I recall being recruited to play in a band up in Fresno while living in Newport Beach (or was it Costa Mesa? I've lived in both.) I asked the singer if it was more like southern or northern California. He said northern, which is true to some extent. Fresno was a funky place in the way I would say Seattle is a funky place, in a good way. I've lived in Seattle, too. Great place!
I was renting a place two blocks from the gig, rooming with a fellow band member. It featured a railroad triage yard about 1 block away. I recall the rent was $80 a month. This was a while back :) I discovered that even the noise of crashing freight cars in the middle of the night is a sound you get used to and can sleep though. I also met a friend I still love dearly who lived next door. He cooked dinner for the two of us 5 nights a week for $1 each. These were good times.
One night in Ara's Apartments, the bar I played in 6 nights a week, someone was buying us round after round of tequila shots. I was pretty hammered and John had snagged a woman to spend the night with, so as I left, Brady, the rent a cop at the door said "Careful, there's a lot of new boys on the force out there". I do not condone drunk driving, so I too found myself a friend named Eileen and headed home.
When blonde Eileen and I walked in the door, it was obvious that anything of value had been stolen. Tape recorded, studio equipment, an old amp, stuff like that. There was also something written in lipstick on the mirror: "SMACK, i.e., the Kiss!". We probably waiting until the next day to call the police and they made much of the mirror writing, but we later found out it was John's ex-girlfriend Kay, who had left town. It was in fact, unrelated to the theft.
A few days later, I ran into a different, brunette Eileen I had known for a while in Ara's. As we left that night, she told me she had a motel room nearby and since she didn't want to disturb her roomate, why didn't we go over there? Well, sure, so we did. And as I opened the door, here was all my stolen equipment! The room was rented by a local thug, Eileen obviously didn't know anything about the theft or she would not have brought me over there. I chose not to pursue the thing because of the Fresno society of which I was a fringe member. You see, the "thug" and a large number of other shady people used to use Ara's as a place to go make drug deals. The owners and the cops had to be in on the whole thing.
Several months later, I brought an old girlfriend up there to live with me. Later still, I left and she stayed and got even more entrenched in the "scene" with hookers, drugs and who knows what else. She worked as a bartender at Ara's. One night, she saw two guys walk in, go right to the poolroom and blow away the owner of the place. Scratch that. Here's the eyewitness account from Mark's book:
It was 6:30 p.m., and the bar was empty when two men walked in. They looked to be from out of town, something in their fringed leather jackets and gloves. They ordered two draft beers and headed to the back room to play pool. Just across the way was my father's office, the door open. He was sitting at his desk working on the quarterly taxes. They played a game of eight ball and walked out.
Ten minutes passed and the two men walked back in. The place was still empty. Lewis asked if they wanted another beer. One of the men gave her an odd look, and the other headed straight back to the office and began shooting. My father fought back with everything he had. It took both gunmen to bring him down.
She was the only witness to the event and she was either smart enough to duck behind the bar and disappear, or maybe she knew somehow she was not in danger. The crime was never solved.
Ara's son Mark, who we saw as a little boy once in a while, became a reporter at the L.A. Times and wrote a book about the whole Fresno context of the time, called In My Father's Name
