Created by June Morrall
Neil Young, the legendary rocker, lives here on the Half Moon Bay Coastside. Enjoy this wonderful photo of him fooling around with local carpenters and craftsmen–including my ex-husband, John, at far right– taken some 30 years ago.
Look for Neil Young in the center, seated on the framing, third from the left.
I don’t know what I’m celebrating here–this photo was taken in 1995, the last time the famous “Slide” was closed for months and months and months. My Burt is convinced he was in the last car to drive over the scenic road before it was shut down on a sloppy, rainy night.
One reassuring thing: Almost every person in a car driving north of Half Moon Bay on Hwy 1 belongs on the Coastside–you know they’re headed for home, a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Here’s what our friends on the other side of the hill are saying:
Overheard: Man to woman: “My wife has a friend in Moss Beach and she says you can’t drive to Half Moon Bay until after 11 a.m.–and JUST FORGET about going over there on the weekends.”
At Right: Devil’s Slide in healthier days (1981)
The two sides of Fayden as he relaxes in my “old” backyard ” 30 years ago when, as he says, “we were all hanging out”– in the background a snap-together geodesic dome “invented” by my ex.
Fayden played with a rock group; was it The Turtles?
Patricia Erickson in 1981 (from my documentary, “The Mystery of Half Moon Bay”).
Patricia Erickson (PE): We do have those moments when fog can drive one crazy. We do have winter winds when although the sun is beautiful, the winds can be fierce and wet.
There’s been development but not nearly what it could be. Let’s face it: you’re just a stone’s throw from over the hill each way. So in ten years time there have been some people who’ve come in but they have to be a certain kind of person who are going to stay here–or they leave.
And we haven’t developed the way an area like this–easily accessible to places–would develop. A lot of people could say that’s the freeway, yes….people who want a freeway aren’t going to come here.
Gene Fleet (GF): The feeling from this side of the hill to other side of the hill is so different–in that the mountains are barriers, physical barriers–it’s because there are roads to the coastside–and yet, when talking with people on the other side of the hill, on the peninsula, if I would say, ‘I’m from the coastside’, to them that would be so far away. And certainly not a place where they would live.
They admire the fact that I am able to live so far away from where it’s “happening”. And for them they certainly couldn’t…They rarely drive over here…even people who come to the beaches aren’t the same folks although I notice the coastside changes on weekends. The coastside is really very accommodating.
This is the ocean; it isn’t owned by anybody. This ocean is a part of the earth and it just happens this is a very special point where the ocean meets the land surface–and there’s a quality of energy when two force fields come together….
I have felt the energy of the coastside as being very strong and independent…and that the coastside coule live autonomously from the rest of what we know as civilization around here.
I had an experience once when I felt this section of the coastside separating and becoming an island from Devil’s Slide to Ano Nuevo….and so we were cut off from the north and south and east. There’s the San Andreas Fault and San Gregorio Fault out at sea. This provides an isolated unit–and with the right shift we could be our own little autonomous unit out here.
PE: I think the mountains know–on an energy level they know…I feel we’re so well taken care of here on the visible levl, even on a spiritual level, we are quite well taken care of.
GF: I feel eccentric people are still here but they’re not the eccentric people who were here before. I feel the coastside will always be a haven for eccentric people. Maybe they’ve moved on, or just died here on the coastside, their energy is still here.
Eccentric people who are here now are different and some other folks have moved on. That in a way makes it a place people come to and go through are a part of the process of being here, of being human. And for some of us, it means being on the coastside for a period of time.
Two years ago I left to go to a community in Scotland called Findhorn, and, at that ime I felt ‘I’m leaving the coastside’. My 7-year cycle had completed, and then this Christmas when I returned– it was just to visit–and, yet here I am still, six months later…I’m still here…
PE: I’m not sure all the people who leave the coast come back–but people who are tuned in on that particular energy level feel a pulling back to the coastside.
There’s a certain type of person that seems to live here, and I can’t actually tell you what this kind of person is, except that they are an autonomous type of person.
They can deal with being their own person and with being alone. Being alone but still having to be within community because we have to function together here on the coastside uniquely. So alone and together which is really what the dance is.
You might say that we live in an oyster and just pick our pearls out….
I’m not a geologist but really feel this area is protected. I also feel I am very protected….
End
Bob Mascall was handsome as a movie star and the founder of one of the coolest stores in Half Moon Bay in the late 1970s. Called Buffalo Shirt, which was clever enough, Bob, a manly and very married man, learned to sew and with his new skill brought life to the hearty canvas bagâand emerged as one of the very few male merchants on Main Street.
I met with Bob Mascall when Buffalo Shirt was housed within the sweetly named Tin Palace, (formerly a rundown old building which he renovated) on the south side of Half Moon Bayâs historic concrete bridge.
(What sticks out in my mind are the long lines of locals standing in front of Buffalo Shirt, the line stretching âround the corner with folks patiently waiting for the front door to open. This was not a regular store day but Buffalo Shirtâs annual saleâwhich was more like a big town event. By then Mascall not only sold the coveted canvas bags but quality handmade woolen jackets and shirts and socks from Ireland. He flew there with his stewardess wife to choose and purchase the lovely soft goods).
But when I talked to Bob it was all about canvas bags. He learned to sew at Half Moon Bay High School, he told me, adding that ” the first thing I made was a miniature log carrier.â?
After âI learned to thread a needle and after I learned the idiosyncrasies of the sewing machine,â? Bob said, âI was better off spending my time at home,â?
Soon after canvas luggage became his passion and Buffalo Shirt was born.
He showed me white canvas shoulder bags and totes, small, medium and large, with perfect seams.
âI do these by hand,â? Bob told me, â and I think I do it better than anybody in the world.â? I canât sew, how could I dispute that?
âI like to sew but I donât want to sew forever,â? confessed Mascall, then the father of a two-year-old.
When the conversation turned to a brief history of luggage, Bob told me that before the appearance of metal trunks, âpeople carried their things in canvas bags. This is the way people carried things until they started making metal trunks. Today people try to avoid long lines in airports with luggage they can sling over their shoulders. Itâs kind of a âreverse evolutionâ.â?
Bob Mascall may have been prescient. These days you certainly do see more shoulder bags at the airport than metal trunks!
(Note: Sadly, Buffalo Shirt is no longer in Half Moon Bay).
Bring the troops here to fix Devilâs Slide
Yesterday, I left home in El Granada at 9:50 a.m.: it’s only four miles to Half Moon Bay but forty minutes later found me mired in traffic on two-lane Hwy 92 about a mile east of Half Moon Bay.
It was confirmed that there had been an accident–a big, locally owned commercial truck hit head-on and the traffic was impossibly backed up. As I crawled up the mountain I saw quite a few cars strewn on the side of the road, with steam spewing out of their overheated engines.
It took me 1 & 1/2 hours to drive from El Granada to 280 in San Mateo, a ride that used to take 20 minutes. The stagecoach in the 19th century did better.
(There was one benefit: at this very slow pace I enjoyed the beautiful coastside scenery that I hadn’t noticed in years when whizzing byâwhat a terrific opportunity to practice patience and meditationâ-unfortunately, the meditation led to drowsiness and I realized, with lids growing heavy, that I better stay alert or Iâd fall asleep at the wheel).
Later, on the way home (youâd better make your return early, or you hit the commute traffic and youâre back bumper-to-bumper) I shopped at the Half Moon Bay Safeway. Another âvictimâ? standing in the checkout line was calculating the cost of driving âover the hillâ? and back–$20 was his calculaltion. He was numbed by his own mathematics.
Itâs incomprehensible that there is no solution, even temporary, to reopening the breathtaking stretch of Highway 1 known as Devilâs Slide.
Itâs alleged by some that “the U.S. military can build a road anywhere in the world in about two hours”. Hey, how about bringing the troops to Devilâs Slide? It would give these young men and women a healthy and useful project to work on.
If getting the army to Devilâs Slide isnât possible, remember weâre just a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley and Stanford, the birthplace of high tech– and we âre drowning in Nobel Prize winners. Surely someone can come up with a solution to get Devilâs Slide re-opened.
In the grand scale of things, a broken road is a very small deal…but what if one day we had a real disaster like an earthquake or a tsunamiâ¦I shudder at the thoughtâ¦.
What a weekend it was.
Last Saturday night, not only was Devil’s Slide shut down, the phones lines were down, the internet was down– God forbid if you had an emergency and had to call 911 because all you got was a busy signal (and one that sounded like a racing heartbeat).
For some unexplained reason the TV worked throughout.
And the local news told us that a landslide on Highway 92 (the only road open now that Devil’s Slide has slipped away) caused the service outages.
The time estimates on when service would be restored varied from unknown to 4 p.m. to midnight. Bay City News got it right on the button–around 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon the landline came back to life, followed closely by the cell phone & 911 and the Internet. (We celebrated…quietly).
During the hours we were “without connection to the outside world” we took a ride “over the hill” and saw the many phone company vehicles parked near the cemetery, presumably close to the site of the landslide. There’s been construction going on there and a fiber optic line had been severed. (Don’t think too hard about that!).
We listened to the radio news and a county official confirmed coastsiders couldn’t get through to 911. Until phone service was back on line, he said police vehicles had been stationed at signal lights along Highway 1. Cops were told to roll down their windows so they could hear anyone shouting for help.
24 hours without phones, without Internet, without 911. Funny– when we got it all back, we took it all in stride, as if nothing had happened at all.
As a dear friend always says: âIf you hang by the neck long enough, you get used to it.â?
Patricia Erickson & Gene Fleet sitting in a Moss Beach garden.
Two Coastsiders I loved interviewing for the 1981 âMystery of Half Moon Bayâ? documentary were Patricia Erickson and Gene Fleet–two new age, spiritual friends who shared the belief that they lived in a unique, powerful place.
Gene Fleet (GF) worked at HMB Nursery and lived at remote Tunitas Creek near the former historical site, Gordonâs Chute– and the artistic Patricia Erickson (PE) lived in Moss Beach (the house with the big rainbow painted across the garage door) near the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.
Itâs 1980 and Pat and Gene speak freely about the power Devil’s Slide and the Coastside.
Patricia Erickson: I think itâs a power pointâ¦.
Gene Fleet: â¦that the whole San Mateo Coastside seems to be blocked off by the earth, with Devilâs Slide to the north and on the south where Ano Nuevo isâ¦Thereâs that whole cliff area which is continually falling inâ¦
PE: â¦people that live here, I think theyâre high energy peopleâ¦.I think people hwo live here are special people, too. I really feel thatâ¦And I think that they bring a degree of energy which stabilizes the earth, too.
GFâ¦There is a basic grounded quality about people who come here. In order to be able to be here one canât be too extravagant. There is a bit of that element coming in with commuter traffic and suburban development of the Coastsideâbut there is a stronger grounding element. It is expressed through various kinds of people living hereâ¦farmers and fishermen and people who are living in the mountainsâvarious nationalities represented hereâ¦Weâre all sort of in this together. In the fog together. In the anticipation of an earthquake, I mean, itâs constantly with usâ¦.
PE: I donât cope with the fog. I think fog is a very powerful energyâ¦We have a unique weather pattern which drives many people insane. We have a unique list of elementsâand force and power hereâ¦One of the elements is isolation which Gene was talking about. You just donât commute to movies every nightâ¦So people who live here are centers almost within themselves. People who can also join in the community but also seem autonomous channels of energy. There is a certain kind of person which stays here, which lives here, which thrives on it and which gets off on it and also channels into itâ¦.
GF: The Coastside has to evolve at its own rate. It will do so no matter whatâ¦As other influences come into the area, commercial ventures or economic things have to do with housing, different things which try to come in which arenât appropriate just donât happenâ¦.The whole thing of Westinghouse buying property and wherever thatâs standing now. The proposed 4-lane highway coming in from the east and north and they have continually been blockedâ¦Even this winter when Devilâs Slide threatened to disappear…
PE: People who need big complexes, all that development, obviously havenât stayed. Energyâs magnetic. So, energy attracts energy. So the energy thatâs here obviously is going to attract an energy. Weâre magnets to each other. I feel, too, that part of the reason venture hasnât occurred here is because thatâs not what itâs all aboutâ¦I think that first of all the earth, which is the very grounded thing here weâre living on on the etheric level is really not supportive of a freeway happening. My feeling is that the mountains themselves have a life essence form, a life energy on an etheric level which is saying âno, this is not going to happen.â?
I also think that the people who live here-and I’m really going out on a limb because I know there’s a lot of people who’d like to move out fast or have a freeway but I think, basically, a great many of the people who live here, on the etheral level, support the mountain’s decision.
Those are the two energies that are compatable–the people who stay which keeps bringing in that energy which the mountain, you might say, has the first and last word–because no one’s going to control that mountain.
…To be continued…
The rescue ships carried the injured, stunned and stricken survivors back to San Francisco where they were created at the emergency hospital.
Rumor had it that attorneys for the San Juan and the S.C.T. Dodd scurried among the shocked survivors, urging them to keep quiet and avoid reporterâs questions. Clearly the attorneys were less interested in the passengerâs welfare than the liability of the ship owners.
Despite painful abdominal and spinal injuries, Theodore Granstedt could not be dissuaded from talking, charging cowardice on the part of the San Juanâs crew.
âWhen the crash came, the entire crew deserted their posts and saved themselves. They made no effort to launch a boat or save a soul,â? Granstedt said before nurses on the scene convinced him that he was seriously injured and needed to calm down and rest.
Theodore Granstedt had survived what the San Mateo Times called âthe worst maritime tragedy the Pacific Coast had experienced in more than a quarter century.â?
The Times noted that 72 peopleâmost of them passengers, many women and childrenâmet watery deaths as the Standard Oil tanker S.C.T. Dodd rammed the San Juan 12 miles off the San Mateo County coast.
The following day Sheriff James J. McGrath and his deputies patrolled the coastline. Hundreds of curious county residents lined the shore as Coast Guard cutters continued a futile search for more bodies.
As the facts were gathered, the tragic story emerged.
According to survivors on deck at the time, the San Juan was sheared almost in half by thee heavy stern of the tanker Dodd and sank beneath the sea before most of the passengers in their staterooms, and the crewmembers in their bunks, had an opportunity to realize the vessel had been mortally struck.
There were indications that a terrific hole had been torn in the side of the San Juan by the impact and she started sinking at once. When the swirling waters reached the engine room, there was a hissing of steam and then the boilers explodedâshattering the ship from stem to stern.
Most of those fortunate survivors were on the deck or in the saloon at the time of the disaster. Those below in their berths or bunks were doomed.
âIt was not a matter of four or five minutes before the ship sank,â? Charles J. Tulee, the San Juanâs First Mate said. âIt was a matter of only a few seconds.â?
The second mate backed up Tuleeâs version, adding that the vessel sank as he attempted to help some women and children into one of the lifeboats. That lifeboat was the only one that might have been launchedâbut it was shattered in the boiler explosion, hurling the women into the air, injuring many seriously. Only a few survived.
Until the results of an official investigation there was the usual finger pointing. The owners of the San Juan blamed the tanker Todd, listing the heavy blanket of fog that covered the Pacific at the time as a contributing factor.
Just as insistent was the Doddâs Captain Bluemchen, who reported that in spite of the fog, the San Juanâs lights were visible, and that she suddenly changed her course, cutting across the Doddâs pathway.
As Captain Asplund had perished in the disaster, the authorities would never know his version of the events.
Some critics opined that the San Juan was too old to go to sea, but others commented that the steamerâs hull had been inspected by officials and pronounced seaworthy.
Captain Frank Turner, a federal steamship inspector, added that the Titantic was a new ship but she sank almost immediately upon receiving a blow comparable to the one suffered by the San Juan.
The bickering and accusations continued until the official inquiry, including a trial, was completed.
According to reports, the U.S. Steamboat Inspection Service Board found the San Juan inshore of the Dodd, tried to cross the oil tankerâs bow, was rammed and sank within a few minutes on August 29, 1929.
In other words, responsibility for the San Juan disaster was placed squarely on the shoulders of Captain Asplund. This decision did little to mitigate the suffering and loss of life.
The sinking of the San Juan remains one of the worst maritime tragedies that ever occurred off the San Mateo County coastline.
(The End)
Photo: The steamer San Juan, courtesy San Mateo County History Museum, Redwood City
