[Between you and me: I never could save. In the 1950s, Bank of America had a deal going with Jefferson, my grammar school in San Francisco. We kids were given a beige envelope, about 3 x 5, that closed with a “string lock.” This envelope opened, in most cases, our first savings account, and every week we were supposed to make a small deposit–given to us by our parents. Several quarters or a dollar, something like that. I made the first deposits, but then I was seduced by the candy store that I passed on the way to school. I couldn’t resist the rows of colorfully displayed sweets and started spending, at first part, then all of it on red licorice vines and mountain bars. My parents were told that I wasn’t a good saver and that was that.]
In 1972, we two city girls took over a ragged little flock in Purisima Canyon: Captain Crunch, the rooster, and his harem of white leghorns, Rhode Island reds, an Araucana and a few belligerent Silkies.
Since we (like the novice Jane with her chimps) had little experience with the animals, we were more interested in chicken behavior than with practical matters like eggs, though we did get a few eggs when the weather was good, and the girls werenât molting or trying to hatch chicks.
We kept a daily journal about our hen house. We bought laying mash from Feed and Fuel on Main Street in 50-pound bags. We raided the Alpha Beta dumpsters for limp lettuce.
The chickens taught us all sorts of things. A good rooster, we learned, is gallant, the official word for a desirable trait in the male. He will not only strut around and cock-a-doodle at first light. He will find tidbits for the hens and stand aside while they eat.
In fact, one problem with especially gallant roosters is starvation. Roosters use a special sound, a soft âbuk-bukâ?, which is used to call the henâs attention to something yummy. (A hen with chicks uses the same call: âHereâs a goodie, my dears.â?) A gallant rooster will fight off predatorsâoften to the death.
A gallant rooster, we discovered, would even teach a young hen how to make a nest, jumping into the nesting box, arranging the straw, sitting on nonexistent eggs and looking catatonic. Which is how the hens appeared when the urge to become mothers came over them. If one hen went broody, they all wanted to go broody.
To our horror, we discovered that hens know when an egg is not viable or may hatch out sooner or later than the rest of the clutch. They will get rid of the egg one way or another, usually by pushing it out of the nest so that it breaks.
Roosters will also fight rivals, which is why we had a problem when the hens started raising families. As soon as the scrawny adolescent youngsters began to practice crowing, they would be set upon by their father.
We also discovered that the proprietor of Georgeâs Toggery on Main Street in Half Moon Bay was happy to take young roosters off our hands, presumably for roasting. We delivered the quiet victims in burlap bags and tried not to think about it very much. At any rate, we neither had to slaughter those roosters ourselves nor watch them be hounded by the Alpha Male.
The childrenâs story about the hen that cried âThe sky is falling! The sky is falling!â? was surely written by someone who actually knew chickens. Chickens are, of course, easily alarmed and deserving of the name for cowardice. They can put out the most terrible racket over any threat, real or imaginedâ¦
BAWK! BAWK! BAWK!
â¦and, they actually have a vocalization sounding something like âAwkâ? to alert each other to anything flying overhead, hawk or airplane. Since chickens canât see in front of their beaks, they will comically turn their heads to watch the sky with one eye and then the other.
The pecking order is as unyielding as a catechism, and the chicken at the bottom not only gets pecked by every one more highly ranked, but also has to be the last to eat. A flock without a rooster will come under the protection of the dominant hen, who may even try to learn to crow.
In 1972, Feed and Fuel dispensed veterinary advice as well as baby chicks, straw, oyster shell and grain. When the flock came down with scaly leg mite, someone at Feed and Fuel advised mixing snuff and sulfur with Vaseline and applying it to the chickensâ legs. It wasnât easy to catch the girls, upend them and smear their legs with this vile stuff, but it did cure them.
Most of the girls had names: Shasta, Paloma, Bruna, and the Rhode Island Reds, Mao, Trostkina and Lenina. We ordered more chicks from a firm that guaranteed their gender (female, after Georgeâs Toggery closed), and they arrived by mail, a loud little yellow crowd in a box no larger than a shoebox.
Commercial operations calculate the ratio of chicken meat or eggs to the amount of feed given, and they usually slaughter the chickens after only a year or two. Our chickens mostly died of old age, however, and did so from the last ranking (most pecked) up.
My last chicken, which had once been the dominant hen, finally died when she was nine or ten years old. I found her down in the coop, stone cold with her feet in the air, just like a cartoon chicken. She might have died of natural causes, but I always thought she
died, because, being the last of the flock, she had nobody left to peck.
———————
***Michaele Benedictâs beloved daughter, Anna vanished from her Purisima Creek home in 1974. Please visit Michaele Benedictâs (searchingforanna.com website)â click here
[One part of coast-side history that is noteworthy is the Mangue family. Ida, Ernie and their three children: Ron the eldest, then Jeanie and Rudy, who was a year or so older than me.]
My first job was working for Ida at her crab stand which was across from the HMB Brewing Co. on that now priceless piece of barren land right on the water. I was in the 4th grade and worked weekends, icing down the fish, cleaning, cracking and picking crab, and all the other cool stuff you do in the operation of a crab stand.
Ida was a sweet lady and you couldn’t help but like her. She had a loyal clientele that were more like family. It was a great place for a little guy to work.
Idaâs husband Ernie, a real character, was a commercial fisherman and abalone diver. The boys also worked with their dad.
Jeanie worked at the crab stand too. She was a hottie.
The Mangues bought the restaurant across the street, now the Brewing Co. Ernie was the chef, Jeanie the waitress, and I was everything else. Ida continued running the crab stand. The boys took over the fishing part of the operation.
When Ron was in high school, he fished with his dad on the week-ends. They’d head out to sea early in the morning and work all day. By the time they got back to the pier and unloaded their catch, little time was left for the pursuit of the opposite sex. Time was of the essence, and any serious competitor knew he’d better get out there if he were to catch something.
Ron had a collection of brightly colored Pendleton shirts. He’d throw one on, never bothering to take time to change his fish flavored levis, hell, that was what Mennen Skin Bracer aftershave was all about.
I was amazed at how quickly he could change and fly to his chariot, and then shoot to town. If odors had color, he would have left beautiful comtrail. Hence the âMangue Bathâ?.
And by the way, he did eventually hook himself a dandy.
Ida and Ernie bought ‘Rotten Ralph’s burger joint (now Sam’s Chowder house) and moved their restaurant business there, and operated it until Ida died.
Well June there’s a little. To this day those of us who knew Ron still call it taking a ‘Mangue’.
Note: The language in this report could have been simpler!
From: Coastside Cultural Resources of San Mateo County, California (Prepared by the Dept. of Environmental Management, Planning Division, San Mateo County, Redwood City, Calif., Sept, 1980
5
The Protection Program
The program to protect coastal cultural resources is composed of various methods and implementation techniques. A major component in this program is delineating scenic corridors that define the space in which a majority of the cultural resources are located. It is here that the protection program will be most influential. Another area of great importance is community design, for in urban areas outside scenic corridors the design review process becomes a key element in protecting cultural resources. Also, the Historical and Cultural Resources Element to the County General Plan, Historic and Cultural Resources Protection Ordinance, and Historic Resources Advisory Board are major factors in protecting historic buildings and structures.
….The protection program describes (1) methods presently employed in San Mateo County and (2) additional methods of protection which may be used to supplement this program.
Gino Lea wrote the “This Is Your Coastside” column for the HMB Review
“Well dear hearts and gentle readers, we have come to a parting of the ways, you and I. This is my last column on the Coastside. There remain many personalities and industries to be written about but unfortunately they will probably remain unwritten.
“Offhand I had plans for the Salomones with the yeast, flour, and paste shop known as the Half Moon Bay Baker; the strictly family enterprise everyone knows as the Alves Dairy; the million dollar organization that is the Half Moon Bay Growers Association; Perry Chiles Miramar Fuchsia Gardens; the story behind the Half Moon Bay Dons.
And such personalities as Jack Quinlan, Frank Bernardo, Charlie Beffa, Tom Marlowe, Alvin Hatch, Mrs. Griffith, the Williamson’s of Pescadero, James Healey and for an adquate bribe I might have slipped in George Dunn now that a good Republican is ancient history.
“Lay down that Brick Bat George, I’m only kidding. As well as my plans were, they weren’t half so elaborate as the designs someone else had on me. Remember the recruiting poster during the lat war which showed Uncle Sam pointing his finger at you over a caption that screamed—Uncle Sam Wants You. Believe me, the man wasn’t kidding. He not only pointed, he pushed a little. Yes, Uncle has bagged himself another nephew.
“And so we have come to the end of our little tour of the Coastside. Hope you enjoyed it.
“Slow down, driver!–that’s it–right here–end of the line. This is where I get off.”
Princeton-by-the-Sea is a place filled with legends and tall tales.
An oft-asked question: Who burned down the beloved Crab Cottage?
As the legend goes, John and Slim were two characters that slept in a wood pile. They didn’t bother anyone….unless having way too much to drink counts. One day John and Slim woke up and heard from a passerby that the Crab Cottage wasn’t open for breakfast that morning. The Crab Cottage was always open for breakfast and it not being open on that particular morning irritated all three men.
John and Slim didn’t work at a regular job unless walking around and checking on the goings on in Princeton counts.
As the day turned from light to dark, John and Slim kept talking about the Crab Cottage being closed for breakfast. They bought some cheap wine and bought some more and by the time the moon was up, the men were outraged.
Something had to be done, they said. So they took matters into their own hands, and with plenty of matches zig zagged their way to the Crab Cottage….and burned it down.
In John and Slim’s mind, they had solved the problem of the Crab Cottage being closed for breakfast. They would never be disappointed again.
Galen also has been doing some remarkable work in Opaques, a technique originally suggested by leaded stained glass or Mosaic found in the arcades, walls and floors of monastaries in Europe. It was originally a surface decoration made by inlaying in patterns small pieces of colored glass, stone, quartz, rock jades, and other material. This Mosaic work presents the first form of broken color ever used. Galen has been experimenting with an opaque techn ique in solid colors that is partially an innovaqtion of his own. It makes beautiful and effective art.
Some of the general remarks Galen made concerning art and painting are probably common knowledge to artists but it should be of interest to the like of many like the writer whose knowledge of art has mostly been gleaned from the arresting pages of Esquire.
The most difficult part of a picture is in the proportioning of the main features and general pattern. Balancing the body of a picture is the most subtle job in painting. Subtle because if it isn’t handled properly the layman couldn’t tell you what was wrong with it but he would remain disturbed by it. For example, by sketching a tree in the foreground, using distant mountains and scenery for the background, the mountains in the background must be proportionately related to the tree in the foreground in order to properly convey distance and size. As for the tree which is the main object, there is only one position in that sketch where the tree can be placed to give the picture balance. A half inch or inch to the right or left, up or down, and the picture just doesn’t come off.
Among other things, the artist knows that the colors he works with are characteristically individual. He knows that warm colors have more power of appeal than cool colors. Therefore a small area of orange or red or yellow is comparable to a larger area of green or blue. Also, large areas of color tend to saturate the eyes. The eye is attracted by the strength and amount of color. But a small picture to attract attention must be sharp and distinctive, done in fine detail to compensate for the reductions in size, darkness of shadows, and strength of hues.
“This Is Your Coastside; Its People, Places and Industries”
“Galen Wolf–Part I
“Galen Wolf long ago discovered what most of us spend a lifetime futilely seeking–a pleasant way of life. It is the essence of this gentle man’s existence and his work.
“If you like interesting people, you would like Galen Wolf. He’s a sharp featured, loose jointed man flirting with his early sixties and standing just beyond medium height. He has the square jaw and jutting chin usually associated with a fighter, and a wide generous mouth that lends itself easily into a humorous smile.
“His small alert blue eyes are made to appear smaller and more deeply set by their conditioning to be heavily lensed glasses he wears. A bandanna or large handkerchief covers his head, a smooth expanse of skin, except for a fringe of snow white hair, which has little in common with a comb. The ends of the bandanna re rolled up into a beret like affair, which is held in place by the straps of green eyeshade Galen usually wears over it. The combination actually amounts to a homemade cap that is cool, comfortable, and restful.
“He’s slightly stoop shouldered from his constant hunching over his sketches and paintings, but he sits and stands with the relaxed ease of an athlete. It is a poised sort of relaxation whose nature is primarily mental, whereas the conditioned athlete’s is almost purely physical. It is the man’s inner harmony that seems to manifest itself in a physical sense.
“There is something singularly [missing words] complete to sweater and tie, are well worn and loose fitting and yet are in no way casual or sloppy. Rather there is an exactness about them, even to neatly knotted loose fitting tie, that suggests a precise and orderly but tolerant mind. Clothes have a way o losing their identity on Galen. Regardless of what clothes he wears, it is only a matter of time until they become part of him, merely one phase of his personality.
(Photo: Galen Wolf with a friend on the tractor.)
“There’s an unpretentious sort of dignity about him that combines the worshipful simplicity of a man’s love of nature and land with the added refinements of the cultured mind of an underpaid college professor.
“Everything that Galen is–a pleasant, cultured man of simple dignity–is reflected in his art.
“Galen Wolf is one of the foremost watercolor artists in the state, and certainly the ablest interpreter of Coastside scenes. He has had a traditional show of country pictures at the Peninsula Book Store in Burlingame for 8 years, plus one show at the Mull Galleries on Sutter Street. He has had pictures on exhibit at Grave’s and Maxwell’s, Allied Arts in Palo Alto; at the California Historical on Mission.
“Galen estimates he has sketched and painted over 400 Coastside scenes, mostly farmsteads, which are his favorite subject.
