“My story of the Palace Hotel is a love story — the first love of my life.”
Born in Ukiah, on her mother’s side, Wendy Mae Thomas (née McCallum) goes back four generations in Ukiah and, on her father’s side, five generations in the county.
Her great grandpa Gustav “Gus” Wolf (1876-1954) owned the first bakery in Ukiah on North State Street. They homesteaded on Robinson Creek Road and Gus walked into town, stayed over during the week to run the bakery and, on the weekends, returned to his family carrying all their needed supplies on his back.
Later, when they moved into town, they farmed a large piece of land on what is today Yokayo Elementary School.
Her grandfather Irvin Ball showed her photos from the Palace Hotel with horses hitched up outside in front.
“He swore, and I’ve heard it many times, that there were tunnels that went from the Palace to the courthouse to the brothel on Church Street (Irene’s Place) , used by those who, of course, did not want to be seen. But those tunnels have never been found; they may have been filled.”
Still on her mother’s side, her great, great, grandfather Jefferson Davis Ball (1827-1900) came out from New York with the Andersons to settle that valley.
“He brought the first apple seeds to Anderson Valley. So, yeah, I mean, I got roots here; I got roots.”
On her dad’s side, on the coast there’s the McCallum house in Mendocino and inland the plaque in Montgomery Woods showing the McCallum Grove.
In 1980, she cleaned rooms at the Palace Hotel and ate lunch with her grandfather Donald McCallum at the bar on a regular basis. She remembers the poem written on the left side wall attributed to Black Bart:
“Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil.
For I am the meanest
son of a bitch in the valley.”
“You want to know why I go by Wendy Mae?” She asks.
Named after her Grandmother Elsie Mae Wolf, she had, at this point gone by the singular moniker of Wendy.
In the summer of 1980, she and her date attended a Maynard Ferguson concert at the newly-built Ukiah High School. During the break, she went outside for a cigarette and, finding herself standing next to Ralph Penta, asked him if he wanted to go smoke a joint. They drove up Low Gap Road about a mile — leaving her date behind — where they had a smoke, talked, returned to the high school and parted ways.
“There was an immediate connection.”
About a month later, she went to the Palace to apply for a job cleaning rooms.
“I was standing in the lobby filling out my application, getting ready to hand it in, and Ralph came around the corner, took my application and said, ‘You’re hired.’ That’s when our love story began.”
Ralph had hired on early with Pat Kuleto during the early renovation in 1977 and worked himself up to managing the everyday construction work. “He always kept the fire going; it was part of his big beef because it was a big fireplace and it took a lot of wood; but it was important.”
While cleaning a room on the third floor, not yet totally renovated, she saw a leak coming from the ceiling.
“With my big heart crush on Ralph, I wrote him a note telling him the ceiling was leaking in room 1983 and signed it, ‘And by the way, I love you, Wendy Mae.’”
“From then on, he called me Wendy Mae. He introduced me as Wendy Mae. It’s because of him I’m Wendy Mae.”
About a month later, when 17-year-old Wendy Mae told her parents she was moving into the Palace Hotel with 34-year-old Ralph, the news was not well-received.
“My father told me if I was going to leave, I needed to go out the front door, not sneak out the back, as I had done in the past.”
She packed a Safeway bag with all her worldly possessions, walked out the front door down to the Circle K at Perkins and Oak Manor, called Ralph on the pay phone and took up residence with him on the second floor in room 194.
She remembers the bands that played at the the Back Door, that they stayed in four rooms with a shared bathroom down the hall.
“In each of the regular guest rooms we would always leave a bottle of Parducci wine and other complimentary things but not for the band. I knew them, though, and always made sure they had lots of those little bottles of wine.”
Although there was the Otis elevator — the original three-story cable installed in 1929 with currently-painted murals by Catherine Woscow — she preferred carrying the laundry up the back stairs that came down into the kitchen, not exactly spiral but kind of crooked, not furnished in any way.
“I was strong and young, right? And it was faster.
“I knew there were ghosts, not towards the front or up by the elevators because that area was too busy but back by the honeymoon suite. I always felt their presence there.
“And there were always ghosts on those back stairs. Mostly, I sensed men, just flashes, like, following me or just letting me know they were still there. Yeah, I definitely felt them.
“I never went into the kitchen because I was afraid of whoever was running it. I was told she didn’t like Ralph and to just avoid her like the plague; so, I did.
“I was young and naïve but thought I was extremely worldly because of my older boyfriend Ralph, who was a big kahuna.”
On Sunday mornings, she would have breakfast with 16-year-old David Post, the singing bell boy in the tailor-made Philip Morris suit and hat.
“I would never ask the kitchen for food; I was too afraid but he wasn’t. He would get an order of eggs Benedict for us to share at a table on the roof of the building.”
During Christmas she and Ralph traveled to New Jersey to meet his parents and then returned to a third-floor room at the Palace.
In late spring they moved to Jersey, married and lived together for 17 years until Ralph’s death in 1997. Then she returned to Ukiah
“As we’ve been talking, I can feel the whole presence of the Palace; I can smell it. I drove by before I came here to talk with you. When Ralph and I came back after Christmas, we lived on the third floor and our room was next to the fire escape on the Smith Street side. When I drove by, I looked up and remembered that I’d hang out there — on my fire escape. I’d watch people as they walked by. You know, people never look up.
“I love the Palace and the thought of it being torn down tears at my heart. Since we’ve been reminiscing these past couple of weeks, however, I’ve come full circle and realize she can’t be restored.”
With tears in her eyes, Wendy Mae says, “Let her rest in peace; she’s lived a good life; hasn’t she?”
If you have a story about the Palace Hotel that you would like to share, please contact Karen Rifkin at: palacehotelfever@gmail.com.
(Ukiah Daily Journal)
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