

Looking at the above picture of Edward, he does seem to have the thousand yard stare of a man hopelessly in love.  Right from the beginning of the series you see that poor (not in a pecuniary sense, mind you) Edward is not made of kingly fiber.  Basically he's a scamp.  Long past the time in life when the Prince of Wales should have started a family, he is conducting serial monogamy with these married women, much to the distress of his mother and his very ill father, the current King.  Edward appears to be a man who cares much more for the sybaritic pleasures than affairs of state.  He is constantly ducking his public duties which consist mostly of meaningless ceremonies and functions.  However, the populace expects to see his picture in the daily papers gamely discharging his civic duty.  In one scene Edward is at his "fort" as they call it, which is his private residence and retreat from public life.  He's alone in his ground floor study when he hears male footsteps approaching.  He quickly rises, opens the nearest window and jumps out.

As scamps go, Edward is most charming.  He likes to kid around and doesn't mind making a fool of himself.  Mindful of his Scottish ancestry he likes to "pipe" his dinner guests into the dining room playing bagpipes, dressed in full Scottish kilt ensemble. (without the comma after 'bagpipes', it would seem that the bagpipes were wearing a kilt--which is why punctuation is so important...)  

     Later on in the series, he serenades a party crowd playing the ukulele.  He likes to stand on his head for extended periods of time.  We see him playing golf; shooting skeet from the deck of his motor yacht; diving off that same deck to go for long swims in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic seas; driving golf balls into the sea from the deck; frisbee tossing LP's (Well, dear, you mustn't worry.  The new records are unbreakable!) at a backyard picnic with his drinking buddy to see who can smash the Wedgwood china first.  And he insists on keeping up with all the latest dances.  Along with the usual grouse shooting and salmon fishing, he is also a big game hunter.

Early in the first episode, he invites the married woman prior to Mrs. Simpson to go on holiday with him to East Africa.  Back in the day, of course, the English empire included great swaths of Africa.  Edward had a legitimate reason to visit part of the greater commonwealth.  However, he wasn't there to motorcade his way slowly through the sweltering throngs of adoring Kenyans.  He was there on safari to hunt big game.  The opening scene in Africa shows a herd of elephants.  Edward, ever the intrepid traveler, gets too close with his camera and the lead bull elephant, a magnificent tusker, charges.  The royal hunting party scatters with a collective shriek.  In the next scene we see Prince Edward shinnying up a tree.  Soon, we see Edward, having regained his dignity, leading the hunting party.  They come upon the same herd of elephants and Edward takes his elephant rifle from his gun bearer and kills the lead elephant with one shot.  For those of us who are more fond of elephants than princes, it was a disturbing scene.  The next scene shows the mistress admiring a giraffe feeding among the tree tops.  Edward grabs his rifle from the gun bearer and gives it to her.  "C'mon, love!  There's a sporting lass!" exhorts the Prince.  She hesitantly takes aim with Edward's guidance and encouragement.  BLAM!   One less beautiful, elegant and graceful giraffe to terrorize the neighborhood.

In a sad bit of irony, had his great grandmother, Victoria, still been alive, that's probably the one bit of Edward's behavior she would have approved of; shooting big game in colonial British East Africa.  No wonder the natives threw the blighters out.  Tomorrow:  Episode 4:  "The Divorce".  I expect more hijinks to ensue. 

Six AM Cinema: Big Al's Pizzeria

A note to readers.  When I ported this story over to my blog from my Imac's word processing  program, the embedded formatting commands were not common to Google's Blog-spot.  Thus the wording is cut up and mis-spaced.  You kind of have to read it like an e.e. cummings poem.  Sorry about that but I'm not about to re-type the whole thing.  Mickey da Mayor


     When I pick a movie from my NetFlix "My List" I know that something about the description of the movie on the NetFlix web site intrigued me.  NetFlix has done their micro-marketing job pretty well.  They know from my past selections what I'll probably like.  But when I sit down in the early morning darkness with my mug of English breakfast tea and my morning cigarette, the movie I select sometimes doesn't work out.  As my friend Davey says:  Some days chickens...Some days feathers.  This morning I was favored with a big fat tasty chicken.

The movie is called "Today's Special". Our protagonist is played by Aasif Mandvian Indian actor and comedian who is well known to any of you "Daily Show with 
John Stewart" fans. I'd always thought of him as one of Stewart's "funny-man-
side-kicks". As a big fan of the Daily Show, I was rooting for a good performance 

from Aasif in this movie. He didn't disappoint. Short plot  summary: Aasif is a 

sous chef in a chi chi restaurant in New York. He gets passed over for a 

chef position; quits his job and decides to go to Paris to apprentice there and 

hopefully find the epicurean "magic" that his boss says he lacks.  

His dad runs a small, tired "Tandoori Palace" in a funky part of Queens. The dad gets a heart attack and Aasif must take over the family biz. The taxi driver 

who takes him to Queens is a talkative fellow. He is also Indian. He finds out thatAasif is a sous chef and starts telling an exasperated Aasif that he also used to bea cook in a very reputable restaurant in Mumbai. "I cooked for a huge banquet 

that was hosted by Indira Ghandi. She liked the food so much, she came back 

the next day and brought all her friends. She even came back to the kitchen and 

congratulated me. I have a picture with her in my home." Aasif, who is preoc-

cupied with the challenge of saving his father's failing restaurant doesn't want to 

hear about how a taxi driver in New York used to be a fantastic chef. As the taxi 

driver, Akhbar, lets him out at the restaurant he gives him his card. Akhbar tells 

Aasif not to worry: "Despair is the solace of fools".

Well, the "Tandoori Palace" is nothing more than an Indian greasy spoon.  

The cook has a huge red beard. He chews tobacco and spits into a cup that sits on the food prep table. To say he is indifferent about his job is to give him too 

much credit. You hear horror stories in the news sometimes about workers in the kitchen doing unspeakable things to the food just to spite the diners. This guy is 

just one step up from them. Aasif, of course, is horrified at the state of the

kitchen and quickly realizes why the family business is failing. He remembers the card that the taxi driver gave him.  He goes to see him at his house. There he's 

amazed to see pictures of this guy in a chef's uniform with the Queen of England, Indira Ghandi and other notables. Slowly, through the movie, Aasif realizes he 

has inadvertently rubbed the magic lamp and Akhbar is the genie who could save the restaurant. Like in the movie "Like Water for Chocolate", Akhbar's cooking is

transformative. The place gets three stars from the New York Times restaurant 

critic and the people are soon lining up around the block to get in. Amusing and moving hi-jinks ensue along the way but, of course, they save the restaurant, 

Aasif gets the girl, and they all live happily ever after. Even the dad with the heartattack...  

I'm now going to segue into one of my own restaurant cook misadventures.  

Now would be a good time for the less tenacious of you to bail out...  

When I saw the kitchen, I was instantly transported back to my first cooking 

job at Big Al's  Pizzeria in Mountain View. It was probably '72 and I was living in arented room at Stanford in one of the less successful frat houses (plenty of empty rooms available). One of my frat brothers (Hans Carstenson--Kirk; can you Cc 

him? I'd love to have Hans's e-mail address) had loaned me his Ducati motor-

cycle. I was at sixes and sevens at that point in my life and I just needed a

job, any job. I rode up and down the El Camino Real looking for restaurant work. I had some previous experience, having toiled at a steak and lobster joint in 

various capacities. Unfortunately, times were tough back then and I was shown 

the door at every establishment I called on, until I got to "Big Al's Pizzeria". I went

into this cavernous dining room/bar. There were very few patrons in the joint.  

"Hi", I said to the bartender, "I'm here to see Al Martin about a job in the 

kitchen." Well, "Big Al" took a liking to me, for some reason, and put me to work.

"We make our pizza dough right here in the back of the kitchen." Al explained, 
"Flour, sugar, water, salt and a block of Fleischman's yeast. We mix it up in this 
industrial mixer (I could almost fit in the bowl), we let it rise in the walk-in fridge, 
then we punch it down; let it rise once more; punch it down again; then we roll the dough out on this machine. Then we cut it into circles with these cutters, small, 
medium and large. We use this large paint brush to paint the sauce on the pie. We make our own sauce too. The condiments we get in large cans from Sexton Food Company; diced onions, diced green peppers, chopped olives, shrimp, pepperoni etc. The condiments are ready to go right into the bins on this island 
counter here. The rotating pizza oven is on your left; the takeout window is on theright.  The condiment table is in the middle. That way the customers can see you make the pizza. None of this frozen crap for us. We make pies from scratch!...
except, uh, for the condiments. You take delivery every Thursday morning for thecooking supplies. The delivery guy's name is Tony. Great guy. He used to work here but he's got himself a sweet new gig. The boss gave him the best route 

here on El Camino. You'll like him."

Come Thursday morning, I hear the "Alum Rock Food Co." truck rumble up 

to the back door. Out pops this classic Italian guy. By which I mean as in the 

Soprano's "Bada Bing" club. He gives me a perfunctory handshake and a nod of the head and heads right past me into the kitchen. The head waitress is standing there with a big smile and open arms. "Tony, baby, c'mer you!"  And  with that 

Tony strides over and takes our waitress, Sophia, in his arms and they start 

making out right there, next to the condiments.  

Now, Sophy is engaged to Alex, the manager; who's good buddies with Tony. "So", I'm thinking to myself, "The food guy is boinking his good buddy's engaged 

girlfriend, our waitress. Good buddy pizza parlor manager is obviously clueless tothis kitchen canoodling. Meanwhile the big boss man, Al, is trying to sell rotating pizza ovens to restaurants all over. His buddy, who "repped" the oven makers, 

offered a sales proposition where Al would be this 'Willy Loman' traveling sales-

man, dragging around a rotating pizza oven, trying to convince skeptical restaur-

ant owners to take a flyer on this amazing new pizza oven that rotates, providing a superior cooked pie. This should be an interesting gig..."

So Al's back in the restaurant now after a tragi-comic sales trip to the casino's etc. at Tahoe's tacky south shore. He's talking to the oven rep buddy who sent him out. Turns out that sometimes the door doesn't work right. During one forget-

table sales demo, Al's demonstrating the oven for some assistant manager, in 

charge of the kitchen at one of the big casinos. As he opens the oven door to 

take the finished pie out, the door falls off. He didn't make the sale, or any sales 

on this trip. Which was a big shame for all of us working there because, Big Al's 

day had, unfortunately, come and gone and the restaurant was running on fumes.  

Big Al was close to being tapped out and that made for a nervous staff.  

Especially the new help, me. Every Friday at the end of the shift we raided the till for our pay. The checks that were handed to us were no good. We were told to 

take out of the till the amount written on the paycheck. Think fumble at a 

football game...

One time, the "other" cook on duty with me was taking a finished pie out of 

the oven. The oven is three rotating round metal discs. When you put the pie in, 

first you scatter some corn meal so the pie won't stick. When it's done you slide 

the pie onto this flat long handled shovel. You do a 180 and transfer the pie to thetake-out box or the metal tray if its in-house. So, anyway, it's a typical Saturday 

night when the joint finally sees some life. There's three of us back there whip-

ping up the pies and putting out the other stuff on the menu. Lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, ravioli, the usual stuff. All of which we made ourselves.

The kitchen floor is a mess of spilled pizza sauce, flour and smashed condi-

ments; probably a few cigarette butts; who knows...maybe some spit... So as my fellow "chef" is doing the 180 to transfer the pie to the box for the customers wait-

ing at the take out window. The corn meal makes pie slide off the shovel and it 

lands on the floor, right side up. Fellow chef quickly bends down and slides the 

pizza back on the shovel. Since he's behind the condiment counter, the

customers can't see that he dropped it. "Oops! Almost dropped it! Here ya go, 

folks! Just brush the corn meal off the bottom before you eat it."

Big Al's Italian Restaurant and Pizzeria, where everything is home-made and the paychecks are made out of rubber. They're not making 'em like that anymore...I hope. To those of you who made it this far, I congratulate you for your tenacity.  

L&K, Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres