On tonight's episode of "Undercover Boss" on
CBS, president and CEO Andy Wirth gets a makeover and goes undercover to
Lake Tahoe, Calif. The Squaw Valley mountain is famous for hosting the
1960 Winter Olympics and the epicenter of big mountain skiing. Alpine
Meadows offers a family-friendly atmosphere with excellent snow sports
for the entire family. The founder of the empire was Conrad Wirth,
Andy's grandfather, who was the Director of the National Parks Services
for eleven years. When Andy took over, he purchased Alpine Meadows to
give the two resorts a more family-friendly atmosphere, where Squaw
Valley mainly catered to the expert skiers.
Thus, technology was on a roll. Bill Gates had founded
the Microsoft Corporation in 1975 and McDonalds had created a drive
thru. However, my mother was more interested in her own life and leisure
time. In the seventies she had graduated high school, entered the
workforce, and married my father in 1976 and started her own
family.
James Douglas Muir Leno was born April 28, 1950, in New
Rochelle, New York. His Italian father Angelo sold insurance and his
Scottish mother Cathryn was a housewife.
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Truly the only thing Hannah's
was good for was drinking, and despite our ages we ordered up and were
served the working man's traditional shot-and-a-beer. In fact we were
served a lot of tradition that night, and by two in the morning we were
beginning to feel our oats. Since
Jay Leno took over the hosting duties at "The Tonight Show", he has
earned another nickname-"The King of Late Night." So, how much money
does the king earn? Another little known fact about Jay Leno is that his
annual salary is reported to be a cool $17,000,000, according to
Forbes.
I had just started on another beer when someone dropped a few
coins in the juke box. The music was bad country. To my utter disgust
the first song that played was that "I want to stick a boot up your
butt" super-patriotic, ultra-jingoist thing by the guy in the
buy old jeep truck commercials. The people around me began to sing
along loudly. Jumping off the back of the
deuce-and-half truck, brushing through the crowd of peanut girls, I
headed to the bar. It was a beautiful day with sunlight dappling the
shaded roadway. It all came back to her then, how he'd lain sobbing in his room
across from hers while the man raged in the livingroom, how she'd
slipped into his twin bed with him and wrapped her arms around him until
he was finally asleep, how she'd read chapters of "Charlotte's Web" to
him each night, how he'd raced on his bike through the dark streets the
night they'd finally made their escape. She'd let him in on it early on,
told him all about her plan to find a new place where it would be just
the two of them and how he wouldn't ever again have to lie awake at
night afraid of what was going on in the livingroom or of what he'd see
in the morning as he headed out for school. He'd told no one. It was
their secret. A little later I waved my hand around in front of my face to
clear some of the smoke and give myself a line of sight. I drained my
beer and told Murphy that I had to bail. He slapped me on the back and
headed toward the old scarred pool table. As I walked out into the
sunlight I was thinking that I'd never have to see the inside of that
place again.