1870s: Colonel Zig Zag Covered All the News in San Gregorio…
“It always rains when I give a ball,” R.W. Savage, the new owner of the San Gregorio House complained to his friends in 1873.
And who got the quote? Why Colonel Zig Zag, the San Gregorio correspondent who mailed his news to the San Mateo Times & Gazette where his column appeared sporadically.
Mr. Savage supported the theory I’ll call reverse psychology. It seemed to him that if he admitted from the get-go that it was going to rain, because it always rained when he gave a party in the spring, well, it seemed to the hotel owner, that, then, it just might not rain.
Did you follow that?
But it was raining hard when he made his weather prediction. It had been raining so much and for so long that the earth looked like thick brown gravy. You had to think twice before traveling anywhere in that goop but the tougher San Gregorians left the driving to their horses. Others enjoyed homemade “sleigh-rides over the slick, greasy mud in high style.”
Who got that quote? Colonel Zig Zag.
Caught up in the moody weather, Mr. Savage offered free mud rides to and from the beach for anyone willing to slide across the soaked ground and spend the night at his quaint hotel.
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