TONI MORGAN BASTIEN INTERVIEW
Narrators: Toni Morgan Bastien, Ray Bastien
Interviewer: Kathy Combs
Interview date: August 2, 2010
Transcriber: Ann Montgomery
Location: Bastien residence (Julian, California)

COMBS This is Kathy Combs. I’m here with Toni Morgan Bastien. We’re in Julian,
California and today is August 2, 2010.
Toni, I’d like to begin with your family history. Obviously, you have a lot of great
Carlsbad family history. But I’d like to take you back pretty much as far as you
can remember, your great-grandparents, your grandparents just to get a feel of
your history from your perspective.
TM BASTIEN: Okay, first of all I never knew my great-grandparents. My great-grandparents,
they were known as “Mom-Mom” and “Granddad.” They died in around 1933,
so the only grandparents that I knew were my maternal grandparents, Ed and
Neva Kentner. My paternal grandparents were from Denmark. And they died in
the same area of the time that my great grandparents died. That would be 1933
thereabouts.
I just have wonderful memories—we were a very close-knit family. The Inns—
the Twin Inns would close on Monday nights. We would have family night
where my grandfather would, oh, cook or do steaks. Even the catholic priest, who
was Father Anthony Casper, he would come down every once-in-awhile and
have dinner with us. The dinner would mean my uncle—my mom’s brother—Ed
Jr.—or otherwise known as “Bup”—my aunt Bee—who was Lorna, who was an
organist in the Carlsbad, Oceanside, Vista, Escondido area—very gifted. Also,
the organist for St. Patrick’s, when St. Patrick’s was in the other location. My—
well Monday night dinners at the Twin Inns, so far for Monday nights.
Living in Carlsbad was quite different than it is now. It was quite smaller, very
smaller. Everybody knew everybody to the point of when you’re pet pony, as we

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TM BASTIEN: had, she would roll under the fence and go around visiting people. My dad would
get a call, “Mr. Morgan, Dolly is out of her corral and she’s down here. Would
you pick her up?” And he would go down and bring her home.
Even the town doctor, Dr. Getz, was very close. It was just different, very
wonderful. At school, Pine Elementary—very, very small. Our class was
maybe—it was either 77 or 87 kids in the class—graduating class. You didn’t
have to lock your doors back then, as it is now.
COMBS: Tell me about some of your activities. You had mentioned your horse—your pony.
Tell me a little more about your pony.
TM BASTIEN: Learned how to ride at a very early age, and that is without a saddle. Bareback
because she liked going under the apricot tree and rub us off. [laughs] So, we
rode bareback most of the time. Although we did have a saddle.
COMBS: Where did you go?
TM BASTIEN: In the corral, yeah. In the corral. Even though my mom had a horse, a little
Arabian that she used to ride, but unfortunately she was killed or died due to
somebody not watching her that w—she was in their care and they didn’t check
on her for a couple of days and they found her dead in the bottom of the ravine
off of Chestnut.
COMBS: Oh goodness.
TM BASTIEN: And to the day that my mom died, every time she went by there, it would bring
back a flood of memories.
My mom was, let’s put it this way, very protective. So, to go riding—I loved
horseback riding—so, to go riding on the little pony was out of the question
unless it was in the corral or my dad lead her. And we found a home for her when
I believe I was about ten years old. My aunt had a little pony called “Beauty,” a
little pinto or paint, who was quite unruly you might say, never really tamed. She
was wild. My dad put me in the saddle when I was about four or five, down by

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TM BASTIEN: the fishpond at the Twin Inns. And I think everybody in Carlsbad knew about the
fishpond, in the lower east end of the Twin Inns. Almost by the railroad tracks.
Beauty bolted away before dad got the saddle cinched and I was in the saddle.
COMBS: Oh my gosh!
TM BASTIEN: [laughs] Yeah! He finally got her stopped. We went upstairs. My mom was in
that rocking chair having, let’s say, a breakdown. Thought for sure I was injured,
and my grandmother was trying to comfort her. I think I—if I remember
correctly, I thought it was just a grand old thing. [laughter]
COMBS: Having a good time!
TM BASTIEN: Yeah! Yes. But that was as far as horseback riding went, until I married and then
I took it up—years later—
COMBS: So, you continued to do it when you were older.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But oh golly, as I said before, I came from a
very close knit, tight family. Family was everything. I mean, everything. Beach
in the summer with family. We took trips up to the High Sierras, and Jackson
Hole, Wyoming to go fishing and family outings. And oh—and then there was
the Tootsie K Ranch, and that was wonderful. My grandfather had a—my
grandparents had a ranch out off Sunny Creek Road in Carlsbad, which is close
to Kelly’s or Kelly’s Flats, and they had a big ranch house. Believe it or not it’s
still standing. We would spend time out there as every member of the family did.
COMBS: The ranch house is still there?
TM BASTIEN: Oh yes, it’s still there. As a matter of fact, one of my classmates has a brother,
Timmy Barlow, used to live there with his family. It’s no longer in the Kentner
family. It was sold many years ago but that’s—they raise chickens and during the
war years they had—oh pigs, hogs, and a cow. And my grandmother I believe
used to milk the cow.

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COMBS: Oh, my goodness.
TM BASTIEN: Because they had a milk cow. That was—you would look through the kitchen
window and there were two little—two little buildings. At the time I thought they
were huge but really, they were quite small, and they used to have stuff—things
in there like probably milk to keep them cool.
COMBS: Then they had the chickens for the restaurant?
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, they had the chickens for the restaurant. They had hogs in pens. And it was
a large piece of property, very large, over 200 acres I believe. It was huge.
COMBS: Oh, my goodness, I had no idea—
TM BASTIEN: And above there—in fact it could have been closer to 300-400 acres—and please,
I might be wrong. My uncle would know. Ed, or as the family calls him, Bup.
But they had—oh gosh, roads leading up to the reservoir and on Monday nights
we would have weenie roasts and swimming in the reservoir.
COMBS: How much—that’s fun. I have a little snippet here I wanted to ask you about
because I—this is a newspaper article and what it said is, it says, “Jack Morgan
saved his brother’s life, Michael”—
TM BASTIEN: I knew what you were going to say. [chuckles] Oh yes, that—
COMBS: Ring a bell?
TM BASTIEN: —that did—oh! Kathy, I have been blessed with a good memory. I have been
quite blessed. My mom used to say, “Toni, you’ve got the best memory.” No, I
have a very good memory. Yes, we were out there—okay, in front of—as you
drove down into—to the ranch house. As you drove down, on the right-hand side
and down from the lawn—because at one time they had a lawn—there was a
pond! And it was—in some spots it was quite deep. Deep enough where the
eucalyptus tree that was overhanging it—they and a rope, and my aunt who was a

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TM BASTIEN: swimming instructor would, I believe, just, you know swing out on the rope and
go swimming. Well, we kids were told, not instructed, but told emphatically, “Do
not go anywhere near the pond and especially the rope.”
I was maybe, oh boy, between—around six or seven years of age. Michael was
probably about five and Jack was just beginning to walk. Mike decided that he
was going to go—well, he was going to try the rope out. Which he did, and fell
in. Didn’t know how to swim. I didn’t know how to swim really. Jack was just
toddling—he was a toddler. Just beginning to talk. So, he went up and he said,
“Brudder’s in the pond.” With that my mom dropped everything, ran out and
jumped in. I called—I think I called my dad or Dr. Getz. And he came right out.
Mom pulled him out and started applying, um—I don’t know if it was mouth to
mouth. At any rate she was told, “If you had been one minute later you would
have lost him.” Mm-hmm.
COMBS: Oh, that’s amazing. So, after that I assume there was no more pond for them.
[laughs]
TM BASTIEN: Oh he—oh Kathy, he was scared to death of water for the longest time. And
another thing that’s interesting, he—this was about the time when Jackie was
starting—Jackie Miller—Jackie Kentner Miller is my aunt, my mom’s youngest
sister and they were 22 years difference. More like mother and daughter. Very,
very, very close. Jackie was just beginning to give swimming lessons I believe
but they got somebody by the name of Dim Poradosky—Dimetri Poradosky, to
give us swim lessons at the Royal pond—Royal Palms in Carlsbad. The Royal
Palms had a big swimming pool. Well years later Dim Poradosky or as we knew
him, Mr. Poradosky, was the—I believe, the math teacher at Carlsbad High
School. In fact, I just saw him ten years ago for our last reunion. Yup, and I don’t
know if he is around. He was not at our class reunion. Anyway, yes, but it took a
long time for Mike to get over the fear of water.
COMBS: I can only imagine what that would be like.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, yeah. He dove, or fell into about five, six feet of water. It was so deep that
Mom could not even touch bottom.

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COMBS: Wow yeah, that’s deep. I kinda picture this [little shallow?]—
TM BASTIEN: And I don’t think the pond is there anymore.
COMBS: Your poor mom must have just been—
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, well Mom was a—my mom was a—she was in the swim class at UCLA—
synchronized swimming. A beautiful, beautiful woman. Wow.
COMBS: Tell me some more about your mom. Let’s talk about her for a little bit.
TM BASTIEN: Okay. Her name was D. D. Kentner Morgan Lee. And she just passed, on June
19, 2003. She and my aunt were—Jackie, came over from Hawaii. They went to
the fair. Came home and said she wasn’t feeling well. They took her to the
hospital and that was it.
COMBS: Oh, my gosh. And how old was she at the time?
TM BASTIEN: Ninety-one.
COMBS: Wow.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, a very young, vibrant 91-year old. She came to Carlsbad in 1919, when she
was seven years old. Because, I believe it was in November of 1919, that’s when
they bought the Twin Inns. And at the time there were two inns, hence the “Twin
Inns.” One was the Wadsworth house on the northern end, and in the fifties, the
very early fifties, they took it down because it was a fire hazard. In fact, we kids
were not allowed to go in there. Period. It was—big holes in the upstairs flooring.
[chuckles] Very rickety, so they took it down. They saved the newel post which
my uncle had, a few stained-glass windows and some turn posts, I believe. The
southern end was known as the Schutte house and it was built by Gerhard
Schutte. And we moved in there in 1961. My grandfather had developed cancer
and he passed in November, right before or after Thanksgiving of November of
1961. And we moved down there in the spring of 1961.

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COMBS: And you were at the Inn, living at the Inn above?
TM BASTIEN: Yes, yes. My grandmother and grandfather, while he was still able to get around.
He—they had bought a trailer, or mobile home, and were living in it in
Oceanside. And because of the—you know, it’s a big building and every once in
a while, they would have trouble with vagrants and people coming in and just
wanting to stay there and you didn’t know who was—who was there! So, we
moved in, in Spring of 1961 and that would be my two brothers, Mike, Jack and
my mom and dad, Art and D. D.
Also, around Christmas-time there was the fear of perhaps someone leaving a
cigarette that was still lit somewhere on the premises. Like upstairs in the dining
room. For instance, Mom and Dad would get—gosh they were beautiful—very
tall Christmas trees that were flocked. And this one time, gosh it was close to—it
was over six-foot high Christmas tree. They had a Christmas party one night and
it was flocked. Mom went around to check that all the lights were off—or the
lights were off, and checking the branches as she used to do just to see that
everything was all right. On one of the branches was a smoldering cigarette.
COMBS: Good thing she caught that!
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, someone was looking out after her. I really believe that. Yeah, we were
there from ‘61—or I was there from ‘61 until ’65 when I married, June 13, 1965.
And then she moved out in, right around June or July of 1969, when my uncle
came over [dogs barking] to take over the business from Hawaii.
[INTERVIEW PAUSES AS RAY BASTIEN ENTERS. BRIEF CONVERSATION TAKES PLACE.]
TM BASTIEN: I said that she moved out in ’69, it must have been June or July of 1969. My dad
passed from brain cancer in April of 1969. I was—found out I was pregnant with
my oldest, James, and that was the only saving grace for her because she found
out just right after that she was gonna have to move out. And then I guess in—
well, she moved in with my husband and I at the time, into our home in Carlsbad
and then in December of 1969 she met a wonderful, wonderful man, Harry Lee,
and they were married. They met through Dr. [Schultz?], Dr. George Schultz,

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TM BASTIEN: who were close friends. He and Hazel were very close friends. What wonderful
people.
COMBS: She was an artist as well.
TM BASTIEN: She was an artist. She was not only an artist she was a super beautiful, beautiful
woman inside and out. Everything she touched turned to gold. She gardened. Her
yard was a showplace. Everyone loved D. D. Morgan Lee. Everyone. As
everybody loved my dad, Art Morgan. I don’t think there was—he had an enemy
in the world. Both spoke their minds. Boy, if you—you didn’t want to—well, I’ll
leave it at that. [laughter]
COMBS: That’s all right.
TM BASTIEN: They were just neat, wonderful, wonderful people.
COMBS: Tell me some more things about what made them so special, some of your
memories.
TM BASTIEN: Us kids were first. They were honest. Just everybody gravitated toward them.
Kathy, just everything! I can’t really—you can’t put your finger on—they were
just my parents. Just did special things. Helped other folks out. Part of the
community. Did things as a family. We were in touch with family every day.
Golly, Mom sewed for me. Just everything! You know, baked, cooked. You
name it. So, I can’t really put your finger on one particular thing. Why was she so
special? She was my mom. That’s what made her special, and everybody loved
her. I think if you went to the—checked with a lot of people here, [they’d say?]
“Oh, D. D. Morgan Lee—D. D. Morgan?”—her full name, the reason why they
called her “D. D.” was Dorothy Dovey Kentner Morgan. She—if you wanted to
get on her bad side just call her Dorothy Dovey. [KC laughs] Dovey was my
grandfather’s great inspiration. I can only imagine what my grandmother said.
But that was Grandpa.
COMBS: [laughs] That’s fun.

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TM BASTIEN: Yeah, yes, it was fun. But Kathy, they were just—you laughed a lot. You did
things a lot on the spur of the moment. You got in the car and did things with
your aunts, and your mom and dad. It was just a wonderful life.
COMBS: Well, tell me a little more about your Monday night dinners.
TM BASTIEN: Oh, well, everybody would meet at the Twin Inns. It was either the Twin Inns or
out at the Tootsie K. And Grandma and Grandpa—my grandfather was known as
“Mr. K” or [“Reggy”?] [ed. note: pronounced with a hard ‘G’ sound].
COMBS: Reggy.
TM BASTIEN: Now, don’t ask me how Reggy came to be. I don’t know.
COMBS: That was going to be my next question. [laughs]
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, in fact one of these days I am going to call Jackie and say “Hey, I have a
question, how did your dad come to be known as Reggy?” Or my grandmother
was known as “Mrs. K.” Nobody really called her Neva unless it was her sister,
Fern, but it was either Mrs. K or “Muddy.” Now Muddy is Dutch—I believe it’s
Dutch for “mother”? But a lot of people called her Muddy.
COMBS: That’s interesting, yeah.
TM BASTIEN: Monday night dinners were dinners out at the Tootsie K Ranch house—would be
my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, meaning Bee, Jackie, and Bup. I had
another aunt Katherine, who was known as “Tootsie,” who was a vocalist. She
had a beautiful voice. There was three years difference. She was born in 1915.
And this was in 1943, she came home from giving a recital. I don’t know if it
was a church—she converted to Catholicism. And I have a feeling, I might be
wrong, I have a feeling it could have been something to do with the church, but
I’m not really 100% sure. This one afternoon she came home and said, “I’m not
feeling well.”—laid down, and they called Dr. Getz. Just so happened it was on a
Monday I believe, and she was dead within a short time. A brain aneurism.

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COMBS: Wow.
TM BASTIEN: And I think that is one reason why my aunt and uncle did not like funerals. They
just—because Jackie said they had an open coffin. And she just will not—. She
won’t—in fact, Jackie really was not here—she wasn’t here for my mom’s
funeral. Or she did not attend her own mother’s funeral. Both were graveside
services. She just—
COMBS: Understandable.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, mm-hmm, but golly. Oh, and Father Casper and probably friends of my
uncles, he had a club that was called the Oilers. They met downstairs down off
from the garage of the Inns. And there’s a lot of people that were in the Oilers. A
lot of young men that were into cars. In fact, the guy that—I’m not going to go
into this but, this person that lives up in Julian, he was a camp manager. He was a
member of the Oilers. [chuckles] I’ll leave it at that.
Anyway, or going out to the Tootsie K Ranch, having dinners out there, hiking
around at dusk. Listening to the coyotes at night. Oh, on one of the nights it was
either Tuesday night or Monday. Tuesday night or Thursday night, they would
take the innards from chicken killing. See, they killed the chickens. They had
chickens there, out there at the ranch and there at the Inns because before the
buildings—before that little shopping area went in, there was an area down
below where they had chickens. And they had their own chickens.
In fact, I would—as a little girl, my brother and I would go around with my dad
looking for farmers that had—or ranchers, that had chickens that they could
buy—my grandparents could buy chickens, you know, there. So, we would bring
them home and they—chicken killing day was one of the—I think it was
Monday—one of the days of the week. And they would take all of the innards
like the chicken heads and all that, and put them in buckets and take ‘em out to
Tootsie K Ranch and dump ‘em up on the hill. Well, you could bet that that night
there were an awful lot of happy coyotes.
COMBS: Oh, yes. [laughs]

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TM BASTIEN: And probably a lot of happy mountain lions, cougars, bobcats—because at the
time back in those days there were cougars and bobcats more than there are now.
COMBS: Have you ever seen a cougar out there?
TM BASTIEN: Oh, yeah.
COMBS: Wow, [unclear] see that now.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, the Wilson’s, who had chickens down the road, had one that was a
nuisance. He would like to have a chicken dinner at night. But oh yeah, there
were sky lights in the roof of the ranch house. And every once in a while, you
would get one up there and we were—we kids were just terrified. Or my aunt—
oh, I failed to mention this, my grandmother had a very close friend, girlfriend,
and they remained like sisters until both passed. And their names were Bill and
Dorothy Vaughn. And they were my “aunt and uncle” although they were not
related. They were as close or closer than my own flesh and blood. And they’d
meet with us on Monday nights or come down just for visits. And we would go—
oh gosh, antiquing and just have fun. Kathy, you don’t hear of anything like this
anymore. And sometimes I miss that so much.
COMBS: Understandable, so—
TM BASTIEN: Yup. But yeah, we had—oh, deer. All sorts of stuff out there. Yeah, they raised
their own chickens at one time. And then I guess it got more profitable toward
the last—toward the end, to buy the stuff, buy the chickens.
COMBS: Well, I have to tell you I wish they still had the chicken dinners there, because I
thought they were just great! I mean I miss it [unclear]—
TM BASTIEN: Kathy, when Niemans took over, we went and had a dinner there. My husband
had chicken and it was so bad. It was very heavily peppered, and it was bad. Just
really bad. Certainly nothing like what my grandparents had.

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COMBS: Now I have read that your grandfather started that restaurant with twenty
dollars.
TM BASTIEN: That’s right, that he had borrowed from my aunt, my grandmother’s sister, Fern.
Yeah, if you can imagine!
COMBS: [chuckles] I can’t actually.
TM BASTIEN: No, you just can’t. Twenty dollars was entirely different from what twenty
dollars is today. I just can’t imagine. And at the time they had, during—right
around maybe prohibition? Or in the thirties, the twenties and thirties, they had
gambling. And in the bar off from the temple room, they had slots. And from
what Jackie has told us—don’t take this as 100% correct, but the money from the
slots is what they built the ranch house with.
COMBS: Oh, goodness.
TM BASTIEN: Uh-huh. And there was a lot of acreage. My mom, to her dying day she said, “If
only Dad had saved out five acres for each one of his kids. How wonderful that
would have been.”
COMBS: Well yeah what’d you say, two, three hundred acres out there? That’s a lot of
land!
TM BASTIEN: There was an awful lot of land and the reservoir that was on the top—see you
went around and there was a pond called Pop’s Pond. And I don’t think Pop’s
Pond was as big as our dining room here. It was overgrown with tules and water
that had moss on it. But to us kids it was wonderful. And a lot of “euc” trees
and—oh gosh, oak trees, the coastal oaks. But to us it was just wilderness and to
go out there and go hiking—oh, and then over from the ranch house there was a
spring. It was a spring filled pond. A little tiny pond where all the bull frogs
lived. And so, we would go hiking on—like on Sundays, and go way up there
and it was just so wonderful. But there was also the problem—my mom always
warned us, “Do not go any further,” because you had problems with the

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TM BASTIEN: “illegals.” Now don’t ask me why she would warn us about the illegals because
so many of those people were wonderful people, but nonetheless we were
warned. Yup. Yup.
I had the opportunity to go out there because I had told you before, one of my
classmates, his brother Timmy Barlow used to live out there and I saw his
brother at our reunion—Terry. Tim is no longer living in the ranch house, but
when I went out, I took my mom out there with me and you know what, it has not
changed one bit. The lights were lightbulbs hanging from a light cord in the
kitchen or in the bedrooms. That was it. And then they have this wood burning
stove. There was no heat at all except for the wood burning stove and the
fireplace that they never used because the flue in it was broken. So, when you lit
a fire, the smoke would back up. And in the wintertime, it got colder than cold. It
got so cold one time that I think I was in maybe third grade, second or third
grade, Dad brought in some—there’s a name of a tree, and I’ll think of it. But the
leaves were iced.
COMBS: Really?
TM BASTIEN: And the pipes were frozen. Sycamore, we had sycamores out there. Sycamores, a
few oaks, a lot of oaks, coastal oaks, sycamores, coastal oaks and a few
Eucalyptus. And I really thought that was really big stuff to have sycamore
leaves frozen and little did I know years later, I’d be living in an area where—.
[chuckles]
Yeah, we had that all the time. [KC laughs] We have this all the time. But it was
an enchanting, enchanting life. I would have girlfriends stay out. As a matter of
fact, at our reunion, I had people come up and say to me, “Toni remember when
we went out to the Tootsie K Ranch?” But yes, it got bitterly cold.
COMBS: That’s unusual to think of, actually the leaves freezing. You know to get—because
it’s inland but it’s not that far inland.
TM BASTIEN: In 19—1967, we had snow in Carlsbad. And you can check this out, it’s on—
there’s a website. There’s one of the—well it’s on the web, where “Remember

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TM BASTIEN: when it snowed in Carlsbad in 1967?” In fact, I’ll look it up. And then in the
forties it also snowed.
We lived on Arland Road in Carlsbad in ‘67. And about eight or nine in the
morning I looked out. Well, the temperature had really dropped. We had one of
those floor heaters. It was an old, old home that was built right around 1915,
where the floor heat, and I looked out and here it is snowing. Well we—my mom
and dad picked me up—my husband was working—picked me up and where the
El Camino Country Club is, all the telephone lines were encased in white ice.
And it was there at the animal park—where the animal park is now—a couple of
inches of snow on the ground and they tell us that that year there was a few
people that were snowed in up here in Julian, that could not get out.
COMBS: I can’t even imagine.
TM BASTIEN: They had to have bulldozers or tractors come in and get ‘em out.
COMBS: Guess I better not be complaining about that July gloom down there right now.
[laughs]
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, well Christmas before last we were snowed in for a couple of weeks.
COMBS: Really?
TM BASTIEN: Mm-hmm. Oh, yes, even though we have four-wheel drive. So yes, we do get a
lot of snow up here.
COMBS; Yeah, and you didn’t imagine that it was going to be—when you were growing up
that you would be up here in the snow?
TM BASTIEN: No, never in my wildest dreams. But yeah, we do get snow.
COMBS: How’d you meet your husband?
TM BASTIEN: My first one? Or Ray?

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COMBS: Mm-hmm.
TM BASTIEN: We met through square dancing. My mom and stepdad in August—oh, excuse
me—in November, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. This was November of 1981.
They were on their way to Borrego Springs to meet with some friends that they
used to go up into British Columbia with. This was of course on a Sunday and
the kids and I—fact, it’s the Sunday—it was the day after the actress, Natalie
Wood was killed on her boat. And I thought, oh how terrible, what else is gonna
happen? I got home and I got a call from the coroner asking me if I have parents
by the name of Harry and D. D. Lee. And I said, “Yes.” He did not identify
himself as the coroner. I said “Yes.” He said, “Well, your dad was—your parents
were in an auto accident.” I said, “What!”—yes. I said, “How are they?” He
said, “Your mom will survive. Your dad is dead.” He said, “Somebody will be
there to see you in a few minutes.” With that, I went next door and got a—they
gave me a glass of brandy.
I was told that they were on their way to visit these friends, as I was told. This
was where 78 goes into old Julian Highway. An elderly man hit them head on.
They don’t know if he fell asleep at the wheel or just plain not paying attention
where he was driving. My mom was—we were told would be in the hospital for
not anything less than six months. She was out by Christmas. [chuckles] By that
September, the next September, she asked me if I would like to take a class in
square dancing. And that’s how I met my husband.
She and Harry knew each other for a month, and they were married. Ray and I
knew each other for approximately the same length of time, maybe shorter, and
we took the kids over with us to Vegas and we were married. Jamie was his best
man. Patty was my matron of honor. Jamie had just turned 13. Patty was about
nine or ten.
James is now on his way to the gulf. He’s a chief warrant officer onboard the
USS Halsey. He’s with the task force of the USS Abraham Lincoln. There are
probably—[addressing Ray in another room] Honey, how many ships are in
James’s task force?
R BASTIEN: [barely audible] That’s classified, but it’s a bunch.

16
TM BASTIEN: It’s a bunch—it’s classified. James is his pride and joy, absolutely. There were
people that said, “Oh Ray—,” he works for the telephone company—he’s retired
from Pac Bell. They told him, “You are marrying a woman with two children.
Are you nuts? It’ll never work.” Jamie is the one. He has 10 kids. James is the
one that’s the most like him.
COMBS: Isn’t that interesting?
TM BASTIEN: Yup.
R BASTIEN: [entering room] Talkin’ about James?
TM BASTIEN: Jamie, yeah, Honey—
R BASTIEN: Boy, I’m sure proud of that boy.
TM BASTIEN: He is on his way to the gulf. They will be—they’re going to the orient first, and
then be winding up in [unclear] Afghanistan or maybe Iran. Thank goodness
they’re on a ship. We understand that when they get to Iran, or perhaps Iraq or
Afghanistan, they have no shore duty. It’s, I think Bahrain where they have the
shore duty. It’s a very close knit [op?]—they don’t do that, shore duty. Thank
goodness.
R BASTIEN: Well, just a tad of information on the military. The Abraham Lincoln is one of
our largest aircraft carriers. And being—the value of that military-wise is
insurmountable. You can’t put a value on it. So, that any aircraft carrier that goes
in—is deployed, has a task force around it. That’s the task force that my son is in.
Just a little to add to that.
TM BASTIEN: His ship is a—isn’t it a guided missile?
R BASTIEN: Yes—it gets—we have had a [chuckles] tour in his ship and I know that you
seem young enough to know what Star Wars is.

17
COMBS: Oh sure. [laughter]
R BASTIEN: Star Wars has nothing on our technology. It’s just—oh, awesome.
TM BASTIEN: He was commissioned on the USS Bon Richard.
R BASTIEN: Yeah, we’re navy.
TM BASTIEN: And formerly on—before the USS Halsey, on the USS Sterett. I had the great
honor of going back and being able to attend the commissioning in Maryland.
But he is now a “plank owner”—he was a plank owner. Or is a plank owner.
Because they say, “Once a plank owner, always a plank owner.” That means that
if you were stationed on a ship while it was being built then you are a plank
owner.
COMBS: Interesting. [voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: It’s a tradition. There is a lot of tradition with the navy. From the buttons on a
man’s pants or a gal’s pants, each button represents the states—how many states.
R BASTIEN: One of the 13 original—
TM BASTIEN: One of the 13 original states.
COMBS: Oh, interesting.
TM BASTIEN: So, it’s not—believe me it would be a real problem if it was all the states of
today. No, it’s the original 13 states. When I attended the commissioning back
there, the namesake of the Sterett, he was in the full period costume which dated
back to the 1700s.
COMBS: Oh, goodness.
TM BASTIEN: It was absolutely inspiring. Absolutely incredible! Wow.

18
R BASTIEN: Do you mind if I just sit here and listen?
TM BASTIEN: Of course not, Sweetheart! [voices overlapping]
COMBS: Please, join us—join in, because we’ll have questions for both of you. Now did
you live in Carlsbad originally and then move out here?
TM BASTIEN: Okay, I was born and raised—Ray is—Ray [Raynaldo?] is from Los Angeles.
East L. A. to be exact. I was born at Oceanside Hospital as my daughter was. She
was the last of the babies to be born there. My brother Mike was born there. Jack
was born at Mercy in San Diego. My mom’s first baby, whom they lost three
hours after birth, he was born there. But we moved—we lived in a little house
that was directly across from the Twin Inns on Elm, next to Señor Grubby’s.
Señor Grubby’s was Mariah’s before. And before Mariah’s, it was the House of
Morgan. And the House of Morgan was my aunt and uncle, Eddie and Jeanette
Morgan, who was—they were well known for their fantastic dinners, or meals.
Eddie was well known for his pies.
COMBS: What kind of pie?
TM BASTIEN: Everything.
COMBS: Every kind?
TM BASTIEN: Everything, everything—mainly the pecan pies. That was his specialty. But they
built these two little houses—mirror, exactly alike. The one that is bright pink,
it’s nothing like what it used to be. Mom had—it was a showcase. Just absolutely
beautiful. She had Cecile Brunner roses and the tradition was angel food cakes,
for family, and in the middle of the angel food cake she would have a small glass
that would fit in there with Cecile Brunner roses in it. I’ll never forget that.
Jeanette and Eddie had a sundry on the old highway right west of the Inns across
the street. And I forget now what is in there. There was McClellan’s Insurance
next to it.

19
COMBS: I’m trying to think.
TM BASTIEN: Anyway, that burnt in the fifties and then they turned—they built a house, or this
little restaurant, in front of the house and turned it into the House of Morgan.
Where they got the idea—I’m told, where they got the idea of the restaurant—
they went over to Escondido, and in Escondido there was a San Diego Church
Supply, a Catholic gift store. And that’s—it was a furniture store before it went
into a Catholic gift store. But that’s where they got the idea.
R BASTIEN: Hmm, I didn’t know that. They got the idea for what?
TM BASTIEN: They got the idea for—when they were drawing up plans for the restaurant.
R BASTIEN: Oh, the restaurant.
TM BASTIEN: And what is the name—is that Grand in Escondido?
R BASTIEN: It’s on Grand, yeah.
TM BASTIEN: It’s on Grand Street. And now it’s—Anthem Church Supply.
R BASTIEN: It’s a religious church supply.
TM BASTIEN: It’s a religious church supply.
R BASTIEN: That’s where—what do we have from them? From the old—
TM BASTIEN: Well, I got our lady statue there. But they carry rosaries and all that good stuff—
all that. All the priests—[voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: I—well, I walked into [chuckles] quite a bit of history through the years. I’ve
picked up a little here and there. It’s quite interesting. Because my family also
has—I’ve written my autobiography. It has a lotta history too. If we just—
different areas.

20
COMBS: So, you’re from Carlsbad and Los Angeles?
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, yeah.
R BASTIEN: Yup.
COMBS: Now, did you move out here right away or did you both live in Carlsbad?
TM BASTIEN: No. No, Ray moved here in ’69 from Los Angeles, Honey?
R BASTIEN: Well, from Riverside [unclear].
TM BASTIEN: Riverside, yeah, from Riverside. But yeah, Kathy as I said, I was born at
Oceanside Hospital. The tradition, at the time in the forties, mothers stayed in the
hospital—not anything—right around a week! [voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: [chuckles] Today [unclear]—
COMBS: 24 hours. [laughs]
TM BASTIEN: [voices overlapping] They have the baby—today they have the baby, a few hours
later—
R BASTIEN: —if you’re lucky! [laughs]
TM BASTIEN: —they’re in—which I really disagree, because a new mom needs to have a little
bit of special time. Just, you know, to rest and all that. But anyway, yeah, they
brought me home. My mom—or my grandparents—had a nurse, Agnes
[Zwally?] come and stay with her to help with the baby, meaning me.
COMBS: You were the oldest?
TM BASTIEN: I’m the oldest. They lost their first one in April of 1940 and his name was
Edward Arthur Morgan. He lived maybe, I think three or four hours. A seven-

21
TM BASTIEN: month baby, with a lot of heart problems. I’ll never forget, Mom said they had
him April—cold, and they didn’t have a stitch of clothing on him. But they sent a
respirator—or the fire department—sent a respirator? Whatever you call it. But
they could not resuscitate him.
COMBS: It was pretty hard. I think back in those days to—preemies were— [voices
overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: Kathy—I think it was right around ’61, the doctor that delivered him—or the
nurse or somehow—‘cause it strikes me as rather strange because Dr. Getz was
our doctor. But anyway, the doctor that delivered him came into the Inns and
Mom could barely talk to him. She was still affected. Patti told me, she said
“Mom,” she said, “I sat down and was talking to Grandma,”—this was probably
right around 1990—“the subject of her first born came up and she just started
crying and crying.”
COMBS: So sad.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that never, never leaves you.
R BASTIEN: Yeah, I’ve walked through that house. They showed me all the secret passages.
[chuckles] All the hidden—
COMBS: Oh, at the Twin Inns? [voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: Yeah, where they stashed all their gambling stuff.
TM BASTIEN: Oh, oh yes, in the attic. No, okay—getting back to the little house. They sold the
little—they called it the “Elm Street House.” And at the time, it was white,
perfectly white. My aunt’s and uncle’s house next to it was a pale yellow, maybe
trimmed in yellow, but they remodeled it to where you went through the main
dining room—the main part of the restaurant to get back to where they used to
live, because eventually Jeanette and Eddie moved out and they moved up to
Sunnyhill right next door to where we used to live. My mom and dad built this

22
TM BASTIEN: beautiful home on Sunnyhill. In Carlsbad of course, in 19—in the fifties, like
around ‘52 or ‘53.
COMBS: Is the house still there?
TM BASTIEN: Oh, yes. [Ray laughs] On Sunnyhill? [voices overlapping]
COMBS: That’s a beautiful street. One of my favorites.
R BASTIEN: You wanna tell her the coincidence? It’s a small world, let me tell ya’.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, I’ll tell—it’s a small world. They built this house on Sunnyhill. The people
who own it now, I think his name is Gidden. He’s a publisher? And right next
door to it on the north side, was a house that was built by the Heltons. And I can’t
think of—Hazel—[voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: [What color—?] Who was the lady—? The lady that was—
TM BASTIEN: Just a minute, Honey. It was built by Red—not Red Helton, that’s his brother—
Hazel Helton. And then when the Heltons sold it to my aunt and uncle when they
added—when they turned their little house and part—into part of the restaurant.
Anyway, years later after—of course, this was just like three years ago, two or
three years ago—I work at Spencer Valley School. I’m the playground aid and
we always take the kids to the swimming pool at Camp Stevens for a swim party
on the last day of school. And I always like to know the parents, you know, who
their kids are and just to know them, so in case they are there to pick up their
children, so I’ll know who I am dealing with. Well this one day, swim day, I had
never met this one parent. And it was a little girl that they had adopted from
Russia. I went up and I said, you know, “I’m Toni Bastien and your name?” And
he told me. I said, “Where are you from?” ‘cause it’s fun to know. And he said,
“Oh, I’m from San Diego in Carlsbad.” I said—I grew up in both places, because
I was from a military family—I said, “Oh really, in Carlsbad, whereabouts in
Carlsbad?” And he said, “Oh, a place called—a street called Sunnyhill.”

23
COMBS: Oh, gosh.
TM BASTIEN: “Oh, Really? Whereabouts on Sunnyhill?” He said, “I forget the address, but I’ll
never forget, it was a—I bought it from a couple by the name of Eddie and
Jeanette and then the people next door had two boys and a daughter, and the girl
used to babysit me.” And I said, “Well meet your babysitter!”
COMBS: Oh my gosh, small world, huh?
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, mm-hmm. [voices overlapping]
COMBS: That’s amazing. It’s still there? What’s the address?
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, it’s still there. I think it’s either 4029 or I think it’s 4029 Sunnyhill. Or
4039. I’m sure it’s 4029.
COMBS: That’s amazing though. It is a small world.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, it’s a very small world.
R BASTIEN: Smaller yet—tell them about my repairing—
TM BASTIEN: Oh yes, Ray was a—
R BASTIEN: I’m a repairman. Well, I’m—telepathy has been my life. I mean, you’re talking
50 years plus. So, it just happened that I was repairing—
TM BASTIEN: He was repairing that day. We were in Valley Center.
R BASTIEN: We were on the ranch.
TM BASTIEN: We were on the ranch. We were also getting ready to move our mobile home up
to the top. We bought a mobile home and put it up there in Valley Center—
beautiful home. Anyway, he came home and told me, he said, “Guess what

24
TM BASTIEN: happened?” Anyway, he had this repair job. It just so happens it was at my old
house where I grew up. [chuckles] Knocked on the door and this lady opens the
door and they immediately started talking. And I think you said, “Gosh—” you
said something like, or no, the woman said, “I’d sure like to meet—," or all the
time he was thinking, “Gosh my wife would really like this house.”
R BASTIEN: It’s very much her style. [voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: It’s very much my style. “She would sure like it.”
R BASTIEN: Wasn’t she was a [luminarian?] or so?
TM BASTIEN: Food—
R BASTIEN: Food, well luminary covers anything.
TM BASTIEN: —author. Yes, with the San Diego Magazine. And she said, “Well, I would sure
like to meet—have the chance of meeting the people that built this house and I
understand they were from the Twin Inns.” And then Ray said, “Well, you met
the right repairman. I’m married—." Come to find out it was my mom and dad’s
old house and I took Mom over there. Pam [Weisencamper?].
R BASTIEN: That’s what it was. I couldn’t remember the—
COMBS: You really do have an excellent memory. I have to say, I’m jealous.
R BASTIEN: Yes, sometimes I wish it wasn’t so accurate. [laughter]
COMBS: It’s nice for me!
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, I have been blessed with that. My uncle’s the same way. Only his gift is
that he can sit down and look at something in a book and it automatically—
COMBS: Like a photographic—

25
TM BASTIEN: A photographic memory. And then Mom and Dad sold the house. It was in the
early sixties when we moved to the Twin Inns. And we really had to do that,
because you cannot leave an old building. You know there was always a fear of
fire. Always that chance, or a vagrant coming in. As it was, Dad was hit over the
head on many—several occasions. And that, they think that possibly could have
been the cause for his brain cancer.
COMBS: Oh sure. That makes sense.
TM BASTIEN: Mm-hmm. Yup.
COMBS: Did you have an ocean view? From that top floor there? I was always curious
about that.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, I went—there was a young woman that interviewed me in May. A high
school student. And we went up into the attic and yeah, you can more or less get
an ocean view.
R BASTIEN: But with all the new building going on—
TM BASTIEN: Well, I was just going to say, Honey, back when I was a kid, more then, than it is
now. Now—what was her name? Gina Schwartz. She was there, and then a
couple of her friends, they were graduating this year, this June. We went up into
the attic. They let us go up there. It has—Kathy, big time in fact—in a way I wish
I hadn’t gone upstairs because it had changed so much. There was a fireplace in
the family room, that’s been blocked off. The only thing that has not changed is
the attic. We went up there and Gina said, “Toni there’s a rumor—there’s a story,
not a rumor—there’s a story that’s been going around. The young boy died by
jumping out or being pushed out.” I said, “What on earth?” She showed me this
room. You go up into the attic and there’s sort of a little cupola, and this little
tiny bitty door. It’s no more higher than this, and you have to crawl out. You can
go out there and overlook the driveway. It’s right directly next to the big dining
room. And if you look up it’s right over the living quarters. And Jack said—I
asked my uncle and Jack, and they said, “You’ve got me!” If that had happened,

26
TM BASTIEN: all of Carlsbad would have heard about it. I mean, people would still be talking
about it now. It was nothing more or nothing less than a story. My brother would
go up there and throw water balloons when he was a teenager.
COMBS: Which brother was this?
TM BASTIEN Jack. Jack.
R BASTIEN: That makes sense.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, Jack is fun. But the ghost stories are something else. Oh yeah, I could go
on and on.
COMBS: Tell me a couple anyway. [voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: I met her square dancing.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, we met square dancing.
COMBS: Are you still square dancing now?
TM BASTIEN: No.
R BASTIEN: No, I have an injury. You’re looking at someone who looks all right but, beat up,
shot, stabbed, beaten, war. [unclear] [chuckles] many broken bones, and stitches.
Because I guess I’m very enthusiastic with living.
COMBS: That’s wonderful! That’s the way to be!
R BASTIEN: Yeah, when I see someone break—broke their arm and they said, “I broke it
skiing.” I said, “Wonderful!” They said, “Yes!”
COMBS: That’s right, it means you got to go skiing!

27
R BASTIEN: Well, you know, hey! Go for it! You know? And I’m that way. It’s my
philosophy. I know it sounds a little—
COMBS: No, I think it’s fabulous. I think that’s the way to live.
R BASTIEN: Yeah, we’ve—you know what? First of all the ranch—I was married before and
yeah there’s a lot—. You’re looking at a project that people said it was
impossible for me to do. When they say, “You can’t do it,”—step aside! You
know, okay.
TM BASTIEN: You can do it. [laughter]
R BASTIEN: Before I met her, I was looking for property and so I built a bridge in Valley
Center that they said it couldn’t be done, and yeah it’s still standing and
[unclear]—
TM BASTIEN: And it will be standing for the next hundred years.
R BASTIEN: Yeah, a hundred years. It’s a railroad trestle.
TM BASTIEN: Or more like 200 years.
R BASTIEN: Because the property had a wash. The property was large but about 100 feet off
the highway. It was a large wash about eight, ten feet deep. People, through the
years, people put a culvert in there and then a big storm every year or so often’ll
wash that culvert away. So, I knew the lady that owned it, who was Annie
Oakley personified. She could shoot, spit and drive a tractor better than men
could. [laughter]
TM BASTIEN: Who also knew my dad at the Twin Inns—used to go there for Rotary meetings.
[chuckles] [voices overlapping] Gracey Cox.
R BASTIEN: Sometimes when you start something like that, you have doubts and I—I don’t
know if you know the Fenton Ranch. Do you know where the Fenton Ranch is?

28
COMBS: Mm-hmm.
R BASTIEN: Boy, a lot of people don’t.
COMBS: I don’t know how. Just from traveling around.
R BASTIEN: Okay, well the Fenton Ranch 20 years—no, no, how many years? When did we
meet? Eighty-two, around the eighties, the early eighties, Mr. Fenton donated his
ranch to a group of nuns who now use it as a—what would you call it? Not a
convent. Well, it might—okay—
TM BASTIEN: Well, it’s sort of like a convent, Honey.
R BASTIEN: Anyway, I got the bridge from the Fenton Ranch, which was massive. [laughs] A
railroad trestle.
TM BASTIEN: And we had chickens—
R BASTIEN: Well we—how about the feat of taking a double wide and putting up 300 feet
above the—see the property was flat, then the culvert, then we had the barnyard.
But then if we put all the animals we wanted, we wouldn’t have room for the
home. So, we put it on top of a mountain overlooking everything. And we have
pictures. And you know who was very inspirational? D. D.—[I fell on the
wood?] D. D. Not right away. At first, we didn’t really—
TM BASTIEN: My mom.
R BASTIEN: —yeah, we weren’t—I won’t say compatible, but we got to start to annoying
each other. [TBM chuckles] But once we became dear friends—really, really put
up. This lady was—
TM BASTIEN: Class personified.
R BASTIEN: Right! You took the words right—class personified. [voices overlapping]

29
TM BASTIEN: Kathy, absolutely class. She and my dad—
R BASTIEN: Have you seen her paintings?
TM BASTIEN: I’ll take you through.
COMBS: I haven’t seen ‘em here, but I know—we were talking about the art, yeah.
R BASTIEN: We have her paintings—everything about her. We would talk for a long time—
[voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: Not all of her paintings because Jack, Mike, and I were close and you divide
things up. When she passed, which was four months before the fire, we—before
the fire we were—oh gosh, we got together I guess it was about September, first
week in middle of September—last part of September. They said, “Well we’ll get
together in a couple weeks and go through Mom’s things.” Then something
happened and they said, “Well how about the last week, middle part of October?”
“No, we can’t do that.” “How about the last week in October?” “No, we can’t do
that.”
We lost our home—I think it was October twenty-eighth, right around there, and
then somebody said—before the fire they said, “Okay let’s just make it the first
weekend in November.” Nobody’s doing that. Now if we had taken all of her
things home, we wouldn’t be having—
R BASTIEN: Yeah, this is the second time around.
TM BASTIEN: This is the second time, so—[voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: I [unclear] it too. I’m pretty, well it sounds [bragadocious?] but, I’ve put in two
and a half years of blood sweat and a lotta love, and I like my home. [chuckles]
For the second time.
TM BASTIEN: But we sat down and we drew straws and we went from room to room. In other
words, we’re so close and I’ve had a lot of people—no, not a lot of people,

30
TM BASTIEN: because not many people would say this. Not many people would have the guts
or nerve to say this, but they’d say, “Gosh, if that happened to me, my brothers
would say, ‘You can have all of it.’” No, you don’t do that. It happened, it
happened, you share. So that’s what we did, we shared. Now they are in business,
we’re all three of us are in business together and it’s been wonderful. Mom was
an artist but we share, and they—Mike, Jack and I have paintings and all of us
have a little bit of her. But with the Twin Inns. Oh, the ghost thing. Oh, yes—
COMBS: If you could tell one or two of those ghost stories that would be terrific.
TM BASTIEN: Oh yes. Well, we moved down—the ghost thing has always been—in fact it is.
There at the—it’s now the Ocean House. When it was Neimans I took Yukari—
our daughter-in-law is Japanese—is fluent in English. Her mom and dad don’t
speak a word of—
R BASTIEN: And they visit us every year—[voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: We visit every year. [voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: They come down here.
TM BASTIEN: We somehow communicate. Anyway, so when Yukari first came over to this
country with her husband, our son, I took her over there for her birthday—had
lunch. I introduced myself to one of the waitresses. Well, invariably it got around
to that subject. “Have you seen anything out of the ordinary?” And this one gal
said, “Oh have we ever!” She said, “You know, it’s so bad that we will not—
nobody that works here will be alone in this old building at night.” You hear and
see things that you cannot—that you can’t explain. There are things that are just
plain downright weird.
My aunt—Jackie especially, just poopoos it even though she grew up with it. She
told of a story when she was a young girl, maybe 12, 13—she and her girlfriend
woke up and somebody was standing at the foot of her bed and then just
disappeared. Mom would hear a voice in the attic, “D. D.” and she’d go up there
and nobody was there. My mother was a very levelheaded woman. Yeah.

31
COMBS: I’ve got that impression from her description.
TM BASTIEN: Very extremely levelheaded, as my dad was. Dad just poopooed it until Grandpa
passed and we were living in the Inns. There was an office that you went through
the swinging doors to get out to the kitchen. And it was in the kitchen, a little
room off from the kitchen with windows overlooking the garden. He was
working there at five o’clock in the morning. He was an early riser. Just out of
the blue, “Art, how are you?” This was my grandfather. From then, he was a
believer.
Mom had—she was an artist as I have said. She had this still life set up. She was
getting ready to get off—she got up that morning and it was completely switched
around. She said, “All right, who moved it?” None of us had touched it. Not one
bit.
Oh, Bup had—my uncle lived with us for a while. Bup and Mom were very
close, but when I was a kid, he had two Great Danes, a brother and sister. Dawn
and Eric. And we had a Great Dane too, Toddy. The three dogs were nothing—
our dog was nothing like his dog. Our Toddy was like this one lying down here.
Everybody loved her. They would—Mom would bring her into the Inns. Or I’ll
get back to that in a few minutes. Bup’s dogs—strange people didn’t come in.
My grandparents were almost sued on several occasions because they were, quite
frankly, they were vicious. And after they died—upstairs in the attic was a
darkroom. Bup is a gifted photographer. And after they died, he could hear them
sniffing at the door. To the point where it would just sorta give you goose bumps.
But this one night—the Inns would always be closed on Monday nights. This one
night, we came home—Jack stayed home to study for a test the next day and it
was just Mom, Dad, Mike and I. We went down to Tony Jacal’s down in Eden
Gardens in Solana Beach. If you’ve never been down there, go!
COMBS: Been there. Mm-hmm, it’s great.
TM BASTIEN: Okay, we came home and here’s Jack standing out there by the chickens, just—
sort of shaken up. Mom said, “Why are you out here?” And he said, “I will not be

32
TM BASTIEN: in—upstairs. No way.” He said, “There was somebody up there walking around
in the attic with a cane, just as plain as day.” And you’d have this. Uh-huh.
Or when Bee came home, before we moved there, she was—my aunt had it
rough—single mother, many marriages. My mom and dad more or less raised my
cousin. We were like sisters—Susan and I were like sisters. Bee stayed there at
the Inns and she came home one day and at the top of the stairs was somebody in
white. And it just freaked her out.
COMBS: This is multiple ghosts.
TM BASTIEN: Many, many.
COMBS: Do you have any idea who they thought they might be?
TM BASTIEN: Well no, but right now my cousin Susan—we were very, very close. In 1960, she
was riding a horse, Chico, my aunt’s stallion. He wasn’t a gelding. Black and
white paint or a pinto. She and her friend were bare back riding in Escondido. He
shied at a drainage ditch. She was thrown and never made it through surgery at
Palomar. And they say that there’s a happy ghost of a young teenage girl. You
know, right away—as a matter of fact, going up into that attic in May was sort of,
I thought, “Geez, Susan?” [chuckles]
Yeah, just creepy, but my mom and dad had that Great Dane, and she was the
other’s direct opposite. Absolutely devoted to my mom and us. In fact, she would
go swim out into the ocean. Scared to death of water, but she’d swim out to try to
bring my mom back. She was more like Peaches, Honey. Another Peaches.
R BASTIEN: Mm-hmm.
TM BASTIEN: And the day that they had to have her put to sleep—. As a matter of fact, they had
Dr. Hill. He was our vet for years and years and then he retired and then
reopened his practice down in Solana Beach. He was the one that had put our
other Weimaraner to sleep. And I’m not sure, I probably—

33
R BASTIEN: He was nice man. Very nice. [voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: Just a sweetheart.
COMBS: It really helps.
TM BASTIEN: He probably has now passed. But he and my aunt used to go to school up here.
So, Kathy—.
COMBS: Small world.
R BASTIEN: This is a small world.
TM BASTIEN: It is so small.
COMBS: Well, I was going to ask you, since you had just had a reunion. One of the
questions that I usually ask people, is—and you so beautifully told your story, we
maybe covered some of this—I always kind of like to hear about, what do you
miss most from the old days? And if there are changes that you like, I’d like to
understand those as well.
TM BASTIEN: Things from the old days? People’s honesty. The smallness of the community.
Everybody knew everybody else. Lack of traffic. Just sort of being laid back.
You didn’t have to lock up. The openness, the—heck, Kathy in Carlsbad now,
they’re taking down some of these old buildings in downtown Carlsbad. It’s
disgusting. The openness, the friendliness of the people. You know, just you have
to—it’s so busy. It’s so utter—everybody has to be in one place at once. Not, you
know—
R BASTIEN: Pardon me, I’ve forgotten your name.
COMBS: Kathy.
R BASTIEN: Kathy. Do you live—where do you live?

34
COMBS: I live in south Carlsbad off Poinsettia.
R BASTIEN: Okay, you see you get out and step out on a sidewalk and you walk to your car
on blacktop and all that. Our lifestyle here is just what she’s saying. That’s
why—my minor in college was psychology for a particular reason. The teacher
was a psychiatrist by fluke. I don’t know how the school—and he told me that, I
don’t know, I’ve never really examined myself, but I can read people. He says—
him and I—the class was actually a dialog between him and I, and when I’d go
out in the first classes I’d apologize to the students because the teacher and I—
he’d keep hitting me with the point he wanted to make in the particular section of
the teaching. So that we—and retired. Toni is telling you how we feel about
places and all [voices overlapping] compared to where you’re at.
TM BASTIEN: For instance, families. Our family were so tight, close knit. Father Casper he’d
come over, Reggy, Mr. K, Muddy, Mrs. K—everybody. Family was close. Every
day, or maybe every other day, Jackie and Bup would come up. My aunt and
uncle from Los Angeles, Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Bill, they’d come down. Our
family from South Bend, Indiana on my grandparents’ side, they’d come down
for a visit.
Family night, “Hey D. D., how about if you—," and oh, [“Jeanetti”?], “How
about if you—,” meaning my grandmother, “How about you, Jackie—,” not so
much Jackie, sometimes Jackie, but, “How about Jackie, Bee and Jeanetti, and
Dorothy’s down. How about if we get in the car, pile in the car and we’ll go over
to Escondido to go antiquing?” You don’t buy a thing, however every once in a
while, you did. With the fire it took everything that I had—a hand painted plate
that my Aunt Dorothy had bought for me on one of those occasions. Or you
know, hey go down to the beach, have a picnic and go out to the Tootsie K
Ranch. You never locked up. Stuff like that, you know it’s a series of things that
you miss.
Now days, kids do not call their parents. “How ya doin’? Let’s get together.”
However, I’ll take that back. Jamie is super on that.
R BASTIEN: Very.

35
TM BASTIEN: When he’s here, yeah. We get together with Jamie and Yukari. [voices
overlapping]
R BASTIEN: [Makes father of ten?]
TM BASTIEN: And, excuse me, and Robert and Nora.
R BASTIEN: We do have some—the children—[voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: But I am used to, “Hey! Hey, how about piling in the car and doing this and
that.” No, no. Or going over to Oceanside to a show at the Palomar, where the
Palomar was. And there was another one, the Palomar and I can’t think of the
name of it.
R BASTIEN: The Strand?
TM BASTIEN: No, no. There was the Crest, Star, Palomar and on the other side of the Palomar,
down the street, on the other side of the street, there was another theater and it’s
close to where Elm’s clothing store was. Yup.
R BASTIEN: Yeah, we go back here. Both Toni and I—[voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: Kathy, I’m going way, way back. In downtown Oceanside.
R BASTIEN: But to the present now, we sort of like buried our heads. She likes computers. I
don’t like computers. I don’t have a cell phone. I don’t have a beeper. I don’t—
and I’m happy.
TM BASTIEN: I get on the computer and I do my form of traveling—reliving or seeing how
things are. You know, logging on to wonderful places in this world and seeing
where people are that I knew—or know.
COMBS: How was your reunion?

36
TM BASTIEN: Oh, it was great! It was more fun. Oh golly, my mom has still got one friend that
she used to go to school with, Louise Williams. Louise is now—
R BASTIEN: Hey, pardon me, can I serve you gals some Julian pie and ice cream?
TM BASTIEN: I’m gonna put some coffee on in just a few minutes, Honey. [voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: Coffee? You want some coffee? I can put some coffee—
TM BASTIEN: Yeah. Kathy, if you would like some coffee.
COMBS: Actually, that sounds wonderful.
R BASTIEN; I’ll make the coffee. [voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: Okay Sweetheart, okay, thank you.
R BASTIEN: Because I’m hungry! [laughs] It’s selfish.
COMBS: How are you doing anyway, I’ve had you talking for two hours. Are you feeling
okay?
TM BASTIEN: Oh, it’s okay! I’m doing fine! [voice overlapping]
COMBS: I tend to forget and say, “Look if you want to take a break—."
TM BASTIEN: Kathy, I’m doing fine. Kathy, I’m just having a real good time. I dearly—
Carlsbad will always be home. I love Julian, but I have friends over there. I have
St. Michael’s that I dearly love. I go to St. Elizabeth’s up here because that’s the
closest thing to the Episcopal Church that you have up here. To drive from here
to the Episcopal Church in Carlsbad is out of the question.
But with Louise, she is the last of the Mohicans of my mom’s friends. And
Louise is 94 or 98. And this lady, she still works at St. Patrick’s in the little thrift
shop there two mornings a week. Just is incredible. And she is as sharp as they

37
come. She has a lady that comes in and helps her a couple mornings a week.
That’s how I want to be like. She’s a dear, dear woman.
But I’m somehow, thinking of people. I’m somehow—well I’ll tell you, I am
related—you might say a shirttail relative, of the McClellans and Jerry
McClellan. The airport was named after him. Okay, my grandmother Neva, there
were only two of them. A sister—two sisters. A lady by the name of Fern and my
grandmother Neva, they were brother and sister. Her mom and dad, or their mom
and dad, were the Sayres. People—Lewis and—think of my grandmother’s real
name—but, everybody called him “Granddad” and “Mom-Mom.” Okay, she
married a man by the name—well she was married to a man by the name of
Atherton, Fern Atherton. And Fern is the one that leant my grandparents the
twenty dollars.
[RAY AND TONI DISCUSS HOW MUCH COFFEE TO MAKE]
TM BASTIEN: Okay, she was married to Atherton. They divorced for whatever reason. She met
this man by the name of Loynel Chase. Out of that union produced—they had
children by the name of Lewis, Royola, Fern Ellen. And let me see, her—‘cause I
get this con—, let’s see—her—Fern’s sister-in-law, Loynel’s sister, was a Chase
and they had a McClellan. Her name was McClellan. She married a McClellan.
So actually, it was Auntie Fern’s nephew, was Jerry McClellan, if I’m not
mistaken. It’s really a roundabout shirttail relative type thing.
COMBS: Interesting.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah. Fern’s sister-in-law was—a McClell—Dewey—okay, Dee McClellan was
Loynel’s sister. Dee married Dewey McClellan. Dewey and Dee had Jerry
McClellan and Jerry had—there were two children in there and they went—
Sharon McClellan went to school with my brother Jack. And they were—Jerry
was, I’ll say “Union Church people.” Jerry, his mom and dad, Dewey and Dee
McClellan were Union Church people. Big time Union Church people.
Well, I got together one time, we were talking—yeah, got together with someone.
Oh, my mom’s former housekeeper, [Minerva Coronado?], and she was talking

38
TM BASTIEN: about a deacon in Carlsbad at St. Pat’s. “J. C.” and I said, “J. C.? The only J. C. I
know of is J. C. McClellan.” She said, “Yeah, that’s it!” Well, he converted to
Catholicism when he married his wife. I had no idea and he is now a deacon with
the church.
COMBS: How interesting. Speaking of airports, do you remember when the airport was, I
think it was out by where the ranch was right?
TM BASTIEN: No, there was an airport there by Chestnut.
COMBS: Oh yeah, okay.
TM BASTIEN: Okay. Yes.
COMBS: So, your ranch was south of there?
TM BASTIEN: Yup, okay, the ranch, the Tootsie K Ranch. Have you ever heard of Kelly’s
Flats?
COMBS: I know where Kelly School is, was it over in that area?
TM BASTIEN: No. No, this was much further down. Do you know where there’s a little mobile
home and there’s Sunny Creek Road? Do you know where Sunny Creek Road is?
There was a barn, there was a Kelly barn—
COMBS: Oh yes, yes! Okay, I know where you—yes.
TM BASTIEN: Okay, there’s a Kelly barn, where you went past the Kelly barn, I don’t know
how many hundreds of feet, and then you turned left and at the time when you
turned left you went through this—I think it was like one lane and on each side of
the road there was sort of a big cliff—not cliffs, but dirt piled—very impacted
dirt for the barn owls—would dig holes, and you had little holes for barn owls or
other owls because it was a big thing going through that road going down to the
Tootsie K. And you wound around. Now, Kathy there’s homes—you can’t even

39
TM BASTIEN: get in there anymore. There’s a separate road now too. It’s called Sunny Creek
Road and at the time—but there was also a stage stop up there. Yeah, yeah. But
Kelly’s Flats were there. Yeah and we had cougars and everything out there.
[dogs barking] What were we talking about before?
COMBS: We were talking about McClellan and that’s what made me think of—and then
your reunion.
TM BASTIEN: Yes, okay. [dogs continue barking] They had an airport there—right there on
Chestnut. There’s a fire station there. There was a town character and I can’t
think of his name for the life of me. I’ll think of it. But this man, it was terrible.
He wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking—I don’t know. He was
really in—Cy Barnett. His name was Cy Barnett. That airport was up there, and
somebody had either started up an airplane—it was one of the little—
COMBS: A prop plane?
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, where you had the propellers. He walked into them. Mm-hmm. And
obviously was killed instantly. And Cy was really, he was more or less the town
character. And if anything was wrong with a horse, he’d come down and help
you with your animal. And on several occasions, Dolly was quite sick. But he
was quite the character. And that’s where that little—it’s nothing to where—like
what McClellan airport is like. I imagine it was sort of like a little airport that
people—
COMBS: Kinda like a dirt landing strip, probably?
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, exactly. But he was a character. And my mom, what a wonderful lady, but
when it came to animal abuse or somebody doing what they shouldn’t be
doing—oh, watch out for D. D. Morgan. She had this horse, a little blacker than
black. She named her Nancy Hanks. A little Arabian. And probably—I‘m
pictured on this horse when I was maybe a year old—on her, with Mom. And
probably when I was a year and a half, or shortly after that picture was taken—
she had her down, farmed out or some guy taking care of her. And he was

40
TM BASTIEN: supposed to checked in on her—forgot. And they found her dead in this ravine
from the lack of water or food.
COMBS: So sad. Oh yeah, your mom must have just been mortified.
TM BASTIEN: When Dr. Hill put our Great Dane to sleep it, quite honestly Kathy, it was like
losing a child. I’ll never forget that. We were in mourning for quite a few days.
She used to take Nancy Hanks and go horseback riding all over. I mean, from the
Twin Inns, clear back to Rainbow when there was nothing. And my grandmother
let ‘em.
COMBS: That’s a long way! To [unclear] there? Oh, my goodness. [voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: Yes, yes, this would be like an overnight jaunt and yeah, she and Tootsie and
probably Bee—not so much as Bee or Jackie, they were quite young. There was
like 22 years difference between she and Jackie. And mom would get—every
once in a while, she’d call Jackie “Toni” and vice versa. But they were very, very
close. Jackie would come over and Mom would braid her hair because we lived
right across the street from one another and Jackie would go on trips with us. So,
they were more like sisters or daughters—mother-daughter, than sister.
COMBS: Well, that’s a big age difference.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, and my dad—it was more like father-daughter than brother-in-law because
Dad came to work at the Twin Inns when his mother died. My grandparents took
him in.
R BASTIEN: Do you want the pie and ice cream on the same dish or do you want it separate?
TM BASTIEN: Just a minute, Honey. What would you like?
COMBS: Oh, just coffee then is fine, thanks.
TM BASTIEN: I have pie out there.

41
R BASTIEN: Julian pie.
COMBS: That is hard to turn down. [laughs] Okay!
TM BASTIEN: All right, Honey!
COMBS: Yeah, we’re about done anyway. [voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: Well, that’s all right. You know what, she doesn’t let me in the kitchen very often
anyway.
TM BASTIEN: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! That’s not the case.
COMBS: I don’t want to interfere with that.
TM BASTIEN: That is not the case.
R BASTIEN: I don’t know where most of the stuff is in there—
TM BASTIEN: That’s alright, Sweetheart, you know where the dishes are.
R BASTIEN: Oh yeah. What do you want? Do you want a pie with ice cream on the same
dish? [voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: Would you like some ice cream on the pie?
COMBS: Sure, my gosh, that’s so nice! Thank you!
R BASTIEN: Pie a la mode?
TM BASTIEN: All right! You got it, Sweetheart. Would you like the ice cream on the pie or
separate?
COMBS: Oh, whatever’s easier.

42
TM BASTIEN: It makes no difference, Honey.
COMBS: That’s fabulous. Thank you. That’s so sweet.
TM BASTIEN: But, as I said, I have a lot of things and my brothers, God bless them, when we
went—we lived over there at Mom’s house, we were the first ones to sleep in her
bed since her passing. And I know as well as I’m sitting here, the guys let me
have first choice of the antiques. ‘Cause we drew straws and the three of us, we
went from room to room. And everybody didn’t say about—anything about the
antiques.
COMBS: It’s nice because they’re perfect in your house.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, I just love our home.
COMBS: Yeah, it’s really beautiful.
TM BASTIEN: Thank you.
COMBS: Now how—I’m still a little confused. You lived—did you move from Carlsbad to
Julian or you went Carlsbad to Valley Center to—?
TM BASTIEN: I was just gonna explain. My first marriage, we married—I married in June of
1965 to a man, his name is Jake Overfield or Loyd Overfield. We moved to
Oceanside for a short time and then moved in June of ‘66 to Carlsbad. And then
bought a place built by my second cousin Lewis Chase on a street called Polly
Lane, which is off of Tamarack. It was a big two-story home. And then we
divorced. Yeah, he moved the next day to Kansas and I was left with two little
kids. For ten years, I raised them by myself. Had a childcare business and then
moved to Oceanside to a little duplex that I could afford. In June—no December
of ’77—moved to Oceanside in ‘64—December of ‘77 I moved to Escondido to
a mobile home park. And then in September of ’82 I met Ray and then moved to
Valley Center in ’83—August of ’83. Then we sold our home. In fact, I had met

43
TM BASTIEN: somehow—oh, in the paper there was an article about this couple that had this
log home.
Now I’ll backtrack a bit. We—our favorite place as a kid growing up was going
up to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to go fishing. Stayed in the little one room cabin.
We always used to—Dad and Mom would always pack up our food. We never
ate out. We always got a housekeeping cabin because that’s all we could afford.
Fix our food there in the cabin—everything. And then we’d go to—went to
Yellowstone. Right away I had a very strong love for log homes. I just adored
them.
So! There was an article in the paper in Valley Center about this couple that had
this log home. Well, I gave ‘em a call and I went over because they were
asking—or telling people, “If you would like to see a log home, come on over!”
It was called the Wild Rose. So, I went over—oh my, I just had a fit. I told Ray, I
said, “Honey, you have to see this house.” He said, “Oh, I’m happy with what we
have.” And I said, “Come on! You have to see it.” We went and saw it. Within
two months, we were planning on putting our house up for sale. Drew up our
plans—oh, we went over and saw it. Fell in love with it. More or less got the
floor plan from their idea—from this home’s idea. It’s a little bit different. We
came up to Julian, put the house on the market. Right away—and we thought,
“Oh!”—this was in March, March of 1990 or ’91—excuse me, it was March of
’91. We thought we won’t sell it so quick. The housing market wasn’t too good.
R BASTIEN: Yeah, we thought we would probably sell it in two years.
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, in two years. Do you know, that this couple came by, they had two little
girls. They absolutely fell in love with it. We had a Jersey cow. He milked
morning and night. I had a little milk business. People would buy fresh milk. I
made my own butter, cheese, the whole thing. And we had to find a place, like
immediately. Patty was graduating from high school that year. I thought, “Oh my
stars and [body?]. What do you do?” So, she was staying with friends. We found
this place. We looked and looked and looked. This little English lady—just a
moment—

44
[TONI ATTENDS TO DOGS]
TM BASTIEN: This little English lady, Alison. She said, “Toni, Ray, I don’t know if you’ll like
it. It’s been on the market for quite a while.” We saw it. That was it. It had no
water.
R BASTIEN: Honey, it was just a frame, two rooms, no bathrooms, no water, no electricity.
[voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: Now, Kathy—now, there’s no way, no way under God’s green earth would I
have done it. [KC laughs] There was no water. They’d have to haul water in from
somewhere. There was no electricity. There was a little cabin that was built
probably about 1912, 1915—
R BASTIEN: Nineteen o-eight.
TM BASTIEN: Nineteen o-eight. The cement was made with river sand. They’d put carpet down.
There were holes in the walls, under the doors. Now, when I was a kid, my
brothers took great delight in putting a lizard down my blouse. To this day, I
cannot have one in the house. I always tell, especially when kids come by, I say,
“Just please, keep the door shut.” I don’t want the wildlife coming in. They
repulse me they just freak me out. I cannot stand ‘em. Snakes are fine. I cannot
stand a lizard. I couldn’t even look at them. Anyway, I forget the amount of time
that I had one curled up on the windowsill under the sink. Anyway, the walls
were two feet thick.
R BASTIEN: The walls of the cabin?
TM BASTIEN: Of the little cabin, so we moved in— [to Ray] thanks, Darling. So, we moved in,
we put a bathroom in—
R BASTIEN: Let me tell you a story about that bathroom. We were there one night, and you
can visualize two rooms, but the living room had a little off set where they used it
as a sink, but the water—all it was, was the water went outside. There was no

45
R BASTIEN: plumbing, so they brought the water in, okay. We went to bed that night and of
course—
TM BASTIEN: Oh, no bathroom Just the outhouse.
R BASTIEN: Oh, that little house there, that you saw when you parked?
COMBS: Yeah.
R BASTIEN: That was the bathroom. Still is, really, you know, for the workers and for myself.
So, we had two dogs and both were black.
TM BASTIEN: A lab and Peaches.
R BASTIEN: Yeah, and she got up in the middle of the night. Of course, there was two doors.
One out of the bedroom and one into the living room. She got up and of course
the dogs faithfully got up with her.
TM BASTIEN: No flashlight.
R BASTIEN: Well she didn’t have a flashlight and so then she got up and went to the bathroom
and—[voices overlapping]
TM BASTIEN: —all of a sudden—
R BASTIEN: the dogs were following her, you know, just—I guess she hesitated or stopped—
TM BASTIEN: I let a blood curdling scream.
R BASTIEN: —and they ran into her and she just let out a blood curdling scream. [laughs]
TM BASTIEN: Because we were warned. [voices overlapping]
R BASTIEN: Yeah, we had cougars on the property.

46
TM BASTIEN: You have—watch out because you have cougars.
R BASTIEN: —on the property. Anyway, she comes back in and she said [imitating Toni
yelling], “I WANT A BATHROOM RIGHT NOW!” [laughter]
TM BASTIEN: Yeah, I think I did.
R BASTIEN: [continuing imitation] “Civilization!” [laughter] Oh my God, for about a half
hour I got beaten to death with—. You know what? Next day, I got some lumber
and started putting in the bathroom. [laughter]
TM BASTIEN: But we—about a few weeks later yeah, we had a guy do the well. We have a
beautiful well.
R BASTIEN: We have one of the best wells in the area.
TM BASTIEN: We have the best well in the area.
COMBS: That’s good.
TM BASTIEN: Under us is like, it’s a dish, and probably the size of it would be a big lake.
COMBS: Wow.
TM BASTIEN: And you’ve got the best water in this area.
COMBS: Boy you’re really lucky.
TM BASTIEN: But anyway, we lived in there from 1991—. To this day, I don’t know. I honestly
don’t know how we did it. Because I really have an aversion towards lizards. To
the point where, I had a guy from the [campground?]—never met the man, not
once—oh, there’s cream and sugar.

47
COMBS: Well it actually tastes good like this. Well maybe a little cream. How are we
doing with the tape?
TM BASTIEN: So, we finished our home here—and this is coffee creamer, liquid.
COMBS: Well, thank you. Oh, this is so nice. Thank you.
TM BASTIEN: Oh, you’re welcome. Here’s a spoon—[to Ray] oh, thanks, Darling.
COMBS: Actually, we can probably stop this and we can just talk.
R BASTIEN: Why not both?
COMBS: We can do that too.
R BASTIEN: You probably got more that you bargained for.
COMBS: I know, I love it.
END OF INTERVIEW