Half Moon Bay Memories & El Granada Observer

…Coastsider.com reports that Caltrans officials at a press conference yesterday announced that Devil’s Slide will reopen on August 4th.

Praise the Lord!

Our gratitude is overwhelming…Thank you to the engineers and working guys at the Slide who beat the schedual, thank you to all the officials for whatever role they played.

Hey CalTrans, one more thing….the poor slugs that sit on Hwy 92– two-three hours per day– may not even get this good news…How about spreading the word on all the printed signs and new electronic boards that give the number of minutes to and from Hwy 280 & Hwy 1….

…And one last thought: If on August 4 there is a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Slide’s reopening– in addition to the smiling bureaucrats and politicians– PLEASE make sure a couple of commuters are represented at the ceremony, too.

(Photo: Commuters raring to go when the Slide reopens).

P.S. Re-opening of the Slide is a headline story in the San Mateo Times

We’re delighted to learn that financial reimbursement is being made by the feds to some local non-profits whose resources have been stretched because of the closure of Devil’s Slide.

That’s great–but, as usual, the commuter doesn’t seem to count.

Let’s examine the cost to the commuter:

(1) Never have gas prices been so high.
(2) A car/truck is one of the most expensive items a family or individual owns.
(3) There’s wear and tear on the vehicle. Repairs to be made.
(4) Time lost sitting on Hwy 92
(5) Stress leading to illness (A well known county cardiologist, with homes on both sides of the hill, says that sitting in traffic on Hwy92 , is one of the huge factors that can lead to heart attacks).

And how do you measure the significant cost on the family?

Don’t forget not everything is measured in dollars. I’d just like to see one time– the worn-out, beat-up, poor sucker who is stuck on Hwy 92 for torturous hours every day–be first on the list of assistance.

(Photo taken in front of Half Moon Bay Bakery, Main Street).

I was driving south on Hwy 1 near Safeway when I pulled up beside one of the Coastside’s “solutions” to the closure of Devil’s Slide.

There might have been more than one passenger but I don’t think so. Seconds later another one of these Parking Company of America jitneys pulled out of the shopping center. This one was empty for sure.

Hopefully, more folks will use these buses–otherwise we’ll just have more vehicles adding to traffic on Hwy1 In that case the $160,000 put out for the service might better have been allocated to finishing the repairs at Devil’s Slide a minute and nine seconds faster.

….IT TAKES FOREVER TO FINISH…..

Today I read an online report that a Half Moon Bay business has created a “Devil’s Slide Cocktail”:

The problem with the cocktail is– it takes two hours to complete and when you’re finally finished you’re more sober than when you started.

Part 4

The day of the match race finally arrived and the stage was set for the two biggest names in the sport, Don Garlits and Don Prudhomme, the only two men to win drag racing’s triple crown.

At 6:15 a.m. that Sunday, cars blocked traffic on Highways 1 and 92. The Half Moon Bay air strips huge parking lot was packed. Parked cars spilled out on entrance roads in all directions—a great turn-out and tribute to these world-class athletes.

“15 thousand people showed up,� Don “Big Daddy� Garlits told me in 1998. “They came to see their man, Prudhomme, beat ‘Big Daddy’�.

(Remember the trophy was already etched with Prudhomme’s name).

The race was run in three heats: two wins got the trophy and the $5,000 purse.

Garlits easily won the first heat but Prudhomme came back with a magnificent effort in the second heat.

On the scene was a reporter from Drag Racing Magazine. “Now the drama was really tense,� he wrote. “We had just watched two-thirds of the best match race we had ever seen.�

Now came the final deciding heat. A quarter-mile, 7-second rush of acceleration.

The magazine reporter wrapped it up:

“The two cars were perfectly matched….The two giants of drag racing pushed down the lanes for the final chapter of one of the truly great moments in the sport.�

And with the starting flags, Don Garlits was gone. He grabbed the lead, over a full car length—it was impossible for Prudhomme to catch him.

Don Garlits had defied the race experts who said he couldn’t win.

“It was the most important, most satisfying victory of my career,� Garlits told me. After he won the race he said, “I drove 50 miles before I remembered that I forgot to get my $5,000 prize money. Jim McLennan was waiting for me at Half Moon Bay when I returned. He grinned and said, ‘We wondered when you’d be back’.�

Jim McLennan, a former Woodside resident, lived in San Francisco when I interviewed him in 1998. The Half Moon Bay Bakery’s Mark Andermahr proclaimed that “Don Garlits is the most famous drag racer in the world.â€? Don Garlits operates the very successful Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, Florida.

Three years after the famous race between Don Garlits and Don Prudhomme, the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip closed its gates forever.

(Photo: The Half Moon Bay Airport where the drag races took place).

PART 3

(Photo: Don Prudhomme with Half Moon Bay Drag Strip “Theme Girl” Tammy Thomas)

For Coastside kids, now adults, the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip remains a fond memory. In the late 1990s I interviewed Mark Andermahr, owner of the Half Moon Bay Bakery on Main Street. A fervent fan of drag racing, Andermahr had turned the walls of the bakery into a museum of historic photos honoring the old drag strip and its heroes.

In the 1960s, Andermahr told me, he and his friends hitchhiked to the drag strip, perching themselves atop the roof of a barn at the south end of the drag strip.

“All we could see was the end of the race when the parachutes opened,� Mark said. They looked like little dots getting bigger.�

(The “parachutes� helped slow down the super-fast dragsters).

The races took place every other Sunday, the price of admission 90 cents. Jim McLennan “could hardly wait for race day� when he got behind the wheel of his 1936 Ford pick-up truck and headed from San Francisco for the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip where he opened the gates and awaited the crowds.

McLennan remembered a press conference he scheduled at Half Moon Bay, inviting radio and television stations to cover a mock race matching his homemade “slingshot dragster� that could go up to 150 mph against Art Arfon’s “Green Monster�.

Arfon’s dragster with a painted monster baring its teeth on the front end was funny to look at but it was awesome, loaded with a gas-eating jet engine that reached speeds of 170 mph.

“The media didn’t come to the press conference,� McLennan said. “They didn’t know where the drag strip was!�

Back at the Champion Speed Shop in Colma a KPIX-TV cameraman and reporter arrived, apologizing for their failure to get to Half Moon Bay.

“Can you show us the mock race now?� the reporter asked.

Game for anything, McLennan called Colma’s police chief, who said, “Sure, go ahead. You can run the thing, just put a couple of guys on the street to stop the traffic on the El Camino.�

“We did it,� McLennan said. “Art came down the street in the ‘Green Monster’.�

He gave it the gas, and the noise was incredible. Two parachutes stopped the “Monster� at the El Camino but the noise was so loud “the phones were ringing off the hook at Colma’s City Hall.

McLennan also made valuable contributions to the safety of the sport. Through conversations with a San Francisco Airport fire official, he helped develop a “pro-helmet, fashioned out of fiberglass material, protecting the driver from burns. Northern California dragsters were the first to wear the new “fire suit,� McLennan said.

Using brakes to slow a dragster going 150-plus mph did not do very well so McLennan experimented with parachutes.

Crouching in the truck bed of a pick-up, McLennan tossed out a 20-foot chute tied to a chain but he says, “It wrecked the tail gate and everything else.�

Eventually he used a triangle parachute attached to a nylon “roll cage� which resembled a back pack. McLennan was among the first to use parachutes to slow down a dragster.

NEXT: THE BIG MATCH RACE BETWEEN DON GARLITS & DON PRUDHOMME

photos courtesy Mark Andermahr

Part 2

(Photo: Don “Big Daddy” Garlits standing behind his dragster with Jim McLennan, wearing striped shirt in the background)

For the uninitiated, drag racing is a lightning speed contest between hot rods racing side-by-side.

In the 1960s, to reach maximum speeds of more than 200-mph in less than 7 seconds, dragsters fine-tuned their engines, modified body shapes and experimented with exotic, flammable fuels.

In the drag racing world, “Seven seconds is an eternity,� Jim McLennan told me eight years ago when he was in his mid-60s. McLennan was also the veteran of 2,000 races and the former owner of the legendary Champion Speed Shop in Colma (south of San Francisco).

“Back in the early 1950s when I was known as a hot rod kid,� McLennan said, “ I cruised in a ’51 Chevy loaded with a powerful Oldsmobile engine. I was at Mel’s Drive-In when a young man called ‘the Greek’ pulled alongside me in his ’41 Buick with a Cadillac engine.�

“Wanna drag?� challenged ‘the Greek’.

The hot-rodders negotiated the site of their “outlaw drag� before settling on the straight-away of the “Upper Great Highway� near San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.

San Francisco’s avenues were used because “there was no place to drag�, McLennan told me. “The street machines were going faster and faster and it was getting out of hand.�

Sometimes the “outlaw drags� took place as early as 5:30 a.m. to avoid getting “tagged� or arrested by police.

Jim McLennan was 25 when he changed careers. He opened the Champion Speed Shop on Mission Road near the Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma.

Inside the concrete “tilt-upâ€? building where the smell of oil permeated the air, McLennan did tune-ups—but what he relished was building hot rods from scratch—and he was so good at it that the phone rang constantly until closing time, 9 p.m. On the other end of the line were young hot-rodders asking questions about engines, ordering special parts, inquiring about the date of the next drag race.

McLennan’s Speed Shop became the nerve center for drag strip devotees.

It was one thing to build fast engines, it was another to actually own a drag strip and that’s what Jim McLennan wanted.

He wanted to own a legal and safe place where amateurs and pros could compete. Imagine his excitement when he learned that the 3000-foot long, 60-foot wide asphalt covered auxiliary air strip at the isolated Half Moon Bay Airport was for rent.

McLennan snapped up the opportunity but he realized that attracting spectators might not be easy. He would have to overcome the fact that few people knew how to find the remote, sparsely populated Half Moon Bay.

…To Be Continued…

. Photo courtesy Mark Andermahr, HMB Bakery (When you go to buy bread or pastries, enjoy the many dragster photos on the walls of the HMB Bakery on Main Street)

Part I

The Coastside sky was an endless milky white as 29-year-old Don “Big Daddy� Garlits towed his “Swamp Rat�, the strange looking, low-slung drag strip racing machine, into the isolated Half Moon Bay Airport.

Bold block lettering on the multi-windowed tower announced that Big Daddy had arrived at the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip: Where World Records Are Broken.

It was 1966 and 1500 drag strip fans, young and old, gathered to witness the highly publicized battle of the year–a quarter-mile, 7-second rush of acceleration– between arch rivals Don Garlits and Don Prudhomme.

Garlits, a Floridian, was always a star attraction, a “hired gun� that brought in the crowds, wherever he raced. But this time Garlits had had a bad year, losing important races on the East Coast—but eveb worse he heard from a reliable source that the big trophy had been etched in advance with Don Prudhomme’s name.

As the day of the big match approached, excitement soared among the dedicated group of drag strip fans.

Who would win the giant trophy and the $5000 purse?

Did the trophy really already bear Don Prudhomme, the Southern Californian’s name?

Which man– and which machine–would emerge as #1?

…To be continued…

Long before I visited New York City a few months ago I admired the great Broadway actress Elaine Stritch. Most recently she did a one-woman show for HBO and she’s over 80 years-old. She was wearing an oversized white shirt and stockings and heels. The only prop was a bar stool type chair, and in her smoky voice she told stories of dating young, gorgeous Marlon Brando, of wild nights drinking, (she doesn’t drink anymore) and dashing from one fabulous Broadway show to another, both of which she was starring in at the same time.

Elaine Stritch’s voice is so much her own that I knew I’d recognize it anywhere.

I loved her as Joanne in Stephen Sondheim’s musical comedy, “Company” (1970) and “her” song, “Ladies Who Lunch”–

Especially these lines:
….

“And here’s to the girls who just watch–
Aren’t they the best?
When they get depressed,
It’s a bottle of Scotch,
Plus a little jest.
Another chance to disapprove,
Another brilliant zinger,
Another reason not to move,
Another vodka stinger.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!
I’ll drink to that.

….”

Miss Stritch appeared in San Francisco a few years ago and how I regret not seeing the show. I heard it was marvelous. But something much better was in store for me!

While in New York, I stayed with Burt at the sexy Carlyle, famous for John F. Kennedy’s rendezvous with beautiful women. I knew that Elaine Stritch performed in the hotel’s club (and that she lived at the famous hotel, too).

One afternoon I was walking into the hotel when walking in front of me I heard a voice I recognized.

“Elaine Stritch!” I said loudly and boldly. If I have to say so myself I sounded like an old friend of the actress.

Wearing a scarf and a coat on a mild spring day she turned to see who it was.

What to do, what to do, I thought. I didn’t feel so bold anymore.

“Can I hug you?” I said.

“Yes,” she answered and I hugged her.

A younger woman, a daughter? a business manager? was with Miss Stritch, watching the scene unfold with an approving smile.

“What’s your name?” the actress asked me.

“June”.

At that point we parted but moments later ended up getting into the same elevator. We didn’t talk but when she got off and walked away, her back to me, she had a final scene to play. In a loud, clear Broadway voice she said to me:

“GOODbye June.” (said in “that” voice).

Like the great entertainer she is, Elaine Stritch made the most out of those two words (that I will remember forever).

Commuters heading home to Half Moon Bay on Monday afternoon, the 10th of July, were stopped in their tracks near Half Moon Bay Nursery. Burt and I were two of those commuters, some 300 yards away from what–at a distance– looked like debris on the road. I wasn’t able to see what was in the road nor were any of the other drivers in front of me.

All of us were baffled. If it was an accident, where were the cars?

As we waited emergency vehicles arrived, including two ambulances. We waited, straining to see.

All we could see was something lying on the road. Something dark. Radio news didn’t know yet. I called 511* for traffic info but the man on the recording said there was a “delay between Skyline and Skyline” on Highway 92, but cars were moving at 35-40 mph. No way! And, where’s Skyline & Skyline?

I decided to find out the old-fashioned way: I called Half Moon Bay Nursery, and asked Brad, who answered, if he knew what had happened.

“Two motorcycles were struck by a vehicle,” he told me.

“Thank you, Brad.”

(Meanwhile two ambulances left the scene, heading east.)

I called KCBS and the story was aired seconds later. “Avoid 92,” the traffic reporter said “92 is a parking lot…”

We were near the front of the line and passed the endless line of cars, standing still, stretching from the scene of the horrible accident west to Highway 1–It’ll take at least a couple of hours to clear this up, I thought.

I didn’t want to imagine how far the line stretched, all those cars at a standstill, in the opposite direciton–and, there are very very few places to turn around on Highway 92.

The Blue Lady has been moving chairs and tables late at night in Moss Beach for decades earning her the reputation as the Coastside’s top ghost.

But there is another ghost, the one we don’t hear anything about, the one who also, in the end, raises many perplexing questions.

I’m talking about the ghost at Miramar.

No sightings of this lesser known ghost had ever been reported until Albert and wife Eva Schmidt moved their restaurant business from Burlingame to Miramar.

It was after WWII, and the building they bought was the old Palace Miramar Hotel. During the war, U.S. soldiers used the Palace Miramar as a headquarters and they were pretty lax on maintenance. Albert had a lot of clean-up and restoration on his hands.

First, he renamed the place “Albert’s�. Then, he found the ornate bar, gleaming chandeliers and other heavy dark furniture at the Spreckels estate sale.

Not only was the hotel worn out, but the historic wooden pier that once jutted 200 feet into the sea, had been left to rot. When Albert arrived, the pier had been reduced to stumps. While sipping at the bar, the Miramar locals guessed when the pilings would vanish forever.

I don’t know what Albert was like in Burlingame, but he was a quirky figure in Miramar, an eclectic cook who whipped up chateaubriand for breakfast and ham and eggs at midnight. Albert and Eva Schmidt also built up a loyal following ranging from the locals to important politicos who loved their crab cioppino.

It was about this time that the “Second Level Apparition� that haunted Albert’s made its presence known. With an eerie shiver, the help reported sightings.

The chandeliers swung and tinkled as if agitated by a strong wind– but the windows were closed. Far more unsettling was the hooded, caped transparent face that peered through windows, there one second, gone the next.

And finally, what was going on in rooms six and seven?

When the pair of connecting rooms was unoccupied, lights could be seen beneath the doors. And when the doors were opened to see what the source of the light was, candles were found burning brightly.

Who lit the candles in rooms six and seven? Nobody knew.

Who lit the candles? Who swung the chandeliers? What was the hooded, caped thing at the windows?

Who was this “Second Level Apparition�? Man or woman? What is its story and why was it haunting Albert’s?

The only explanations seemed otherworldly. Remember, it is said that a ghost is a tortured soul searching for peace.

There are many theories: Was it one of the soldiers, a guest at the hotel, a fisherman on the pier, a passenger on the train, or someone who suffered an agonizing death during prohibition?

Most perplexing of al, what happened to the “Second Level Apparition� ghost when Albert’s burned in the 1960s?

Did the ghost find peace when the Albert’s hotel was destroyed by fire or did it move elsewhere?

Attention folks in Miramar: If you have any unexplained, strange activities in your home or business, please let me know.

Top photo: Albert’s, courtesy Joe Clement