Slim Benson

Tatum Smith: This is Tatum Smith and MJ Teaff. I am pleased to welcome Slim Benson, whom we are interviewing on the behalf of the St. Helena Historical Society’s Oral History Program. We are conducting this interview at 4:01 p.m. on April 3rd, 2026, at Slim’s house [539 Sunset Dr., Angwin]. Welcome Slim. Can you begin by telling us when and where you were born?

Slim Benson: [I was] born in Napa, at the Parks Victory Hospital in 1952 April 10th, and that’s right across, do you know where Buttercream Bakery is now? Right across the street, down just about a half a block. That was the old Park’s Victory hospital. I’m the only one in my family to be born down there. Everybody else was born up here. [Adventist Health Saint Helena]

TS: That’s cool.How would you describe your daily life in the town during your childhood?

SB: [It was] just simple town life. The town was so small, very rural, and [had] not nearly as many people as now.

TS: How did your family end up in the St. Helena area?

SB: My dad bought property from Mr. Merriam on Pratt Avenue. My mom was living on Edwards Street when they met. She was living with her sister and her husband, across from the Ogletrees, which is now Parriott Motors; [it] used to be Ogletree’s machine shop. My dad met her there; she was living in a trailer, and she had a couple of kids.

TS: What did you do in your free time here as a kid?

SB: How early? [laughs]

TS: Like, at any time.

SB: Well, that flood picture of us in that airplane tank [1964]– that’s a fuel tank out of an airplane [referring to photo 1]. We were floating around in the floodwaters on Pratt Avenue. When we were younger, say about eight years old and ten years old, we would go out in the vineyards and run around. We had free rein; we could go wherever we wanted; we’d go to town, but the hobos were a big thing back then. It’s different than homeless [people] today because hobos are just old guys that travel around and want to be left alone. But that was really interesting as a kid, because you’d go through the vineyards, we lived on Pratt Avenue, there by the Pratt Bridge. We’d go through the vineyard over to Brewery Creek, which is over by Krug. There’d be an encampment there, there’d be about ten, twelve guys, and they’re just old scruffy guys. If they saw you, they would yell at you and throw stuff at you, a rock or something; “get out of here, you bunch of kids”, you know? They just wanted to be left alone. But after they would move on, we’d go over there and go through their camp, and you’d find stuff. It was very interesting. You find little things. For a long time, I had a little pencil lead container that I picked up in one of their camps, but it was a lot of fun. And then we raised calves. [inaudible]. We had calves that we would raise. We had a cow– we milked a cow twice a day.

TS: Like this picture right here? [Referring to photo 2]

SB: Yeah, we buy the calves, and we raise them. Then we take them down to Napa and sell them at the auction house. This was way back; there was a cattle auction there in Napa.It’s kind of where Copia is now, I believe. There was an old cattle yard there.

TS: In this picture right here [referring to photo 3], what were you guys trying to do?

SB: There’s a pitch and putt place, they’d [have] go karts. I believe that was in Washington. It’s just like a place where we go miniature golfing and all that stuff. Well, back then, they didn’t have pinball machines; you had go karts, and you could swim, and that kind of stuff.

TS: Do you have any favorite or funny stories you’d be willing to share from growing up? SB:Yeah, I got some stuff that we used to do as kids. I’d ride downtown. We all had bikes, and at six or seven years old, we’d ride to town all the time. So back then it was different. You could do that. So, you [would] just ride around town, you [would] go down [to] see Mrs. Kirkpatrick at the Five and Dime, and buy baseball cards, because you [would] get bubble gum in there, and penny candy. Then, across the street, where Steve’s hardware is now, that was the Purity store. That was the main market in town. [inaudible]. It had wooden floors. So you’d go in there, and you’d buy your groceries there. Then Keller’s [was] down the street, where C29 is now, but Keller’s market. We’d go in there. We had an account there. An account back then for our family, [and] they had a little index box here on the cash register, and they opened it. There were 3×5 cards. So they [would] pull out a 3×5 card and whatever you bought, [and] they [would] just write the amount down on the 3×5 card and stick it back in there. Then you get a bill once a month. Instead of computers, that’s just fun stuff that you remember.

TS: When you were growing up in Saint Helena, there was a slaughterhouse in town. How did it influence your life here?

SB: Well, at school and biologically, I went to Foothills, of course, all eight grades, but we would go down to the slaughterhouse. When we were really young, raising the calves, we didn’t know yet where they were going, [or] where they were headed [laughs]. But we sold them in Napa, and I’m sure some of them ended up in the slaughterhouse. But in biology class, or science class, it wasn’t called biology, but in science class and grade school, they’d go down there to the slaughterhouse and get sheep heads, or hearts from animals. Then we’d have them there [at Foothills], and they’d bring them up, and then display them, and you could dissect them and cut them, and see what this is all about. We would do that. Well, [when] we were in grade school.

TS: Yeah, we do that now.

SB: Yeah. So, they still do it, it’s kind of interesting, a little bit on the macabre side, but, yeah.I remember Zak [Slim’s son], when he did it in school there, I think they had a heart [that] they were cutting apart. There was a blood clot in the heart, and he took it, and he said, I’ll give you five bucks to one of his classmates. “I will give you five bucks if you swallow it” [motioning to hand someone a blood clot]. He did. He took the blood clot and swallowed it.

TS: What values or lessons did your parents or community pass down to you?

SB: Hard work, because when I grew up, everything on Pratt Avenue was prunes and walnuts. So all the way up and down Pratt, it was all prunes and walnuts, so you would pick prunes, and you would pick walnuts, and your hands would get black when you did the walnuts. When you pick prunes as a kid, a field lug, which is a… a field lug, looks huge now compared to the little boxes you get fruit in now. But you got fifty cents for filling that field lug. It took forever. crawling around on your hands and knees, picking prunes up, and putting them in that box. But, you know, 50 cents. But, by the same token, you go down there to the station, I think it was across from the Purity store. Let’s see, what is it now? It’s A&M next to the mural at that little station. I think it was a [traffic] signal, but you could buy a Coke for ten cents. You know, you put the coin in, you slide it along, and pull it out [sliding motions]. There was a little bottle of Coke for ten cents.

TS: What are some of your strongest memories of raising a family here?

SB: Funny because we raised the boys on the same street that I was raised on. [So] a little bit different. We did have a lot of gardens there, and they [his sons] would sell cantaloupes, for, I think, $0.75 or something. They grew 495 cantaloupes, Zak and Ramsey, my boys, [in] one year, and [they] sold those. But it’s just about responsibility, learning, working, selling stuff, learning how to make money, and that kind of thing.

TS: Do you have any siblings?

SB: I do. I have older half-siblings. My mom had three kids. She had Shirley; Shirley passed away before Janet was born, and then Janet and Darryl. They’re my older half-siblings. Then, my mom married my dad, I’m the first, and then she had three boys.

TS: It’s a big family. What was the dynamic between you guys growing up?

SB: Darryl is seven years older than I am. So, he was in charge, kind of. But it ended up [that] I towered over him. So, but he was just old enough to… when I was feeling rambunctious and started beating the crap out of him, he could use his old age and trickery to get me down, but he’s the one who was involved in me cutting off my finger in the lawnmower. Cutting the end of my finger off [shows finger]. It was an electric lawn mower. My dad was a mechanical genius, and he built this lawnmower with an electric motor on it. But if you let the grass get too long, it would plug up. So you’d have to flip it over and clean the grass out. Well, I was two years old, and I was over there monkeying, and he plugged the stupid thing in, and it [motion of exploding] got the end of my finger off. So, my mom didn’t have a car. She’s home there. She calls down to Dr. Wood. That’s a name that, you know, old-time Dr. Wood. He sent one of his patients [who was] in the office, drove out to pick up my mom, who was nine months pregnant with my little brother. [He] picked me up and took me down there, and he [Dr. Wood] sewed the end of my finger back on.

TS: How did you and your wife meet?

SB: Grade school.

TS: So you’ve been together for…

SB: Fifty-four years.

TS: That’s crazy.I kind of already asked a similar question, but compared to you growing up in the schooling here, how is it different raising your kids in the school system?

SB: Well, it’s private schools, so it was, you know, Foothills. I went there all grades, and then I went to PUC Prep. There are a couple [of] girls in that photograph that I went through the first twelve grades with [referring to photo 4].

TS: This one?

SB: Yeah.So, Roberta Carli.

TS: Mm hmm.

SB: She’s one of… she’s cousins with [the] Varozzas. The Varozzas are her aunt and uncle, but there was me, Kathy, [and] Roberta Carli. Where is she? Right there, Deronna Meade. We all went through the first twelve years of school together.

TS: I feel like that’s one of the pros of growing up in a small town.

SB: Yeah, and you know people. Like in town, you go down there, Mrs. Kirkpatrick, and you know the people in the store, and it’s kind of cool. You have a personal relationship with all those people. So, now I go down in the morning to the coffee shop, Sam’s [General Store] every morning. I’m developing more relationships with people in town that I’ve known for a long time, you know, the Wignoles, the Galushus, the Bullers, and the tons of Italians. There are so many Italians, there’s Italians, the Varozzas, the… The whole town, when I was growing up, was Italian.

TS: What do you remember most about your grade school years?

SB: Being bigger than all the rest of the kids [laughs]. Yeah, just having fun, riding a bike to school, right, a bike to school, a lot. My aunt used to drive a school bus, and I can remember a lot of times, on Pratt, she lived next door to us, and she would be driving the school bus, and she would come in the yard with us, the school bus, and there was a circle that she’d drive around, and then she’d stop. All the kids would get out of the school bus, and she’d drag a hose in there, and hose out the school bus, because some of the kids got sick, and she’d stop. The kids would all get out, and she’d get in there with a hose and hose it out. It’s hilarious. I rode my bike. I didn’t want to ride on the bus. No way.

TS: What schools did you go to after grade school?

SB: Napa JC [ Napa Valley Junior College]. It had not been going [on for] that long. This was in [19]71. So they didn’t have a gymnasium, or a ball field, or anything yet. So my first class of the day was at the 300 Club in Bel Air Plaza. Bowling. Is that cool or what? So you go, and you bowl a game in the morning, first class of the day, and then you’d go on down, drive on down to the school. [I] took welding and history, and early literature from an Irish Catholic guy in a tweed suit. It was fantastic. It was absolutely amazing. Mr. O’Shea. That’s one of my favorite classes. This real proper Irish. It was hilarious. Yeah, [and] astronomy. I had to drop U.S. history because the guy was a klutz. [laughter] But, yeah, it was a lot of fun.

TS: Oh, tell us about your business, Benson Company. How was it founded?

SB: I started in about 1980, and I got my contractor’s license. Of course, you always think you can do stuff better than anybody else, but I don’t like being told what to do, so that means you gotta do it yourself. But I’m kind of an entrepreneur. Growing up, having to raise those calves, pick prunes, and it kind of made you realize the value of money, and what hard work and effort can do. If you use your noggin a little bit, you can figure this stuff out. Otherwise, you’re just at the whim of somebody else, and that’s not me. So, those lessons of milking the cow, having a structure, and having to do those chores, picking the prunes, [and] raising the calves. I would go to school in the morning. We would mix [it [Calva-lac]] up for those calves. We would mix up what they called Calva-lac, which was powdered milk. So you’d buy it down at the feed store, which was Napa Milling then. It’s just big bags of powdered milk, but it has a particular odor to it. You’d have to mix up powdered milk with warm water, and pour it in the bucket with a big nipple on, and then you take it out to the calves, and the calves would see you coming, and they were all ready. They would grab that nipple, and when a calf nurses, it does that to the mother [hand hitting other hand motion]. You know, the udder, it’ll do that. That means, come on, release your milk. Relax, release it. I want milk [hand hitting other hand motion continually]. Well, that would do the same thing to the bucket. You know, so it rammed the bucket like that. Well, it’d slop all over you, and your tennis shoes, [and] you’d already be dressed for school. So, you [would] go to school reeking of Calva-lac [laughs]. It’s so strange because years and years later, I walked into a store down in Napa, and all of a sudden, I was overwhelmed with this odor, and I see bags of Calva-lac stacked there. I couldn’t believe it. But when you milk the cow, you throw a flake of alfalfa in her manger, then you [would] put a cup of grain, which was corn, oats, that kind of thing, and then they mix it with molasses. Well, molasses, the cows love that. So you just sprinkle that on the alfalfa because animals will just eat the leaves [and] won’t eat the stems, they just eat the good part, you know? But if there was enough grain in there, they would just eat it all. But as kids, [we] learned to milk the cow, and the cats were there, and it’s quick milk with the cats. Once in a while, the cow would get an itch or something, raise up and put its foot in the milk bucket, and then that was… And my older brother, Darryl, taught me how to… We had a five gallon [inaudible] steel bucket. So you’d fill the bucket, you would milk, and coming back to the house, you would take the bucket. You could get it swinging like this [motion of swinging back and forth], and then go around the world, you know [swinging in a 360 motion]? And he could do it. So I thought, you know, Well, shoot, I’m as big as you are, but I’m not as skilled yet [laughs]. So I get it, and when I came back around, it hit my leg and upset the bucket. My dad was really upset. Because that was a main… that was a lot of our food. I mean, it was milk and cream, homemade bread, beans, and Nevada honey. My dad would buy star thistle honey from Nevada, big square, five-gallon tins. My mom would make homemade bread, and you’d tear that up in a bowl. You pour cream on it, and then put that Nevada honey on there. That’s how we were raised on fresh cow’s milk. So… then we made homemade ice cream in the old crank, you know, we’d go down to the town, where you’d put a quarter in the union, ice thing, and you’d hear all this clunking in there, and a big block of ice would come shooting out. You’d put it in a gunny sack or burlap bag, and you’d take it home, and then you’d break it up with ice. We used hammers. I don’t know, a lot of people use ice picks, but we use hammers. We beat the living crap out of it. Then you put it in the ice cream, and, I mean, around the tune, and that was, that was big. That was lovely, and we always had chickens. I used to have to help my dad with the chickens, you know, I grabbed the feet. I’d go and catch the chicken, grab the feet, and he would grab the beak and… off with its head [hitting motion], and then you’d scald it. Then you’d have to pick the… You’d have to pull all the feathers off the thing. After you scald, it makes them easier to come out. But if you’ve ever done that, I know you haven’t [all laugh]. Lucky. But the feathers, they’re wet, and they stick to you, and they stink. So it’s just part of growing up, then everybody gets to the table, and you say the blessing, during the blessing, we’re like this [reaching motion], you know, we’re reaching out, because we’re all kids, you always want the drumstick. Everybody was trying to get the drumstick. I liked the gizzard, and that was my favorite part. Interesting, huh?

TS: So, how did you get into the industry of general engineering?

SB: In school, I went back to the East Coast, like, growing up with my dad, it was all tractors, and we’d make stuff run. He would say, if it’s got spark, if it’s got compression, and it’s got fuel, it’s got to run. So, as kids, he was always making stuff, and so he would teach us to work on this stuff. So, we were always building go karts and all kinds of stuff, making a run, you know? And then he rebuilt cars, you know, wrecked cars, you know? He would fix them. I know there are some photos in there somewhere of cars that…

TS: Like that car?

SB: No. That is… This here, my dad, was a GI. He was in the artillery in World War II.

TS: Mm hmm.

SB: He came back, and as a GI, if you worked on a piece of property for seven years, you got the deed to it. So, he went up to Washington, and they gave him 160 acres. If he worked it for seven years, that’s what he was living in.

TS: Yeah, it’s pretty… It’s pretty bare.

SB: So it was called a tar paper shack. He was living on milk and cookies, and he got sick. But anyway.

TS: So, what has it been like running a company in such a small area?

SB: It’s been great. Yeah, you start small, and six employees is the most I’ve had, but it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed it immensely. It got complicated enough eventually where Suzanne had to be here and run that part of it, but it starts out easy and simple. You just go to work every day, and most things are that way. All my brother’s [and] cousins are all doctors and lawyers, so I started this thing, and I knew I couldn’t fail. You cannot fail. You must make it. You have to be just as important as they are, so. That’s a big driving force. So I’m really happy. I bought everything, paid everything, everything’s cool. But yeah, a lot of fun.

TS: Has there been any big change to the industry while you’ve been running the company?

SB: Yeah, I learned on cables, levers, and cables, and now it’s all joysticks and [laughs] you can take kids now, you can put them on a piece of… and they feel right at home. Running the equipment is not as physically demanding as it was back in my day. They just have to learn what to do with it. That’s the tricky part.

TS: Do you have a project that you’re most proud of?

SB: I got a lot of them [tapping motions].

TS: You don’t have one you’re most proud of that you could talk about? Like one that’s more…

SB: One that you would know about?

TS: No, just any of them.

SB: Washington Square down there in Yountville. I did all that.

TS: That’s pretty cool.

SB: I mean, where R&D kitchen [and] the service station. I put all those [gas] tanks in there by that service station. I demoed the old station; I demoed all the buildings there. I put in all the foundations, [I] did all the street tie-ins, [I] did all that stuff. That was back in [19]86, about.

TS: That’s pretty cool.

SB: Then I’ve done paving at the Humboldt nuclear power plant. Yeah, some cool stuff.

TS: What made the people of St. Helena unique compared to other places?

SB: Well, it’s just the heritage that excites me the most, the Italians that came here, and the work ethic that they had, and the farming community. There’s something about farming that is just, it connects you to the land and the community. So, I think that’s really cool. Because one of the places I grew up on Pratt Avenue was a Varozza Ranch. So, that was cool. [ tapping motions]

TS: How would you say that your neighbors supported one another when you were younger?

SB: [tapping motions] Maybe a little bit more, gatherings. For instance, at the base of Conn Dam that was a big family thing. You’d go down there, and they had a pool, the estuary there at the base of the dam, where you’d swim. There were picnic tables there, and you’d have watermelon and homemade ice cream; there were more gatherings like that.Now today, I don’t see as much of that. It’s more cell phones and… That’s why I go to the coffee shop [Sam’s General Store] in the morning. I just enjoy talking to… I enjoy this [motioning to interviewers]. I don’t enjoy talking on the phone. I enjoy people. So this is important to me. That’s one of the reasons I agreed to do it, because I think that people [need to] communicate, it’s easy to do when the cell phone is handy, and I’m not knocking it. I am not saying it’s bad. But there’s something about human contact with your neighbors and the people of your town, and like this, that is so important, that [it] gets lost in the everyday. Because you guys are important to looking forward, but it’s just, [interviewers smile] see there’s those reactions you get right there, you don’t get that on a cell phone or a text or a phone. It’s just precious to me. So, when I grew up, there was a phone with a party line. So you pick up the phone, it’s like, “Hello”, [and] there are people talking on the phone. “Hey, I need to”. [laughs] It’s crazy, and some people would just sit there and listen to all the gossip, and it was… people are people, but… Yeah.

TS: Angwin is a very Seventh-day Adventist community. Growing up, were you involved in the church?

SB: Somewhat, yeah. Yeah, I was. There’s a baptismal class. I think that one photograph was a baptismal class. [photo 4]

TS: One of all your…

SB: Yeah. That one, I think, is a baptismal class.

TS: That’s cool. Oh, yeah, it says it on the back. [Referring to photo 4]

SB: There you go.

TS: Do you stay involved in the church now?

SB: I’m a member of the PUC Church… Yeah.

TS: What do you think St. Helena gave you that you might not have gone elsewhere? I mean, it’s kind of similar to our other questions, but…

SB: I don’t know, it’s home to me, I’ve lived here my whole life, so to me, it’s just the changes that [have] happened, and there’s a lot of change, it was bound to change.I don’t know all of [if] it [is] for the better, but it’s just the small community that I like. I couldn’t be in the city. I don’t, that’s just too…I probably could have back when… because I used to go to the city with my dad all the time. He was completely at home down there. He didn’t; it didn’t bother him at all. But he was more, you know. Eighteen years old, he was around the whole world, in the war, and he was in the invasion of parts of Japan. So, I mean, he was around the whole world, so it was nothing to him. He would just go to his house; it didn’t bother him a bit, to me it was a little bit frightening as a kid. He’d take us when we’re just little guys, little towheads, you know?

TS: Mhm

SB: Hey, we’d go down there. Yeah, it’s crazy. You know, anyway.

TS: Are there any traditions, events, or places that brought the St. Helena community together?

SB: Well, I like one of the biggest things that I really think that you’re doing today is the Music in the Park. I love that. I go to that. We go to both Calistoga and St. Helena. I like the siren when it goes off. I know a lot of people don’t, but I do, because it reminds me of when I was a kid and a siren going off, because that was a big deal.I also remember the church bells in St. Helena, because they would ring at the Catholic Church; they would ring their church bells. Whether it was actually ringing the bells or recordings, I don’t know. But you can remember being in town and hearing the bells, the bells ring, and I always enjoyed that. Going to… the courthouse [which] used to be on Adams Street, and going into court when you’re sixteen years old for a driving infraction, and seeing Judge Schifflets up there, and… You know, and actually turning out [to be] the only case of the day that was thrown out. They threw it out because… Anyway, it’s just. Oh, and getting… When I was a kid, we did polio? Vaccination? Yeah. You got it? They’d put sugar cubes [tapping motions]. They’d take an eye dropper, and they dropped the medicine on the sugar cube, [swiping motions], and then you’d take the sugar cube. That was a big deal back then, because it was that or an injection. But they were doing that with a sugar cube. It was this pink stuff they put on there, and you popped that.It was kind of cool.

TS: So would you say you and others, like, prominent figures in the community were pretty close? As you mentioned, the judge and Dr. Woods, you said.

SB: Yeah, well, I don’t know that I was close with a judge [laughter]. Dr. Wood, though, is an icon, an absolute icon. My dad drove a taxi in St. Helena back in the… before he went in. He was sixteen years old, driving a taxi in St. Helena, and he would take Dr. Woods up to Stony. Stony house up across Pope Street, up there to check the girls and stuff like that.

TS: Yeah, there was a bowling alley in St. Helena. Did you go often?

SB: That was a little bit, but that was down by Tripoli market. That was another market in town, the Italian, the Tripoli market. A lot of sausages and meats in there. But it came, it went, it wasn’t that big of a deal. A bigger deal was probably A&W when they had girls with roller skates, and they’d come out, and you would roll up your window about that far [gestures two feet with his hands], and they’d hook the burgers and stuff on your window. I can remember that it was kind of cool. It was like American Graffiti. That was cool. I can remember doing [that] when I was young. My older brother, Darryl, [I got his] Oldsmobile 88 and got it up to 105 miles an hour on Pratt Avenue.

TS: That’s crazy. What changes in town have been most difficult or surprising for you to see?

SB: Well, I like the fact that the train is back. Because to me, that was a part of my growing up, and the train meant commerce, it meant things are happening, things are moving, and the hobos would come. They didn’t bother. It’s totally different than homeless people. It’s totally different. There are two different things, but seeing those guys and how they travel around, right, they train around here, and they’re just scouting around. Life’s a big cabaret for them. I mean, they don’t… They were very industrious; [they] just wanted to do what they wanted to do and be left alone. But the train was a lot of wine and lumber. The lumber yard in town was where Safeway is now. So the train would come up there, and all of the sheet rock and the lumber would be offloaded right there in that area, and that was the St. Helena lumber company. So, that’s just interesting stuff, that you don’t… It all seems so different now. A lot of the stuff, when you start talking about it, it comes back to you, but going into a grocery store, like [the] Purity [store], and walking on wood floors that were all kind of worn out, and that, you couldn’t even do that today. You know, because for health reasons or safety reasons or whatever. Everybody, most of the population smoked back then; that was another thing. I was able to do just fine as a kid, a couple of things we would do, end up [on] Pratt Avenue, and down we’d go down the trail track sometimes in town. But, how did I get money to buy those baseball cards, slingshots, bean shooters, and stuff, and Cokes? Aha. So, we would go up and down, we’d pick up bottles. That was… everybody threw stuff out of the car back then. It was just [that] people would drink, [and] throw stuff out. So we go, [and] we [would] pick up these bottles. I don’t know if you guys remember, but back in the day, when I was a kid, they switched from bottles to cans. But the cans, when you pulled the pull top of the can, it didn’t pop and stay on the can; it came off. You pulled the pull tab off, and then you just threw it. So there are those pop can tops and cigarette butts everywhere. But I would pick up bottles and take them down to Purity, where Steve’s Hardware is now; that was a story.It later moved down to where Sunshine is once they built that. But, I would get those, and that’s how I got money to get the slingshots, to get the baseball cards, bean shooters, penny candy, all that stuff, and the Cokes. Then I put a basket on my bike, because you could get a lot of bottles, it got to be kind of a business thing. Then I started getting weird, started getting…There are cans up and down the road, too. Beer cans. So you’d go in, you’d start picking these things up, you know? You [would] get a big pile of them on one side of the road, and you [would] get a pile on the other side, then you [would] get all this fishing line. You thread them through there, and then you run across the road to the fishing line, you tie it all up with these other beer cans, and you’d wait, you’d lift the thing up, and a car would come by and catch the fishing line. [They would] all go down the road, dragging all these beer cans.It was hilarious, stuff like that.

TS: Did you play any sports growing up?

SB: [tapping sounds] Not really. No, too busy with engines, and see, that’s one thing my boys had, they played all the sports. I was a grease monkey, like, the cars and motors and engines, and that’s probably why I do what I do, the engineering part of it, but, yeah.

TS: So, were you involved in your son’s sports life? Were you really involved with watching?

SB: Oh, yeah. More pictures here. [shuffling to find pictures] Where were, where are they?

TS: Oh, I see this fishing. Did you fish? [referring to photo 5]

SB: Oh, yeah.

TS: Where was your favorite place to fish?

SB: Eagle Lake.

Melissa Teaff: [I’ve] got to write that down.

SB: There are both things in here somewhere. I just saw them. Oh, right here [referring to a photo 6] Yeah, I coached Little League for a couple [of] years. Both the boys were All-Stars. Just going to school. These are my brothers. [referring to photo 7] [hitting the table] Yeah. Then I get into go-kart racing, Four Wheel Drive, and motorcycle racing. I don’t know. All kinds of stuff, fishing.

TS: You mentioned a lot about the Italians. Were you big into Italian food growing up, too, since…

SB: Love Italian food. Spaghetti? Cannoli. Yeah, it’s all good. Yeah. Hey, just, I don’t know, you can’t be here in St. Helena now. Even now, there’s just so many Italian names, you know, Varozzas, Bertolis. You just keep going. You can go for hours. Morisoli. McKelley. When we were kids, we used to be frightened all the time by Officer Harry Malani, and he would only ride around, just kind of a portly Italian guide. He was always yelling at us kids. We were always playing down in the river or something like that, and he was… We were all scared of him.

TS: How do you think Main Street has changed throughout your years?

SB: Main Street?

TS: Yeah.

SB: The trolley tracks are still under there. There used to be a trolley in Saint Helena. [The] electric trolley, and the tracks, I think, are still under there. So every once in a while, they do work in St. Helena, and they’ll hit one of those steel rails under there, and be surprised; it’s no surprise to me. See, working on wrecked cars, my dad would fix all that stuff [referring to photo 8]. There are other pictures somewhere [referring to photo 9].Well, that’s just one of my brand new trucks I bought for a good business.

TS: And what ways do you feel you often contributed to St. Helena or its people?

SB: Not getting arrested [laughs].Providing is just another vendor out there. Providing services for people or contractors as a contractor. Yeah, I’ve done tons of work down there at Beringer. We grew up, like I say, on Pratt Avenue there, so we would live there, in my grandmother’s house, for eleven years, and at night, you’d hear them dumping the glass bottles into the bins and stuff like that. Then ended up doing tons of work there on that facility with Hank Hathaway and Lloyd Ramsey, and all those guys, you know? But fantastic.

TS: Is this, like, one of the pictures you were talking about with the car? [Referring to photo 10] SB:Yeah, that’s the one I was looking for. Well, my dad would completely fix that. It would be new again. So I learned that when I was ten years old. That one with a falcon in it, the one you just had.

TS: This one? [referring to photo 10]

SB: That one. So, you see how old I am there? I’m on the left.

TS: Mm hmm.

SB: All right? I’m about ten there. Maybe, yeah. So I could oxyacetylene weld when I was ten. He would show me, and so my dad would do the critical parts of the car because he would cut two cars in two and then weld them together.

TS: Wow.

SB: To make a car. He would let me do all the floor pans, the non-critical area; he would do the critical areas. But I learned to oxyacetylene weld. Then, the camp being really mechanical, he would teach me all this stuff, like he would reach over to the dash. He would say, I want you to take the dash out. You sit there, you’re ten years old, and “Take the dash out of a car?” So he did say, “Well, it’s self-explanatory”. You know, there’s a screw there. You take the screw out, and then you reach over, and he’d take one of the knobs off, and hand me the knob. “Here, see that?” [gesturing with his hands], and he’d stick it back on. You go to take it off, [but] you couldn’t get it off. You went well, what in the God? Then he handed [it] to you again, and he put it back on. Well, in life, there are always tricks to doing something that seems so complicated and impossible, but it’s really not. You just have to know the key to making it happen.All you do is pull the knob out a little bit and reach around behind and depress the spring clip, and then it slides right off. It’s just stuff like that you learn over and over the years, and it makes it really interesting. So I don’t know, it’s kind of cool. I used to fish with Suzanne’s [his wife] grandfather, Daddy Frank. I think that’s Eagle Lake, though [referring to photo 5]. But, yeah.

TS: Cool. What are you most proud of when you look back on your life here?

SB: Yeah [laughs], that hadn’t killed anybody, but I’m the most proud of my boys. and my grandson, my grandkids. The grandkids there [referring to a photo of his grandkids on his wall]. Look, I tell you what, man, they’re just awesome; they are smart. Their parents are really cool, and those kids, someday the truck just goes that way [gesturing turning a wheel right with his hands], and I go up there [referring to his grandkid’s house]. It’s wonderful. Rylan [his grandson] has been down here; he worked for me last week. He’s fifteen years old. He just got his [permit]… he came down [here]. His mom, Tricia, tried to get him an appointment up there in Auburn; they live in Auburn. [She tried] to get an appointment to take his driver’s test.But they were filled up. Guess what popped up? There was one available in Napa last Thursday, at three o’clock. There was an opening; she grabbed it. So Rylan was here working for me that week, so Suzanne took him down [to Napa]. He passed his [test]. [He] got his learner’s permit. Then he drove with me back and forth. I managed Las Posadas or Rancho La Jota. So he would drive back and forth, and teaching him to drive. Oh, he did this [referring to the timeline book [photo 11].

TS: Oh, he made it?

SB: That was his biology project for school. If you want to look at that, I mean, you can look at it, but that was his… I just did this with him, and he wrote that, and then he put this together. TS:Wow.

SB: You can look at it if you want to.

TS: How did you [get] engaged to your wife? It [photo 11] says you got engaged in 1971.

SB: She was nineteen, and I just turned twenty. I couldn’t sign to get my driver’s license, so my mother-in-law had to sign so I could get a driver’s license in South Carolina.

TS: When did you go to South Carolina?

SB: [19]71.

TS: What made you come back?

SB: Homesick. I couldn’t deal with the humidity. Oh, you have no idea. It’s brutal. You just damp all the time.There [were] good times back there, don’t get me wrong, but, yeah.

TS: You mentioned how…

SB: There is absolutely no place like the weather here in California. When you walk outside right now, it’s just heaven. You go back there, [referring to South Carolina], you just like you open the door, you hit a wall or air conditioning. I hate air conditioning.

TS: You mentioned how your dad was in World War II. Did he have any cool things that he mentioned to you or battles that really impacted him?

SB: Oh yeah. Yeah, lots of them.

TS: Would you give us an example?

SB: Oh, they were operating a 105 Howitzer, which is a gun; he was in Sebu City and Bougainville. The Japanese bombers would come over at night and bomb them. Until the P38 shot down General Yamamoto. This is all just history stuff… But, at night, the Japanese would try to infiltrate their camps, and there was this creek there, ducks and chickens on the creek, you know? At night, you’d see this thing moving along, this white thing, moving along, you didn’t think much of it. So many accidents had happened by friendly fire, guys getting shot at night, guys getting spooky and shooting, and hitting our own guys. Everybody had to keep their weapon without a round in the chamber. But he’d been watching this at night, kind of seeing this white thing kind of going along. All of a sudden, he heard that the bolt go back on a .50 caliber machine gun and opened up [makes shooting noises]. In the morning, they go out there and Japanese with demolition packs with white helmets to imitate the ducks. He had a watch for a long time off of one of them, and then when he went into Yokohama, he got a Samurai sword, which I have here in the safe, which goes to Rylan, because he’s collecting swords. He goes to Comic Con. Do you know what Comic Con is?

TS: I do know what that is

BS: Anyway, he and his girlfriend, fifteen years old, he has a girlfriend [laughs]. They were big into Comic Con. So he gets this sword that my dad left me, [it] goes to my oldest son, Zak, and then he’s instructed to give it to Rylan.

TS: You said how one of the things you were most proud of when you look back on your life was your sons and your grandsons. How do you think they differ from you?

SB: Well, we’re all different.For instance, my siblings were not anything alike. We are totally different. Of course, it’s a split family kind of [thing], but my older siblings are different. I’m really different from my own brothers; we are just widely different. Just different, so different interests than whatever. So as far as being really close, we’re not like those guys. Those guys are gonna be, they are so tight, my grandkids are tight. The little one worships the older one, and they are a group, man, they’re fierce. It’s pretty cool. I didn’t grow up that way, but they did. Which is really cool. Both my sons and my grandkids are a lot smarter and healthier than I am. Yeah, so I’m pretty proud. TS:What do you hope people remember about the older life in Saint Helena?

SB: They what?

TS: Like the older life, like how it used to be.

SB: [tapping sounds] Well. Nostalgia is fine, you know. [MT motions to TS, five minutes are left] [Are] you in a hurry to go?

TS: No, it [the timer] was saying we have five minutes left because we have to cut it off at one hour.

SB: Oh. I think that what you guys are doing right now is important, and that you guys will probably remember this part of your life and cherish it, because it moves fast, let me tell you. It moves fast. Once you have kids, if you have kids, it goes really fast, because then you’re focused on them. It’s just a blur. Then if you’re running your own business and you’ve got kids. It really goes fast. Then you have grandkids, and you don’t want to miss a moment. But we’re two and a half hours away [from his grandkids]. So they just spend a week here. Then we go up there. We will go up there for the day and come back. It makes a long day, but it is so important right now. So, for the times in St. Helena that you have, and I don’t know what you guys do [laughs], but it’s probably way different than what I [did]. Its social media is… I don’t know, it ruined… I think, if you keep a handle on it, it’ll be okay.But Pandora’s box has been opened, that ain’t going back in, so it’s out. You guys are gonna have to learn to deal with it. I hope you guys… limit it and have more of this [motions to interviewers]. So it’s special to me when you come talk to me at the table and form relationships in the coffee shop. That is so important. I like texting because I don’t like talking on the phone, [laughter], so if you want to get in touch with me, you text me, that works, because I can look at it at my leisure.When we had pagers, that was terrible, because people are paging me when you’re running a business; they’re paging you all the time. I would get so upset. I’d take my pager, and I’d throw it [laughter]. Then I’d have to get the guy, “Hey, go find my pager.” [laughter]. Twice that happened, and they’re out there looking in the weeds, and they find it and come back, so…

TS: I feel like that kind of connects to our last question, but what advice would you give to future generations growing up here?

SB: Be happy, enjoy life. Man, look at [it], have fun. I don’t know. Don’t be a pain in the ass. Don’t do anything. [laughter] Oh, did I say that?

TS: No, it’s okay. [laughter]

SB: Yeah, don’t be a jerk. Don’t do anything stupid. There are a lot of things that people do, and I’m thinking, why do you want to do that? I don’t know. I grew up in a non-drinking family, so we didn’t drink, [and] we didn’t smoke. It’s saved so many heartaches in my opinion. But I worked with everybody. When I started working, the first four to five years, everybody smoked, everybody that I worked with. But I think everybody knows now, it’s not good for you.You told me one thing. [laughs] I remember it. Oh, yeah, you like keeping score at the football game, but those guys, they stink. [laughter] So, but that’s part of it. I mean, you know, you can’t sweat and work hard like that and not know you’re the one picture coming home from work.Where is it? [shuffling to find pictures] This is what happens to you when you work [referring to photo 12]. Where’s the mud face? Well, we have it over here. Oh, here it is [table noise]. That’s work [laughter].

TS: That’s crazy, so funny. Okay, well, we really thank you for this interview. We really appreciate you doing this.

SB: And you can stay and just look at stuff. If you have any more questions, you can ask me, but yeah, it’s fun.

TS: This is, yeah, that was good. All right, well, thank you.

MT: Thank you.

SB: I think I got Zak when he was born. [Referring to photo 13] This was a midlife crisis [referring to photo 14]. I’m not sure what that was about. I really don’t like people with cameras. They all catch you at the worst moment. [laughter]

MT: Well, we have to take your picture today when we leave, so…

SB: My mom and dad [referring to photo 15]. But, you know, you can’t, I’m just bumping along here, you know, but you can’t cram a whole… into an hour interview.

TS: Yeah.

MT: Yeah.

SB: You know what I mean? Because there’s so much about things that, you know, you could spend a week here. Yeah. And keep talking. And some stuff you would repeat, but then you would remember something else. Yeah. And so I hope some of this stuff helps.

TS: Yes, it does. Thank you. We appreciate it. [photo 1] [photo 2] [photo 3] [photo 4] [photo 5] [photo 6] [photo 7] [photo 8] [photo 9] [photo 10] [photo 11] [photo 12] [photo 13]​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ [photo 14] [photo 15]