Memory lane, Garberville California

Just as I abandoned the "Vroom, vroom, yeehaw" post below, it took a tangent that I been wanting to explore anyway.

I think that it was Cousin Jim that asked if anyone remembered the dump. Of course a few of us did, then Kym did a post about it.

Then Jim threw a trick question at us; “Who knows about the original Wagon Wheel Bar, next to the sheriff's Garberville sub Station? I’ll give you a hint. It was actually 2 or 3 buildings north of the sub station.”

It was not a very good hint, because the Garberville Substation and Jail used to be on Thomas Flat, that used to be the flat that the Southern Humboldt Building Supply is built on now. The flat was huge and it was once used as the town park. The freeway took out most of the flat. The flat was where the town ball games were played, and when the circus or a carnival came to town, which was at least once a year, the flat was where it was put.

There also used to be a creek there that ran just north of the building supply. The creek had a sandstone bank that had thousands of fossils in it that the town kids would spend endless hours digging the fossils out of the stone. Monroe Tobin, as a child found a whale bone there. The creek is now buried beneath the freeway.

The Midway Motel was built on the north end of the huge flat, about where Redwood Drive crosses the freeway on the north end of Garberville. The Midway Motel had Garberville’s first coin laundry in it. I serviced the Bendix-Westinghouse washers. They were front loaders, and had to be bolted to the floor to keep them from walking away.

When the freeway was built, they took a huge amount of soil from Thomas flat, and lowered the grade at least forty feet. The soil was used to fill Bear Gulch; the Newcomers call it Bear Canyon, just south of where the Alderpoint Road goes up the hill. The last lonely remains of what was once a glorious hunk of flat real-estate can still be seen between the freeway and Redwood drive just south of Bear Gulch Bridge. Heading south, look up and to the left as you pass Bear Gulch. It’s the flat top hill that is left there as an island.

Southern Humboldt Building supply was built originally as a bowling alley back in the mid fifties, it was the most popular place in town, and you had to belong to a league to even get a chance to roll a ball in it. The buildings between the freeway and the building supply are some of the remains of the motel units that were the Midway Motel, and they were moved there before they built the freeway.

The trick Question that Jim asked about the Wagon Wheel Bar that was run by Al West, is tough to visualize because the terrain has been lowered and the roads repositioned. But, the Wagon Wheel bar was built in a building that backed up to the bluff that you peer over between Bear Gulch, and the freeway, at about the south end of the guard rail. The trees that were behind the building are still there, but the dirt that the building sat on is gone to the fill in the gulch.

The back porch was where they had their refrigeration units. When I worked on their refrigeration units, all that there was between me and a three hundred foot fall was a rickity old railing. If I dropped a wrench, I didn’t even look to see were it went. They say that it takes a brave person to do something that scares the hell out of him. I can tell you that I didn’t trust the porch, I didn’t trust the railing, and I would even go back there if anyone else was back there. I didn’t go for any clowning around. But I did it, so I was one brave kid. The Orange Spot Market was on the south end of the Wagon Wheel and it sort of got smaller as the bar got bigger. It was all in the same building. And, the north end of the Market was more of a fruit stand than what a person would think of as a market.

Now, I apologize to all of my out of town fans, but I’m going to indulge us OLD-timer locals for a bit.

These places were all gone before 1964
1- Where was Foxworthy Lane?
2- Where was Poorman’s Auto Parts?
3- Where was the Pass Café?
4- Where was the Ace Café?
5- Where was the Coffee Cup Café?
6- Where was Buds café?

I have more, but you can start with these. If you can add to the list, please do, but everything has to be pre-sixty-four. That will separate the newcomers from the old-timers. One of the above is a “Fudgie” because it existed past ‘64. Which one?