I moved from Twain Harte towards the end of 2003. It was my sister Jane Hilsabeck’s idea; she thought I should come down and take care of our mother who was in her early 90’s then.
This took place shortly after the Tech bubble burst and I was forced to sell thousands of Cisco System shares worth a million dollars before the market crumpled. Six months prior to this Cisco split at $140. Irrational exuberance indeed! Oh well.
I pretty much lost everything since I’d leveraged the buy on my new house. Dang, I hate when that happens.
Snow, chopping firewood, getting stuck in the snow, falling in the snow, hating the snow and the very strange people in Sonora made it very easy to leave.
I’m still taking care of Irene my mom; I expect she’ll live to see a hundred. Apparently, there are good genes in this family; I pray I don’t live that long. At sixty-six I have more aches and pains than I can deal with. Oh well…
2009 finds me living in the Napa valley; I’ve been here about 6 years. Mommy dearest is 98 and I’m still the family caretaker.
Napa is too conservative and living in a mobile home park with tons of asphalt sucks. This town is boring; nothing in the way of good shopping, etc exists. If you want something aside from wine or a bread and breakfast you go elsewhere. Maybe I’ll move to Marin or Costa Rica, or Maui, Fiji? Hmm… I’ll keep you posted. I’m
in the heart of "Gold Country" living in Twain Harte, California;
our local e-mail alias is THC for Twain Harte Community located nine
miles above Sonora in the Sierras.
THC is quaint with six or seven stores, a golf course amongst the
pines, and a spoonful of restaurants along the main thoroughfare.
There are no Starbuck’s, Barne’s & Nobel, or Trader
Joe’s in Sonora where we go when we need certain things; for
special items or doctors who are specialists we must drive an hour
to Modesto.
My first job was when I was ten, picking apricots—not an unusual
occupation for a California Native. A few other jobs come to mind:
Marketing, production director, copywriter, interviewer, announcer,
public relations, voice-talent, web master. The following are gigs
I worked that are seldom seen on my resume and it bothers me: lathe
operator (turning wooden porch columns), spray painter, office worker
(the ability to type has saved my life more than once), fork-lift
operator, hod carrier, carpenter’s helper, mass-spectrometer
assembler, artist, horse trainer, fax machine salesman, inventor (U.
S. patent for a pooper-scooper), created Risky
Business Travel and was partners in The Hilsabeck-Droese School
of Radio.
My freshman year was interrupted when my dad, a salesman, was offered
the branch manager’s job in New Mexico. We pushed the horses
into boxcars and moved to Albuquerque where I became an instant minority:
a Californian gringo.
Graduating from Sandia High, I attended Highlands University in Las
Vegas, New Mexico, where I immediately began to fail; incensed by
the erection of the Berlin wall, my roommate flipped a coin—heads,
we’d join the Navy—tails…the Marine Corps. Oy vey!
After 18 months of Okinawa I was transferred to Barstow, Calif. There,
the General’s secretary mentioned I might get an early-out simply
by filling in a few forms. Ninety days of not being a Marine sounded
like freedom to me; however, there was no desire to join anything,
let alone a college.
Perhaps it was an intuitive moment that compelled me to complete that
application? I’d just finished a Time article about the College
of San Mateo’s new telecommunications department, complete with
pictures, sooo...
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The
college was twenty minutes from my folk’s home, so I printed
College of San Mateo in the box.
After three years-nine months of service I returned from the Marines
to stay, for a short time, with my parents, who had given up their
lovely home along the Rio Grande and moved to a new place my father
built in Portola Valley near Stanford University in Palo Alto. |
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On
the day, the very day, I was Honorably Discharged my
unit was sent to Viet Nam.
I enrolled at CSM and was soon mispronouncing Dimitri
Shostakovich’s name on KCSM, the college classical
station. |
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After
graduating, my first gig was at KLGS, the only radio station in Los
Gatos, but on the cusp of San Jose where I would soon be creating
the free-form format that put KSJO on the map—the year, 1968.
With exception of a few thousand days in various hi-tech industries
(Varian, Activision, & Cisco) much of my time has been spent behind
microphones and in front of monitors producing commercials, programs
and other fabrications . I have literally worked in stations from
A to Z: KABC, Los Angeles—KZAP, Sacramento (several of us
put ZAP on the air—we [air-dudes] all lived together in an old
Victorian—it was nutz, and extremely fun).
After twenty-plus years in the biz, the last fifteen or so, in Production—I’m
back. I’ve reincarnated, as a Producer of radio programs.
My first project was to write and produce a one-hour audio documentary
entitled, Reefer Madness—The history
of marijuana’s prohibition in the United States.
It’s an incredible story that, if the ban hadn’t destroyed
so many lives, would be a Grand Opera or at the very least a comedy
of epic proportions. My Director, a former Big Band musician, singer
and voice-over man, Russ Holcomb thought it was dry and suggested
it be more like a radio drama; having penned one screenplay Postage
Due I understood the concept, but where would we get actors, and
how could they be paid?
Fortunately, Sonora (population 4,500) supports three exceptional
little theaters. Some local actors get SAG wages. This prompts thespians
in search of a mellow clime to visit us from as far away as Los Angeles—the
city of my birth.
This particular project was made possible because the Twain Harte
Community Players brought Reefer Madness to life—they
did it for the cause—bless them!
Also in the works are one hour music programs
featuring the art of the segue. The programs are broadcast from a
virtual-gold mine located in the side of the mountain on my property.
The shaft goes back a hundred feet and connects to a large cavern
complete with stalactites and stalagmites; you can hear water; drip,
drip, drip. |
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