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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