Writes Tim McGraw:
Hi Lew,
Ahhh, Bohemian Grove… home of the owl and the Death of Care Ceremony. That owl is on the one-dollar bill in miniature up by the “1” in the upper right-hand corner. The Bohemian Owl is also on all the dinnerware and the open motor coaches from the 1940s (I think) that drive the attendees around the grove to their various camps. I think there are over 30 camps.
My wife and I worked catering jobs at the Bohemian Grove from 2000 to 2004. It is an odd kinda creepy place, especially after dark. The redwoods in the grove are huge. The Grill is where we usually did our catering jobs. The Grill is for all club members to use with a reservation for private events.
The bar where I usually worked was really cool. The bar wrapped around a giant 10′ thick redwood that made up the south wall of the bar area. The Grill had a huge stone fireplace and long picnic tables for dinners. The kitchen was funky and had two swinging doors with portholes for us caterers to go through. I remember a beautiful painting of a naked maiden in the forest gazing over a lake under moonlight which was on the wall next to the door to the kitchen. A wife demanded that the picture be removed for her husband’s party at the grove. Women are allowed into the grove during daylight hours but must leave at sunset (unless they are caterers).
We also did some catering jobs at a few of the camps. These jobs were almost all in the afternoon as women were present. All of the camps are different. Some are for music. Some are for business. Some are for drinking. Some are for acting. Clint Eastwood has shown a film on the outdoor theater screen.
One camp we worked at had a very dyspeptic caretaker. He was a bigot who gave our fellow beautiful ex-model black female caterer a hard time. She spent the afternoon in the catering van as she refused to work the job after his lewd comments. I suppose my wife and I should have just left, too, but we were just catering company employees, and we always finished the jobs.
Over the bar in this camp was a painting of an old man in tails fecking a young woman on a piano. I’d never seen a painting so well done or so lurid in my life, not even in Paris.
In the storage room of this camp were cases and cases of booze and mixers on the shelves. It was something to see.
But another camp had great singers and musicians who were black. Another camp was all about businessmen making deals.
Robert F. Kennedy attended Bohemian Grove. Kennedy was told not to talk to the help, but he gave a speech to the valet drivers in the parking lot. I learned a lot from the old Bohemian Grove head caretakers who drove the open-air motor cars.
He’s the one who told me about the two-story wooden building. A famous architect designed it. The story was that FDR and Churchill met in this building to discuss the development of the atomic bomb. They were drinking Manhattans so named the project after their drinks.
I don’t know if that’s true. I can’t find any evidence that Churchill was ever there. But my wife and I did walk over to the building and up the outside staircase. We peered in the windows. Inside, it looked like 1940 in a film noir movie. Nothing had changed.
Oh, I have other stories, but you get the idea. Bohemian Grove is like everywhere else, with good and bad people in it; they just have more money.
This week the private jets are flying over our town into Santa Rosa Airport, bringing the swells to their annual Faggot Forest Fun in the Redwoods. Well, Nixon called them a bunch of faggots, but I never saw any gay behavior there. They all seemed like drunken, heterosexual, arrogant, rich, and powerful men to me.
It’s been the same throughout history. Bohemian Grove is no big whoop. The owl is kind of creepy, though.
