August 19, of 2017 I had occasion to travel to South Lake Tahoe to visit my stepson Cole’s Memorial, a ritual that I have followed for the last 15 years since his untimely demise on August 18 of 2002. He was killed in a motorcycle accident on that day which in itself was bad enough, but to make matters worse August 18 is also his mother’s birthday. He was a wonderful son to me and was only 27 when he passed. His mother and I had been divorced for seven years by that time, but I loved him like he was my own flesh and blood. After visiting his Memorial for a while, my son Garrett and I were headed to Carson City, Nevada to Trader Joe’s and then to JT’s Basque restaurant in Gardnerville Nevada for lunch.
While traveling through South Lake Tahoe, I recalled a story that Mr. Vim told me one Saturday afternoon back in the fall of 1964. Now Mr. Vim was the owner of Vim’s Club in Ione, California, and he was about 55 years my senior so that’s why I always called him Mr.Vim. That’s all I knew him by and I have never known his last name to this very day.
I had moved to Campo Seco, a small town in Calaveras County the previous fall and had become acquainted with a couple of young men my age so on this particular Saturday we had went to Vim’s to have a few cold beers. It was located in the town of Ione, in Amador County about 15 miles north of Campo Seco . We were having a good time, drinking cold beer watching the baseball game on TV, and talking about what young men always talk about, namely fast cars, pretty women, and drinking. Mr.Vim was sitting on a stool behind the bar directly across from me, and after listening to me and my buddies for about an hour or two, he remarked about how us wet behind the ears kids didn’t know squat ! I could tell by the tone of his voice that there was a good story involved so I asked him how old he was, in a respective manner, and would he mind telling me what he meant? Well he says, to begin with I am 82 years old and was born in 1882. I’ve lived in this part of the country all my life, making my living as a saloon owner and gambler mostly. In fact by the time I was 18 I had built up a stake of around $4000 cash which back then was a lot of money. I got in a good poker game over in Nevada and ended up winning 1000 acres of land on the south end of Lake Tahoe on the California/Nevada end. He said back then there was only a stage Road that went through there to Carson City, and the stagecoach only went through there once a week. He said he tried selling timber for about a year or so, and then he swapped the entire acreage for the stage line that went to Carson City. He realized that the stagecoach business wasn’t going to last on account of all the new automobiles that people were buying, so about 1915 he swapped the stagecoach line for a sawmill near Placerville, California. When World War I came along shortly thereafter, he said that’s where he made his fortune selling lumber to the government, and after the war was over he sold the sawmill and open up a saloon and he never looked back. At the end of his story, I asked him if he could give me some good advice to help me down life’s road ? Mr.Vim looked me right in the eye and said kid, the best thing I can tell you is this; you’ll find out by the time you get to be my age, that in life you only get one good horse, one good dog, and about a half a dozen average women. No disrespect to you ladies, but Mr.Vim sure told me the truth that day.
