17 minute read
AROUND TOWN
Birds Walk, Runners Fly, Hiller Sets the Pace
The a couple of days after the talented parrots of "Happy Birds" entertained kids at the Hiller Aviation Museum on August 11, a crowd of some 700 runners gathered for a 5k, 4k and 2k run, using the San Carlos Airport runway as part of the course. "Airports of any size are part of a nation wide network of transportation," says Hiller CEO Jeffrey Bass. "They can't open and close at will." So, taking just two hours on a early Sunday morning takes weeks of obtaining premissions, including the FAA. This, the fourth annual run, went off without a hitch.
Advertisement
Summer Music Makes a Return
It felt like summer again as the crowds of music lovers gathered at Couthouse Square and on the lawn of Stafford Park to dine, listen and dance to the tunes of Mustache Harbor and Sinister Dexter.
Sequoia Graduates Gather for Alumni Picnic
Alumni from multiple Sequoia High School classes returned to campus Aug. 21 for the Alumni Association’s 14th annual barbecue lunch and campus tour. In addition to enjoying a lunch catered by Bianchini’s, the grads got to see the Sequoia cheerleaders perform their spirited routines. On its 50th anniversary, the class of 1971 was also honored as “golden grads.”
Top: The Class of 1961.
Right: The oldest graduate, Andy Browne '46, with the youngest student, Alana Moyer '24
An Oscar-Nominated Director Appears at Movies on the Square
The crowd got to experience a bit of film festival ambiance in downtown Redwood City Aug. 19 during the weekly Movies on the Square night. Tony Gapastione, a film director and the founder of the local arts nonprofit Bravemaker, introduced the audience to Doug Roland, director of “Feeling Through.” The 18-minute short film about a blind and deaf man was an Oscar nominee last year for best live action short film. Roland said he had the honor not only of being nominated but also to be accompanied to the ceremony by deaf/ blind actor Robert Tarango and the CEO of Helen Keller Services. Roland, 37, said the film is sparking conversations about the deaf/blind community, as well as encouraging inclusive story-telling. Oscar winner and deaf actress Marlee Matlin was the executive producer.
Right: Director Doug Roland
With This Many Clocks, Collector Gail Waldo’s Not Counting
By Janet McGovern
The Covid lockdowns forced Gail Waldo, like millions of other Americans, into a prolonged time-out from doing her usual work and having friends over to visit. But the Belmont resident may be unique in her ability to count those lost hours.
Waldo collects clocks, so many, in fact that she can’t begin to put a number on her timepieces. Eight hundred perhaps? Easily, she responds.
They’re everywhere in her residence: On all the walls, in display cabinets, on desks, and in the bathrooms. When she left off keeping a census in 2012, Waldo had listed 60 clocks on one wall, 206 on another, 17 in the bathrooms, and three on a coffee table. Plus 40 in the kitchen out of which, pre-Covid, she operated a thriving business making old-fashioned cutplug licorice. The kitchen clock count has grown to 54.
“I used to count clocks,” she says, “but I gave up.”
Waldo comes by her love of clocks naturally. Her father, Herbert Miller— aka “Pop”—was a watchmaker who did repairs at the University Avenue jewelry store of Boris Small in Palo Alto. The Miller family had clocks everywhere and Pop wore six wristwatches. In later years, after he and his wife, Wilma, moved to a retirement community, he gave daughter Gail some spare clock parts and only a few clocks.
“Just the want, really the desire to have more clocks,” Waldo, 70, says, “that’s what I got from him.”
How It All Began
She essentially started from scratch collecting—and creating—clocks. The hobby began with about a half dozen crystal clocks from thrift stores, which is where
she has discovered many of her treasures in the 25 years-plus that she’s been amassing her collection. She also finds clocks at estate sales and online.
But many of her clocks “found” her. Friends who knew she collected gave her gifts, including a grandmother clock. Even today, when she concedes that she might have to “swap out” clocks to make space for new ones, she wouldn’t “insult somebody” by turning down an offering. “I’ll take a clock,” she says.
A longtime graphic artist by profession, Waldo has an eye for putting together odd items—a teapot, a cup, a humidor, a filigree cotton ball container—fitting them with a clock insert, and creating a ticking conversation piece.
But she’s missing out on the pleasure of being able to tell visitors the back story on her clocks, because of the shelter-in-place restrictions that have come with the Covid. She used to be able to share her enthusiasm with typesetting customers and friends. “It’s always fun to see people’s faces.”
Color Coordinated
Waldo likes to group clocks, such as by type or color. A dozen cuckoo clocks share the same wall area. Tables are topped with alarm and desk clocks. There are red, yellow and blue clock clusters. Dark-colored clocks fill the living room, among them a redwood burl clock. One bathroom with angel clocks has a Greco-Roman vibe.
Only a few of Waldo’s clocks are antiques or otherwise valuable, including a Waterford crystal clock that was supposedly non-working when she got it at a white elephant sale. The tab needed to be pulled to start it ticking. It’s worth about $150.
She owns an opera clock which dates back to 1875, and treasures a desktop clock which was made specially for the Toledo Chewing Gum Co., begun by the first person to receive a chewing gum patent in the United States, in 1869. Waldo snagged it for $60 at a Salvation Army thrift store. A Seth Thomas clock featuring the Bible’s Rebecca at the well may be her most valuable clock. Among her whimsical clocks: one made out of a jigsaw puzzle glued to a backing, a Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger clock whose ears and tongue move, a Mona Lisa with clock hands on that enigmatic face, a baseball diamond clock and one that says “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere.” Hanging from a fishing line, a flapping-winged “Time Flies” clock whose hands spin wildly is not a clock at all.
The Telltale Tick
Clocks, of course, tick, and Waldo likens the background sound in her apartment to rainfall. A few clocks erupt in chimes
Gail Waldo with some of her clocks.
on the hour. One elegant clock with moving musician figures plays music box-style melodies including “The Blue Danube” and “The Waltz of the Flowers.” There are relatively few clocks in her bedroom: “Well I have to sleep,” Waldo explains.
Many of the clocks on display are her own creations—she gets most parts from the website Klockit.com and says, “I can make a clock out of anything with a clockshaped hole. Anything. If it’s pretty, I’ll put a clock in it.”
There are so many she couldn’t possibly keep them all in batteries, but Waldo is philosophic. “I don’t care. They’re right twice a day.”
Pre-Covid, she had been earning a tidy income from two businesses. Among her other customers, Waldo Graphics, a graphics and typesetting company she started in 1973, had a big contract with San Mateo County to produce government forms.
Homemade Licorice
Three years ago, she also perfected a recipe for cut-plug black licorice, caramelly rolls cut into little logs like elongated Tootsie Rolls. She started selling them at the Redwood City Farmer’s Market in summer 2018 and was subsequently invited to sell at the Williams Sonoma store in Palo Alto as part of the store’s local artisans’ program. Her Black Lick Rich candy was a big hit.
With Covid, her graphics income plummeted as demand shrunk. Some businesses which had provided her work have closed. “Just one thing on top of the other,” she says. “Dominoes.” Farmer’s markets have reopened, but Waldo isn’t allowed to give away free samples, even though they’re individually wrapped.
“It doesn’t make sense to do it if I have to wear a mask and no free samples,” she says. Licorice was “very profitable. Along with the typesetting, I was doing real well. Now zip.”
Ken Seydel of Redwood City became friends with Waldo through church and says she amazes him with the breadth of her knowledge, her memory and her creativity. When she turned her licorice recipe into a salable product, he became chief sales rep at the farmer’s market.
“I was the hooker who would promote it and try to stop people and get them to take a sample and try it,” Seydel says. “If they would take a sample and try it, they would usually buy it.” With something as unusual as licorice, “people don’t want to spend $5 for a bag of candy if it’s not good stuff.” Under the county’s cottage food industry rules, Waldo is also not allowed to do mail orders.
Until things loosen up, she’s stuck with more time on her hands than she could possibly want. And all those clocks to watch.
There’s no avoiding what may seem a rude question for this over-the-top clock collector. “I’m eccentric,” Waldo readily agrees. “Why not? I make licorice. Who in the world makes licorice?” C
He’s a Veteran Racecar Driver – at Menlo Park’s Jesse Love is pursuing his NASCAR dream16
By Don Shoecraft
Ponder the scenario: the 16-year-old asks for the keys to the car. What emotions burn in the chest as visions of mechanical chaos reel off in the brain? Menlo Park’s Jess and Elizabeth Love reckoned with similar feelings with son Jesse — when he was five. They gave him the keys. Good choice. Jesse Love today is the youngest champion in American Racing Club of America history and, as of mid-August, points leader on the ARCA Menard Series West stock car racing circuit.
Toyota has brought him onto the team for training and given him the team’s top car. As ARCA puts it, Jesse drives “famed No. 16 NAPA Auto Parts-sponsored Toyota, inheriting a ride that has won six West Series championships dating back to 1999.”
He’s on a trajectory to becoming a fullfledged NASCAR driver, part of a system that produced famous champions such as Kyle Busch and Martin Truex. He and his team have no doubt he would, and could, run NASCAR races against the best in the business were he able to do it today, but it’s against the rules.
Drivers must be 18 to run a NASCAR race. Jesse is 16.
A Young Champion
He seems perfectly ready to be a champion, not only in skill and talent but in poise, aplomb, presence and presentability. Climate first profiled Jesse Love in 2016 as he and his home-grown, Redwood Citybased team were tearing up the USAC midget racing circuit. At the risk of being repetitive, he was the youngest champion in the history of that circuit, too.
That profile observed that Jesse, then 11, “sounds very grown up for a person his age,” and quoted mother Elizabeth saying that “spending so much time with his dad and so many grownups in his life he’s learned to be a very, very good communicator.”
The more so at 16.
The high school senior is fully aware and can clearly enunciate how to pursue the pinnacle of his chosen profession. “We’re all in this together,” he said. “The one person I owe this to, with the exception of God, is my dad.
“…Now it takes more than just being a driver. You have to be a good spokesperson, you have to be likeable, and you have to drive. I owe that all to my dad and everybody at Toyota who have been managing me. Right now, it’s a hard hill to climb. It’s harder than climbing danged Mount Everest.
But, “...I have the trust of the people that sponsor me, people that manage me and people that trust me to do the right thing every weekend. It’s not a trust thing or a pressure thing, it’s just that we’re a team and I’m going to pull my weight. I’m the luckiest guy to be in the seat of the car and go win races with it. So, I’ve got to work the hardest of the team and be the best leader I can be, on and off the racetrack, 100 percent of the time.”
Spotlight: The Usherettes Profi le: Stanford RWC Business Bootcamp Entertainment: Woodside Cheer Squad’s Super Performance Food: Arya Global Cuisine
ISSUE ELEVEN • MARCH • 2016
Jesse Love IV, USAC Racing Champion HOTWHEELS
Above: Jesse Love graced the cover of Climate when he was a champion midget racer at 11 years old.
Stock Car Racing’s Hub
Living away from home is contributing to the adult-level pressures of his job. Six months ago, he and driver relations representative Dustin Edge moved to Cornelius, N.C.
Anyone who hasn’t heard of it clearly is not a stock car racing geek. Cornelius, a suburban area on Lake Norman north of Charlotte, population 25,000, is close to the geographic center of stock car racing, a quintessential American sport born of moonshine runs of the early to mid 1900s where outlaws souped up their daily rides to outrun police. Think “Smokey and the Bandit.”
Twenty racetracks are scattered through North Carolina’s piney woods. “I can chase my dreams out here,” Jesse said, “where all the race teams are, the NASCAR Hall of Fame is. Tracks are here. This is the racing hub.”
Racing is so of Cornelius’ essence that eight of the 17 “notable people” the community lists on Wikipedia are racers.
As for living away from home at the age of 16, “it’s obviously young,” he said, “but you want to kind of get the growing pains out of the way, living on your own, learning new things about yourself and maturing. I’d rather do that now than I would when I’m in the truck series or the Infinity series where there’s even more pressure on you.”
In the next two years he will move up three levels, through truck racing, which races Fridays, to the Xfinity series, which races Saturdays, to NASCAR Cup races on Sunday.
Each level differs. Menard Series ACAR cars debuted as previous-generation, carbureted NASCAR racers restricted in maximum RPM. A new standard Ilmor 396 V-8 engine and intake restrictors equalizes the field. Truck racers are similar but with a pickup truck-like body, a different “aerodynamic package;” Xfinity Cup car ignition and RPM limits are higher. Power plants for all are similar, delivering 700 to 750 horsepower, but critical other features, such as aerodynamics, ignition, tires and
special tweaks, all of them treated as top secret, vary performance.
The Winning Formula
With such different machines to drive, how does a driver keep winning?
Two things, as father Jess, himself a former champion midget driver, said five years ago: comfort with speed and a special spatial sense that can’t be taught. “It’s the understanding,” he said, “they can fit a fivefoot car into a five-foot hole.” At the time he was talking about doing that at 60 mph. Now it’s speeds approaching 190 mph.
“Sometimes I’ll be watching from the stands,” said driver relations manager Edge, “I’m like, ‘there’s no hole, he can’t get through, he’s stuck.’ And I’ll watch him throw his car into a gap that I couldn’t even see.”
Jesse has a particular driving style, with which he is perfectly comfortable. “I do like the brake pedal. I like the gas pedal. I make a lot of speed. I think the biggest thing with my driving style is I make speed.”
It takes a big team to field an ARCA car and driver. Toyota and NAPA Auto Parts are sponsors. Owner of the 16 car is Bill McAnally Racing of Roseville, which has fielded several champions in the last three decades. Jesse also drove Venturini Motorsports’ 25 car last year.
Top: Love's ARCA level car with a 396 V-8 engine that reaches 190 mph. Left: Jesse Love checks the track with his #1 sponsor and fan, dad, Jess Love Sr.
Jesse has a regulated lifestyle that emphasizes health, fitness, learning, training and practice.
A Racer’s Regimen
It sounds like astronaut training or, as his father says, “creating an Olympic athlete.” Up and in the gym at about 8:30 a.m. for an hour’s workout. A trip to the Toyota Performance Center for meetings and time in the “sim,” the front half of a Toyota car in a darkened video room that can simulate with great realism any of the tracks he might run. Teams of engineers monitor the sim to adjust the setup in real time and according to his performance as he is learning the nuances of the track and car.
After five or six hours at the performance center, he’s home, if not attending high school through On Track, an accredited online K-12 school many very young professionals-in-training in many sports use, then plotting the week’s race on paper. “It’s become normal to me,” he said, “but it is really cool when I go to new racetracks like Dover, Iowa, Gateway, Phoenix.
“When you get to go higher speeds and you go to bigger racetracks everything is coming at you so fast and you’re becoming overwhelmed,” Jesse continued. “But then over time things slow down and it’s more like a short track. It’s a real interesting dynamic. Being a racecar driver is unlike anything else, where you’re so close to that threshold of fear and speed and death and adrenaline and all that stuff. It’s really cool and something I’ve become used to.”
At the end of all that preparation, the racing hubbub, the concentration and the performance, there is a reward. A state of calm and joy. It’s “when you’ve won a race and you have a lap to cool down. You don’t even feel like you’re in the car. You’re so overwhelmed with emotion.
“I won the championship in Phoenix. Doing a burnout at the track that I grew up on — when I was 11 years old when you interviewed me — I was going from there to watch Alex Bowman, a mentor to me and a good friend. Just watching there as a fan, a little guy, and you come there four years later and win a championship, and you’re going to do a burnout in front of all these fans — that was probably the biggest moment of, like, Zen and calmness that I ever felt in a racecar.”
Feels good to be a winner. C ARCA races are broadcast on NBCSN and live streamed on TrackPass. Details available at www.arcaracing.com
