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They call California the Granola State — a place where every inhabitant is a fruit, a flake, or a nut. They don’t get any fruitier, flakier, or nuttier than the deviants, crackpots, and losers profiled in “California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts.” A freewheeling catalog of misfits, eccentrics, creeps, criminals, and failed dreamers, “California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts” profiles 45 bizarre personalities who exemplify the Golden State’s well-deserved reputation for nonconformity.
“California Fruits, Flakes and Nuts” tells the history that gets cleaned out of respectable history books. In these pages, Gold Rush pioneers are revealed as murderous madmen; Hollywood celebrities are shown to be drug-addled sex maniacs; early hippies are just 1950s weirdos; and even seemingly ordinary Californians have a talent for freakish, crazy, and criminal behavior.
From frontier lunatic Grizzly Adams (whose head was one massive wound after multiple bear attacks) to “I Love Lucy” star William Frawley (a racist, misogynist, foul-mouthed drunk) to legendarily awful film director Ed Wood and many more nutjobs and oddballs , “California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts” is a side-splitting look at the people who made California the strangest place on earth.

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Publié par	Linden Publishing
Date de parution	01 novembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781610352130
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0020€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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California Fruits, Flakes & Nuts

True Tales of California
Crazies, Crackpots and Creeps

David Kulczyk

Fresno, California
California Fruits, Flakes & Nuts
Copyright © 2013 by David Kulczyk. All rights reserved.

Published by Craven Street Books
An imprint of Linden Publishing
2006 South Mary Street, Fresno, California 93721
(559) 233-6633 / (800) 345-4447
CravenStreetBooks.com

Craven Street Books and Colophon are trademarks of Linden Publishing, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-61035-213-0

135798642

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kulczyk, David.
California fruits, flakes, and nuts : true tales of California crazies, crackpots and creeps / David Kulczyk.
pages cm

ISBN 978-1-61035-194-2 (paperback : acid-free paper)
1. Eccentrics and eccentricities--California--Biography. 2. Dissenters--California--Biography. 3. Artists--California--Biography. 4. Criminals--California--Biography. 5. Inventors--California--Biography. 6. California--Biography. I. Title.

CT9990.K85 2013
920.0794--dc23

2013028344
This book is dedicated to
Alison Milne Shurtleff
(1958–2012)
crime aficionado, editor, friend
Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

P IONEER C RAZIES

1: Grizzly Adams (John Adams, Arnold, Calaveras County)

2: Psycho Hooker (Ida Brewer, Sacramento)

3: The Geek (Tom McAlear, San Francisco)

4: Psycho Politician (David Terry, Stockton/San Francisco/Lathrop)

5: Shanghai Chicken (John Devine, San Francisco)

6: Voodoo Queen (Mary Ellen Pleasant, San Francisco)

7: Elusive as a Will-o’-the-Wisp (James Dunham, Campbell)

8: First in Flight (Lyman Wiswell Gilmore, Grass Valley, Nevada County)

9: Crazy Cowboy (C.M. Jones, Sacramento)

10: It’s a Gas! (Edna Fuller, San Francisco)

T HE R ISE OF S OUTHERN C ALIFORNIA N UTJOBS

11: Death by Ostrich (Billy Ritchie, Los Angeles)

12: Little Miss Bohemian (Aline Barnsdall, Los Angeles)

13: Silent Fall (Larry Semon, Hollywood)

14: In His Sister’s Shadow (Jack Pickford, Los Angeles)

15: True Square (Aimee Semple McPherson, Los Angeles)

16: Grumpy Stooge (Jerome Horwitz, Los Angeles)

17: Big Bill (Bill Tilden, Hollywood)

18: The Brat Wagon (Margaret Rowney, Van Nuys)

19: Fraidy Cat (Samuel Horwitz, Los Angeles)

20: Nature Boy (eden ahbez, Los Angeles)

21: Rocket Scientist (Marvel "Jack" Parsons, Pasadena)

22: Friday on His Mind (Jack Webb, Los Angeles)

23: Genius in Angora (Ed Wood, Los Angeles)

24: The Not-So-Little Rascal (Carl Switzer, Los Angeles)

25: 20th Century Nostradamus (Jerome King Criswell, Los Angeles)

26: A Brilliant Man (Hermann Schultheis, Los Angeles)

27: Lovable Crank (William Frawley, Los Angeles)

28: The Rebel (Nick Adams, Los Angeles)

O NLY IN C ALIFORNIA

29: The Terror Bandit (Clarence "Buck" Kelly, San Francisco)

30: Black and White and Read All Over (Harry French, Alturas, Modoc County)

31: Big Daddy (Eric Nord, San Francisco/Venice)

32: The Educated Idiot (John Russell Crooker, Bel Air)

33: Firebug (Stanford Pattan, Glenn County)

34: It’s Friday! (William Liebscher, Fairfax, Marin County)

35: The Gold Coast Princess (Karyn Kupcinet, West Hollywood)

36: Shame on You (Spade Cooley, Willow Springs, Kern County)

37: Fleecing the Flock (C. Thomas Patten, Oakland)

38: The Ruler (John "Bunny" Breckenridge, San Francisco/Los Angeles)

39: The Sacramento Vampire (Richard Trenton Chase, Sacramento)

40: The Grifter (Dorothea Puente, Sacramento)

41: Taxed Out (Jim Ray Holloway, Sacramento)

42: Savannah Smiled? (Shannon Wilsey, Los Angeles)

43: The Naked Guy (Andrew Martinez, Berkeley)

44: From Russia, with Hate (Nikolay Soltys, Sacramento)

45: The Gambler (Frank Gambalie, Yosemite National Park)

46: A Different Drummer (Jim Gordon, Los Angeles)

47: The Panty King (Roy Raymond, San Francisco)

48: The Tower of Wooden Pallets (Daniel Van Meter, Sherman Oaks)

Bibliography

Index
Acknowledgments

Alison Milne Shurtleff edited my earliest drafts of this book. Sadly, she died of cancer on February 22, 2012. Her knowledge, humor, and enthusiasm for the macabre, the criminal, and the odd were unsurpassed. I miss her every single day. I would like to thank Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, who picked up the ball after Alison died and edited this book. I would also like to thank Lorraine Clarke, James Kulczyk, Luke Suminski, John Massoni, Susan Kendzulak, Richard Sinn, James Van Ochten, Nick Miller, John Russell, Mark Staniszewski, Jaguar Bennett, Kent Sorsky, Tobi Shields, Brett "Sadam" Lempke, and professors Joseph Palermo and Joseph Pitti of California State University, Sacramento. And, as always, I thank my wife Donna for giving me the time, space, and patience to do this project.
Introduction

Why are Californians like a bowl of granola? Because what isn’t a fruit or a flake is a nut.
Anonymous

T hat little chestnut about the citizens of California has been around since James Caleb Jackson invented the tasty whole grain cereal back in 1863. You always had to be a little crazy to move to the Golden State. Mountains, deserts, and the Pacific Ocean render it geographically distant from the rest of the world. It borders the large and empty states of Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada, where even a gas station can be more than a tank of gas away. California attracts those who dare and those who are willing to take a risk.

If we were to accept some historians’ sugarcoated version of the nonnative founders of the Golden State, you would think that the pioneers were all Bible-reading Caucasians of good personal hygiene who brought civilization to the wilderness. That scenario could not be further from the truth. The majority of people who swarmed to California during the Gold Rush of 1849 were single men, under thirty-years old, came from all over the world, and represented virtually every race, creed, and color. They arrived exhausted from the long journey to California and had little opportunity for personal hygiene. Most found themselves working in unsanitary conditions, and the only safe liquid to drink was alcohol. Combine drunkenness with youthful exuberance, a lack of responsibilities as a result of being thousands of miles away from home, and freedom from social stigma, and you have a recipe for zaniness. Paupers became millionaires and millionaires became paupers, but, in the long run, most forty-niners were just lucky to break even.

Many of the migrants noticed that there were countless opportunities to make money in California. If you had some sort of education, or pretended you knew what you were doing, the sky was the limit in the Golden State. It is still that way.

There have been multiple gold, land, job, and health rushes throughout the Golden State’s history. Today, lenient marijuana laws are starting a "Green Rush" to California, as Americans swarm to the state to cultivate California’s number one cash crop. California is the place where the bubble is first filled, and if something is going to be discovered, it usually happens here.

There is no shortage of fruits, flakes, and nuts in California. The Mediterranean climate encourages immigration, the cities welcome it, and, for the most part, the people overlook it. The immense geographical size of the state is sufficient to house every brightly burning bulb in the world. The brightest bulbs sometimes burn out the fastest, but there is always another ember waiting to be reignited.

In this book, I chose not to write about the well-known California nutjobs like Emperor Norton, Sarah Winchester, and Charlie Manson, as their stories have been widely told. I wanted to write about the obscure, the scandalous, and the infamous: the Bohemians and inventors who were laughed at during their era; the beloved actors, musicians, and artists who are admired despite their questionable personal flaws; the criminals whose horrifying deeds have become forgotten as their victims’ loved ones pass away.

Despite all the hoopla, there is not a place on Earth where you will find so many people of different cultures living side by side, in relative harmony, than in the great state of California.

"In Los Angeles, all the loose objects in the country were collected as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California." Saul Bellow
Pioneer Crazies

B efore anyone knew there was gold in the hills of California, you could count the nonnative, non-Californio population on your fingers and toes. Then, within two years, thousands of people from all over the world came to the Golden State to try their luck in the search for gold. Most came up empty, but stayed anyway, doing whatever they could to make their way. Thousands of miles away from home and family, some achieved success, while others fell into a dark abyss of insanity, violence, and crime .
Chapter 1

Grizzly Adams

John Adams Arnold, Calaveras County

W hen people think of John "Grizzly" Adams, they usually think of the television program, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams , which aired on NBC from 1977 to 1978. Adams, who was portrayed by stuntman, animal trainer, and actor Dan Haggerty, goes about his mountain man business, accompanied by his tame grizzly bear, like a