The Wanda Tinasky Affair

The Wanda Tinasky Affair

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of...
The Mendocino Shuffle

The Mendocino Shuffle

A few patrons and some of the staff referred to the Sea Gull Cellar Bar as The Meat Market or The Butcher Shop. This was a variant of the Mendocino Shuffle itself “a pun on the rather open sex life of many free-love folks at the time” and the inspiration for at least...
Fire !

Fire !

A typical winter day: cold, clear, calm, quiet.  I walked downstairs from the bedroom in the house next to the restaurant, the historic Jacob Stauer House.   In the kitchen below, I looked out the window into the garden behind the Inn.  There wasn’t much left of the...
The Crooked Tree

The Crooked Tree

“Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without Improvement are the roads of genius.” William Blake     On Highway 128 just before the newly built Mountain House Estate, there is a crooked tree that stands near the point of...
Doctor Harold Robinson

Doctor Harold Robinson

My first office as an investment adviser was upstairs in the old Lisbon-Paoli Hotel building.  Doctor Harold Robinson was one of my first clients.  He bounded through the door in his characteristic style with a sly smile on his face and asked how business was going. ...