BODIE, BUTTS AND…BENTON

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

imageWell, judging from the response we got to Bob’s post last week, I’d say his butt is so popular it should have its own Twitter feed.  He continues to do quite well in his recovery but his now-famous derrière is still stuck at home.  So this week you’ll be traveling with me again to the Eastern Sierras.  Last time I wrote about the ghost town of Bodie, which is a state park that has been preserved in a state of “arrested decay”.  Hmmm, sounds like some people I know.  In any event, this week our travels take us to the towns of Benton and Benton Hot Springs.  If you’ve never heard of them, you’re in good company.

No gas or food here

No gas or food here

Benton and Benton Hot Springs are on California Highway 6, 32 miles north of Bishop and 46 miles east of Mammoth Lakes.  The towns are three miles apart and are literally in the middle of nowhere.  More on that in a moment.  The “Bentons” were established in 1852 by the Paiute Indian tribe who sought out the warm springs that surround the area.  During the gold rush Benton became a stop-over spot for fortune seekers traveling to and from the western Sierras.  With the discovery of gold in Bodie, Benton became a supply center for the mines and the population swelled to 5,000 people.  The heyday of the towns was from 1862 to 1889 and then, much like Bodie, the gold-seekers moved on to other states and the towns that supported the mines fell on hard times.

Today, Benton Hot Springs is noted for a rustic bed and breakfast, aptly named The Inn at Benton Hot Springs.  Remember when my brother wrote about the Inn at Spanish Bay?  This is nothing like that.  However, it is a jumping off point for many of the hiking trails in the area and is busy all summer long.  Note that I said it is “rustic” – only one of the rooms has its own bathroom.  The inn gets varying reviews on Yelp from “fabulous” to “flea bitten .  Since sharing a bathroom with a stranger is my idea of Dante’s Inferno, I’m going to pass on the Inn.  But if you want to hike the area it is your best – albeit your only – bet.

It looks innocent enough but...

Hasn’t changed since the ’50’s

Benton is the real “town” of the two spots, although the current population has dwindled down to 165 hearty souls.  The town’s gathering place is the Benton Station Cafe, which coincidentally is also the gas station, bus stop and post office.  My husband and I have mixed memories of Benton Station.  About 25 years ago on our first trip through the area we decided to stop and use the facilities at the cafe.  It should be noted that Benton Station provides the only bathroom in a 30 mile radius so we assumed they had lots of visitors with urgent needs.  When we walked through the front door everything and everyone came to a standstill.  Every person in the place (and it was packed) stopped talking and turned to look at us as we walked through.  No one said a word to us but they followed our every move.  Images of “Deliverance” raced through our minds.  We scurried to the restrooms, bought a couple of Cokes as a donation, and got the hell out of there.  I have since learned that, like The Inn at Benton Springs, the Benton cafe has widely divergent reviews.  While their pies are rated universally tasty, the food is deemed to be either “best ever” or “sick as a dog for three days”.  It turns out there is a “good” cook and one whose vocational talents lie elsewhere.  The locals have memorized the cafe schedule so they know which days will provide a delicious meal.  After reading that I thought back to the day 25 years ago and surmised that we must have hit the cafe on a day when the “good” cook was working and the locals didn’t want us horning in on the food.

Our wingman

Our wing man

This year we decided to make the trip from Mammoth Lakes out to Benton once again.  Truly, the scenery on the road there is spectacular – a mix of mountains and rolling hills, pines trees and a view of the southern end of Momo Lake.  But knowing that the past can be prelude, we prepared ahead of time for this journey out to Benton.  We brought Dash the Wonder Dog along to act as interference.  After all, the locals might be wary of us, but who can resist the face of a cute dog?

 

Hip, Hip Away!

by Bob Sparrow

breath

I thought it was a Hookah Pipe

My research has turned up the fact that the very first successful hip replacement surgery was performed in 1960 and today, just in the United States, over 300,00 of them are done each year and there are over twice as many knee replacement surgeries. So a good number of my friends have had hip or knee replacements in the last few years and they have welcomed me into the ‘replacement club’; brother Jack has had both hips replaced. Others have asked me about my recent experience with my surgery because they see themselves as ‘replacement club’ candidates in the not-too-distant future. So I thought since the only place I’ll be visiting in the next month or two is my own house, on a walker, I don’t have a lot to write about other than my initiation into the ‘replacement club’.

At the pre-surgery meeting with my surgeon, Dr. Patel, I was told to have a restful weekend and be ready for surgery Monday morning. My snappy rejoinder was that I’d probably be sleeping through the whole process and suggested that he was the one who needed to have a restful weekend.  He wasn’t amused. Dr. Jay Patel received his Bachelor’s degree in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He then went on to earn both a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and his Medical Doctorate from Stanford University. So I was naturally concerned that my surgeon was a slacker.

drill

Black & Decker

I arrived at Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Irvine at 5:30 Monday morning; my pre-op routine included Dr. Patel scribbling his initials on my right hip with a Sharpie to insure they don’t replace the wrong one, which has happened, more than once!   Mine would be the first of 6 hip replacement surgeries that Dr. Patel would perform that day; each surgery taking about 60-90 minutes. I barely remember meeting the anesthesiologist and the next thing I knew I was waking up in post-op.  I did take the opportunity, or make the mistake, of watching a YouTube video on hip replacement. It looked like a construction site, with people wielding crowbars, ball pein hammers, jigsaws and power drills (Black & Decker I believe); I was surprised that everyone wasn’t wearing hard hats. The video is not for the squeamish.

After the surgery Dr. Patel came in to let me know that everything had gone very well and I asked him if I could see the piece of hip that he took out. He said that it had lots of bone spurs on it and he threw it in the ‘bone yard’. My request came from a suggestion from a friend and fellow golfer, Tom Metz, who has a great sense of humor and suggested I ask for a ‘doggie bag’ and bring the bone home for my dog to gnaw on. Yeah, he’s a little sick too.

butt

Margaritaville: “No, Mr. Sparrow you can’t go home that way!”

I must say that the staff at Hoag was unbelievable; not just professional, but I really got the sense that they enjoyed their work and did whatever it took to make my one-night stay there as comfortable as possible. They always had a smile on their face and enjoyed a good laugh. For example, I asked one of the attending nurses, Margarita Avalos (I called her ‘Margaritaville’ for ‘short’) when my catheter would be taken out. She looked at me with a very serious face and said, “Oh, it not so much when it will come out as how.” I asked what she meant, she said, “We take the end of the catheter and tie it to the door, then just slam the door.” Ouch!!!

Unlike the operation itself, I don’t get to sleep through the rehab, which is the not-so-fun part. Managing the pain is important along with doing the exercises prescribed by the physical therapist. The hardest part of rehab may be not drinking while on pain medication – and here I thought drinking was pain medication.

As part of my ‘exit interview’ they asked me when I get released was I going back to an abusive home. I didn’t think this was the time to bring up Linda’s and my heated discussion about who should take out the garbage. I will happily do it . . . now without a limp.

 

 

BODIE OR BUST!

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

The Bodie Car Show

The Bodie Car Show

A friend recently posted a picture of herself in the ghost town of Bodie, California, an abandoned mining town in the Eastern Sierras.  I thought we were the only people crazy enough to take the three mile, pot-holed, kidney-damaging road back to see Bodie so it was good to know we weren’t alone.  Assuming that most of our readers are not crazy (perhaps a rather large assumption) and therefore have not seen Bodie in person I thought I’d fill you in on this little piece of California history.

First of all, part of the reason Bodie is not well known is that it’s in a rather remote part of the country.  It’s just off Highway 395, about 75 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe and 12 miles south of Bridgeport, a town so remote itself that it’s claim to fame is it’s high gas prices.  (As a side note, my husband and I have been playing a game of “name the gas price” for 30 years whenever we approach Bridgeport and we always underestimate). The turnoff to Bodie is easy to miss – there is a small brown “State Park” marker but that’s it.  Bodie is 13 miles east of the turnoff, 10 miles paved and the last three the teeth-jarring surface mentioned above.  In fairness, there is a sign posted warning that the road is not paved the whole way, but given the condition of the road it should say “Turn Back Now if You Value Your Tires and Vertebrae”.

Downtown Bodie

Downtown Bodie

Once you arrive in Bodie you will be transported back in time.  The Bodie Foundation, which now runs Bodie for the State Park system, makes a point in informing visitors that Bodie has not been restored, rather, it’s been preserved in a state of arrested decay.  Walking down the main street in Bodie is the closest you might ever come to experiencing a real mining town.  A town with a storied past and a short lifespan.  In 1859, as the gold rush in the western Sierra slopes began to dry up, miners rushed to the high desert of the eastern slopes in hopes of making their fortunes. W.S. Bodey laid claim to the land around Bodie and then set out to Mono City to get supplies for the town.  Unfortunately, the winter of 1859 was particularly harsh and Mr. Bodey froze to death in a snow storm on his way back to camp.  Nevertheless, others carried on and named the town in his honor – although a sign painter spelled the name phonetically and that’s the spelling that endured.  Some gold was discovered but the town struggled through the 1860’s and early 70’s; by 1868 only two mining companies had been established and that year they both closed.  In 1876, the Standard Company decided to mine Bodie again and discovered a profitable deposit of gold.  Suddenly Bodie was transformed from a has-been mining camp to a boomtown.  More discoveries were made in an adjacent mine in 1878, causing more and more people to seek their fortunes in this remote wilderness.  It’s estimated that in its heyday the population of Bodie was 5,000-7,000 people with more than 2,000 buildings in town.

Bodie had amenities not usually found in a mining camp – a Wells Fargo Bank, several daily newspapers, restaurants, a volunteer fire company and even a brass band.  There was a Chinatown neighborhood with several hundred  inhabitants who had been brought in to work the mines.  And just like in “Gunsmoke”, there was a red light district with their own Miss Kitty – Rosa May.  But what Bodie was best known for was it’s free-wheeling, downright dangerous culture.  There were 65 (!) saloons along the one mile stretch of Main Street.  The cry of miners as they left their hometowns was “Goodbye God, I’m Going to Bodie”.  The town became known for murders, shootouts, barroom brawls, and stagecoach holdups.

The General Store

The General Store

The first signs of Bodie’s decline began in 1880 when silver and gold discoveries in Montana, Arizona and Utah lured the “get-rich-quick” miners to the new boomtowns.   Most of the single men left town and Bodie turned into a family-oriented community.  Despite the population decline, the mines flourished.  A narrow-gauge railroad was built, the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company, bringing much needed lumber, cordwood, and mine timbers to town.  But there was no going back to the boom times.  By 1910 the population was down to 698 people.  In 1912 the last newspaper, The Bodie Miner, shut down and in 1913 the Standard Mining Company finally closed its doors.  In 1917, the Bodie Railway was abandoned and its iron tracks were scrapped. By 1920, the Census Bureau recorded Bodie’s population as 120 people. Despite the decline, Bodie had permanent residents through most of the 20th century, even after a fire ravaged much of the downtown business district in 1932. In fact, the post office operated until 1942, when the federal government required that all nonessential gold mines be shut down to support the war effort.

Just left Bodie

Just left Bodie

Bodie was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961 and became a California State Park in 1962 when it was named the state’s official gold rush town.  Only a small part of the town has survived, with about 110 structures still standing, including one of the gold mills. You can peer in the windows of the commercial buildings and homes, many remain as they were left – stocked with goods and personal belongings.  Dinner plates on are the tables, food is in the pantry (I’m guessing way past its “best by” date) and cars are abandoned by the roadside.  I think these abandoned items are what most intrigued me.  It’s one thing to decide to leave town, but why did so many leave all of their belongings?  After all, when most of the remaining Bodie residents left it was the height of the Depression, when clothing, food and furniture were in short supply for most.  I’ve read some speculation that most residents just wanted to start over fresh and  gave their belongings to the their friends while some thought they would return for their belongings when things got better at the new gold strike over the next hill. I guess we’ll never know.

Bodie is an attraction not to be missed and if you’re at all interested, make a trip soon.  The cash-strapped California Assembly has had Bodie on the chopping block for several years.  The Bodie Foundation raises money to keep it open but it’s not known how long they can continue to do so.  Just remember, if you go, bring a spare tire and make sure your kidneys are in good shape.

 

 

 

Summer Concerts . . . Some Are Too Big

by Bob Sparrow

u2

U2 Concert in Pasadena

As summer heads into the ‘dog days’ and recording artists wind up their very profitable summer concert schedules, I got to reading about concerts today and comparing them to concerts of yesteryear.

I discovered that back in 2009 the group U2 broke their own attendance record for the best-attended single concert performance when they performed at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to a sellout crowd of 97,014! They broke their old record of 86,145 set in 1987 at JFK stadium in Philadelphia. That Rose Bowl performance grossed $9.9 million, which was 2nd all time, only to the Three Tenors concert at Giant Stadium, New Jersey, which grossed $13.4 million. Pink Floyd was third, then the Rolling Stones with the Backstreet Boys (how did they get in there?) rounding out the top five.

rolling stones in concert

Mick Jagger one inch tall

The Rolling Stones are at the top of the list for most expensive concert ticket at $624 A PIECE! Surprisingly Fleetwood Mac is second with a price of $307 per ticket and Justin Timberlake is a close third at $293. These are actually ticket prices, scalpers can end up getting significantly more.

I have to say I’m not a big fan of the ‘big concert’ although I saw the Eagles at the Forum in Los Angels last year (their final tour since leader Glen Frey passed away in January of this year) But I find at these big concert venues, unless your seats are front and center, the performers look about a half an inch tall, so you end up watching the entire ‘live in person’ concert on the Jumbotron.

hungry i exterior

Exterior of the hungry i

I’m going to sound like the old geezer that I am here, but seeing top performing acts today is nothing like it was when I was growing up. I think back specifically to going into San Francisco’s North Beach to the ‘hungry i’ to see the Kingston Trio perform. This of course was back in the ‘folk scare era’, the acoustic age, when folk music and the Kingston Trio were really big and I was really into folk music in general and their music in particular. I was also a fan of the Limelighters, who I’d seen at the hungry i and Peter, Paul & Mary who, when they were scheduled to sing on a Friday night at the hungry i, came over to College of Marin, where I was going to school, and did a short mid-day performance at an assembly for us – not too many top acts would do that today!

For not not familiar with the odd-named hungry i, how it got its name is not really clear. Some say the ‘i’ was short for ‘intellectual’, other say it was for ‘id’, either way, the story goes that as they were painting the name over the door, the painter ran out of paint (and apparently capital letters), so all that appeared was ‘hungry i’, and so it stayed.

hungry i interior

The Kingston Trio at the hungry i

The hungry i was the spot to see all of the top folk and comedy acts of the day.  It was a brick-walled basement nightclub with a capacity of about 75 -100 people, all sitting a few feet from the slightly raised stage on one level, no balconies or other fancy seating.  John Philips, later of the Mamas & the Papa and his band, The Journeymen, were the house band. In the early days of the ‘i’, a young Barbra Streisand, who had never performed professionally in her life, begged to perform there for a single night promising that someday she would come back as a big star – I think she kept her promise!

And even though I did see, and I do mean see because I couldn’t hear, the Beatles perform in the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964, my favorite all-time concert was the night I saw the Kingston Trio at the hungry i. It was a double date with my good friend Don, but for the life of me I can’t remember either of our dates. (I hope we talked to them at some point during the evening!)

album coverThe Trio walked right past our seats on the aisle as they took the stage. No electronics, no speakers, just three guys (plus their stand-up bass player, ‘Buckwheat’) singing and playing their guitars and banjo. It was like they were singing to us. They would interact with the audience throughout the concert, we could actually see the expressions on their face. If you ever get a chance to listen to a ‘live’ recording of an act from the hungry i, you won’t hear thunderous applause because there are so few people there, but it’s probably ‘Standing Room Only’.   And I know they didn’t set any records that night for top grossing performance – tickets were about $15

Later this year I will see Jimmy Buffett (yes, again!) at Irvine Meadows, at a large (15,000) amphitheater that will close its doors forever after his performance.  Even thought I love his concerts, I won’t feel that Jimmy will be talking or singing to me and he will only be about a quarter inch high on the Jumbotron. It will be enjoyable, but it won’t be the Kingston Trio at the hungry i.  I realize you can never go back, in fact the hungry i has moved down the street and is now a strip club.

 

 

LONG LIVE THE LAND LINE

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

landlineIt has come to my attention, somewhat startlingly, that I have become a Luddite.  According to a recent Pew poll,  as of  the end of 2015 49% of household in the U.S. don’t have a landline telephone.  That’s an amazing number.  I shouldn’t be surprised, given that a good many of my family members are part of that 49%.  I’ve always thought of myself as fairly tech savvy, given my age and all.  I pour over the reviews of new phones and computers, I browse the Best Buy ad on Sunday to see the latest gadgets, and I know how to do Ctrl/Alt/Delete to get me out of most computer problems.  Heck, I worked directly for the CIO of a major corporation and often received the “samples” of new equipment left with him by eager tech companies.  So this revelation of a cell phone centric society came as a shock and one, I might add, with which I totally disagree.  My opinion has only been strengthened in the past month when we were in a rental house and dependent solely on the cell phone.

Before I launch into my defense of landlines I readily admit that I also love my cell phone.  I’m constantly on it to check email, Facebook, the stock market, and the weather.  Oh yeah, and once in a while I actually use it as a phone.   So although I am old enough to remember plug-in switchboards at my first job, I do realize that having a mobile device is a marvelous thing.  I just don’t think it should be the only thing.  Here’s why:

Convenience

money in bra

I have nine telephones in my house so no matter what room I’m in, there is a phone nearby.  But, you say, the cell phone is always with you.  Yes, and that’s a good argument for some people.  People who have pockets.  Having only a cell phone over the past month caused me to realize something – I own several objects of clothing that are without pockets.  My nightgown, for example.  I know of some women that stick their cell phone in their bra but that brings back rather gruesome memories of when I worked as a teller at a bank.  I had “regulars” who would waddle up to the window, reach down into their sweaty cleavage, and hand me a wad of bills that were as limp as yesterday’s fish.  And smelled worse. So, far be it from me to ever do that with my phone.  I suppose I could simply hold it in my hand but somehow I can’t see myself as one of those women who walk around with a death grip on their phone as if it’s the winning Powerball ticket.  I’m just klutzy enough that I like to keep my hands available for those times I trip over the bath mat.

Do Not Disturb

The real problem with the cell phone-only lifestyle is being disturbed because people can literally reach you anywhere – shopping, at the movies, at the gynecologist’s office.  Conversely, if someone calls me on my landline and I don’t answer they know I’m out doing something.  They leave a message and I call them back AT MY CONVENIENCE.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve received calls on my cell when I’m on the golf course, in meetings, and God forbid, the bathroom.  My wish to not be disturbed is also the reason I charge my phone in the opposite side of the house from the bedroom. Once I go to bed, that’s it.  Occasionally I hear my cell phone ring but  I never get up to look at it.  Experience has taught me that certain members of my family are prone to drunk dialing.  Oh sure, they apologize the next day and blame it on butt dialing but I’m not buying it.  When’s the last time someone butt dialed you from a landline phone?

cell phone in carAre You Still There?

I admit to occasional use of my cell phone in the car.  I have a Bluetooth connection so I’m hands-free and I do find it convenient to return a call or make a quick call if I don’t have time to do it before I leave the house.  But most of the time I save my calls for home because frankly, even after all these years, cell phone reception is horrible.  There’s still that awkward pause where you have to ensure that the person you’re speaking with is done or you cut them off, and vice versa.  But worst of all is a cell phone conversation when BOTH parties are using Bluetooth in the car.  The clarity of the call is about what I had as a kid with a tin can and piece of string.  Mostly it’s garbled, cuts out, and is distracting.  Sometimes the reception at home isn’t any better.  Like many people, some parts of our house get better reception than others and in our rental house last month there were whole rooms where there was no service at all.

So for me, I’m sticking with my landline.  Perhaps I will become one of those gray-haired old ladies that gets invited to speak at the local library about life in the olden days when phones were actually attached to walls.