Bob Hodel was driving home from work one cool Wednesday in March when it appeared before him like a ghoulish apparition: a geyser of orange flame, rising from the road we now call Santa Fe Way, directly ahead a mile or so.
In 1970, a national organized-crime-fighting confederation of police agencies discovered a leak.
Daniel Cater’s architectural firm, Cater Design Group, has engineered the plans for a number of renovated and from-scratch buildings in what’s known as Eastchester — mainly 18th, 19th and 20th streets, between Chester and Union — in downtown Bakersfield.
Jennifer Keel will tell you her country gospel album, "Bakersfield Believes," has been in the making for three years, but the reality is, it's been more like 50.
The first wave appeared from the north at 7:48 a.m. local time. A swarm of 183 bombers and fighter aircraft dropped armor-piercing bombs, fired aerial torpedoes and strafed with wing-mounted cannons. It was over in less than an hour.
When Donald Trump made that solemn walk onto the stage in front of the U.S. Capitol for his swearing-in as 45th president almost eight years ago, one of his best friends was beside him.
The ancient, blue, heavy-knit sweater adorned with the giant letter “B” tucked away in Michael Heslov’s L.A.-area home doesn’t really have a suitable fashion pairing anywhere else in his closet.
Here in Kern County, we venerate the sacrifices of our veterans.
Michael Waski can’t make it to the Caltrans-sponsored celebration Monday in the one-stoplight town of Lost Hills, but he’ll be as much a part of the festivities as any of the invited dignitaries.
We interrupt the unprecedented overuse of the word unprecedented to bring you an embarrassing but hopefully uplifting anecdote completely devoid of political agenda.
In a July 1 ruling with democracy-threatening implications, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for acts committed in their “official” capacity.
This Friday is Flag Day, the day we honor the buoyant banner of red, white and blue that has graced courthouses, schoolyards, ball fields and battlefields for nearly 2½ centuries.
It’s not like former Rep. Bill Thomas of Bakersfield left the country in rock-solid, Shining-City-on-the-Hill condition. Viewed through a 2024-tinted prism, however, things in America were pretty good 17 years ago.
Not much shocks me anymore, but I was mildly surprised to see how things played out when two members of the Bakersfield City Council proposed renaming a city street after civil rights leader César Chávez at last week’s council meeting.
In the 31 years since labor leader Cesar Chavez died at the age of 66, at least 31 cities in 11 states have seen fit to name a street or other community thoroughfare in his honor.
He came out of nowhere: I’ll bet most police officers have heard that statement a few times.
When Kevin McCarthy left Congress halfway through his ninth term last December after a political bludgeoning no previous speaker of the House had ever been forced to endure, he did more than leave most of Bakersfield without representation in Congress.
Your television, social media feed and physical mailbox will receive one last batch of assorted pleadings for your vote in the next few hours. Some of those messages might actually contain objectively factual information. Might, but probably won’t.
Hope and despair make unlikely neighbors, but they maintain an uneasy coexistence on one north Bakersfield street.
We’ve come to expect stability in our congressional representatives.
Attentive, reasonable people don’t put credence in much of anything Matt Gaetz says. Don’t go to the Florida congressman for dating advice, for example, and steer clear of any guidance the often-rebuked archconservative might offer on ethical behavior.
Our orange traffic cone nightmare is about to come to an end. Until the next orange traffic cone nightmare comes along.
Robert B. Powers, a turn-of-the century railroad detective and self-educated philosopher, joined the Bakersfield Police Department in 1928 and became police chief in 1933.
If you’d asked me a year ago what Cabinet post might best suit Bakersfield’s Kevin McCarthy, I'd have been at a loss. There is no Secretary of Mega-Donor Relations. Yet.
Kevin McCarthy must be a slow learner.
I do not normally condone junior-high-reminiscent, fight-between-classes cheap shots, but Kevin McCarthy deserved this opportunity.
It started with a football injury. Not Darin Sundgren’s injury — his son’s.
It used to be a gateway to California’s vast interior, a welcoming boulevard of energy and intrigue, but today much of Union Avenue reflects desperation. It is a boulevard of broken dreams plagued by drugs, poverty, homelessness, violence and, perhaps most infamously, prostitution.
A prominent American businessman once said, “The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is to seem desperate to make it.”
Well, it’s about time.
Music historians continue to flesh out this region's contributions to American culture that extend beyond the twin pillars of Bakersfield's previous-century honky-tonk scene.
Where can we experience some of that authentic, working-class, twangy Bakersfield culture? The question has been posed to me more times in the past quarter-century than I can say. Maybe you’ve fielded the same sort of queries.
Every so often, Kevin McCarthy slips up and tells us how he really feels.
Vivian Blevins did not make any Douglas MacArthur-style declarations of defiance as she reluctantly abandoned her home four months ago. She didn’t have time.
It’s been a tough spring for Arvin. The farm town 20 miles south of Bakersfield that grows them sturdy of stature and upright of character has lost two of its finest in recent weeks.
When I was a high school student a million years ago the challenges of maintaining good attendance in school were pretty much the same as they had been in the decades prior.
My father had a collection of hard-bound classics in his library that would impress Ron Burgundy. The complete works of Charles Dickens, Plato, Socrates, Miguel de Cervantes, Carl Sandburg’s four-volume biography of Lincoln. They were so immaculately preserved, I can only assume Dad handled …
The year before gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada foothills in January 1848, the population of San Francisco was 459. Two years later, it was 25,000.
Every student in every American classroom is at some point taught at least some of the details. The Civil War, fought between 23 northern U.S. states and 11 seceding southern states, played out between April 1861 and April 1865.
Rivers giveth, rivers taketh away.
This is a wonderful time to be an AR-15 manufacturer. The semi-automatic weapon, owned by an estimated 16 million U.S. adults, is the bestselling rifle in America, and judging by the way its name is mentioned in so many settings these days — social media, national media, school fundraisers —…
It’s been more than a week now, enough time for me to recover from all of that eye-rolling. The muscles around my face’s orbital bones have never been stronger, so thank you. You know who you are.
Among the many turns in his long, focused life, two catastrophic events in particular helped shape Chuck McCollough’s direction.
The weight of history’s judgment was, in a very real sense, on his shoulders. What really happened on that traumatic afternoon? How was that unprecedented breach of security accomplished, and who was responsible?
They were had. Fed a line. Suckered.
The Big Lie lives on, and now it’s trying to take Kern County hostage.
An acquaintance cornered me last week with a question about American history and Bakersfield’s place in it now that a homegrown politician, Kevin McCarthy, has ascended to what, theoretically, is one of the most powerful jobs in the nation and, hence, on the planet.
Given the hostage-taking nature of Kevin McCarthy’s historic, 15th-ballot victory over elements within his own party to win the House speakership Friday night/Saturday morning, it might be helpful to consider how much worse it could have been.
Pop yourself some popcorn and sit down with your favorite news network Tuesday. We might just witness a political drama of a type not seen since the lead-up to the Civil War. Which somehow seems appropriate, given the tenor of today’s political discourse.
Everybody goes home at Christmastime, in one way or another, whether they want to or not.
