Two Bakersfield Bars
by Bryce Martin

Tex’s Barrel House: On my last evening visits during the early 1980s, the unremarkable and poorly-lit pod of indifference held mostly elderly and low-income patrons content with shuffling along in a flat-footed version of the Cotton-Eyed Joe. And the usual bar drunks you find anywhere.

Tex's Barrel house: It's a perfect name for a Bakersfield honky-tonk, Bakersfield being an oil and farming town. Barrel house: a building on the refinery grounds where barrels are filled with various grades of oils for shipment

How about having a “straw in the cider barrel?” That is to have an interest in a well in a producing field; reservoir.

Country people can relate to apple cider, hard or soft. They can grow the trees that produce the apples and ferment the juice that makes the drink, all homegrown.

So, roll out the barrel and have a barrel of fun, as the song says. It'll be even more fun when the barrel, or keg, is filled with beer and you're holding your honey tight on the dance floor with a fiddle playing a slow waltz from a quartet of backing musicians on an elevated stage.

The Blackboard is another beer joint. Windowless and like a cavern, its ambiance inspired the country classic (classic title, anyway) "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke and Loud, Loud Music." The Blackboard got its name from the oil business. “Oilfield people came in, of course,” said part owner Joe Limi, years ago. “They got to writing on the walls.”

Just the word "blackboard" is part of country music's history. Who can forget Hank Thompson's sad reading from "Blackboard of my Heart" from the 1950s?

My tears have washed I Love You
From the blackboard of my heart

Limi found out that the oil workers were just leaving information about new wells starting up, the locations and the companies, and other details to help others of their sort looking for jobs.

Some info was plain enough and some was for the oil savvy only. Wells and prospective drill sites nearby were promoted and some remote ones “out where the wildcats prowl and the hoot owls mate with the chickens.”

“We put up a big blackboard for them to write on after that,” Limi said.

Limi said he didn’t understand most of the writing, but figured someone did.

Call it “creekology,” if you will, a term for early, unscientific geology. Or, in Bakersfield, maybe that's “oilology.”


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Bob Skahan, Kansas football legend 

By Bryce Martin 

 While patrolling centerfield for Columbus (Kan.) in American Legion Baseball for two years in the summers of '60 and '61, Bob Skahan would often come around the dugout to visit. He was slightly younger than myself, dated a Columbus cousin of mine, Diane Gust, and was one of the few high school kids I knew of during those days who lifted weights. He often wore t-shirts with the sleeves cut out, and it was obvious he lifted weights. Coaches and athletes in general did not think lifting weights was such a good idea. They felt it could cause muscle tears, and unwanted muscle (read: muscle bound). It did not seem to affect Skahan in a detrimental way. A good-natured kid, Skahan was an outstanding baseball player. He was an all-state quarterback in 1962 for Columbus and was given a scholarship to play the quarterback position for Kansas University at Lawrence. I still own a newspaper clipping that shows Skahan taking in a touchdown on a play that everyone thought would involve Gale Sayers as the ball carrier. The final score was Kansas 15, Oklahoma 14. 

It was the last play of the game and is on the top ten list of anyone's greatest college football finishes. 

At KU, Skahan was one the top Big-8 quarterback statistically.

Bob Skahan

It amazed me how Columbus could field such great youth teams, such as our American Legion baseball team, and not have all of their best athletes compete. Missing from the Legion team during my stay was John Cowley, a lefthanded farmboy who stifled a great Joplin High School team. Cowley threw double-digit strikeouts in defeating Joplin's highly regarded Gary Churchwell. It was a stinging and throughly administered defeat, something Joplin was not used to and amounted to a deep wound stuck in the overweening pride of the Lions. Cowley pitched for us some early on in 1960, but had too many competing farm duties and had to give it up. I'll always remember his introducing me to Absorbine Jr. to treat my throwing arm after games.

...

"Scoop" Albright and the last of the windmill baseball pitchers
by Bryce Martin

Jim "Scoop" Albright, a righthanded junk ball pitcher for my hometown Galena Merchants was a hero of mine in my early years. I'd seen an old time pitcher on occasion employ the old double windmill windup to give a batter a little extra to see, but "Scoop" did it on every pitch.

To fully appreciate Albright's double windmill windup, one would have to understand the demise of the spitball pitchers. When the spitball was outlawed in professional baseball, great leeway was given to the handfull of pitchers who threw the pitch for their livelhood. They, and no others, were allowed to still throw the spitter the rest of their careers. The last one, Burleigh Grimes, earned the sobriquet, "Last of the Cuspidor Curvers." The double windmill, because it could not be employed without making a balking motion -- several in fact -- was declared an illegal motion by most leagues, minor and major, in the 1940s. Like the last spitballers, the last of the double windmillers were cut some slack, at least on the non-professional level. Albright did not have overpowering stuff. He did throw a heavy ball. He always pitched wearing large, floppy, white undersleeves, and sported a bulbous cheek full of tobacco. A batter faced this from Albright: a motion of counter-whirling arm spins, not knowing exactly where the pitch was coming from or when it was going to get there, and when it was released, was faced with the chore of trying to pick up the path of the white baseball against the backdrop of flopping white sleeves and a bulging white orb from the side of a face.

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Mantle, Boyer brothers and hometown baseball
by Bryce Martin

In the 1950s, during the Major League baseball off-season, my Galena, Kan., townteam often played at home against a ragbag of players, including Roy and Ray Mantle, Alton Clay, Floyd Woolridge, Cliff Mapes, Red Rose, and Barney Barnett Jr, some current and some former big leaguers. Miami, Okla., had a team, with Max Mantle in centerfield. The Joplin Globe newspaper printed news releases relating to the dates and times of the off-season baseball games at Miners Park in Joplin, and those in the Alba/Purcell area that included the Boyer brothers. Even Mickey Mantle played in some of the contests. I saw games in Miami, Galena, Joplin and the Alba/Purcell region. Some good, young players resided in these regions, but deference was given to older, local amateur players when it came to playing against the big boys. A Galena pitcher, Jim Albright, employed a double windmill wind-up, a memorable motor movement passé even then. Attendance for these exhibitions was moderate and the setting was informal. In a game at Miners Park in 1956, a hefty Bub Woods from Galena, who had no professional baseball experience and who didn't play much anymore because of age and some added girth, was seated in the front row of the grandstands watching the festivities in his overalls. He was called in to pinch hit. He belted a drive up the right alley that should have been a double, but he barely made it to first and gave way to a pinch runner. He returned to his seat. In the same game, sure-fielding Ken Boyer of the St. Louis Cardinals let a rather routine groundball go under his glove at third, and was unsteady on some other chances. As a young kid, I could not imagine a major leaguer of his stature being so far off in his fielding. That was memorable, because the next year St. Louis moved Ken to leftfield. Associated Press stories in the Globe reported that Ken, for reasons unknown, could no longer field his third base position. An image of the cleanest uniform I had ever seen is still vivid in my mind. Mickey Owen Jr. wore a bleached-white home uniform of the Reds. Usually, if a player wore a ML uniform in one of the exhibition contests, it was of the traveling gray sort. Owen Jr., a catcher, like his father, seemed a fish out of water to my young eyes. He showed little ability. His dad, remembered for a World Series slip-up, always stood behind the screen and watched his son's every move. I felt a little sorry for the elder.

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Hitting a baseball not hardest feat in sports
by Bryce Martin

"Hitting a baseball is the single hardest thing to do in sports."


You have heard that axiom. We all have. Taken literally - and I do not know how else to take it -- the statement has never made sense to me. If you have an official at bat in baseball, which excludes walks, sacrifices and the like, that means you hit the ball into fair territory and it is live. When you hit a baseball, these things happen: a base hit, flyout, groundout, or an error in the field (which counts as a time at bat but not as a base hit). You can also strike out. But even those who strike out more than others also hit the ball and put it in play more often than they strike out. If you were to bat 600 times in one baseball year and strike out 100 of those times, that means the other 500 times you either connected bat to ball for a flyout, groundout, base hit, or reached base on error, but you hit it. That is difficult?

Hitting a baseball, and hitting a baseball for a base hit are two different things. I've heard it expressed, and so have you, that you only have to hit the baseball three out of ten times to be considered successful. That's because that would be a .300 batting average and .300 is considered the benchmark for a good hitter. Nevermind that the other seven times fielders had to make Brooks Robinson-like circus plays to get you out.

The old bromide would be more accurate stated something like this: "Hitting a baseball for a base hit is the single hardest thing to do in sports."

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The Hottest Club in Bakersfield
Or, That's Life... Movin' West
by Bryce Martin

The Golden Lion was a moderately large lounge in the Holiday House, a low-slung building in Bakersfield on Old Highway 99 where White Lane crossed.

The structure was once a Holiday Inn. The new Holiday Inn relocated about a mile to the west, down White Lane and at an exit just off the new Interstate 5. The older building may have changed names but you can spot a dead and repurposed Holiday Inn by the shape of its sign, and on this one the "Holiday" part stayed the same.

I was the new ID checker for the lounge operated now by my old boss Bobby Cline. I had worked for him before salvaging iron. I drove his heater-less pickup truck south each morning to the top of the summit at Castaic, up the often foggy and steep climb on the gray asphalt early each weekday morning with two black men as my passengers. They were co-workers I picked up at their residences on Cottonwood Lane. We cut cement-laden railroad track from tunnels in the mountains, loaded the iron strips on a truck bed and sent them on their way with a driver who showed up in the afternoon to Cline's salvage yard in Bakersfield.

When that job played out, Cline took over managing the Holiday House. It was just a few years back that he operated his own steakhouse, the Buckhorn, a place famous in this area of town for its sign -- "Wine And Dine With Bobby Cline."

I even had a free room at the motel. I worked Friday and Saturday nights. That was it. I was paid "transient pay." That is, I made up a name each week, was given a check with that name and they cashed it for me. It was all done at the front desk. Each week, they would get a good laugh at the name I picked. "Who are you this time?"

I found out that the guy who had this job before me, Rick Sessions under previous management, had applied for the job again but was turned down. He was too rough on the customers. I was told he'd tear an arm off and beat a guy to death with it. He was an older brother of singer Ronnie Sessions, who came into the club a few times. We sat around and talked over a beer a few times. Ronnie was confident he would be hooking back up with Gene Autry's Republic Records.

It was a dead club then. Not long after, it was the hottest club in town. Al Garcia and the Rhythm Kings packed them in. A large Mexican clientile showed on weekends. A regular was a Mexican I only knew as "Fast Eddie," actually as I only bothered to know him by. That nickname was supposedly for his pool playing prowess. He was really upset each time he came in, reminding himself and me how it should be him who had my job. "That's life," I told him, "movin' west." That was one of my favorite lines. It was a voiceover ending the show each week from an old television western series called Frontier in the 50s. "That's the way it happened, movin' west," were the exact words as covered wagons rolled onward. I'm confident he didn't know that nor would most anyone else. Still, I could appreciate my own sarcasm more than most anyone else.

A resident for a few weeks was Jim Manos from Phoenix. He was a phone man. "Just put me in a room with a phone, a phone book, some index cards, some oatmeal to keep me going, and I'm in business anywhere." He would organize and stage charity events for a fee, such as donkey basketball games between the police and fire departments in cities around the country. He was in Bakersfield to do a Kern Country Fish and Game barbecue that was to feature cowboy movie stuntmen from Hollywood.

On Sunday mornings, Jerry Gianinni liked to go to the Mint bar on 19th for what he called "church." He was a Holiday House regular who had just joined the Eagle's Club and was a volunteer fill-in bartender for Cline. The Mint opened at 6 a.m. all days. It was owned by Bud Walston, known as the "Mayor of 19th Street." Gianinni would always set it up for at least a couple of people to join him. One morning I "snuck" in with the group. As it turned out, they were cliquish and didn't like it much. I drink on while they plotted against me.

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10 Country music myths
by Bryce Martin

1. Dwight Yoakam is not from Bakersfield, Calif. He wasn't born there (Kentucky). He didn't grow up there (Ohio), and he has never lived there. The closest he has lived to Bakersfield is where he is now, in the Los Angeles region about 130 miles to the south.

2. Johnny Cash never served time in prison. Most people I've learned over the years don't know the difference between "jail time" and "prison time." Prison is the "Big House," the place you go for the more serious crimes and longer sentences. Jail might just be an overnight stay or shorter. When you are released from prison, you are on "parole." When you are released from jail, you are on "probation." It's a state prison; a city jail. There's a big difference between the two. Cash had some very short stays in jail, but he never served time in prison.

Okay, two.

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Trona days
(Notes from 1963)
by Bryce Martin


American Potash and Chemical Corporation is located in the middle of Trona, Calif., and represents the biggest investment any company has thus far made in mining the brines from the ancient lakebed of Searles Valley. Trona is a company town in the classic mold of such places.

Many of the workers are from the Midwest and the Southwest. It is rich pickings for those driven from their home place by poor economic times. The name of the Trona plant is often shortened to AmPot in conversation. That is not just for convenience. Many of the workers own stock in the company, and it is listed as AmPot in stock market lingo.

When entering Searles Valley heading north, you first encounter Westend, where the other plant – Stauffer Chemical Co., is located -- then Borosalvay, Argus, Trona, Pioneer Point, and Valley Wells. From there, Death Valley is just over the next rise.

It is many locales for such a small space. The sun shines on all of them, too. That is true since the valley floor is unrelentingly flat. Some houses, though, are backed up to tall and massive rock formations, providing, one would guess, more shade at times in the day than a house in the open.

The giant rocks, however, act as a kiln in holding in the heat of the boiling sun.

Schools, churches and homes are of indistinct architecture, and built primarily in the thirties and forties. The newer homes are in the Pioneer Point and Homewood Canyon district.

The company buildings in downtown Trona resemble railroad depots.

The two plants mine brines from the lakebed to produce inorganic chemicals. A staple is sodium carbonate (soda ash). There are also borates, sodium sulfates, and potash (potassium chloride and potassium sulfate).

The two plants have different priorities and use somewhat different processing systems. Potash, for instance, is produced at American Potash but not at Stauffer.

I work at Stauffer. Few of us pay that much attention to borates and sulfates. I have been told some of what we produce is used to give glass beer bottles that brown tint, and as an ingredient in some household cleaners. From what I have gathered in conversations, most do not know or care. The paycheck is the main thing. Keeping those happy who are responsible for the paychecks is another primary consideration.

Technical talk is left to the engineers. Many of the workers, most of whom have little formal education, make comments typical of those downtrodden and plain. “Last week ah couldn’t spell engineer and now I is one,” is a one-liner repeated regularly and often followed with a knowing wink. Then there is the old standby: “I may not have much schoolin’ but at least I got some common sense.” The implication is always that anyone with an education could not possibly have common sense too.

When the engineers and plant workers are together for discussion on a project, I always get the feeling the engineers get a satisfaction from humoring the time card punchers. Conversely, the workers walk away with a smile like a fox in a henhouse. Both groups are able to break away and return to their own, content that all went well.

Most of the guys in the valley do not soup-up or customize their cars to the extent they do in Galena. I rarely see a primered car in Trona, one with flipper wheel covers, lakes pipes, a split manifold and rapping dual pipes, or one with an exotic or standout paint job. The native boys are an easygoing bunch who wears flip-flops (some here call them “thongs”), plain white t-shirts and Levi’s (and I mean Levi’s, the brand name, not just jeans).

The San Bernardino Sun newspaper runs a regular ad featuring Earl Scheib. He is a man who started his own company painting cars at a cheap price. The ad has a head shot of Scheib, with a cartoon balloon coming from his mouth that reads, “I’ll paint any car for $19.95.” The idea of someone that unhip-looking as Scheib doing something as cool as putting a new paint job to your car seems incongruous.

I have an uncle in Trona who has a used car lot. He said he takes cars to the Scheib shop in San Bernardino for paintwork and that they do a good job. “They don’t sand them or do any body work for that price,” he added.

Scheib also has a television ad. It is the same photo of him and with his taped voice playing in the background. “I’ll paint any car for $19.95,” he says, in a nasally, uninspired voice, one you would expect to hear from such a face.

Minor body work is $5 extra.

Even cooler than getting your car painted is going below San Diego to Tijuana for a tuck-and-roll upholstery job. It is a fancy style of pleated upholstery; much the same as the style of seats in a diner I frequented on Joplin’s Range Line. I have never been to Tijuana, but I have seen the results of the tuck and roll work and it is impressive. You can get the whole interior done for a hundred dollars. Those who have had it done tell me the Mexicans stuff the insides of the seats with foam rubber. You do not even need a map or an address. Just go to Tijuana, drive around and you will find one of the shops on a side street. The ones who know their way around, however, usually take the new people to the places they are familiar with and trust. It is a one-day affair. I have heard several stories about a bar in Tijuana called the Blue Fox, where some of the guys killed time while the interior work was taking place.

“I chi-hwa-wa!”

I'm picking up a little Spanish after working and being around Mexicans for the first time. I'm told most of it is slang and no one who learned Spanish in this country would know what I was talking about if I repeated any of it.

Those who go to Tijuana usually bring back an ample supply of Mexican sandals, or huaraches. The latest ones are neat, the soles and tops formed from fresh tire treads.

I thought parts of my hometown in Galena were about as "moonlike" as it got here on earth from its lead mining days. I was mistaken. You would have to go to the moon to top Trona. Trona is one desolate, forsaken spot.

The local water is too alkaline for consumption. Water is piped in from Ridgecrest. The pipe runs above ground alongside the highway.

A hydrogen sulfide smell flares the nostrils. I have asked the scientific types where the smell comes from and, to put it in my own words: The rotten egg smell comes from bacteria feasting on organic material in the lakebed brine.

After a time, you do not notice the smell. I do not, anyway. It may be just me, but if I am gone from the valley for a spell, I do not smell it when I return, either.

Trona is 18 miles northeast of Ridgecrest. Ridgecrest seems desolate, that is, until you see Trona.

I remember my basic science from high school: sodium chloride is common table salt, and sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. It is also called bicarbonate of soda. Knowing this, I was able to figure out a cartoon one time when one of the characters had an upset stomach and said, "I need a bicarb."

That is about all I know regarding the soup in the dry lake. I am not about to imply that I am familiar with the chemical compositions of all the products produced from the different brine processing techniques employed by the Trona plants.

However, I did go to some trouble to find out exactly what Trona is. I found that it is half sodium bicarbonate and half sodium carbonate. What I might do with that information is up for grabs.

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How Sopranos finale ends
by Bryce Martin

My prediction:

Safe house is attacked by rival mob leader's henchmen.

Tony escapes, or appears to have, only to get waxed by Paulie Walnuts who lets Tony know he has resented him for a long time now and has worked out a better deal for himself with the other side.

Tony's wallet somehow ends up on the floor with it unfolded and Tony's driver's license is splattered with his blood (this is some metaphor we're supposed to attach to classical drama).

And, since the show relies so much on song clips to set the tone, and because Paulie has a hair style replete with what has been referred to on the show as "wings," in the background plays a Wings song.

What Wings song? Any number of them would do but I'll go with "Band on the Run."

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No contradiction in believing in creationism and in evolution
by Bryce Martin

I have seen this many times over the years. A poll that indicates a high number of Americans believe in creationism and in evolution, and that to have both views is contradictory. Perhaps, and perhaps not.

I have yet to see a poll -- any poll -- that does not bias responses by the wording, placement, or other factors regarding how the question is presented.

Evolution, in its classical sense, is opposed to the creationism concept. But, evolution in the process of change and adaptation over a period of time is easy to understand and is accepted by many creationists and others. This is why so many people say they believe in both, and this is why it is not a contradiction, and this is why the supposed intelligent people who decipher these results are sorely out of touch and ignorant to boot.

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It's baseball season and... I miss Mickey
by Bryce Martin

The faint recognition of early spring brings revival to the spirit and, with it, another Major League baseball season in slow bloom. Always this time of year I can't help but being overcome by an old and kindred feeling -- the nostalgia that is Mickey Mantle.

This is the time of year I really miss Mickey, when the sky's clouds are crisp over a background of light, dreamy blue, much the same as on his 1951 Bowman Gum Co. rookie baseball card, #253.

Most of Mickey's fans, I believe, were his fans first and baseball fans second, with no big drop-off. It was true for me. Sure, keeping tabs on Mickey and his New York Yankees teammate Roger Maris while they chased Babe Ruth's magic 60 home runs benchmark in 1961 was incredible theater. I was even astonished by the Tigers' Norm Cash and his surprising long-ball power that summer.

The fact that the small Kansas town I lived in was only about 35 miles from Mickey's house made my hero accessible. He wasn't just some snowy image on a black-and-white TV that you saw occasionally on one of three, and only three, venues: CBS, NBC, ABC; or a gloriously smiling figure posed in a magazine layout with singer Teresa Brewer, whose 45 rpm vinyl, "I Love Mickey," was hot.

He was the Mickey that I caught on KSWM-TV, Channel 12, out of Joplin, Mo., late in 1955, telling sports host Johnny Holmes that he was seriously considering quitting baseball and taking up professional golf. I didn't have my cap pulled over my ears. He said it, and I worried about it all winter. The next year, when nothing more came up on the subject, I still had concerns. Mickey earned a rare Triple Crown in 1956 -- leading the American League in homers, runs batted in, and batting average. What more did he have to prove in baseball?

Then there was the thrill of playing on the same dusty baseball fields as the adolescent Mickey, especially the one in Baxter Springs, Kan., hearing the old-timers describing one of the legendary clouts the young son of a lead and zinc miner -- many of whom knew and worked alongside the elder Mutt Mantle -- had witnessed, and his blazing speed and raw ability.

There was the chance to see his cousin, Max Mantle, a smooth-fielding centerfielder, twin brothers Roy and Ray, boyhood chum Barney Barnett Jr., a giant hulk of a man, all playing in "townball" games, where a collection hat (usually straw) was passed around to pay the civvies-clad umps.

Where Mickey lived and where he played his first two minor league seasons -- Independence, Kan., and Joplin -- were short car rides to all who lived in the Tri-State area of northeast Oklahoma, southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas. Everyone in the Route 66 region knew and discussed all things Mickey.

In 1955, I got to meet him.

It was my grandfather's idea. It was a simple plan to execute. Just drive to Commerce, Okla.

Arriving in Commerce, unannounced as it was, we found a modest home, no different than any other in the tiny hamlet. A station wagon was parked in the driveway. The front door was swung open to the inside and blocked by a closed screen door, the preferred manner of most households back then on pleasant mornings. Two hunting rifles stood upright against an outside wall.

Then, as if on cue, Mickey emerged, along with pal teammate and second baseman, Billy Martin (who much later would be peddled to Detroit and cited as a "bad influence" on Mickey). Relating that they were going on "a little hunting trip," they were, nonetheless, cordial and friendly and didn't seem to be in a hurry.

Oddly, I recall little of the meeting. Maybe it's not good that we actually meet our idols in the flesh, and maybe God has a way of suppressing such epiphanies, an idol-check of sorts for our own good.

I miss keeping up with the young Mickey in all those golden, eternal summers. Mickey, the promise, dream and inspiration that he was. Always, I miss him the most around right now.

I feel sure that poet Robert L. Harrison would not mind if I share his tribute to Mickey, one concerning a "pro-de-jus" blast at the Tigers' Briggs Stadium in 1953. The poem is, of course, about more than that.

1953 Young Mantle Hits One

It was a shot like no other
tearing into the breath of God,
leaving earth and grass and fans.

A sphere for the ages racing along
casting no shadow in frozen space
finally arching for the great fall.

Described on the radio as a new star
a stellar moment of freedom expressed
bright and clean as a summer's dream.

...

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