Spent a lovely evening last night at Luigi's where banker Bart Hill held a private reception to unveil his latest sideline: extra virgin olive oil. Seems Bart, president of San Joaquin Bank, has 13 acres of olive trees near Visalia and is now marketing his own boutique brand, appropriately named "13 Acres." Luigi's is of course a special place and it was packed with Bakersfield business people, along with a lot of their kids home from school. What struck me were the number of bright, articulate youngsters we send off to school who never come back. There's simply few opportunities for them here. Among them were Bart's girls, Paige (University of North Carolina) who is now in grad school at the University of South Carolina, and Elizabeth (also UNC) who is working in Washington, D.C. Also there were Katie Benham (UC Davis), working in Newport Beach, Sam Brandon, a sophomore at Colorado at Boulder, and my own daughter Lauren Beene (UC Berkeley) who is working in New York. "13 Acres" is on sale now at Luigi's but unfortunately we only see these promising young people there on rare occasions.
