Hello Stranger! This is Carla Heine. My dad Edmund Heine was chief architect for Kingston Trio Properties. He designed the Trident Restaurant, and Frank Werber’s house on De Silva Island. My brother and I found an eight car garage full of classic cars from the 60’s in the wine country. Amongst them was Frank Werber’s car, the bright red convertible Cadillac! If that car could talk! Carla’s email is: sonoma1@hotmail.com
PS: My Trident memories are not of the Rock and Roll Variety, I came with my dad for the Trident’s famous Shirley Temples when my dad came in on business, However: Do you remember the trap door under the Trident? I remember it. The secret passage into the Trident from Frank Werber’s sailboat. Do you remember the tattoo on Frank’s wrist? I had never seen an Auschwitz tattoo before. I asked him if it was his Social Security Number, and he thought that was pretty funny. Later my dad told me what that kind of tattoo meant. Do you remember when Tommy Smothers spoke as a character witness for the trial, after the authorities caught onto the trap door and the Sailboat trips to Mexico for quality and quantities of some very righteous weed? Tommy told the Judge that he had known Frank for years, and that he was a much nicer person since he started smoking marijuana. The courtroom was crammed, and even the Judge laughed. Did you know that the original Trident wood-worker artists had a working reunion in Sonoma in 1972, when the mortuary that is now Deuce Restaurant on Broadway was converted to a restaurant? All the wood and wrought iron there were done by the same men! Do you remember Ronnie Shell’s audition with Frank for the Kingston Trio? He came in right before John Stewart. After the audition, he said: “Well, I have to go now. I have another guitar lesson in twenty minutes.” The Trident sure was the Eye of the Cyclone! Do you remember when John and Buffy Ford fell in love, and didn’t surface for five weeks? That was a panic! The first time I saw Nick he was parked in his new sports car on the deck-parking lot of the Trident, and he was picking his nose. The last time I saw him was at his son’s little league game. We were lying on the lawn and I asked him why he wanted to move to Oregon. He said he needed the change, and the whole Sausalito scene was getting too built up, and he had had a good run with the Trio, but he wanted to move forward with his own life. He was chewing the white pulp of a green grass stem and looking off into the future. Were you at the Hungry I, when Frank was working there in North Beach as a dishwasher? He was up to his elbows in suds and dishwater in the back, and he heard these three kids from Stanford singing out front, and he cornered them after the show and outlined his plans for them and signed them on the spot, and quit his job. That’s how he told it to me. Did you go to the KFRC Magic Mountain Festival in the late 1960’s? Frank was instrumental in putting that together. He was there so far in advance that he had a big Indian Tee-pee set up just a short distance from the stage. We were burning several jumbo joints, and his girlfriend was a little nervous, because she had seen this black net shirt at Marin Army Surplus Store, and asked Frank to buy it for her, and he said he would, but only if she promised never to wear anything under it. Which was why she was a little nervous in the tee-pee. That was a great concert. We were in the tee-pee when we heard a helicopter, and Frank said “That’s Donovan; he’s always late.” Another great tee-pee line was : “Who the Fuck are the Doors?” And: “Canned Heat and their Canned Shit!” That’s about it from me, for Trident Memories. Carla in Sonoma