Barstow is not a beautiful place to die. But that’s what happened to Lew Moreing.
Moreing was a celebrity in Sacramento, a pivotal figure in the city’s baseball history. I thought about him the other day when I realized he’d disappeared from the consciousness of local sports fans and everyone else.
Nobody attending a River Cats game today would recognize his name, or know what he did to save baseball in Sacramento.
Moreing died at home in Barstow, a Mojave Desert railroad town, in 1935. He had a heart attack. His wife Edith checked on him one May morning. She found him barely alive. She called a doctor, but help arrived too late.
I’ve had several jobs over the last 50 years. Being a landlord was the worst.
I was a landlord for almost 20 years. There were good days, but they were rare. Even when the monthly rent check arrived on time, the joy was temporary. I couldn’t go out and spend all the money on booze and dinner.
A big chunk of my rental income was untouchable, sequestered for repairs and maintenance and taxes and fees and insurance. There were many months when I made no money.
There’s no easy way to say this. A state agency is helping affluent property owners barricade an equity gateway for many of Sacramento’s poorest, non-white residents.
If this sounds impossible today in California, here’s how it happened.
In recent months, the Central Valley Flood Protection Board overstepped its responsibilities for flood maintenance and operations. The state agency became the literal gatekeeper for residents along the Sacramento River levee who want to keep outsiders out.
The greatest coach in Sacramento history invented himself in 1944. He was 25 and serving in the Army Air Corps. He walked into a courthouse in Los Angeles, filled out a name-change petition, and with a judge’s permission, became Sherman Chavoor.
Gone forever was Izikiel Correa, the Portuguese kid from Hawaii. Gone was the link to Guilhermo Correa, his abusive father who worked cane fields around Hilo and loaded freighters on Oakland docks. Gone were insults, insecurities and poverty.
There was a real Sherman Chavoor. He was a UCLA football star in the 1930s, honored for courage and sportsmanship. He became a teacher, football coach and high school principal in Burbank. When Izzy chose an identity to steal, he chose well.
Darrell Steinberg is a timid politician, and timid people should never be mayor. Timidity was the hallmark of his political career. It sustained him for three decades before it finally, inevitably ruined him.
The pattern began in 1992. He entered politics as a City Council candidate to replace Kim Mueller when she moved to the federal judiciary. Steinberg won easily. He secured valuable support months before Election Day. He campaigned against a weak field populated by unknowns and has-beens. The race was over before it started.
Temporary chain-link fences showed up overnight. Stretched across the Sacramento River levee, blocking the gravel path, disheveled and lurching like drunks after a party. One fence ran into the water, breaking federal and state laws. Somehow, the fences were approved by state officials from the Central Valley Flood Protection Board.
In May, a staff member at Central Valley Flood issued temporary permits for two private, cross-levee fences and gates in Pocket. The new barricades went up fast.
They were erected by property owners near the river, the small, loud group that spent years fighting to keep the public away from the levee.
