Apache Saddle Part II

     Once the seasonal license issues were overcome, the Apache Saddle (or just "The Saddle") became a full-fledged bar. Food in the restaurant was good or it wasn't, but the bar kept on. 
      Over the years, like many similar establishments, it acquired its cast of characters. The Tidwells, Chuck & Marge, the original owners, and their children Tommy and Patty Tidwell Shirley, ran the restaurant for the first few years, hiring staff to do all the work, and then hiring managers to manage the staff. Some of those managers were as colorful as their customers.
      One such manager was a guy named Bill Marsh. He started in the middle of summer one year, and his first big weekend was Labor Day (Oktoberfest). I warned him prior to the weekend that he was going to be really busy -- "human car wash" busy. I saw him on Labor Day Monday afternoon, and asked him how it went. "Man, this place is half-full of a$$holes", he declared. "Yeah, and it's only half-full," was my (tongue-in-cheek) answer.
     Since PMC was growing at a rapid pace in those early years, many of The Saddle's "characters" were in the construction business. Jerry Kiger, Bullet ('cause he moves so fast! ;-)  
Pee-Wee the Roofer, Cecil Chambers, Chuck Hartley, Lance Hartley, Dick Murphy, to name but a few, all helped build Pine Mountain Club from a resort into a community. Del Archer Construction started in Malibu building mansions, and then Del and his crew came to Pine Mountain Club and built some "mountain mansions". Del's crew all hung out at The Saddle after work and on weekends, and some are part of legend. Some of those stories I'll tell later, but I'll just list a few names now: Norm Jessel, Buck & BJ Sawyer, Black Bart (who won a Silver Medal at the Olympics), and of course, Del & Barb. 
       One of the best stories is as much legend as truth. I can't vouch for the story because I wasn't ever there (how'd that happen??). Her name shall be kept confidential, but she came to be known as "Bootsie". The name came from her occasional habit of (when well-inebriated, and in the company of an equally inebriated crowd of onlookers) dancing on the top of the bar in go-go boots... That's all --- just boots. If those wall could talk! -- and a lot of us old-timers are relieved they can't. (It wasn't really me and JW that used all the disco records as Frisbees off the upper deck that night, when most of them made it all the way over the golf course fence---those guys just looked like us!)