…and other stories
CritterCon 10
Day Three
Having planned this trip out carefully, I decided that between Castroville and Santa Barbara, there were no roadside attractions worth stopping at, or, if there were, they were ones we had already been to. With that in mind, the Bus started heading down the highway about 3 in the morning so that when we all woke up at 7, we were not only in the Santa Barbara area, but in the parking lot of Lugo Makes Breakfast!, a very tasty place to eat.
I had eaten here before, so I knew the drill, but did not fill anyone in when we all filed inside at 8:00. See, Lugo only makes one kind of breakfast: bacon, eggs, hash browns, a biscuit and whatever you choose to drink, as long as you drink coffee, tea, milk or water. There is no menu and all you get to choose is how your two eggs are cooked. That’s it, baby. $7.00 a pop and if you dawdle over brekky, the waitresses start saying rude things about you. So we ate and got the hell out.
(Silky: Dad neglected to say that you get four slices of bacon, the hash browns are seasoned wonderfully and that big ass biscuit is fluffy and delicious.)
Our only other stop in Santa Barbara was the Bird House, which is a pretty standard 1960’s ranch style home set smack in the middle of an aviary the size of a football field. Said aviary is home to 97 species of birds, from tiny wrens to ostriches. The tour takes about 45 minutes and costs $5.00. Many of the birds are not afraid of humans and will land right on you.
(Roxy: That’s cool when the bird is a little finch, but alarming when the bird is a hyacinth macaw.)
(Leon: AUGH! My cat instincts were at odds with being in a humanoid body.)
Upon leaving the Bird House, we all relaxed on the bus as we made our way to San Diego. Gabriel and I got to doing a comedy bit where he played Rocco, a Chicago mobster, and I played Maxie, his dim bulb of a right hand man. It was mostly Rocco asking about how the latest plan went and Maxie telling how he and the boys screwed it up. An example…
Rocco: So, Maxie, I told ya to go corner the market on D&D. How’d it go?
Maxie: Oh, boss, the first night was so tiring. My feet hurt from all that dancing.
Rocco: Dancing? What the hell?
Maxie: Yeah, D&D, Dames & Dancing. Them gals was cute, though. This one blonde…
Rocco: MAXIE! D&D is not about dames and dancing! It’s…
Maxie: Oh, we figured it out, boss. It was Ducks & Drinking. Lemme tell ya, them ducks cannot hold their liquor.
And so on. We had everybody laughing.
Around 11:30, down in Los Angeles, we stopped at our next attraction, the World Famous Murder Mansion. I mean, who wouldn’t want to tour a seaside mansion that has been the site of 14 murders, starting in 1924 with the last one in 1998?
This place is huge and sits on 10 acres of land. After you pay your twenty bucks per person, you enter the mansion and see the scene of the first murder, where silent movie actress Dondra Durban shot her cheating husband and his mistress six times each (she reloaded her revolver, drank a bottle of wine and shot them again).
(Silky: She was plenty pissed off.)
(Daisy: Ya think?)
From there, you go to…
The 1930 mob hit on Frankie “Box Office” Tanetelli in the front driveway. No convictions on this one.
The 1941 unsolved decapitations of the twin Onslow brothers in their separate bedrooms.
The 1947 murder by strangulation of actress Jenny Robbins, committed by her ex manager in the pool house.
(Silky: I remember hearing about this one on the radio.)
The 1959 triple homicide (shooting, stabbing & beating) in the dining room of Mr & Mrs Waldefski by their business partner, Ed Niddle, who was the one shot by the dying Mrs Waldefski.
(Leon: That was one hell of a business disagreement.)
The 1970 poisoning of record producer Buddy Leaper and his girlfriend. They ate poisoned cookies in the master bathroom while bathing. Girlfriend’s mother was convicted.
The 1979 death by bomb in the car of B movie director Sam Sterling. Bomb planted by his ex-lover, B movie star Trent Nash.
(Daisy: Hey, he made “Teenage Lizard Girls From Outer Space”!)
(Max: And “Surf Of Death”. That one with the deadly kelp!)
The 1988 dismemberment and partial cannibalization of Richard Milligan, a gardener, by his employer, millionaire Alex Rader. The bodies of 11 other people were found at Rader’s ranch near Santa Maria.
(Roxy: EWWWWWW!)
And finally, the 1998 murder of Mr. Harry Culbertson by his wife. In the Kitchen. With a Frying Pan. On a Saturday. Because he was an Insufferable Asshole.
(Silky: She died on Death Row in 2009.)
The whole tour takes over 90 minutes and yes, folks, they do have a gift shop. Oddly, when we got back on the Bus, several folks didn’t want to eat.
We rolled into San Diego at 5:00 and rested up before dinner. After dinner, we played two sessions of D&D 5th edition. I ran one game and Daisy ran the other at the same time. Everyone had fun.
(Daisy: Daddy ran them through a dungeon and I ran my group through the Forest of the Doomed. It was pretty fun to scare the crap out of them with Ghost Trolls, Night Slimes and Fungus Orcs.)
It’s time for bed now. Tomorrow, we’re off across the desert, with one of our stops being
Destination Sign When We Started: Lair of the White Worm
Destination Sign When We Stopped: Townsville
QM Radio Station: Dog Punk 101
