Price Canyon 1981

This blog has been fermenting in my mind since January when we stayed at the Avila Bay Inn near Shell Beach.  On a visit to San Luis Obispo just after Christmas, we stopped by the Oasis Moroccan-Mediterranean Restaurant on Broad Street for lunch.  This family owned gem is run by the Dad (Moroccan chef) and his red-headed Irish wife who works the tables.  The freckled faced boys help out in the dining room and the kitchen.  The dining room is nicely decorated and the tables are covered in hand made tile imported from Morocco.  I was very impressed with the tile craft and each table is a unique work of art.  The Moroccan Eggplant salad was amazing with grilled eggplant, peppers, carrots, feta cheese and olives tossed in cilantro vinaigrette.  And we really enjoyed the Moroccan Tea, slightly sweetened and made with mint.  We were so impressed we went back for New Year’s Eve Dinner, our 31^st anniversary. The Osso Bucco Tangine is a braised beef shank and garbanzos in a smoked red pepper sauce, served with rice.  The Moroccan spices include cinnamon; garlic and cardamom are unique and bold without being too hot.

At the end of the fishing pier at Avila Beach is a fish market and the Old Port Inn.  The views of the beach, the hills and the ocean are amazing.  At dinner they were very accommodating and split the warm Greek salad that is loaded with fresh rock cod sautéed in olive oil and garlic with fresh oregano, basil, tomatoes, sliced black olives and sherry and is served on a bed of fresh spinach and topped with feta cheese.  We also split an entrée, sorry, I can’t remember what it was.  But I do remember that they did not charge a corkage fee for local wine we brought.  It was so memorable, that we went back for lunch months later. The Fresh Dungeness Crab sandwich is served on grilled sour dough with melted jack cheese, sliced tomato and smoked tomato aioli.  The chunk crab meat is awesome and fresh from the fish market next door.  The whole sandwich is pricy $24 and plenty for 2 people. 

http://www.oldeportinn.com/lunch.html

Whenever I get to the Pismo Beach area I am taken back to 1981 when I was relocated to the Santa Maria area to cover the strong drilling activity and oil boom of the time.   I had been a mud engineer for only a few months working in Bakersfield, Rio Vista and Wyoming.  Relocating to Santa Maria meant working from home-base instead of a hotel for weeks at a time.  I was very excited about working from home as my girlfriend Betty relocated with me.  We got an apartment in Arroyo Grande about a mile from Pismo Beach.

Driving East from Pismo Beach on Hinds Street takes you to Price Canyon Road where you can see where natural crude oil has seeped from the road cut and gathered alongside of the road.  Price Canyon Road follows Pismo Creek flowing out of the oak covered hills to the shores of Pismo Beach.  Following the road east there is an entrance to the historic Arroyo Grande oilfield.  In 1981 Grace Petroleum owned and operated the field.  They were in the middle of executing plans to develop the field and increase production.  This included re-completing old wells which means a work-over rig was to move onto an old well and try to make it more productive by removing old liners down hole and re-drilling (under-reaming) the completion zone. 

Working a well that is 3,000’ to 5,000’ deep and 7” to 10” diameter with sketchy records and decade’s old liners in the hole is a risky business.   As the mud engineer on the job, I was given the location of the rig and the name of the company man to report to as I would be responsible for making the drilling fluid and have it meet the requirements to make this re-completion successful.

Jay was the Company Man and drilling engineer on the project.  He was hired by Grace Petroleum to be responsible for the re-completing this well.  In 1981, the drilling engineer was the highest paid expert on any drilling job.  Jay was an elderly gentleman with white hair and wore leisure pants and a Hawaiian shirt.  The drilling engineers I was familiar with in Bakersfield, Texas and the Rocky Mountains wore jeans or coveralls and drove pickup trucks.  So when I met Jay in his 1976 pale yellow Cadillac with the Landau top, I thought this could be fun.  As it turned out, he was as much of a hard ass as I was used to. 

I reported to the rig one June afternoon.  I found the work-over rig (commonly referred to as a bullshit rig because it was much smaller than the larger drilling rigs) on the creek side of Price Canyon road hidden among the oak and sycamore trees and dense brush.  Jay took me on a tour of the Mud Pit he designed and built for Grace.  “I built this mud pit.  You’ll use it to make the brine completion fluid for the rig.  We have to remove the old slotted liner and under-ream the production zone.  Then we will hang a new liner in the well.  We will need a constant supply of low solids fluid that will not contaminate the producing zone.  So we will use a viscous fluid that is weighted with salt to keep the gas and oil out of the well bore and keep the well from sloughing in on us”.  I had already ordered the polymer and salt and had it delivered to the dock alongside of the mud pit.  The pit was a steel tank about 16’ diameter, open top and set in the ground with a covered dock on one side and a pump, hopper and nozzle system to mix and circulate the fluid.

Jay explained, “I have this frac-tank here to store the water that you will need to make the fluid.  It holds 500 barrels.  The pit holds 300 barrels.  Follow me and I’ll show you where water well is”.

We got in his Cadillac and drove east on Price Canyon Road to where a set of muddy tire tracks veered off the road through the brush.  It ended near the creek at a power pole and well head.  Jay showed me the switch on the power pole, “this starts the well pump and pumps the water to the frac-tank.  Make sure you keep an eye on it and don’t overflow the tank.  The vacuum truck will be standing by to pick up the fluid, so have the mud ready by midnight”.

I was living in Arroyo Grande, so it was an easy drive to the field at 10:00PM.  Even in the summer, the cold marine layer moves into the canyon and blankets it in fog.  I drove to the plant entrance that resembled a park entrance with shale rock and flowers.  But shortly after entering the plant in the dark, the scene was surreal.  In the fog shrouded hills, there were numerous tanks and vessels interconnected with pipes overhead and along the ground.  Vapors emanated as steam clouds and the boilers roared with fire and vessels chugged and throbbed like a nest of dragons.  The process plant separating oil and water and making steam for injection wells was nestled between the oak and brush covered hills.  The entire scene was illuminated with lights struggling to shine through the midnight fog and steam.

The mud pit and platform were overlooking the scene waiting for me to go to work.  First things first, I calculate how much salt and polymer it will take to make 300 barrels of fluid of the proper weight and viscosity.  I’ll need water, so I left the plant to find the water well.  Everything looks different in the dark, but I was used to finding drilling rigs in the middle of the night so I followed the road and watched for the mud tracks left by recent rig traffic.  After activating the water pump I drove back to the plant and the mud pit.  Following the dirt roads winding through the oilfield I was accompanied by numerous deer that come out at night to feed.  I opened the valve at the base of the frac-tank and began to gravity fill the mud pit with water.  As soon as the level reached the pump intake, I started the circulating pump and started lifting 100 lb. bags of salt to mix into the water through the hopper.  The salt dissolved in the water to add weight and inhibit formation clay from swelling that can plug the producing zone.  As the salt dissolved I also added 50 Lb. bags of polymer to add viscosity to the fluid.  The viscosity helps to carry the rock and sand cuttings out of the hole as the drill bit cleans out the hole and under-reams the oil zone of the well. 

Don’t forget to turn off the pump when the frac-tank is full.  By Midnight, I had cut open and lifted several pallets of salt and polymer so the rig had lots of fluid to work with.  Now it’s time for me to check on the mud pit at the bullshit rig and make sure the fluid properties stay good as it circulates through the drill pipe and back up the well.  In 1981 I was experienced on drilling rigs where the mud is clay based that washes off with water.  This little bullshit work-over rig works on producing wells pulling rods and tubing and is covered in crude oil and is a real mess to be around.  It looks bad and smells bad and anything I touched including hand rails, valve handles, viscosity and weight test equipment all seemed to leave oil on me. 

As dawn broke at 6: 00 AM, the crews change and the crew bosses (tool-pushers) change.  I already have my mud report finished and a copy hung in the dog house as required on all rigs.  The Mud Report documents the mud properties, the inventory used and what to do in the next 24 hours to keep the fluid in the proper condition.  Jay, the company man drives up in his pale yellow Coup d ’Ville to start his day at 6:00 AM.  I met the rig bosses or tool pushers, both named Dave.  After a review of the night’s events and progress (or lack there-of) on removing the old liner, we decided to go to breakfast. 

It was a short drive to Pismo Beach and Trader Vic’s overlooking the Pismo Beach cliffs and the beautiful Pacific.  Trader Vic’s (now Steamers) was a Polynesian themed restaurant.  As we entered we walked by the tropical decorated bar fully stocked with bamboo shaped glasses and little paper umbrellas.  We took a table at the window where we could see the waves breaking on the beach below.  I was hungry after working all night and I was surprised when Jay and the 2 Dave’s ordered Bloody Mary’s. 

The 2 Dave’s and Jay were characters that I could hardly comprehend.  The company they worked for was a Santa Maria based rig company, Haussler Oil Petroleum Service (HOPS).  Their motto or mission statement was “Your Hole Is Our Goal”.  This classy statement was on their business cards, signs and they had promotional belt buckles declaring it.  As I enjoyed the view of the waves rolling onto Pismo Beach on a beautiful sunny morning, the Dave’s got into it.  They were both married and I was quite disturbed to hear their conversation.  They both lived in Santa Maria and they both had girlfriends.  During the conversation, I learned that their girlfriends were friends with each other.  I also learned that their wives were friends with each other.  Dave “A” apparently bought his girlfriend a gift.  And Dave “B” was pissed off because now he had to buy his girlfriend an equal or preferably better gift because their girl friends talked and compared notes.  So anything that Dave got one girlfriend the other girlfriend pestered the other Dave to get the same or better.  I am beginning to understand what the term “oilfield trash” means.  And the bumper sticker, “Please don’t tell my Mom I work in the oilfields, she still thinks I am a piano player in a whorehouse” is making more sense to me.

Jay was reminiscing about the good old days.  He was from Bakersfield and remembered how his Dad and him would fly their plane from Bakersfield on Sunday and land it on the beach at Pismo.  Right out there from where we were sitting (Riiight).  They got out of the plane and dug for the famous giant clams along the shore at low tide.  They would fill a couple buckets with clams and load them in the plane and fly back to Bakersfield to make a big pot of clam chowder in time for dinner.  I’m thinking to myself, this is another typical bullshit story.  I just want to go home and get some sleep. 

In the afternoon they needed some more drilling fluid.  That’s when I met the goat at the rig.  Apparently it was wild and hung around the rig waiting to be fed.  Rough neck sandwiches and chips were one thing to feed the goat.  But the rough necks discovered that he also liked stale donuts and cigarettes.  “Watch this”, one would say.  The goat even ate the cigarettes lit.  He would take the cigarette in his mouth and bite off the lit end, then delicately turn it around in his mouth and bite off the filter end and eat the tobacco that was left.  This is great entertainment.  And when the drill bit salesman showed up to show off his canon, I had to stick around and check this out.  He set up his canon made from a 4 foot piece if drill pipe that was rigged with a fuse and a charge of gun powder.  He dropped a steel ball the size of a tennis ball into it and let the fuse.  These people are crazy.  I’m standing back.  The canon was pointed south across the canyon.  There were no houses on the hills like there are now.   A few moments after the explosion, I could see the puff of dust on the other side of the canyon where it landed. 

In 1981, there was one winery in the Edna valley behind Arroyo Grande.  It was the Lawrence Winery.  And they produced some great Rieslings.  They sold out to Corbett Canyon and closed the tasting room years ago.  Now the valley has numerous wineries and the hills are covered with vineyards.  My favorite winery in the Edna Valley is Kinsey.  They are producing some wonderful Pinot Noir. 

http://kynsi.com/cm/kynsi_wines/Home.html

Another awesome small winery I discovered in Arroyo Grande is Toucan Winery.  Toucan does not have a tasting room but you can find their wine in tasting rooms nearby by visiting the web site.  I love Toucan Zinfandel and Petite Sarah.  They are bold, intensely flavored and well balanced.  And they currently have a great special on the 2007 Zinfandel and case purchases.

http://toucanwines.com/orderspecial.htm

Concrete fermentation tanks: the good; the bad; and the ugly.

A few weeks ago I had a chance to take a colleague wine tasting in Paso Robles.  He’s from Texas and really enjoys wine, but has never visited a winery.  Betty and I started wine tasting in CA when we lived in Santa Maria in 1981.  We have seen the Central Coast wine production explode since then.  One of the first wine festivals we attended was at the Ballard Canyon Winery near Solvang.  They had the barbeque, wine tasting and party at their home and winery on Ballard Canyon Road.  At the time, Johannesburg Riesling was the dominate varietal grown in the area and it was the most delightful introduction to really enjoying fine wine. (As a side note: Wild Horse was just getting started at the time and Kenneth Volk had produced a Merlot that was one of the most drinkable, balanced and beautiful merlots on the market.  It really set the standard for Merlot as a great stand-alone varietal.) 

At the Ballard Canyon wine festival, the tri-tip barbeque and all the wines were great.  Towards the end, after much imbibing, my friend in the picture and I participated in the foot stomping of some red grapes that were in an open top fermentation tank.  It was large enough to hold about ten of us.  There was a guy next to us just minding his business stomping on the fruit when Craig kicked his legs out from under him.  This guy falls into the smashed grapes and red juice.  He didn’t want to be the only one to be drenched in grape juice so he comes up throwing smashed grapes all around and pulling others into the muck.  Everyone within 10 feet had some amount of smashed fruit and juice on them.  After the food fight, we were standing in line at the garden hose to wash off.

At last month’s wine tasting in Paso Robles, I wanted to take my colleague to some wineries with my favorite wine and some great views.  I also like to try new wineries anytime I can to keep up on the 200+ wine makers in the area.  Our first stop was Brochelle Winery that makes one of the best Zinfandels ever.  The Syrah and the Cabs are also great.  It is such small boutique production that every bottle has the bottle # on the label, i.e. “no. 180 of 600” produced, referring to the reserve Zinfandel.  The family is so lovely and friendly and they are personal with all the wine club members, like us.  http://brochelle.com/

The Good:  The first wine on the tasting schedule at Brochelle was the Chardonay, which is a first them.  It was explained that the wine was fermented in 1/3 stainless steel, 1/3 oak and 1/3 concrete.  That is unusual, I thought.  And the wine was unique: not fermented and oak aged to the point of some of the buttery, toffee and oaky Chardonnay’s; and not too light and crisp like the stainless steel fermented Chardonnays that I enjoy.  It had an initial taste of pineapple and later grapefruit with a smooth and balanced mouth feel.  I bought a couple bottles.  I think it will go great with grilled salmon and mango salsa that I like to make at home. 

The Bad:  Our next visit was at EPOCH winery off of Hwy. 46 West on York Mt. Road.  It is at the former York Mountain Winery that had the historic, now condemned wine cave.  I heard of this winery from my manger in Denver that said her customer, a Canadian oil company, owns the winery in Paso Robles.  The wine is supposed to be really great and sold out of all the production.  It’s a famous location and they have won awards, so I wanted to try it.  In the tasting room they explained how all the wine is 100% fermented in concrete.  I’m thinking: what’s with all the concrete fermentation?  The red wines we tasted all had an astringent taste.  Not like strong tannins that make your mouth pucker.  But more like the caustic in cement.  My colleague and I had the same response and didn’t even finish the tasting pour.   http://www.epochwines.com/

Our next and last stop on our tour was a sure bet, Le Cuvier.  They have over-all and consistently  the best wine.  I mentioned to the winemaker about the concrete fermentation tanks that I learned about today and he just said, “It’s the latest fad”.   http://www.lcwine.com/

I told him the story of my experience with concrete wine tanks: 

When I was selling Plasite coatings in the 1990’s, our company was in at the Gallo Wine Co. in Modesto, the largest wine producer in the world.  Plasite formulated a special epoxy tank lining that was tested to protect the steel storage tanks from corrosion and not impart any taste into the wine.  It was not my account, but I wanted to spread the success in my territory.  In the southern valley there is a history of large scale grape production and massive scale wine production from the 1950’s.  Off of Hwy. 58 in Bakersfield there is a Giumarra plant that used to be one of the big bulk wine producers. There are huge insulated tanks that you can see from the freeway.  So naturally where I see huge tanks, I want to sell some coating.  Once I got past the guard and into the plant, I learned that the winery is long past making wine and the tanks are out of service.  But the bottling plant was in production, they had a contract to bottle Snapple.  So I turned my cap around, so to speak, from Plasite Coatings to Pall Filtration.  I learned about the Snapple production and bottling operation and eventually got the bottling manager to try a set of Pall filters.  Bottling operations are notorious for being the cheapest people around.  The profit is fractions of a penny per bottle so it was a tough sale with a high dollar premium product like Pall. 

I remember trying to sell Pall filters to the Pepsi bottling plant in Bakersfield (when it was operational) and thinking:  They will not pay an extra ten cents for a better filter, but they will pay $100 Million to Michael Jackson to be in the ads. 

On the Snapple line at Giumarra, I remember the ornery plant manager had a call into me.  Before cell phones, I had to stop and find a pay phone and call him back.  He said that my filters had fallen apart and they were junk and he wanted a new set.  “I understand that is a problem.  I’ll come by and see what I can do”.   When I got there, I asked to see the filters that had failed.  So he is showing me these used filters that had the end caps and media support coming apart.  After close scrutiny I said, “I see.  These really are junk filters.  Look at this end cap, it’s come apart and all the contaminants have passed through to your Snapple.  Why would you ever use these again”?

“Exactly”, he said.  “I need you to get me a new set right away”. 

With my smart-ass grin I said, “Where are the Pall filters I sent you?  Every Pall filter has the logo molded into the end cap right here.  These are not the Pall filters I sent you”. 

He replied, “Your Pall filters must have plugged up during the night shift so we had to replace them with what we had.” 

“Well, if you want another set, you’ll have to pay the full price”.  That was the end of my Snapple filtration.

The Ugly:  On Comanche Drive, south of Panama Rd near Lamont, there was another old school massive winery from the 1950’s era.  Di Giorgio is an old facility that used to make huge quantities of wine.  I went there in my Plasite days to help them get their wine production going again.  They wanted to get some old concrete vaults coated so they could use them again for fermentation and storage.  Walking into the area where they had concrete vaults, 10’ by 10’ by 10’ high, lined up row after row, I could visualize pallets of Plasite in 5 gallon cans with 1 gallon cans of catalyst being used to line all these tanks.  Running the numbers in my head while listening to the history and plans for putting these vaults into service, I am thinking: 60 sq. ft. per gallon; a hundred thousand sq. ft; $60 per gallon; 25% commission to Mensco, 30% of that to me, I can see it all resulting in a nice commission check. 

I was also visualizing the production: 100,000 acres of ripe wine grapes all coming into the winery in tandem semi-trucks, lined up at the scales and waiting to dump the tons of grapes into the crusher and all these vaults filling with fermenting juice.  What I saw when we got into the vaults was concrete that was old, corroded and spalled with loose aggregate that would come apart in my hands.  My pen knife could dig right through it.  I could not imagine what the exposure to this open corroded concrete would to the wine.  “We are going to have to get to some sound substrate before we can ever get any coating to stick to this surface.” 

I never sold a drop of epoxy to fix those tanks and they never went back into production.  I know because years later, I was back at the same plant selling bottling filters.  The old massive wine production facility that was its own city, Di Giorgio, CA had used a small portion of the original bottling plant to fill beer kegs with wine for Anheuser Busch to sell to their restaurant and bar customers.  A portion of the business offices were used by the plant personnel and the meeting room was the old board room of one of the great agri-businesses that made the Central Valley the world’s most productive agricultural area.  I could feel the energy and ghosts of the business dealings that must have taken place there.  Pictures of past success, agri-business greats and production accomplishments along with ribbons and awards decorated the walls and along one side of the room there was a wine tasting counter that 20 people could line up at.  

I was successful with coatings at one facility near Delano that made grape juice.  Much of the grape production in the valley is made into juice and juice concentrate that goes into the fruit juice drinks like Capri Sun.  The plant near Delano has some old tanks that were clad with stainless steel to protect against corrosion.  Sheets of stainless steel are formed to the inside of the tanks and the seams are welded.  When there is a failure at a seam, the juice gets behind it and corrodes the tank.  At this plant, they were removing the cladding and sandblasting and coating the steel for protection.  That turned out to be some nice coating sales.    

Nearby on Hwy. 65 are the power plants that burn coal, rubber tires, agriculture waste, refinery coke and anything else that is cheap to buy and can be burned in a fluidized bed to make steam.  I asked a customer to lunch once and we went to the only place within a lunch time drive.  It is the Idle Spur Café in McFarland.  It is at the south bound on-ramp from Hwy. 46 to 99.  There is a dirt parking lot and cattle corals there.  The burgers are great and they grill a nice flavorful steak.  We were there on a Monday when they have the beef auction.  I walked through the dining room to the auction area and watched the cattle parading through as they were being auctioned off to the buyers in the stands.  It’s worth a visit on a Monday for lunch to see this take place.  The whole experience is something out of Petticoat Junction or Green Acres.  I was there for lunch once and the waitress had her new born baby in a car seat propped up on the counter while she was working tables and the cash register.  The baby was darling and remained pretty quiet while I was there.  Just last month, I took my manager there for lunch on the way back to town and talked to the lady that owns the café and she said that baby I saw is 12 years old now.  And I learned that the family is the Maitia Basque family and they have a Basque dinner on Friday nights.  I mentioned how I used to like the special dressing at Maitia’s Basque when it was on Union Avenue, blue cheese and 1000 island dressing mixed together.  She made some for my salad.  This is a fun stop for excellent home cooking and a friendly atmosphere that is hard to find these days.  And try to make it on a Monday and check out the cattle auction.  But be prepared to see some real cowboys and ranchers at the Idle Spur.  They come in from work with dirt, mud and manure on them.  And you might see some sales guy hanging out there for a break, checking messages or entertaining customers.

Pumpkin & Goat Cheese Ravioli

Pumpkin & Goat Cheese Ravioli

I have been living off salad greens and vegetable soup all week.  I am ready for some comfort food.  When Betty & I were in Florence many years ago, we learned how to make pasta from a lovely woman in her 500 year old home.  Thinking what is available in the kitchen tonight, I found some canned pumpkin and some left over goat cheese from earlier in the week and it just came to me to make some ravioli.  I would normally use ricotta cheese, but I improvised and used what is available.

For basic pasta:

¾ cup flour (I add 1 tbl spoon of high gluten semolina to give it a stretchy quality, like I do with pizza dough)

1 egg

Pinch of salt

Tsp of olive oil

Drop the flour on the table and make a hole in the middle into which the egg, oil and salt is dropped into.  Mix with a fork and knead it into a ball.  Knead with the ball of your hand and fold over and over until it incorporates and stays together in a ball.  This takes some effort.  After it’s kneaded into a nice ball, wrap it up in some plastic and let it rest while you make the filling.  Eventually you can press it and flatten it enough to get it into the coarse setting on the pasta maker. 

The filling available at the time included:

½ cup of canned pumpkin

½ cup goat cheese

¼ cup grated parmesan cheese

Pinch of each: salt; pepper; dried rosemary; dried basil; oregano.  Mix with a fork.

Run the pasta through the machine and let the rollers continue to knead it.  Eventually, after rolling and folding it over several times, it will begin to make a nice flat sheet.  It reminds me of when I visited a steel rolling mill in Utah. I saw the red hot ingots of steel poured onto the rolling mill.  The block of steel is rolled bach and forth and gets longer and longer as it gets thinner.  It does not get wider; it just gets longer each time it is rolled thinner.  It’s the same with pasta.  So get it to the width you want and roll it consecutively on smaller settings until it is about 2 feet long.  Because one foot is about the length of the ravioli mold.  However, once the sheet is made, it can be cut into linguini, spaghetti, or other shapes if you prefer.

I used the ravioli mold and put a sheet of pasta onto the mold.  Pressed the shaper and filled the depression with a teaspoon of the pumpkin goat cheese filling.  A top sheet goes over and a rolling pin is used to press and seal the 2 sheets, leaving the raviolis.  There was just enough dough to make one more sheet in which I dolloped some filling and folded the sheet over and sealed it.  Then I cut between the fillings to separate the raviolis.  They are not as pretty, but taste the same with the sauce over it.

There was about ½ cup of the filling left over, so I mixed it with the jar of Alfredo sauce.  The pumpkin gave the modified sauce a nice orange color.  The goat cheese and spices in the filling added a good tang to the Alfredo sauce.  It’s an easy way to make a store bought jar of sauce into something unique and special.

I wanted a bottle of Sangiovese with the dish, but the only Sangiovese I had was a 5 year extra-long barrel aged Le Cuvier that is best when decanted for 4-6 hours.  I'll save that for later.  So I opened a bottle of 2008 Paoletti Nero D’ Avola.  Nero means black in Sicilian and it is the most important red wine grape in Sicily.  Paoletti brought the cuttings from Sicily about 20 years ago and are an exclusive to the Paoletti Winery in Calistoga, Napa Valley.  The wine is deliciously fruity with sweet tannins and flavors of a juicy plum, blackberry and ripe cherries.  I highly recommend Paoletti wines.  And the Cabernet Sauvignons are fantastic with a steak.  * Sorry I can't figure how to insert the pictures so they are the right side up.

Flashbacks

Flashbacks

Having the 3 women in my life together for an hour is such a beautiful gift.  Betty & I picked Lia up from the airport after an 8 month journey and we met Dana in Eagle Rock where she was showing property.  We met in Highland Park at Carrows on York Dr. and drove to a hip café and Bakery, Antigua Bread Bakery Café at 5703 N. Figueroa Street.  This is fast up-and-coming hipster neighborhood in N. Los Angeles.  Dana drove us past an apartment complex she sold 2 years ago.  I remember seeing pictures of an old run down building that she listed and now the new owner has turned it into a clean manicured upgraded charming art-deco looking building in a trendy family oriented neighborhood.

The Antigua Bread Bakery Café is also a hipster joint in a renovated building on Figueroa St. with a notable breakfast menu and great burgers and sandwiches.  Lia had the juevos rancheros with rice and beans and the rest of us had the grilled chicken sandwich.  The greatest part of this late lunch is the hour we had together visiting for the first time since Dana’s wedding last May.  On the way out I saw the green hills across Figueroa and asked out loud to myself, “Is that Elephant Hills?”  On our way back up the Glendale Freeway where they finally completed the overpass that was on the cover of the Doobie Brother’s Album “The Captain and Me”, I faced the mountains and asked Lia if she has ever driven up to Mt Wilson?  Seeing the hills in Highland Park and the entrance to Angeles Crest Highway and a previous Facebook post asking who remembers the gas station attendant, I got thinking of the times 2 score years ago (40 years) when I got my first job at the Union 76 gas station that was located at Altadena Drive and Washington Blvd. in Pasadena. 

In 1972 oil cost $2 a barrel and a gallon of leaded gas cost $0.39.  My high school friend Frankman said I should work with him at the station.  The job paid $1.70 / hour.  I found out that 2 of my other friends that I have known since kindergarten, Glenn L. and John W. also worked there. 

The End of Innocence.

I didn’t know how to check the oil, transmission fluid, radiator level or tire pressure.  At 16, I didn’t much of anything.  The experiences piled up fast with the characters there.  The only telephones then were in the house.  So when you wanted to know what was happening, you had to go someplace to meet your friends.  At that time, the meeting places were the Pasadena high school parking lot and the Union 76 gas station - at night after the boss went home.  2 attendants worked at night to pump gas, clean windshields, mop the shop floor, clean the bathrooms and watch over the joint. 

The characters included the owner, Al.  He was our parents age and ornery as hell.  He endeared all his attendants with the nick-name Barney.  At the start of work he might say, “You’re late again Barney.  Where the hell have you been?”

 At age 16, I made a lot of mistakes and heard, “You fucked up again, didn’t you Barney”

Or, “You did a shitty job cleaning the toilets and mopping the bathrooms last night Barney.” 

Or, “This place was a fucking mess this morning, Barney Fife. What the hell did you do here last night?”  With my head down, I’d say, “Nothing Al.” 

His # 1 side kick that worked during the day was Tim.  Tim was twenty-something, and basically a fat slob. He had long greasy hair and chain smoked.  The gas pump handles at the time did not have the pressure switch and you could pump the gas out on the ground which was done if the gas tank was full and you wanted to round up to the nearest dime to make the change easier.  Tim once threatened to pump gas on anyone who gave him any shit and throw his cigarette on them.  He drove to work in a 1948 shit-racer truck with his dog Toby in the back.  Tim loved to roll an old tire out back and watch Toby chase it down, growl and chew on it and carry it back to Tim with the tire around his neck.

This gas station was a major hangout for all our friends who wanted to get free work done on their cars and trucks.  They knew the boss was gone and they would come in like they owned the place and put their car or truck up on the rack and use the shop tools.  And since working on cars and drinking beer went hand in hand, there always seemed to be beer around.  Sure there were school nights when we worked on homework when it was slow.  But on Friday and Saturday night, it was crazy.

Tim had a friend that just got back from Viet Nam.  He was a combat Marine, Al Frye.  He had “USMC” tattooed on his forearm, wore his dog tags on a chain around his neck, had long hair and was 6’ 5”, loud and big and strong and carried a 45 under the seat of his car.  It was always exciting when Frye was around.  He drove into the station screeching and skidding in his supped up 1965 GTO.  “Hey man what’s happenin’, want a beer?  I need to use the rack for a while and check something on my car.”  Someone asked him once about Viet Nam.  “Man, we smoked ‘em.  We cut ears off the Gooks, dried ‘em and made necklaces out of ‘em.  Look, here’s where I got shot.” 

At the station on night Al thought he could get the front wheels of his GTO off the ground, like a dragster pulling a wheelie.  We all gathered around as he reeved the engine until it screamed and popped the clutch and had us watch to see if the front wheels actually lifted off the ground.  “Yeah, sure Al, I think you got air that time”.

My friends Glenn and John W. taught me how to change oil, fix a tire flat and other useful skills.  Frankman was also my age and he was the one that the girls came to see.  He always seemed to have a girlfriend, even if it was just for one day.  I couldn’t believe that a girl would actually seek out this kind of treatment:  Come to a gas station and be taken around back to have Frankman’s hand down her pants or be put in the back seat of the car with him and have one of us lift the car up on the rack. 

Older guys would come by at night and say, “I used to work here and need to borrow some tools and put my truck up on the rack.  Here have a beer.”  Chris was a Pollack with a 1963 4-wheel drive Chevy truck.  Oh, the truck of any 16 year olds dreams.   One night while I was working, Chris worked on his truck and shared a 6-pack of Coors with me.  After work he took me 4 wheelin’ in some hills around Los Angeles, he called Elephant Hills.  After several beers, I just remember scrambling up some gullies in the hills.  All I could see were the stars through the windshield with the truck screaming and mud and grass flying.  I think it was the hills around Highland Park.

The social media in N.E. Pasadena in 1972 was the Union 76 gas station on Altadena Drive and Washington Blvd.  I always worked Friday and Saturday nights.  It seemed to ease the pain of not having a girlfriend.  We worked until 10 PM.  Our friends would come to get a couple dollars of gas and ask where the parties were, share a beer or get one that we had stacked up in the Coke machine in the lobby.  It was party central. We kept track of where the parties were, which ones were bogus or a dud and we would head to the best ones after closing.  One cold winter night, I heard of a party at Mount Wilson from someone that came in for gas.  The LAPD was having a party at the observatory.  My friend Bob just got a new Capri after his VW was stolen and pushed off a cliff in San Gabriel canyon.  After too many beers, Terry, Bob and I thought it was a great idea to crash this LAPD party at the top of Mt Wilson.  We drove up Angeles Crest highway in a storm.  I will never forget hearing The Doobie Brothers “Jesus is Just Alright” taking the winding mountain road up to Mt. Wilson.  It started snowing and the road got slick.  Bob didn’t EVEN slow down and on a right hand turn and the car went straight and ended up with the bumper on top of the guard rail.  We got out of the car in the snow to lift it off the guard rail and looked down a sheer cliff into the abyss.  We made it to the Mt Wilson Observatory and saw where the cars were parked.  The snow was falling and we opened the door of some building.  By this time it must have been midnight and everything was a blur.  We 3, 16 year old kids walked into this room with the snow blowing in behind us and the party stopped.  Everyone turned to look at us and someone said, “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

We must have looked like Beavis and Butthead and in our deepest adolescent voice said, “We’re LAPD and we’re here to party”.  Everyone laughed and someone gave us a beer.  I’m not sure how long I was asleep on the table.  But somehow I woke up in the morning in my own bed in Sierra Madre. 

Tom B. was our ticket to get the beer.  He had a full beard at 17.  And somehow he got a bad knee and often walked with a cane.  He would go into a store and talk to the clerk, say that he just got back from ‘Nam where he got shot in the leg.  But it was getting better.  We would wait in his parent’s Travel-all and watch him come limping out of the store with his cane in one hand and a case of beer under his other arm. 

In 1973, the Arab oil embargo put an end to all the fun.  There was not enough gas to even bother being open at night anymore.  Glenn got me a job with a contractor he was working for.  That is another blog in itself.