Milt Younger sets the record straight on the union picketing and more on the Lebec Hotel

 * ... UNION: Longtime plaintiff's attorney Milt Younger gave me a call to set the record straight about why the Carpenter's Union was picketing the downtown Bank of America building, which Milt owns. The irony, of course, is that Milt is a lifelong Democrat and big labor supporter, and he also represents the Carpenter's Union on  legal issues. He told me he was not aware a non-union contractor was being used in an office renovation and was "embarrassed" by the whole episode. That contractor has now been let go in favor of a company using union labor.

* ... SPOTTED: In the lobby of a downtown hotel, a female fan of the Bakersfield Condors is seen screaming obscenities at another fan who had quietly criticized the team's play. The woman's tirade went on so long that a bartender had to intervene, but not before the woman and several Condors players made the man feel so uncomfortable he had to leave.

 * ... LEBEC: More on the old Lebec Hotel from Robert Wert. "Forty years ago when I was in the Merchant Marine the ship's cook said, 'You're from Bakersfield? Did you know that O'Brien potatoes were invented at the Lebec Hotel?' As a side note my grand parents would stop at the Lebec Hotel overnight on their way from Los Angeles to see us in San Jose. About 1939 or 1940 my grand father had a heart attack and passed away" at the hotel.

* ... MEMORY: Vickie Nunlee remembers growing up near Alta Vista when her father, a mechanic at Morrison's Automotive, would "borrow" whatever car he was working on take Vickie and her three siblings to lunch, usually bologna sandwiches and Kool-Aid.

* ... BROCK'S: Reader Patricia Davis Kelley wrote to recall Zeke Cantini, a employee at the old Brock's department store who ran the Campus Deb Club for teens. "We did fashion shows for Brock's and she taught us a lot," she said. "I was doing a fashion show at the Fox Theater and there was a Hollywood movie star there by the name of Richard Egan. We discovered we were shirt tail relatives and that the governor of the Territory of Alaska was also an Egan and a relative, distant but related."

* ... KOHL'S: Hats off to Kohl's which donated $60,009 to the Mercy and Memorial Hospital Community Wellness Program. Kohl's has now donated some $300,000 to the programs, which help combat childhood obesity.

 * ... FEDWAY: Superior Court Judge Thomas S. Clark weighed in on the old Fedway Department store downtown. "I do remember the opening and that it had the first escalator in town. I had seen one or two department store escalators on rare trips to Los Angeles, but it was still a source of amazement to me. I felt Bakersfield had finally arrived into the 'big time.'"