Imagine hanging out in Berkeley with friends on a Sunday and deciding that it would be a good idea to walk to Pinole for a drink or two. If that seems ridiculous in 2012, apparently it wasn't so outrageous an idea about 100 years ago.

This week's Historic Pinole is about a group of men who ventured east to wet their whistles. The article gives no explanation about why the men couldn't get a drink in Berkeley or any other spot on the way to Pinole. Surely, Oakland was a shorter walk. Did local laws forbid booze sales on Sundays? Was Pinole the go-to place for a drink?

Adding to the mystery is why any newspaper readers would care about this "story" that somehow made its place in history on Page 3 of the March 18, 1910 edition of the San Francisco Call newspaper.

Gossip of Railwaymen

A more disappointed quartet has not been seen for several months than that comprising W.L. Calhoon, chief clerk for S.F. Booth of the Union pacific; "Tom" Settle, manager of the E. C. Horst company, and Messrs. White and Mahaffey of J. M. Brewer's office, after an unusually long walk last Sunday from Berkeley to Pinole.

The quartet were all in Berkeley and some one suggested a drink. A most unusual suggestion for a Berkeleyite. Calhoon suggested a walk first — which was most necessary — and the party started out to walk.  Calhoon had a reputation as a pedestrian, and to him it was only a short jaunt. They walked and they walked and they walked until they, finally reached Pinole. White was in the lead, Settle second and Calhoon, the adept, a poor third. Mahaffey managed to get to work in time yesterday morning. But the disappointment: ah, yes. They spied a saloon at Pinole and marched up to it in single file — and found it closed.

This article comes from the California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cdnc. The collection has digitzed more than 400,000 images from newspapers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Images dated between 1846 and 1922 are in the public domain and not subject to copyright.