I don’t know anybody in this world that cannot say the aforementioned statement with any truth to it. We all wish we had not done some things, and in retrospect after the moment has passed, we all wish we had done certain things. Every year as the month of June approaches, I start anticipating the musical”high”of our Father’s Day Festival that is fast approaching, but in the back of my mind there is always the low that I experience every year on June 11, which is the day that my good friend Vern Williams passed over Jordan. I will always regret not doing something for Vern about a couple weeks before he passed away. It may have got me any little hot water with the hospital where he was at, but I still wished I had done it for him. Here’s how it went down. I spent at least an hour or two a day with Vern there at the hospital, just talking, reminiscing over good times we had playing music for all those years, and just enjoying each other’s company. God this is hard. [Sorry folks, this voice program prints everything I say] I told Vern, give me your hand pappy,[ that was one of my nickname for him because he was eight years older than me ] and as I was holding Vern’s right-hand, I asked him, you remember that scene in your favorite movie Lonesome Dove, where Gus is laying in bed dying and he can hear the piano playing in the saloon next door? Vern said Yep, I Shore do. I said, you remember he asked Woodrow if that was a Whore playing that piano, then he gave Woodrow a $20 gold piece and told him to go next door to the saloon and get him another bottle of whiskey, and give the rest of the money to the gal playing the piano.Vern said Yep I shore do. Then I told him, that is exactly what I’m going to do for you buddy. I am going downtown to Goonies Saloon (a former saloon where the dregs of Calaveras County used to hang out) and see if I can find a hooker that plays the piano, get a couple of bottles of whiskey for us, roll a piano in your room, and drink whiskey and listen to music all night long. Vern laughed his butt off, and said JD you can’t do that, I said the hell I can’t! And started to go out the door, but Vern said JD don’t do that, the whiskey will probably kill me, and they’ll kick us both out of here for making a ruckus. I said Vern, what the hell is the difference you are dying anyway so we might as well go out in style old pard. Hell, the County will talk about this for the next 50 years! But, I let Vern talk me out of it much my regret nowadays. I set back down there next to him and held his hand again, and we laughed for an hour. Try as I might, I couldn’t talk him into letting me do that for him. Looking back I just wish the hell I had got up and done it and to hell with the consequences! The spirit of Gus and Woodrow would have been alive and well in Calaveras County for the next hundred years!
So much for what I wish I had of done. Here’s a true story of what I did do that had dire consequences for me for at least a week or more.
Highway 26 starts at the junction of Highway 99 And Fremont St. in Stockton California, and heads east from there. As you head east on State Highway 26 from Stockton, you go through several small towns. Linden, then into Calaveras County and the old stage stop’s of Bellota, Stone Corral,then the town of Valley Springs, Double Springs, Mokelumne Hill, Glencoe, West Point,then down across the North fork of the Mokelumne River into Amador County, up the North Fork side about 5 miles where Highway 26 ends at Highway 88. About 150 yards west of the junction of 26 and 88, on the north side of 88 is a run down, and dilapidated building that was once a favorite cafe of the locals, dating back from late 30s or early 40s . It has been closed for the last 10 or 12 years and is just about fell down from lack of care, but previous to that it was a good place to eat and had wonderful biscuits and gravy on the breakfast menu. But it wasn’t always that way much to my regret. In 1968 when I was living in Campo Seco, my hunting buddy and I left my place about four o’clock in the morning to go archery deer hunting.We headed up Highway 26,and when we got to Highway 88, we were hungry as a wolf and were looking for a place to have breakfast. When I pulled up to the stop sign at Highway 88, my buddy said look, pointing to the left, and lo and behold there was a sign all lit up that proclaimed “Mom ‘s Cafe”, home cooking , so we both agreed what is not to like about mom’s cooking? So I pulled the old 56 Ford pickup into the front there, and in we went to have a mom’s cooking breakfast!
We sat down at the counter, and “mom” turned out to be a little old dried-up woman who was probably 80 years old and about 4’6″ tall.I noticed right off that that clothes that she was wearing looked like she had worn them for a month or more. She poured us each a cup of coffee and said what what would you boys like for breakfast? I said I think I’ll have a short stack hotcakes ( those are pretty hard to mess up ) and my buddy looked at her, her filthy demeanor and dirty hands and said I think I would like some cold cereal. So, she gave him a bowl and a spoon, one of those little boxes of cereal, and a little carton of milk, and proceeded to dump some brand X hotcake mix in a bowl, add some tap water to it, give it a couple of cursory stir’s with a spoon and dumped it on the griddle. I knew this is not gonna be good. In the meantime, my buddy was diving into his cereal with a wicked grin on his face, which I knew meant trouble for me. Those were the worst hotcakes I ever tasted in my life, and if I had any brains at all, I would’ve only ate one or two bites, but old hell no, I ate them all. About halfway to where we were going to go deer hunting that day, my stomach started doing flip-flops, and by the time we got there I had a case of heartburn that would’ve killed TWO BULL ELEPHANT”S! I kept thinking to myself, HOW can you get heartburn from eating hotcakes? No matter what I tried,Tums, baking soda and water, for the next three or four days I thought I was going to die from heartburn! I could not hardly sleep at night, I could not function during the day, all on account of them damned brand X hotcakes I ate at “MOM’S CAFE”!
Ever since then, I will not eat at a place called mom’s! So dear hearts, I drove past the old”Mom’s Café”building today on my way to Jackson to get some groceries and I just reveled in the fact that it will not be long until the place is just a memory of some of the worst hotcakes I ever had the displeasure to experience, not to mention a damn near terminal case of heartburn. Every time I mention that hunting trip to my old buddy, he always gets that evil grin on his face and says, JD you should’ve had the Wheaties! To this day, I still ask myself, HOW in the hell can you get heartburn from eating hotcakes? I guess that will always be one of life’s mysteries.
