The Weasels

Geez, where do I start with the Weasels story. First the name ... I can't reproduce the whole thing here because I intend to do my part to keep this a "G" rated site, but suffice it to say my buddies from Daly City had a "chant" when we were growing up that had a reference to weasels in it. And this group of friends has now known each other since grammar school in some cases, and high school in all cases. And we're no spring chickens. Several of us get together somewhat regularly, and all of us get together once or twice a year. All of us meaning 15-20 guys from Daly City, California.

We grew up in the sleepy bedroom community of Daly City. John Daly's little experiment which Henry Doelger expanded into a profitable community ... due south of San Francisco. A good chunk of Pacific coastline and some great beaches, cliffs, and spectacular ocean scenery lie to the west. San Bruno Mountain, which we always called "NBC mountain" because of the lettering at its peak, near the NBC towers that supplied reception for Channel 4 to our little black and white TV's, is between Daly City and the Bay. To the south is the Peninsula, which we were always jealous of, due to the fact that we got the fog and they got the sunshine all summer. EVERY summer. And of course our famous neighbor to the north, the afore-mentioned City by the Bay, San Francisco.

And by sheer luck of the draw, the 20 or so of us became friends and have remained so for all these decades. Among us we have doctors (plural), a biochemist, a plumbing contractor, a network specialist, a master mechanic, a pharmacist, a commercial jet pilot, a B&B owner/fireman, a jewelry wholesaler, several lawyers with varying specialties, an inventor/graphic artist, an insurance broker, a wine and liquor broker, a produce market owner, and your humble author. I make a living managing telecom for a large drug company, but I'm also a licensed real estate broker (some of us are actually amazingly honest), and pick up a few bucks (and lots of oooohs and aaaahhhs and thank you's) utilizing many hundreds of hours of professional massage therapy training.

The Weasels live all over the country, which somehow doesn't present a problem for our bi-annual events. People drive and fly from all over the west coast, and one guy rides his BMW 1150 GS cross-country every year. You may be getting the feeling that we like getting together. We do.

We ran in many different groups while growing up. Not that we were always as close as we are now ... far from it in some cases. One of the current Weasels was one of the feared school bullies. He's now one of our collective best friends, and the nicest guy on the planet. We have former jocks, scholars, outcasts, in-crowders, and a couple former "wall boys."

The Westmoor wall boys were a small group of "popular" guys who spent time between classes leaning against a cinder block wall across the hallway from Mr. Christensen's Auto Shop. They dressed in Damon alpaca sweaters and starched collar button-down shirts, likely purchased at the New England Shop in our beloved Westlake Shopping Center. Some had the obligatory early excuse for a mustache, most wore some flavor of wing-tip shoes or Sperry Topsider tennis shoes, commonly in blue or (the more daring) red. This was the in crowd at Westmoor. They were the cool guys. The "popular" crowd.

I was a surfer. Distinctly different crowd. We wore Levi's, madras shirts (you know, the colorful Indian cotton shirts with colors that were supposed to run together when you washed them, meaning it was a new shirt after each wash cycle. Interesting concept in 20th century California. And we also wore blue tennies, no socks, mandatory blonde hair, and of course you needed to smell like suntan lotion at all times. Equally interesting concept.

But as is common ... I digress. The Weasels have two major events every year. We've gotten together for a winter event for the past 15 years or so. Generally somewhere in San Francisco, usually includes a romp through some neighborhood in The City, and ends up at our favorite restaurant, Joe's of Westlake (there will be more "Joe's" to come, trust me). About 10 years ago during one of the "winter events," someone came up with the novel idea of getting together sometime in the warm season, vs. rainy cold winter. One of our brethren said something like "I have this little cabin in Truckee, and it will probably suffice for a summer event." There were 15 of us at this particular event, and low and behold, our resident cardiologist's little abode was more than adequate to put us up for a few days of "summer weasel festivities."

And thus begat "The Den" which will be the focus of Weasels Pt 2. Stay tuned.