Tag: Patton Museum

The $100 Hamburger…

The $100 hamburger:  It’s aviation slang for any hamburger that requires flying in to a local airport for a burger. I first heard the term from good buddy Margit Chiriaco Rusche when researching the story on the General Patton Memorial Museum.  You see, there’s still an airport at Chiriaco Summit, left over from General George Patton’s Desert Training Center.  Margit told me about pilots flying in for the mythical $100 hamburger at the Chiriaco Summit Café, and I knew I had to have one as soon as she mentioned it.  The Café doesn’t actually charge a hundred bucks (it was only $15.66 with a giant iced tea, fries, and a side of chili); the $100 figure pertains to what it would cost a pilot to fly your own plane to Chiriaco Summit, enjoy the General Patton Burger, and fly out.

Even though bloggers like Gresh and me are rolling in dough, we don’t have our own airplanes.  But we have the next best thing.  Gresh has his Kawasaki Z1 900, and I have my Royal Enfield Interceptor.

Good buddy Marty (a dude with whom I’ve been riding for more than 20 years) told me he needed to get out for a ride and I suggested the Patton Museum.  It’s a 250-mile round trip for us, and the trip (along with the General Patton Burger, which is what you see in the big photo above) would be just what the doctor ordered.  I’d have my own hundred dollar burger, and at a pretty good price, too.  Two tanks of gas (one to get there and one to get home) set me back $16, and it was $18 (including tip) for the General Patton Burger.  I had my hundred dollar burger at a steep discount.  And it was great.

I’ll confess…it had been a while since I rode the Enfield.  In fact, it’s been a while since I’d been on any ride.  I didn’t sleep too much the night before (pre-ride jitters, I guess) and I was up early.   I pushed the Enfield out to the curb and my riding amigos showed up a short time later.  There would be four of us on this ride (me, Marty, and good buddies Joe and Doug).   Marty’s a BMW guy; Joe and Doug both ride Triumph Tigers.

As motorcycle rides go, we had great weather and a boring road.  It was 125 miles on the 210 and 10 freeways to get to the Patton Museum and the same distance back.   Oh, I know, there were other roads and we could have diverted through Joshua Tree National Park, but like I said, I hadn’t ridden in a while and boring roads were what I wanted.

The Patton Museum was a hoot, as it always is.  I had my super fast 28mm Nikon lens (which is ideal for a lot of things), and I shot more than a few photos that day.  You can have a lot of fun with a camera, a fast lens, a motorcycle, and good friends.  A fast 28mm lens is good for indoor available light (no flash) photography, and I grabbed several photos inside the Patton Museum.

It was a bit strange looking at the photos of the World War II general officers, including the one immediately above.  I realized that all of us (Marty, Joe, Doug, and I) are older than any of the generals were during World War II.  War is a young man’s game, I guess.  Or maybe we’re just really old.

You can see our earlier pieces on the Patton Museum here and here.  It’s one of my favorite spots.  If you want to know more about Chiriaco Summit, the Chiriaco family, and the General Patton Memorial Museum’s origins, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Mary Gordon’s Chiriaco Summit.  It is an excellent read.

We rode the same roads home as the ride in, except it was anything but boring on the return leg.  We rode into very stiff winds through the Palm Springs corridor on the westward trek home, and the wind made for a spirited ride on my lighter, windshieldless Enfield Interceptor.  My more detailed impressions of the Enfield 650 will be a topic for a future blog, so stay tuned!

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Patton Museum Reopens!

We recently blogged about the General Patton Memorial Museum at Chiriaco Summit, California, and in that blog, we mentioned the museum was closed due to the Covid 19 pandemic.  Well, that’s changed…I had a nice conversation a couple of days ago with Margit Chiriaco Rusche (Co-Founder and President of the Museum) and she told me the Patton Museum is now open.  I’m going to plan a ride out there as soon as the heat breaks (watch the ExNotes blog for more details), and if you’d like to go, let us know.

Margit asked me to mention the Patton Museum’s USO Room and theatre, the lecture series, and the library.  These are important parts of the Museum and we’re happy to do so.

The Patton Museum’s theatre and USO room.

The Patton Museum has hosted two years of lecture series and Margit tells me they were well attended.  Prior presenters have included the Superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park and a key speaker from the Metropolitan Water Department (refer to our earlier blog for the story about the Patton Museum’s Big Map, donated by the MWD), as well as several others.   The lecture series was suspended during the pandemic, but it will resume in 2021.  My good buddy Phil may be one of the speakers next year on his research and his new book, Letters from Uncle Dave.  We’ll have an upcoming blog on Phil’s new book in the near future, too, so as always, keep an eye on the ExNotes blog.

Another shot inside the USO Room.

The USO Room presents the story of the United Service Organizations, a group focused on keeping military morale high.  This exhibit features exhibits on Al Jolson and Bob Hope, two major forces in the USO’s entertainment world.  The USO Room has the original juke box used at Camp Young’s entertainment center (Camp Young was the headquarters camp for the Desert Training Center, and it was located at Chiriaco Summit).

One of many exhibits at the Patton Museum.

The Patton Museum library contains a large book collection, along with notebooks chronicling the lives and activities of World War II veterans (the Museum currently has over a hundred of these, and more are being added).  It includes tactical maps used by Patton during World War II, and a collection of rare books.  The library is also a source of genealogy information.

If you would like to learn more about the General Patton Memorial Museum, Chiriaco Summit, and the Chiriaco family, in addition to our earlier blog on the Patton Museum you might want to pick up a copy of Chiriaco Summit, a book that tells the story well. You should buy a copy.  It’s a great read.

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