Created by June Morrall
While I was in downtown, historic Half Moon Bay this Sunday morning, I dropped in a store new to me:
This is what I found inside: 
I met the owners, Ann (left) and Kim (right) with Faye, Kim’s sister-in-law in the center
And, this is what I bought, an adorable hat (without a label, very cool!)
On my way to the Half Moon Bay Bakery on Main Street (for a twist w/sesame seeds), I saw the makeover of the old Half Moon Bay Inn.
For fun, here’s the before and after pictures of the Half Moon Bay Inn.
Before the makeover, some 30 years ago, about 6AM:
AND, today, Sunday, November 6, 2005
In an earlier post, Ernie Alves (“Our Cows are Outstanding in Their Field”) hinted at the devastating effect of WWII on Coastsiders–especially Germans and Italians without citizenship papers–who were prohibited after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor from living or working on the west side of Main Street, the Highway 1 of that era.
What was on the west side of Main Street? The beaches, the stores, the school and the restaurant, the economic and social life’s blood of the town. Fear of another attack by the Japanese was so great that the military patrolled the beaches, built bunkers and placed gun emplacements on the hillsides.
I’d heard Germans and Italians were not permitted to cross the freshly painted white line down the center of Main Street, yet I didn’t meet anyone who would provide details until a couple of years ago when, through a phone tip, I interviewed Josephine Revheim. A Pacifica resident, Josephine had clearly suffered as a young woman but she had grown into a confident, articulate person who had done very well with her life.
At 15, Jo was the only daughter of Half Moon Bay farmer Antonio Giurliani and his wife, Marianna. The close-knit family resided in a little house next door to the old Catholic Church that stood west of Half Moon Bay’s Main Street. On the land adjacent to their home they grew sprouts and chokes.
The Giurliani’s came from Lucca, Italy, Jo’s father’s home, but her mom was actually born in Marseille, France. Still, everybody in Half Moon Bay considered them all Italian.
Soon after Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 army trucks rolled into Half Moon Bay, and, Jo told me, her father, who didn’t have citizenship papers, received an official letter from the US government ordering the family to move to the east side of Main Street. They had two weeks to comply.
Jo recalled seeing the printed notices on telephone poles throughout the town ordering all “aliens, Germans, Italians and Japanese” to relocate. The Japanese were rounded up and detained at Tanforan Racetrack. That history is well documented but in Half Moon Bay there was no central location for Germans and Italians. After registering as aliens in San Mateo they had to leave their homes on the west side.
(Technically, Josephine and her mom could have stayed on the farm but she asks: “How could we maintain a large farm without dad’s help?” The family decided to stick it out together.)
There were plenty of homes on the east side but unless you had a relative to help you were out of luck. That was the situation Jo and her family found themselves in–no place to move to and time was running out fast.
“Luckily,” Josephine said, “dad had a friend with a ranch in Higgins Canyon, south of town. He not only hired dad, he gave our family a place to live in the Johnston House. In those days it wasn’t called the Johnston House–we called it ‘the old house on the hill'”.
(Built in the 1850s by pioneer James Johnston, the fully restored Johnston House has become a famous landmark that stands on a hill at the south end of Main Street).
Josephine still recalls the morning her family moved into “the old house on the hill”. She says, “It hit us, what we were in for. The rat-infested house had no windows and vagrants had slept there, leaving behind garbage. Straw covered the dirt floors, the outhouse was halfway up the hill in the back, and when it rained it was like a waterfall, but there was plenty of room, and thank God there was cold running water to drink.”
Most important, the house was located on the east side of Main Street. But the school and the stores were on the west side. If they crossed the white line, they would be breaking the law. To check on their farm they’d have to do it secretly, because, if caught, it was likely someone would inform on them.
The most humiliating part of the whole experience for then 15-year-old Josephine were the stares and unfriendliness she and her familly encountered. One of the worst recollections was of her mother fighting off an assualt by some angry, unthinking local. It’s not hard to understand that many of her remembrances are so unpleasant that she remains uncomfortable talking about them today.
After about five months the Giurlani’s nightmare ended.
“We came home,” Jo says, “and at least the house and barn were still there. Everything else was gone, the crops were gone, and even our wild pigeons that had nested in the barn were gone.”
Not long after they settled back in their home the family received a letter from the US government advising them to become citizens or face deportation. They all got their citizenship papers.
Shortly after my interview with Josephine Revheim, we took a ride to Half Moon Bay to see the house she had lived in as a 15-year-old before her family was ordered to move out of it. Surprisingly the house was still standing, but it was vacant and uncared for, with broken glass on the floor, grafitti on the walls, empty paper coffee cups, somebody’s crashpad, and, right there, in the middle of town.
Why was this house still standing? Some connection to the story I’ve told?
Of course, I haven’t been back and don’t know if the house still stands but here are the photos I took a couple of years ago. That’s Josephine Revheim in all the pictures.
We see the house 
inside, what a mess!
A last look.
The Moss Beach Post Office gets high marks for balancing the books in 1917.
The letter (click to enlarge or read below) is from:
United States Post Office
Burlingame, Cal. Nov. 3. 1917.
District Postmaster.
Moss Beach, Cal.
I have received from you this date under register No. 59 stamped paper for credit amounting to $180.71.
It is a pleasure to receive a report correct. Would like to shake hands with you.
Signature illegible
Central Accounting Postmaster
I decided to type the document called “Organization of the Moss Beach Chamber of Commerce was announced today.” (February 12, 1952).
In my previous post, you can click on the original and read it, too.
This is the baby chamber of commerce of California, but its Secretary-Manager R. Guy Smith is the senior member of the Central and Northern California Chamber of Commerce Executives organization. His membership dates fromm 1925 when he was secretary of the old Coastside Civic Union which promoted the formation of Joint Highway DistrictNo. 9 which is composed of the counties of San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Cruz. It was formed for the purpose of building along the ocean that portion of State Highway No. 1 from San Francisco to Santa Cruz.
The first problem now confronting the new chamber is the permanent improvement of this popular highway at Pedro Mountain.
Earth and rock slides have interrupted traffic each winter since its first opening in 1937, fourteen years ago.
The chamber advocates two practical solutions to this problem.
The first solution would be an elevated four lane causeway across the face of Pedro Mountain at the present location. Built high enough to permit all slides of earth and rock to pass beneath it. Supporting elements would be heavy and strong enough to resist the crash force of the heaviest boulders that would be likely to strike it. Foundation of the supporting elements, or piers of the causeway would be upon solid granite rock.
The second solution would be a four lane tunnel located either at Green Canyon, or at the canyon immediately to the south. This tunnel would be about 2800 feet long and approximately 500 feet above sea level. It would shorted the present road by one mile and cost approximately $500,000,00. This is the opinion of an engineer who is thoroughly familiar with this road.
A tunnel at this point would be entirely through solid granite rock, emerging on the north side of the mountain above the stratified rock formation which is responsible for the slides that are now causing trouble.
This work would be done under the TEN YEAR COLLIER PLAN of 1947 which calls for a four lane highway along the coast from San Francisco to the junction with the San Mateo road, a distance of 30 miles.
The “new boulevard” at Montara. 
Below the newly organized Moss Beach Chamber of Commerce confronts its No. 1 problem. (Please click on image to enlarge)
Moss Beach, California
February 12, 1952
R. Guy Smith, Moss Beach Postmaster
signed
The old landmark I refer to in the headline above was an historic wharf at Miramar, partly destroyed by huge waves in early November 1928 or 77 years ago.
About 150 feet of the wharf at Miramar Beach had been swept away by heavy seas and a team of men worked feverishly to retrieve the floating wood and debris.
It was originally known as Amesport Landing ( built by Judge Josiah P. Ames in 1868)–and after it was modernized, it was called Miguel’s Wharf, named after the Half Moon Bay family who built the beautiful glass-windowed and redwood shingled hotel called the Palace Miramar.
The pier and the hotel, once the site of Amesport Landing and a warehouse and customs house.
The wharf’s fame grew out of the Amesport, pre-Ocean Shore Railroad era when Miramar was the center of a tiny seafaring village, with a warehouse for shipping and receiving freight for the Coastside. There was a waterfront saloon and a customs house from which passengers bound for San Francisco boarded the colorful steamers “Maggie” and “Gypsy”.
(Valladao is a well known name in Half Moon Bay, and one of their family members, “J.C.” worked as a clerk in the custom’s office.)
It was Moss Beach writer, Peter Kyne, who fell in love with Miramar and the steamer “Maggie”, so much that he featured them in his first book, “The Green Pea Pirates”. Local legend has it that when Peter was a kid he watched the steamers stopping along the Coastside to drop a package of nails here and pick up a letter there.
Hearing about the pretty hotel, the wharf, the steamers and the writer who loved it all, makes you believe all was perfect in Miramar.
Nothing is ever perfect, and behind the facade was a longtime feud between the new hotel and wharf owners, the Miguels, and the Mullens, the former “power” at Miramar. The Mullens, whose lovely farmhouse still stands on the east side of Highway 1 in Miramar, had operated the Amesport Wharf until the landing lost its usefulness as a source of transportation and was plunged into bankruptcy.
Along came the Miguels with a well known architect’s plan for a beautiful hotel that would serve Ocean Shore Railroad passengers. The indoor salt water “plunge” and the restored wharf would knock the socks off visitors. It was inevitable that a confrontation would arise between the Mullens and the Miguels.
That story coming up soon!
Burt and I had to go to Las Vegas on business– the magical glittering town’s ad campaign advises “what happens here, stays here”, but, for me, it’s simply not possible to stay too long. Two nights is just perfect, I think.
It was dark when we flew out of Oakland– but getting there was filled with the kind of terror you feel when you’re on time and then you’re really late. Traffic was terrible and we couldn’t figure out why until at the airport exit there was an injury accident and the most fire engines I have ever seen.
We thought we were on the last flight out and calmed ourselves by being cool, Well, whatever happens, happens.” In reality, of course, we were gritting our teeth.
With minutes left to get to the Southwest gate we sprinted out of the car and into the terminal, with one piece of carry-on luggage and this small but ancient, heavy suitcase that we had to bring. Luckily a uniformed woman directed us to a security checkcpoint that had no business. We were getting a break but I forgot to wear shoes I didn’t have to remove and in my rush I forgot to put the carry-on on the conveyor belt thingy, all of which made me and everybody else dizzy.
Here we are with no minutes to spare and we learn that our gate is the last gate in the terminal and while the carry-on can be rolled, we’ve got this heavy old suitcase that has to be hand carried. What a nightmare.
At the gate the ticket-taker said, “We were about to give your seats away.” We were the last pair to board, with seats at the very back of the full plane. But we made it.
Burt was carrying the old suitcase and it looked like it hadn’t seen light in a long time prompting a passenger to say, “Next time why don’t you dust the suitcase before you bring it.”
“You can see how long it’s been since I’ve traveled,” Burt quipped.
Next to us sat a young Irish fellow who had lived and worked in San Francisco for seven years. In Vegas he was meeting the rest of his large family, siblings and mother who lived in Dublin–they had never seen the eighth wonder of the world and he wanted to be there to enjoy their reactions.
We talked about Ireland because I had heard there was a big real estate boom, with housing prices skyrocketing, and Chinese restaurants on every block, and, in general the economy was prospering due to high tech. He confirmed all of the above but cautioned that the prosperity wasn’t benefiting everybody–it was a bit picky.
Most interesting to me was that he said he never wanted to go back and live in Ireland. He visited the place of his birth a couple of times a year but he said he loved America.
An hour-and-a-half later we landed in Vegas. We got in the taxi line which was moving fast and the dark skinned, very muscular looking guy wearing two earrings in front of us captured our attention.
“Are you a wrestler?” Burt asked.
“I used to do cage wrestling,” he said.
“You’ve got the look,” Burt said.
He said, “I work for the government now, I’m a pencil pusher.”
Burt and I looked at each other. He didn’t look like a pencil pusher.
A few minutes later he said, “No, I’m a bounty hunter. I’m the one they send out to bring the bone back home. Somebody else got my guy so I’m just relaxing.”
The wrestler-pencil-pusher-bounty hunter disappeared into a cab and so did we.
Our trip to Vegas was turning into a movie.
On the strip where imagination rules the building of hotel-palaces and gambling casinos, there is an incredible building boom going on. This morning there was a story about a tacky-looking shack selling for over 1 million buck. In this desert of dreams, condos and houses are going up in the least likely places,in fact, they’re going up any old place. Two experts I know, one an economist, the other a Midwest realtor, said when the building bubble bursts, it will start in Vegas.
The first time I visited Las Vegas was with my father in the late 1960s. There was no terminal. We stepped off the plane in the searing heat and walked across the field. I don’t recall any large buildings. I was there because a high school friend, Danny, had asked my father for my hand. Danny was going to UNLV in Vegas and worked as the assistant to a state senator. Danny was a sweet Catholic boy who had been kicked out of Sacred Heart in San Francisco for playing too many pranks. He ended up at Lincoln High School where I was going and that’s how we met. We didn’t marry.
(PHOTO, Below, right. This is Danny in Vegas, back when. I always wanted to be a writer and he once said, “I hope I get a chapter in your book.” Well, Danny, I hope a graph is okay for now. 
)
I’ve been to Vegas many times since. Burt was there even earlier, when the Stardust was being built, or another hotel with a romantic history.
When Burt and I were there over the weekend, we took a cab to the Mandalay Hotel’s Convention Center. Our cab driver was a woman from Eastern Europe, very interested in world politics. Like the Irish fellow we met on board the Southwest flight, she loved America and never wanted to go back to Europe. She had lived in Italy, a beautiful place, but said you can’t find a job there unless you know somebody. The police was a good place to start, she said.
I don’t know if you’ve seen those Vegas convention centers but the one at the Mandalay is mammoth. Long, long halls, long, long walks. Everything is extra large in Vegas.
Somewhere along our travels we learned that Bill Clinton was coming to town, staying at the Bellagio for a fundraiser.
Yeah, I gambled at the Venetian, where we stayed on the concierge level, both a lovely and quiet experience. I favor the slots but most of them don’t crank out real coins anymore. You get a piece of paper and I guess this is an extension of the cashless society. While the paper is printing there is the recorded sound of coins coming out–I like the slots because it’s mindless work that cleans out the “mind’s disk”.
To wrap up, we were picked up by a friend who was taking us to his brother’s home to look at some things he wanted appraised. His 70-year-old brother had died a few months earlier–for decades he had been a casino manager. It was clear that the 1970s was the peak of this man’s life. The house was built in the 1970s, and, as a single man all of his life, his home underlined that sort of lifestyle. I could see it as a partyhouse. His car, though a late model, had the furry seat covers. There was a photo of him with that fluffy hair look.
The ride from Vegas to the airport was fascinating but I’ve thought about it, and I can’t, not now, anyway, tell you about that conversation with the cabbie. Another time.