Down At Mike's Place
CASTELLA, Almost nothing has changed. At first it looks the same, and then you notice there are a few things missing like the Wall Street Journals that used to be on the table over by the window. Always. And of course this is summer now, but you kind of miss the orange peelings that Mike always put on top of the heater. On a snowy night the tang they permeated was a kind of homey touch. But Mike's was a homey saloon. You could sit by the round table; turn on the old *fashioned lamp, and read the S.F. Chronicle if you felt like it.
All the paintings and photographs are still in place. There's Marilyn Monroe, bigger than life, still over there by the door. And all the nudes and scantily clad nymphs, circa 1920, are still dustily provocative.
You almost hesitate to turn and see if the painting" is still This is the supreme test. If it isn't there, then where is it? Sir Thomas had once said the painting was worth $50,000, maybe more. Thoughts came flying back of how you had thought, a couple of years ago, what a great story that would be a $50,000 painting hanging in a remote and dingy joint high in the northern mountains!
Mike said a lady customer had given it to him years ago. That they had been talking across the bar one evening and she told him she had a painting that would just fit in his place. Mike said he had just figured it was bar talk, but sometime after she had gone home to San Francisco, the painting had been shipped to him. And it had been hanging over the piano ever since.
It seems her husband had been a frequent customer at a gaudy old saloon in San Francisco where three pain-. tings of gorgeous nudes hung over the bar. When the saloon went out of business in 1901, he implored the owner to sell him the painting named "Della." The owner obliged for $5,000. "Della" was taken to his home and hung in the parlor. The canvas got scratched up a bit in the 1906 earthquake, and then, after the husband died, Della was immediately relegated to the basement. And that's where she stayed until the day she was wrapped and sent to Mike.
A close inspection of the canvas revealed several names. There was an "A.D. Cooper" on it and also "Diriga by Buido." Even more fascinated, you ask Mike if he would allow pictures taken of the painting. He didn't mind. The pictures were sent to the De Young Museum in San Francisco
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