🚀 go-pugleaf

["Followup-To:" header set to ba.food.]

> Grapevine is the name of a town at the base of the mountains, in the
> southern part of the central valley. I don't think the naming of the
> town had anything to do with the road, did it?

As best my memory serves, there was never a town at the base of the
Grapevine, as the once brutally steep grade, which used to be Hwy 99, from
the valley floor to the top of Wheeler ridge, was universally known to
Central Valley denizens.  My family lived in Bakersfield when I was a wee
tyke and bi-weekly trips to visit relatives in SoCal left me with marvelous
memories of The Grapevine.  

Back when the Grapevine grade was a 2, sometimes 3, sometimes 4, lane
undivided highway, it started at the billiard-table-flat Valley floor and
went up an arrow straight grade for about a mile or two.  At the end of that
straightaway, just before the curves of the section that was a terror for
truckers began, there was a roadside cafe-gas station on the East side of
the highway.  For some reason I seem to recall it was called the Grapevine
Cafe, but I can't say for sure. I remember it being there because I always
wanted my parents to stop there so I could gaze out in wonder at the great
vista of the vast Valley floor visible at that point of the grade.  It's
long gone, now, not even being there back in '75, the last time I traveled
that route.

I just talked to my dad, he being a long-time veteran of the Grapevine, and
he told me that little cafe got taken out by a runaway semi.  He assured me
The Grapevine did, in fact, refer only to that once infamous grade, and not
the rest of the Ridgeline.

nb