Treat ‘Em Right

I always loved rapper Chubb Rock, man. He never got the full-metal love beyond airplay of the titular single, but I remember him performing on an episode of FOX’s erstwhile stand-up showcase “Sunday Comics,” this particular episode hosted by the king, Martin Mull.

A total shame that his “Fernwood Tonight” and, later, post-“Mary Hartman” squared, “America Tonight” is not on DVD. I recall attending an outdoor concert of his touring “Martin Mull and his Fabulous Furniture” in Toronto, wherein he replicated a den onstage and riffed endlessly. I remember someone yelling out, “Where’s Jerry?” (sidekick Fred Willard, from A2N). Mull replied, “He’s dead. (pause) Professionally, at least.”

Man, Karma is a beeyotch.

So, I’m driving in Cincinnati on a gig in 1991, when the Chubster starts, “Nineteen-ninety, Chubb Rock burst upon the scene” on the car radio.

For years, I thought that one of his final rhymes was a shout-out to “Lainie Kazan, my homegirl; peace.” I love Lainie Kazan, but Chubb’s flow hit my ear entirely wrong. It was “Lady” something. We out.

“Treat ‘em Right” comes on my old-skool radio station the other day, and Kathy downloads it for 99 cents. That’s $18.91 more than the year Chubb talked about.

Treating ‘em right is what the Cline family did when Fred and Nancy started their Sonoma-based winery in 1988 (and their latest winery, Jacuzzi, pictured above). Their California Missions Museum, based on the winery real estate, is home to dioramas of all 21 Spanish Mission buildings, traversing over 600 miles from San Diego, up north to Sonoma. The models debuted at the 1939 World’s Fair on Treasure Island (the original planned location for SF’s airport) in San Francisco Bay, and later were set to be individually auctioned/sold off. In 1998, Nancy and Fred took possession of all 21 models, and seven years later, housed them on their property, open to the public at the winery.

Kathy and I have lived up and down the California coast, at various times in our various lives. Reading about the lives and relative successes of these mission buildings is enlightening. We all know about the big SF earthquake in 1906. But what about the big one in 1845? Civil War be damned, we’re messed up!

Living in San Francisco three lives ago, we toured Mission Dolores. Based in Los Angeles, six lives ago, we sought out San Juan Capistrano. Many of the structures were decimated by natural disasters; another, cosmetically altered, served as the back-drop for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.”

“But you can’t care, Madeline, you can’t care!”

Fred and Nancy Cline, thank you for treating them right. These models burst upon the scene.