Lizzie Wienke followed in the footsteps of her dad, the “mayor” of Moss Beach
In the 1890s the guests came from all over to enjoy the Moss Beach Hotel, and they were enchanted by Elizabeth Wienke, the resort owner’s precocious daughter. Later, Elizabeth used her positive impact on people in the bare-knuckle world of San Mateo County politics.
Called “Lizzie,” she was born in 1883, the only child of Meta and Jurgen F. Wienke, proprietors of the Moss Beach Hotel on the San Mateo County Coastside. The resort’s extraordinary location near the crashing surf allowed the child to wander on the nearby unique beach, playing among the exposed reefs at low tide. Looking back at the sea cliffs through the mist, she could barely make out the roofline of her family’s hotel, which resembled a large home.
On her way to and from school, Lizzie walked along the cypress tree lined avenue, planted by her father, and called Wienke Way in his honor.
As a young man, Jurgen Wienke worked as a gardener, landscaping estates in Germany, the place of his birth. On the Coastside, hotel owner Jurgen Wienke was so highly regarded that he was called the “mayor” of Moss Beach.
In the 1880s, the Wienke’s hotel was so remote passengers arrived by stagecoach. The coming of the Ocean Shore Railroad changed that, bringing guests from San Francisco and beyond. A tidy stone and wood train station, just steps away from a small commercial sign, directed passengers to the cypress tree-lined lane leading to the Wienke’s popular resort.
Some guests came tor relax in the refreshing climate, renting a rowboat at the Reefs, a seafood cafe situated on the sandy dunes. Others, like Stanford President David Starr Jordan, whose interest was marine biology, studied the varied and abundant sea life.
Whether lured by the crashing surf or the isolated beaches, coves and caves, all agreed you dare not miss the abalone, eel and fried chicken dinners prepared by Meta Wienke, assisted by her capable daughter Lizzie.
To You~
Who’s love has come our way at this difficult time. It’s the greatest form of support you can offer, because it’s real.
Well at this point there are many stories and rumors about what has happened here in the Tassajara Area/ Big Sur mountain range, to the best of our knowledge at least 190,000 acres have burned and it’s still moving. Just 2 days ago it broke over a hold line and headed in our direction. It’s now less than 1 mile away. Big Sur is about 8 miles away as the crow flies and is all burned out between us. It is actually the result of 2 fires, the Indians fire (70,000 acres) and the Basin Complex fire (so far 120,000+) acres, they fortunately joined and consumed all the fuel in that area so extinguished the interior but the perimeters are still very active.
We are eternally grateful to the many brave fire fighters here from everywhere (SAMOA even) they are truly a unique breed. Today two huge Base Camps have been combined and are stationed about 3 miles away, about 2000 troops and loads of equipment including 17 Helicopters. They have established a Fire Break line that runs between our home and the fire, we have been told that if it’s possible to contain it they are the best there exist in that effort, if not, then the entire Carmel Valley is being threatened.
There are huge areas under orders to evacuate, and about 75% have refused and are staying on their property, What’s the point here ? A lady we know was halted at the blockade by the CHP; she explained her daughter was home alone and had to be evacuated, she was told she was not allowed back. She said “NOT ALLOWED, MY ASS!” and drove thru the blockade. CHP ended up chasing her up the mountain, but this ALLOWED everyone else to power thru and scatter like a bunch of ground squirrels and are still hiding out. All the authorities are just doing their job the best they can and are to be appreciated.
Suzanne has been awesome in her efforts to help in the evacuation of our important things, deal with Jocelyn and I, and still run her business in the midst of all the confusion. I pray her patience will hold out, for all of us concerned.
It’s a day by day situation, and not a pleasure to pass on dire information, but hopefully the next e- will surely bring good news on a bad situation. So please know that your prayers are reaching and supporting us and with that we will be OK when it’s all over. God Bless You all for being THERE.
Til Then,
Sincerely,
Sam/Dad,
Suzanne
and Jocelyn Varela
*Sam Varela was a former owner of the Moss Beach Distillery.
RT: I used to have that, maybe still have it somewhere. The polyhedron depicted on lower right is the Archimedean Truncated Icosidodecahedron, and is a zonohedron, a convex polyhedron bounded entirely by zonogons. Lower left is a “polar projection” of a polar zonohedron, the zonohedra I studied for so many years.
Now, so far as zonogons, and zonohedra, generalize to space of n dimensions and you have zonotopes. Always convex, always centrally symmetrical. Hypercubes, or n-cubes, including the square and the cube
for n=2 and n=3, are all zonotopes. The 4-cube or tesseract is bounded by eight 3-cubes; there is a relentless parallelism: each 3-cube has an equal and opposite 3-cube, each square face an equal and opposite square face, and the same with edges and vertices. This tesseract projects most symmetrically into three dimensions as Kepler’s Rhombic Dodecahedron. It so happens that this Dodecahedron can be dissected into four equal rhombic hexahedra in two ways; these are projections of the bounding 3-cubes of the tesseract.
It is all dimensional analogy which allows one to grasp these things. The master of such analogy was one Alicia Boole Stott of England, over a century ago. She was a younger daughter of the algebraist George
Boole of Boolean Algebra, which is the foundation of computer processors. But her father died when she was four, so her gift with the geometry of higher Euclidean spaces was not due to her father’s tutelage. Professor Coxeter provides an interesting little biography of her in his “Regular Polytopes.”
Well. Hypercubes fill their n-spaces, they close-pack. One might guess that their shadows, cast into 3-space, also close-pack. This is not usually true. For instance, the Archimedean Truncated Icosidodecahedron is an orthogonal shadow of a 15-cube, and does not close-pack to fill the 3-space. But one can contrive tilings in which mixtures of this zonohedron with other zonohedra *do* close-pack to
fill a 3-space. An example is attached. In this case the multitudes of zonohedra, colored according to their differing volumes, close-pack to build up a larger Truncated Icosidodecahedron. I try to illustrate such tilings on my YouTube channel.
HalfMoonBayMemories (HMBM) To my eye, this image is beautiful. What is it to you?
Russell Towle (RT) oh it’s beauty all the way, but in this case, it is one frame from an animation, in which a virtual camera is pointing into a virtual kaleidoscope of three mirrors … as though one took a 30-60-90-degree right triangle, and erected a vertical mirror on each side of the triangle. Then reflections make it seem like an infinite plane with some sort of tiling …
Russell Towle is a mathematician, amateur geologist, and local history writer who currently working on an article about zonotopal tilings.
“Zome is a word coined by Steve Baer as I recall, based upon “dome,” the difference being that the geodesic dome of [Buckminster] Fuller was formed upon a network of triangles, wheres zomes are bounded by zonogons, a zonogon being a convex, centrally-symmetrical polygon. A rhomb is a zonogon, so are all regular polygons with an even number of sides, but a zonogon need not be regular.”
1944; it was almost the end of WWII, and, John Reber, “the man who wanted to remodel San Francisco Bay,” revealed his plans for a 5-hour Military Highway and SuperFreeway Connecting San Francisco with Los Angeles.
There are two crescents; (1) 125-mile San Francisco and Los Angeles Areas in which live 90% of California’s 800,000 people; (2) 50-mile Los Angeles and San Francisco Metro Areas in which live two-thirds of California’s 800,000 people.
Email Larry Kaplan ([email protected]
from Further Conversations with Larry Kaplan
This is Larry:
This is June:
Larry, an avid yachtsman, says: The following photo of Wanda was taken when she was new.
June: An historic photograph. When was she built?
Larry: she is 90′ long and she was built in 1922. My clients are in Canada and I get to play with WANDA at will. I do. WANDA is my haven, I say, HAVEN away from home. There is a funny sign on WANDA’S stern about lemonade.
June: And she’s parked where?
Larry: WANDA is parked on the Petaluma River VERY near downtown Petaluma and the Riverfront re-construction effort that is re-vitalizing the entire downtown of Petalooooma.
Here’s a couple of other views of beautiful Wanda.
To read more about Larry Kaplan and Wanda, click here
(In this photo you can see the sign for “Dan’s Place which was located on the hill [look for the big windows] overlooking Moss Beach.
Remembering Dan’s Place
Story by Elaine M. Teixeira, with Lena Parks***
The Bortolotti family moved to Moss Beach from Orland, California (approx. 1924) where they owned a turkey farm. Because Dan suffered from asthma, they left to live on the coastside.
Dan and Kina the family first lived in a house, up on the hill, across from the Moss Beach Grocery Store.
Later, they moved into the service station, along side of the grocery store. From there, (in approx. 1930-31) they moved into the structure which became known as Dan’s Place. Previously, in the building, there was a church and a dance hall.
Dan and Kina opened a restaurant and bar, with Kina doing most of the cooking. Dan tended bar and his brother John helped out. Dan’s sister also came from Italy with her son Domenic, but she soon returned to Italy; her son later opened up the hotel and restaurant in Half Moon Bay known as Domenic’s, and which now is known as the San Benito House.
In time, Lena Park’s older sister, Laura, was helping with the cooking, Lena (Parks) waited on tables, and their brother, Barney, helped tend bar.
There were approx. 11 rooms upstairs, which members of the family occupied, though Dan and Kina, also lived in a home, on the room north of the restaurant facing the post office. Later, Mrs. Tyler, a school teacher at the Moss Beach grammar school, lived in the house, and then, Barney and his family. On the other side of the building, below Dan’s, is another house which at that time, faced the grammar school, and was owned by Dan and rented out.
They also opened a grocery store in the corner of the building, near the grammar school, which later, during WWII, became a hamburger shop, run by Lena and husband Kenny Parks, a service man stationed in the area.
On the north side of the building stood an auto repair shop with gas pumps, operated by Tony Claudino, and then Tony Bettencourt. There was also a barber shop on the side. Dan’s Place was enlarged and blue windows were installed to cut down on the sun’s glare.
At some point, Dan had a motel built on the cliff, near the ocean, by the Catholic Church; the motel could be seen from the coast road. It was a popular spot for some of the customers at the restaurant; fishermen wanting to stay overnight, and travelers passing through. Both Laura and Lena had to make up beds and clean the rooms after school. Uncle John would tend to the motel business, and later, a sign was posted to tell customers to sign in at the restaurant.
(Dan’s Motel overlooked the Pacific in Moss Beach; it was an example of the classic 1940s-50s drive- in motel)
In 1947, the parents were in a very bad auto accident, and Dan died a day later in the hospital; Kina was severely injured and never fully recovered. The two older children, Laura and Barney married and their spouses (Laura married Frank Bertolacci ,and Barney married Frank’s sister, Josephine) worked in the business. Frank Bertolacci tended bar, and his sister, Josephine (Tye,) worked as a waitress and cooked in the kitchen.
Laura tended bar sometimes. She was one of the few women who could tend bar. In those days, no woman could tend bar unless her name appeared on the official licenses and if she had an interest in the business.
At some point they hired a cook; eventually, Barney and Josephine were the only ones left running the business. When they retired, their three daughters, Donna Lou, Janette and Debbie ran the restaurant. Their Mom, Josephine, continued to help in the kitchen and Donna’s spouse tended bar until the building was sold. Barney’s son, Danny,opened an auto shop built down near Hwy One, which he ran. Later it was sold and is currently where the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Dept. houses their vehicles.
————–
***Lena Parks is the youngest child of Dan & Kina Bortolotti who owned Dan’s Place in Moss Beach. She was 2 yrs old when they moved to Moss Beach and she atttended the grade school in Moss Beach and graduated from the high school in Half Moon Bay. She married Kenny Parks, a service man, on the coastside during WWII and they raised three daughters. They lived with their family in Redwood City, she is now widowed and lives in the San Jose area.
***Elaine Martini Teixeira says: I worked when Tony and I first married, for about five years or more, until I started a family, lost first child, so returned to work, then was off for about 15 yrs raising the two children. In the early part of marriage, I worked in HMB for a couple of different government, farm organizations, PMA, Soil Conservation and Farm Advisors. I also worked for the County of San Mateo in Recorder’s office and School Dept. When I returned to work after raising family, worked for a laundry rental company and then the County of SM for 22 yrs.
(Photo: Elaine M Teixeira, wearing white, with sister Loretta).
