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.”
-30-
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Bob Skahan, Kansas football legend
By Bryce Martin
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.
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.
...
Sunday, June 17, 2007
"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.
-30-
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.
-30-
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.
-30-
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.
-30-
Saturday, June 16, 2007
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."
-30-
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."
-30-
Friday, June 15, 2007
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.
-30-
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.
-30-
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
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.
-30-
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.
-30-