Stories from winter and spring, 1997

San Diego beekeepers know all the flowering plants

One time, Mikolich says, he got a call from a friend, a commercial beekeeper whose helper had driven a truckload of hives off a road and then down into a gully. The hives had slid off the truck, and the air all around had gotten messy. Beekeepers tend to rely on each other when this sort of thing happens—who else could they call?

By Douglas Whyknott, May 15, 1997 | Read full article

San Diego's juvenile delinquents — how to treat them

Arrested for threatening to punch another kid in the face if he doesn’t hand over his Walkman, he’ll spend a few days in the Hail and then be sent home with a stern warning never to do it again. The judge will probably have slapped him with six months’ probation but, because his case is relatively minor, it will be banked.

By Gary Rivlin, April 24, 1997 | Read full article

Man robs bank to see his daughter

Sean Legacy robbed a bank in Pacific Beach. He also wrote a book over the four years he was in various jails called Point Zero Bliss. It is the kind of book you pick up and then set down quickly, maybe pace or smoke, do some chores, turn on the tube and then—to hell with it—you pick it up again.

By John Brizzolara, April 17, 1997 | Read full article

Older people in downtown San Diego talk about death

“I don’t like the nursing home either. I don’t wanta go there ’cause I had a lady I used to pray with all the time, and when she got so sick, they put her there, it wasn’t nice at all. They steal all the things."

By Madeline DeFrees, April 10, 1997 | Read full article

Life as a castrated man

On our drive to the Cove, Tom briefs me on the state of his love life. He has grown increasingly close to a woman. They date regularly and are together often. But she has developed a reservation about the physical side of their relationship. Tom has proposed that he quit taking testosterone.

By Steven Shepherd, April 4, 1997 | Read full article

Slammer culture

“My brother Johnny tried to do something with his life but drowned on Labor Day, 1977. And Tony, who’s 40 now, is blind. He got shot in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun back in 1979. He was a bully and a neighborhood jackass. And he’s still a blind fool. He was locked up too, from the time he was a kid."

By Jory Farr, Mar. 27, 1997 | Read full article

Psychic Theodore Graham-Rogers, head of county probation

Carla tells about the duplex on Neptune Avenue in Encinitas where the Bees and Graham-Rogers rescued the spirit of a sailor named Eric who’d crashed and died on the nearby rocks. Another time, on one of the Navy bases in Point Lorna, spirits of Indians who’d been slaughtered years ago were haunting one particular homemaker.

By Jeannette DeWyze, Mar. 13, 1997 | Read full article

An unhampered look at Carlsbad's Army Navy Academy

"Unlike the upper-school cadets, these boys will break down and cry, a lot. They don’t want other boys to see ’em cry, ’cause it’s not macho. But they come to me, and letting them cry, letting their emotions be known, means an awful lot. They really need, at this age, someone who’ll actually listen."

By Ray Westberg, Mar. 6, 1997 | Read full article

What San Diego wine experts say among themselves

Tastings still have rules. “You know it's totally social when the women show up with seven layers of perfume that masks anything the wine could ever develop even if you held the wine right up to your nose. I have heard a lot of people say, ‘Hey, guys, no cologne; women, no perfume."

By Matt Lickona, Feb. 6, 1997 | Read full article

Balboa Park museums do surgery on masterpieces

"An American artist must be dead for 50 years and Europeans for 100 years. We don’t have a great High Renaissance painting, and we don’t have anything from the school of Caravaggio. On the other hand, a John Singer Sargent or Thomas Eakins for the American collection is something that we would want."

By Stephen Dobyns, Jan. 16, 1997 | Read full article