Half Moon Bay Memories & El Granada Observer

(Photo: From Pescadero: the most sumptuous–luxurious– lilies).

( “Gofor-iters” on a Moss Beach Rock, photo by R.Guy Smith, circa 1910).

[Photo: View out of my window on Dec. 26 2006....I prefer the more natural-looking roundness of the new "radar station" to the flatter, pan-cakey version I used to see out of my window  (see photo below) I could do without the electric wires.)

In the fall of 1981 I interviewed El Granada resident, Frank Millione, then a 41-year-old professional bowler, who, when, not working at Pillar Point Radar Station, traveled the country to participate in championship bowling contests.

[At right: Oct. 1981 photo by Maria Demarest.]

Rumors of flying saucers launced from Pillar Point–that peninsula of land that juts out into the Pacific Ocean at the northern end of Half Moon Bay–circulate from time to time. The 80-foot radar dish, which sticks out like a sore thumb high atop Pillar Point, helps to stimulate fertile imaginations.

But 41-year-old Frank Millione, who has worked as a “special tech” at Pillar Point Air Force Tracking Station for 17 years, denies the flying saucer rumors.

Pillar Point Tracking Station–a division of ITT, tracks the flight accuracy of missiles launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County. Millione told me that “There has never been anything around here that can honestly be called unexplained phenomena.” He explained the UFO sightings as being mistakes for missiles launched from Vandenberg in the evening or early morning when they can be seen near Half Moon Bay.

“It looks like a big white object streaking through the sky,” Millione said. “But people don’t recognize it, so they say, ‘I saw a flying saucer’.”

Vandenberg on the West Coast (California) is the equivalent of Cape Kennedy on the East Coast (Florida). “At Vandenberg,” Millione said,” when they look up at a missile, they’re looking at the back end. Due to heat produce at take-off time, they can’t see through it, so somebody must look at it from the side which is what we do here.”

Missiles launched from Vandenberg either go south or west. “The missiles that go south,” Millione told me, “are put into orbit and used for navigation and communication. The ones that go west are testing for inter-continental ballistic missiles, like the Minutemen–they’re targeted at cities.”

Besides two telemetries and two radars, there is a fifth system at Pillar Point. Frank Millione is in charge of the fifth system called command control. “Once a missile is launched,” he said, “it’s an object that’s not controlled, like a bullet in flight. While missiles are not externally controlled, they are internally controlled by a guidance mechanism that enables signals to be sent from Pillar Point to the missile and back.

“If something goes wrong with a missile, endangering the safety of lives, somebody must get rid of it. That’s oen of the things I do. Blow missiles up.”

Frank Millione said he last blew up a missile about a year ago (1980).

Although several sites on the West Coast have the ability to blow up missiles, only Pillar Point ia allowed to do it. Two other stations act as back-up sites.

A new system recently installed (1981) at Pillar Point enables the station to move satellites. I “We can fire their engines up,” Millione told me, ” and move them from one position to another.”

[Note: Please read Parts I & II below]

Upon returning to Half Moon Bay, Roma T. Jackson, the Coast Advocate reporter, punched out an unfriendly story, once again pointing out the poor condition of the cemetery fence at Pescadero–going so far as to predict that the Pescaderans would never replace it. He also tossed in a cruel barb, aimed at the young ladies who planned to raise money for a new fence by sponsoring a dance.

The article incensed the Pescaderans who said Jackson’s article had not reported all the facts.

To present their side, “A and B”–the pseudonym for two Pescadero writers, penned a letter to the San Mateo County newspaper, the Times-Gazette.

Referring to Roma Jackson, “A and B” wrote, [Jackson] “knew that money was being raised for the purpose of building a new cemetery fence. He also knew that the ladies have been working day and night for the [cemetery] fence, and it is an insult to them and to the town…to infer that they care nothing for their dead.”

Later it was revealed that the dance had been canceled when money for the fence suddenly materialized– gifts from generous villagers.

“The new fence was raised,” reported the Coastside Advocate, “…an artistic and stately fence gladdens the eye of the passer.”

But that wasn’t enough…as the Half Moon Bay newspaper editor (as official spokesman for the special group that had visited Pescadero) continued to complain about this and that–now it was the less than friendly reception endured while staying in the tiny Coastside village.

Once again there was a retort from the writers “A and B”. “As for hospitality,” they said, “we must confess that we were very lax in that regard, because we did not know we were expected to show any more courtesies to Half Moon Bay than Half Moon Bay has to us upon former occasions.”

That statement by “A and B” speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Clearly the trip to Pescadero was a public relations disaster for everybody. While the Half Moon Bay crowd clung to their civic superiority, the crusty Pescaderans (”A & B”) closed the door on the affair with a final statement in the Times-Gazette: “…we wish to say that Pescadero, the gem of the coastside of San Mateo County, invites the people of other places to come and visit us. The hotels are kept by hospitable persons and the townspeople stand ready with open arms to welcome the strangers, but ask that when you leave you tell the truth concerning us, and not cast slurs upon the characters of our young ladies, or upon the town in general.”

“The Good Shepherd” was a longer movie than I anticipated but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. There was so much to see, hear and think about as the characters accompanied me through the very well written, adult script.

Movies tell their story using visual images and there aren’t many words spoken (as opposed to a novel). In either format it’s difficult to bring full dimension to a writer’s characters, to make them human rather than cardboard representations –but the characters in “The Good Shepherd” felt like real people that I got to know in more than two hours. I could feel what their daily lives were like–and in the case of Mr. Wilson, played by Matt Damon, how he came to make his difficult choices–be it love with a woman and/or love for his country.

If you’ve read anything about “The Good Shepherd”, you know that it’s about the birth of the CIA–but it’s much, much more than that.

By the time the credits rolled (and the cast is impressive; wait ’til you see) I had felt a lot of fear, learned that even though I was born the same year the CIA came into being, under certain political circumstances I might just be considered a visitor in the USA– and, most of all, the movie’s message to me was that I (just an ordinary person) should never ever trust anyone. Not anyone.

“The Good Shepherd”–a movie not to be missed.

There’s yarrow, fresh garlic, lavender, red peppers, bay leaves….

Cypress Flower Farm, Moss Beach

Ferry Bldg, San Francisco

Photo by Leon Kunke

But by 1898, what had been dubbed “the Pebble Beach War” was over and the beach was open to everyone–and now that the air had cleared, Half Moon Bay sent some of its concerned citizens on a special mission to see how the Pescaderans had weathered the nasty affair. What they found, they said, was a tense former “war” zone.

The special interest group from Half Moon Bay included Roma Jackson, the Coast Advocate newspaper’s reporter/editor/publisher. Roma never missed an opportunity to exploit a juicy quarrel brewing between the two rivalrous Coastside towns.

Anyone could have predicted that the visit would turn into a nightmare. As usual, the contingent from Half Moon Bay criticized, tsk, tsk, tsk-ed and ridiculed their sister villagers. They could never do anything right.

Finally they zeroed in on a deteriorating cemetery fence north of the village–a fence that the Pescaderans later acknowledged as “the disgrace of our cemetery”. But for now they remained tight-lipped–except to leak the news that funds for a brand new fence were to be raised at an upcoming dance organized by the young ladies in town.

Privately, the Pescaderans thought the condition of the fence was none of Half Moon Bay’s business. They prided themselves on being independent thinkers who resented Half Moon Bay flexing its muscles so far from home.

“If our town does not suit the people of other towns,” sniffed the proud Pescaderans, “our advice to them is to stay away.”

…To Be Continued…

In February, 1898, the villagers of Pescadero had had enough of the stream of unrelenting criticism dished out by a visiting contingent from Half Moon Bay. What was the problem? It was about everything in general, but specifically, the poisonous word darts were aimed at the fence surrounding the local cemetery where some of the gravestones were artfully decorated with stones gathered from nearby famous Pebble Beach.

As soon as the offending party from Half Moon Bay left on the stagecoach, the Pescaderans met and decided to forgo sending a formal thank you along with freshly made olallieberry pies–and instead offered a caustic serving of what was on their minds.

The timing of the visit was unfortunate. The tug-of-war over who owned tiny, precious Pebble Beach had made its way through the courts, subjecting the Pescaderans to ruthless scrutiny in the press. That fiasco had been instigated by the village’s best known resident-villain, the litigious millionaire landowner Loren Coburn.

He said he owned Pebble Beach, treasured as one of the village’s family jewels–an 1898 one-of-a-kind beach attraction that brought horse and buggy tourists and prosperity to quaint Pescadero. Coburn planned to charge an admittance fee and that did not sit well with the locals who were used to roaming about everywhere freely.

To demonstrate his power, Loren Coburn closed the beach sending Pescadero’s fragile economy into a tailspin. Depending on which newspaper you read, the press either wagged a disapproving finger at the Pescaderans or at Coburn, sometimes both, but the upshot of the testy affair was that tourists stopped visiting and spending money in Pescadero.

…To be continued…

The Mountain House Restaurant

Geographical Definition: For those of you who don’t know, Coastsiders live in the flatlands. They are called “flatlanders” by the folks who live up on the hill–up on the mountain, near Kings Mountain, up on the two-lane tree-covered Skyline Road, most of which now sits in the affluent Woodside community.

About 1956, John Wickett, a very kind, eccentric fellow, bought some 4500 acres off Skyline as an investment. The property embraced the top of Kings Mountain with spectacular views of the bay and the Pacific–as well as ancient redwood trees and cool meadows. A historic sawmill once stood there and crudely built huts and shacks dotted the dazzingly green landscape.

Mr. Wickett got more than an investment. The land would forever change his way of life.

In 1979 I interviewed John Wickett at his San Francisco Pacific Height’s home. Pacific Heights, with its breathtaking views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, is home to some of the rich and famous. Author Danielle Steele has a fabulous home in the area–consulates from all over the world have their headquarters here. Really, it’s unlike any other city.

But John Wickett’s three-story home and his interior decorating, I’m sure, ran counter to prevailing tastes. It was stuffed with bizzare things, many of which he had obtained at auctions. Near the front door was a mechanical creature I immediately recognized. It was the brightly painted, gaudy “Laughing Lil”–so named because she laughed hysterically, bending at the waist with outstretched arms, in a spastic manner. When I was growing up in San Francisco’s Sunset District, she had been a famous resident of Playland at the Beach”. “Laughing Lil” was part of the life of every kid who visited the popular amusement park, now replaced by beach condos and apartment buildings.

The floors of Wickett’s home were densely covered with outlandish objects, wooden, ceramic, metallic, short, tall, some unidentiable. I could have sworn that one of the larger “objects” in a corner of a bathroom was a gynecologist’s table. Upon closer inspection I saw that it was….

Every inch of painted wall space was covered with embroidered fabric or colorful cloth from all over the world.

He had created a home that was the antithesis of what most people called a home. I think that was his purpose, to shock, to shake-up, to show that there was no one right way to live a life. John Wickett’s was clearly a different life–and he never wavered in it.

You could walk (or run, or lope) up the stairs of the multi-leveled home–or ride in the soft, velvet-lined elevator. I chose the elevator. My destination was John Wickett’s office, down a narrow corridor, past many closed doors.

He sat there waiting for me–there was a vitality and energy surrounding this kind, warm and very eccentric man.

Photo: San Mateo County History Museum. Visit the museum located in the historic Redwood City Courthouse.

…To Be Continued…