Category: Tidbit

What’s Juicy?

The majority of the narrative of Kenneth “Steve” Henson’s story is taken from an interview in the Los Angeles Times with Steve by Sergio Ortiz. The quotes of both Steve and Audrey came from the same source. The voices are not theirs.

Alaska did not become a state until 1959, ten years after Steve moved up there to become a plumbing contractor. It is unclear how he went from driving a truck for Hollywood and learning how to be a plumbing contractor. The picture sarcastically labeled Military Industrial Complex is actually Site Summit, but it is a Cold War military installation in the Alaskan wilderness. The story of clogged pipes and poor diets is made up, but there was mention of Steve trying to get them to eat more vegetables. There was also mention of him trying to find a lower fat alternative to Blue Cheese dressing. The quote is from the LA Times article, word for word.

I stumbled upon the article where Steve was involved in a cave in. It was never said that he left Alaska because of the incident but it seemed plausible.

Gayle and Steve went back to California and moved to the Hope Ranch Park neighborhood and Steve quickly became bored. I am not sure what causes you to have a dream of owning a dude ranch, but that was Steve’s. The ranch was named the Sweetwater Ranch and Steve did rename it immediately to The Hidden Valley. The reason is never mentioned. The story of making up stories about the bear skin rug was taken from an interview with CBS Sunday Morning. Of course, the Showbiz Pizza Place was my addition.

Gayle would play the organ for dance parties at the ranch. Here is an advertisement from the February 1, 1957 Santa Ynez Valley News.

The ranch was difficult to keep occupied especially during the winter months. The Hidden Valley Guest Ranch would close down due to low business as is mentioned in this article from 1958. His real name was Kenneth but he went by Steve.

Steve’s desire was to keep the guest ranch as a private club with no advertising. However, he was forced to start having open houses to gain interest in the ranch. Here is one of the early advertisements from 1956.

The dressing was popular and guests left with quart jars full of the stuff. The story of Audrey Ovington and the Cold Spring Tavern is true. This is how I was made aware of the story years ago when I would work in Santa Barbara. There was a small framed sign on the wall that said, “This restaurant is the first restaurant to serve Hidden Valley Ranch”. There is an article written about a recipe for Banana Fritters from the Sweetwater Ranch (the name before Hidden Valley). The article was written by Audrey. Stay tuned for a morsel about that one.

The story about the Hawaiian guest asking for 300 quarts of dressing is from the article. Him using it for a luau to cover up the taste of poi and kalua pork is made up. If you have ever tasted it though, you would love to have a side of ranch with it. I livened up the conversation with the Hawaiian and Steve using a Frommer’s article named Twenty Words Every Hawaii Visitor Should Know. I was trying to do a haka-style delivery even though it’s from New Zealand. I don’t know if the owner of the Copper Ranch was the same guest, but it’s pretty wild that Hawaii is the only other place besides California that I found ranch dressing mentioned in a newspaper. This article is from 1965.

The story of his mail order business taking off is true. I really wanted to find an advertisement in a newspaper somewhere, but it seems to be from word of mouth. The early logo had the dancing cowboy. It is never mentioned that it was because of Gayle’s organ playing at the ranch, but I’d like to think she was honored by that.

The story of Kelley’s Korner is true. The store is no longer in Santa Barbara.

The story about the Stagecoach road being difficult for the trucks to travel is true, however, my picture is a dramatic representation.

The story of the Independence Day party guest dying from a skull fracture is true. The editor missed the headline saying “Injudy” instead of “Injury”. I am not sure if this is why he decided to get rid of the ranch, but I am sure it was not the only incident that made owning the ranch more trouble than it was worth.

By 1970, the company distributed ranch dressing mix to 25 states. I found this article about Hidden Valley Ranch coming to Texas in the Odessa American in September of 1970.

The fried appetizers mentioned all came to be after Hidden Valley Ranch was created. “Chicken strips, Ranch-style dip, and wings from buffalo” is a line from the Robert Earl Keen song, “Furnace Fan”.

Henson sold the company to Clorox of all companies for $8.7 million in stock. That is a lot of $0.75 packets. Clorox was based in Oakland, California.

The story of Waples-Platter and the lawsuit is true. There was another suit pending between Hidden Valley Ranch and Kraft Foods. Kraft started selling a ranch dressing mix and Hidden Valley wasn’t happy about it. You can read the entire case here. The Fort Worth connection was too good to pass up.

Bottled ranch dressing is not that good. Notice the amount of times you hear people say that a certain restaurant has the best ranch dressing. Chances are, they are all using Hidden Valley Ranch Mix made for restaurants. This is still mixed with buttermilk instead of regular milk. You can still buy it in the store under “Restaurant-Style”.

The logo cowboy did change, get smaller, then disappear. I wish they would bring it back, at least for a throwback label. Here is a history of the logo.

What’s Juicy

The Chevrolet Brothers did immigrate from Switzerland at the turn of the century. Louis came over first, then sent money for his brothers to come over as well. If you are interested, the Chevrolet Brothers website has some really neat pictures and articles. Arthur raced in the first Indy 500 in 1911 but did not finished because of engine problems after 30 or so laps. He was driving a Buick and it seems to have something to do with the overhead valve engine design they were using.

When they started Chevrolet with Durant, all of the vehicles were going to have overhead valve engines. The Chevrolet Brothers wanted to make race cars and Durant wanted to make more affordable passenger cars. There was a fist fight and they parted ways after only a few years. The name was kept, but there are several legends about where the bowtie logo came from.

Frontenac was their attempt to do what Durant wouldn’t let them do… make race cars. Albert Champion was a successful French cyclist and was a partner in Frontenac. They had a falling out but there was no mention of the issue (I made up spark plugs) or a fist fight. There is a strange story about Albert’s death though. He died at 49 in a luxury hotel in Paris after his wife’s married lover punched him. The fist fight seemed probable after hearing this.

Gaston ended up winning the championship that year posthumously because he accumulated enough points that no one could catch him. The Frontenac’s were pretty good race cars.

The Chevrolair was a good idea with bad timing because of the depression. The brothers had a falling out at this time and it did become physical from several accounts. I noticed that I mixed the company/corporations with the Chevrolet vs Martin names. That was a mistake. Martin didn’t do too much changing to the Chevrolet logo. Martin did become Lockheed Martin after a bunch of mergers through the years.

I don’t know if the brothers grew tired of making companies for other people but it sure did happen a lot. Arthur took his job working in Columbus, Indiana for Cummins as a research mechanic. He enjoyed bowling and golf. Preston Tucker asked him to come work for his aviation company as he was merging with Higgins. The quote from Arthur is real and it does sound a lot like The Godfather quote, but it isn’t related as far as I know. When I saw that Francis Ford Coppola directed “Tucker: A Man and His Dream”, I couldn’t resist.

Higgins Industries made the Higgins boats and they were said by many to have won the war. The National World War II Museum was built in New Orleans because of the Higgins Factory. Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex in his presidential farewell address. Technically, he invented the term.

The bourbon and fist fight tale over the naming of Tucker Higgins Aviation Company was made up. People need to be more creative with names. Maybe some bourbon would help. Too much, and you get stuff like Tucker Higgins aviation Company. The fact about the plywood needing to be warm and damp is strange and true. Once they decided to build the aviation plant, the government took over the boat factory.

That’s when the Army Corps of Engineers comes in. The song playing in the background was written in the 1960s for a government promotion for the group. Their mottos is Essayons or “Let us Try”. The plant became the Michoud Assembly Facility and produced rockets and the fuel tank for the space shuttle. They are currently building the rockets for the Space Launch System (SLS) which will propel the Orion spacecraft.

Tucker and Higgins had no reason to work together without a government contract. The C-76 was a horrible plane and not many were made. There probably wasn’t a fist fight. Tucker went on to make his car company, but that is another story. Just watch the movie.

The house on Carrey St. is supposedly his home. It has been a couple of restaurants over the years. The story about his grandson Gerald is true. There were a lot of people drowning in Lake Pontchartrain in those days. I’m not sure if he paid his taxes or not, but he did hang himself although sources vary on whether it was in the garage or in the house. My bet is on the garage.

Up until 2017, people thought Arthur was buried in Indianapolis. The cemetery name in Indianapolis is really Holy Cross and Saint Joseph. These catholic names get a bit hard to follow at times.

The story about the letter is true as is the request to be in an unmarked grave in Slidell away from his brothers. The records were lost in Hurricane Katrina, but they were not going to put a marker on his grave anyway to respect his wishes. The tradition about what direction graves are facing is real and so is the reason. Check it out next time you go by a cemetery.

The marker for Arthur was left just inside the entrance to the cemetery. They added a part on bottom to make the grave marker more of a memorial. It says, “In These Hallowed Grounds, The Exact Location Unknown, Rests Arthur Chevrolet”

What’s Juicy?

The intro has a mosquito truck sound in the beginning and it continues throughout the video. Although mosquito trucks run year round, I was not fortunate enough to get fogged by one so I added them. It was filmed at the memorial site that is near the actual crash site. I got the Queen of Cleavage from googling “Jayne Mansfield nickname“. if you google “Queen of Cleavage“, you get a different answer.

Vera Jayne Palmer was her birth name, but she went by her stepfather’s last name Peers in high school. Paul and Jayne were married and then had their daughter Jayne Marie 6 months later. Some people question if Paul was the father or if it was another boyfriend. DNA testing on her five children would be interesting to say the least.

I included a tea sipping sound from the Pizza Wars video for The University of Texas reference. Paul did try to get full custody of their daughter claiming that Jayne was unfit because of the nude modeling. Jayne Marie, the daughter, would go on to pose in Playboy in July 1976.

Jayne and Mickey Hargitay married 5 days after she divorced Paul. Jayne was notorious for having well publicized affairs with other men while married to Hargitay. The reference to the question mark curse is from something I heard in a podcast one time. In an interview about Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Robert Zemeckis was asked why the title didn’t have a question mark. He said it was a Hollywood superstition that if you use a question mark in the title, the movie would bomb. There are a whole bunch of movies that followed this logic including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Billy Graham, who wasn’t really a televangelist, was visiting London when he made the quote about Jayne. It was part of a larger quote about making idols who emphasize sex. The second commandment is about idolatry, not gun control–that’s the second amendment.

While the term wardrobe malfunction wasn’t used until the Suberbowl Incident, Jayne’s clothes fell off all of the time in public. She used it to gain publicity. The Sophia Loren episode as well as her account of the incident are true. The rivalry between Jayne and Marilyn Monroe is debated. I think it is fair to say that they were competing for the same movies. Jayne supposedly had affairs with JFK and his brother Robert. Jayne claimed that the shipwreck in the Bahamas was not a publicity stunt, but it is hard to tell. Her quote after hearing the news of Marilyn Monroe’s death is real. There were a lot of similarities between the two ladies.

Jaynes marriage to Matt Cimber, the birth of her child Tony, and her separation from Matt happened in less than a year. From the pictures of the couple, it seems like alcohol was getting the best of her. This isn’t in the video, but Matt Cimber went on to be the co-creator and director of Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW).

Jayne and Sam had a toxic relationship. They would get drunk and get into fights with each other and people nearby. Ireland was not the only country they got kicked out of.

The Anton LeVey meeting is real and this is where things get a bit strange. I think you have to assume this was a publicity stunt, but does seem a bit far. I wonder what Billy Graham thought about that. There is a newspaper interview from LeVey where he tells the story of the curse.

The lion attack at Jungleland USA is real and the lion’s name was Sammy. I never confirm he was actually euthanized though. The car accidents are real as well. They were mentioned in the Anton LeVey interview as well as Jayne and Sam’s interview a few days before their death.

The Gus Stevens Supper Club is no longer in Biloxi. Ronnie Harrison was also Gus’s daughter Elaine’s boyfriend. Unknown to him at the time, the couple was preparing to elope because she was pregnant. Ronnie was 19 years old. The amount of people that fit in a car back then is amazing. I am not sure what that says about us now, but sitting three people in the front seat seems crazy. The four chihuahuas were there too, and there is some film of the NOPD officers with the two dogs that survived.

The story of the accident is true including the detail about the mosquito truck. If you grew up around these things, you know how much fog is put out behind them. Even so, they must have been going pretty fast to cause that type of damage.

The story about Jayne’s wig fueling decapitation rumors is true. The New Orleans coroner confirmed later that it was more like a scalping than a decapitation. I left that detail out of the video.

The story of Mariska Hargity becoming Olivia Benson on Law and Order – Special Victims Unit is true. Shortly after the accident, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommended putting an under ride guard on 18-wheelers. These were referred to as Mansfield bars.

What’s Juicy?

The story of the Ranger oil boom is fact although, the shipments of coal to the North Pole was an obvious addition. The location of the JH McKleskey No 1. has a “park” and it looks like there may be some old equipment still there. I wonder if they ever plugged the well. The facts about the growth of the field are staggering and true. All of the towns around Ranger would be transformed from small towns to boom towns.

The account of Conrad Hilton is supposedly true. No one ever says which bank he was coming to buy. I like to think it was the one that got robbed. I don’t believe the hotel had a Santa Claus in the lobby though, so they probably weren’t charging for that.

The story of the robbery is pretty high-level to not bore people with the details. It is what I thought was relevant from a few accounts of the story. People differ on the facts, like always. I did make up the part about the Ho Ho Holdup.

The building at the end of the alley was a vacant lot during the time of the robbery. Frances and her mom ran across the alley and got to the police station quickly. This is why they were able to respond before they left. The rest of the robbery account is true although ridiculous. Robert Hill got a full pardon from Governor Connolly in 1964. He supposedly changed his name and went to live the rest of his life in West Texas. He died in 1996. The story of the insanity… well insanity is true. It appeared like he might get out of the death penalty, so the mob took things into their own hands.

The story of the play and the noose are true. There is a monument behind the theater that commemorates the lynching. The museum in the old jail has inscriptions on the wall from Helms and Hill as well as Ratliff’s pistols. They even have the rope from the lynching.

Conrad Hilton was born on Christmas Day and he liked to be charitable with his money. That is why he has “Christmas is forever” written on his tombstone. He probably did not have anything to do with the bank robbery. It just goes to show you how you can find conspiracies anywhere.

Keep it Juicy!

What’s Juicy?

The story of the beginning of Aurora is accurate as far as I can tell. The town is named by William Stanfield after the Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora. The town did grow quickly but suffered from a spotted fever (meningitis) outbreak that caused people to flee the town. The railroad choosing to go to Rhome caused even more folks to flee.

The article from S.E. Haydon is the basis of the story about the crash and was really published. It does ready like a joke to me although it is strange that there were so many other “sightings”. This was at the height of yellow journalism so maybe this was normal. Although the article names T.J. Weems as an authority in astronomy, it does not mention that he is a follower of Roman mythology. I made that up.

After reading up a bit more on the goddess Aurora, I found the little story about Mars and Venus. I figured it could be juiced up to explain how Weems thought that the pilot was a Martian. I’m a bit proud of that one. The flower garden is mentioned in the newspaper article.

Brawley Oats is a real person who sealed up the well after having a bout with arthritis. He is buried in the cemetery but Judge Proctor is buried in Boyd.

The account of the various sightings of mysterious airships around the country and state of Texas is accurate. There are multiple books on the topic. It is pretty interesting, but, again, it was also at the peak of yellow journalism. This occurred about the same time as H.H. Holmes’s activities in Fort Worth.

The articles do mention the government, the Spanish, and proponents of the temperance movement. There are also accounts of meeting the pilot, Wilson. That may be an inside joke. An account in Stephenville lists 20+ people as witnesses to seeing the machine on the ground as the pilot made repairs. One of them was Otto Houston, Sam Houston’s nephew.

MUFON is real and they did an investigation which didn’t turn up much. The exhumation was denied because next of kin could not be notified. The movies by Jim McCullough Sr. are real as is the review of Aurora Encounter. After watching the trailer, I am not sure I could make it through the movie. Although I did notice that there is another film from 2018 about the Aurora UFO crash named simply Aurora. I haven’t found out how to watch it yet. I will, by no means, watch “Nacho Chihuahua”.

What’s Juicy?

While Canadians did come train in Fort Worth to escape the colder weather, the part about the origin of “snow bird” is made up.

Vernon and Irene were animal lovers and promoted a bunch of dances with animal names. They had several family pets and Irene eventually set up a pet adoption organization named Orphan’s of the Storm. She valued this above her dancing career.

Vernon did fly in 300 missions during WWI which is remarkable. It gained the recognition of the French and they awarded him the Croix de Guerre (War Cross). He trained pilots in Canada and was eventually sent to Benbrook.

He did indeed have a pet monkey named Jeffrey. He flew with him and is said to make cocktails for the airmen during leave. The Curtiss JN4 “Jenny” had a top speed of 75 mph and weighed less than a ton. The instructor would sit in the back (not the front). I am not sure if Jeffrey helped Vernon out or was just there for company.

Even though the instructor usually sits in back, Vernon chose to sit up front on the day of his death. The comment about not flying until you land was from a Todd Snider song.

The dramatic details of his crash were from the Star Telegram. I assume they are true although I did add the stuff about Jeffrey screaming. Vernon was the 5th person to die in a training accident that week.

The funeral pictures are pretty impressive. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a funeral that big. He is buried in New York, and Irene, although she married a few more times, is buried next to him.

The memorial in Benbrook is further south than the probable crash location. Although the airfield is not there anymore, it used to run along Mercedes Street between Winscott Road and US 377. Here is an overlay of the airfield over a current satellite photo.

The movie is real although I don’t think they thought that much about the title. Irene acted as an advisor and proved to be difficult to work with. The Worth theater no longer exists in downtown Fort Worth.

The story of Vernon Castle is fascinating. The life that this man led in such a short amount of time (he died at 30) is both humbling and impressive.