Many years ago, I used to own two gift shops here in Yountville, Caboose Noir and Train of Thought. Opening Caboose Noir in 1977 is what brought me to living here in the Napa Valley. Caboose Noir was a gift shop carrying primarily Noir Enamels which was owned by my late cousin Loreon Vigne’, a well known San Francisco artist and finally the owner and founder of Isis Oasis. Train of Thought was a paper store featuring gift cards, posters and many other paper products.
About 1980 during Christmas while working at Caboose Noir, a young man came in to buy gifts for his mother. Unfortunately, he did not have enough money to buy the ones he picked. He did have an old photo album containing many historic photos from the early 1900s which we agreed to use as barter for his purchase.
I am in the process of moving so I have been going through everything to see what moves, what to sell and what goes into the trash. This gave me reason to revisit the photo album which by this time contained a large number of very faded photos. One photo to survive in fairly good condition was that of the Eagle Cycling Club which happens to be a long time cycling club here in the Napa Valley.
I reached out to them and was contacted by a Ken Rands. He was kind enough to send me their history by El Jefe which I have included here. It makes for interesting reading. I hope you enjoy and sorry about the formatting but it was the best way to include it here. I was grateful I could give this photograph from the album regarding their past.
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