Created by June Morrall
(Petrouchka’s on 24th Street in San Francisco)
And Sunset Magazine sent a photographer to shoot the canopy we stood under (while receiving the vows)– I think this was the photographer’s photo that appeared in the magazine, or one like it–I’m still looking for the magazine photo.
(Mine, early 1970s, Santa Cruz Ave, Menlo Park)
Were we spoiled?
That’s what Burt just told me as he got off the Slide (on his way to work in Burlingame) and entered the long-missed views of Pacifica.
“Pacifica looks good! Valero took over the Chevron station. Oh, there’s the hotel.”
He said there was an evidence of an overnight celebration in Montara with bits of bright ribbons and colorful balloons on the ground.
Light traffic, a pleasure to drive over the “new” Slide–“What a difference,” Burt said.
Mario Vellutini in the front yard of his El Granada home.
I used to watch Mario Vellutini bending over in the fields bordering Highway 1 in El Granada. That’s where wild daisies the color of butter grew in abundance, waist-high.
Wearing baggy gray trousers and a worn hat, the thin, pale old man searched for clumps of wild mushrooms where the ground was rich. For dinner he cooked them with chicken, country Italian style.
One day while Mario was gathering mushrooms I went to talk to him. I hoped he would tell me secrets about Prohibition, when the Coastside was home to shadowy figures, rumrunners and bootleggers– and a madam or two who called the shots.
He didn’t disappoint.
(A little history about Mario: He was 17 when he left his home in Italy in 1913 for Half Moon Bay–where he got to know every Coastside field, working on ranches from Pescadero to Montara.)
He delighted me when he talked about his close relationship with John Patroni, a powerful man during Prohibition. Patroni owned the popular Princeton restaurant called the Patroni House–the old roadhouse was torn down in the 1950s and today the Half Moon Bay Brewing Co. stands near the site.
Some people called the husky Patroni “the padrone” for he was the boss of Princeton-by-the-Sea in the 1920s and 1930s when the sale, possession, and drinking of any kind of alcohol/liquor/whiskey was illegal.
(Can you imagine enforcing this one?)
John Patroni was the Coastside padrone but Mario Vellutini, who, when he was in his early 20s lived at the Patroni House, called the padrone, “Big Daddy.” John Patroni was the kingpin and a wealthy rumrunner, Mario Vellutini, who lived at the Patroni House, told me.
A narrow thoroughfare separated Patroni’s lively roadhouse from what is known today as Pillar Point Harbor but in the 1920s the high seas weren’t interrupted by a breakwater system. During Prohibition rumrunners used the pier across the way to unload whiskey at night.
Mario worked for Big Daddy, and rumor has it that Vellutini watched out for the best interests of his boss, making certain that nobody was cheating him.
Those were heady times for the Coastside, famous up until then for the endless fields of artichokes. But the artichokes took a back seat to Half Moon Bay which became better known as one of the biggest supplier of illegal booze on the West Coast.
When the Prohibition agents headed for Patroni, the 81-year-old Vellutini said, somebody called from Redwood City to warn him.
Thus John Patroni avoided the stinging penalty of too many raids. A raid could also mean that a roadhouse or a owner like Patroni had failed to honor the custom of the time by making sure the appropriate officials got their regular “salary.”
To be continued.
When Sharon Zugay was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the late 1970s, her many Coastside friends offered help and supportâbut mostly they gave their hearts.
I remember Sharon as a beautiful young womanâone of those very special young people who are like fairy dustâ-
She and her twin sister, Karen, were simply stunning.
Sharon lived with other artists in an historic house (the artichoke king Dante Dianda’s home) which stood next door to the “Sun House” where jewelery and beads were sold (now
At the time there werenât many of us on the Coastsideâand I define âusâ? as outsiders or newcomers, around college age, with similar reasons for being here. The loss of Sharon was devastatingâ¦it was as if we were one body and Sharon represented a living, vital part that we were going to have to live withoutâ¦
I will never forget the âfarewellâ? disguised as a benefit concert held for Sharon at the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society. (As usual, Pete Douglas, was generous, turning over his Miramar âdigsâ? to the locals for what was a memorial service with the lovely lady who was soon to be mourned present.)
My last image of Sharon was of her being rolled out in a wheelchair, the Dennis Swensen painting you see in the printed notice hanging on the stage behind her.
