on the cover / By Heidi Walters

Empire Falters

Old Charlie Hansen’s truck stop might close as the future zooms past

(Dec. 2, 2010)  That last day, the old man arose at 5:30 in the morning, same as he always did, got into his old white Ford pickup and drove from the big farmhouse down the road to the ranch to feed the cows, then headed the short distance over to Hansen’s Truck Stop. He went inside the warm cafe and sat in one of the reddish shiny vinyl stools swinging in a row before the bright yellow counter. The waitress poured his coffee, and the old man dumped his usual outrageous load of sugar into the cup. His bacon and eggs arrived. As he ate, the old man chatted with a retired logger friend.

His friend left. The old man finished his coffee and stuck the toothpick in his mouth. His chin dropped to his chest. And that’s how the waitress found him when next she turned around to check on him.

A new fence separates Sandy Prairie Road and Hansen’s Truck Stop from Highway 101. PHOTO BY HEIDI WALTERS

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Old man Charlie Hansen, a few weeks shy of his 95th birthday, was gone. Oh, he lingered on six or seven days more at Redwood Memorial Hospital, in a peaceful coma brought on by the stroke he’d suffered at the cafe. Family dropped by his room to murmur their goodbyes, and they even brought his sweet dog Hannah in to visit him. Then, on Dec. 11, 2009, it was over.

Maybe Caltrans thought it was over, too — the trouble with Charlie Hansen. For 60 years, Hansen had warred with the state highway department over access between Highway 101 and his property just north of the highway’s intersection with State Route 36. The latest court case was still plodding along as Hansen drifted away in the hospital: a suit filed by Caltrans on Dec. 5, 2007, to seize by eminent domain nearly two acres of Hansen’s land to build the new Alton overpass. Hanson objected, and the state put up a $429,000 deposit for the “probable compensation” for what the taking would cost him, which included the loss of the land plus one of the gas station service islands. Hansen eventually took $400,000 of the deposit, but said it’d take a lot more than that to make up for his loss of access and business goodwill.

Trial dates were set and abandoned. Ten months before Hansen died, according to court documents, the state made a final offer of compensation of $784,000. Hansen countered with a demand for $5 million. And after he died, it definitely wasn’t over. Charlie Hansen was a fighter, and he’d raised his kids to be that way too. The eminent domain case, and a new lawsuit the family filed against Caltrans after Charlie died, carry on to this day, with trial dates now looming sometime in early 2011.

Even so, things aren’t boding well for Hansen’s Truck Stop. These might actually be the last days of at least the homey roadstop part of the Hansen family empire, down there on its scruffy patch of dirt south of Fortuna.

On the floor of the darkly skylit, cavernous wire rope workshop that Charlie Hansen, Sr. built, near the open main entryway, his 55-year-old son, Charles Hansen, Jr. — “Chas” — leaned over a small cylindrical stove and stirred a pool of shiny molten metal in the kettle-like top. It was a mild, post-rainstorm Friday in early November. Out in the scrap yard — a sprawling operation in the long dirt stretch between the wire rope shop and Hansen’s Truck Stop — a screechy tractor maneuvered among large puddles that reflected montages of sky, rusty bins and tanks, eucalyptus trees, old engines and other hunks of discarded metal.

Chas crouched low and adjusted the flame shooting from a gas line propped underneath the stove, then stood back up. His thick-bellied frame was dressed in the ubiquitous, dirt-smeared working man’s outfit: brown leather work boots, blue jeans, blue-and-white striped Ben Davis shirt with the half zip in front. Just like his big brother Hans dresses. Just like their dad, Charlie, wore.

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