Appliance Repair in Modesto, CA

Enochs uses second-half surge to overcome Modesto; are playoffs next?

The Enochs High football team is not done yet.

The Eagles likely earned their way into the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs with a wild 63-38 victory over Modesto in a Central California Athletic League game on Friday night at Johansen High.

Senior quarterback Adam Ammar passed for three touchdowns and ran for three more as Enochs reached the four-win threshold that makes it eligible for the postseason.

“This week we had to focus on ‘we have to finish,’ “ Enochs coach Tracey Traub said. “We’ve had several games where we were right there, just didn’t quite finish. So, that was our whole focus this week.

“The first half we weren’t finishing, so at halftime, we went in and made some adjustments ... so we came out in the second half and executed much better, finished drives, finished plays.”

The Eagles (4-6 overall, 2-3 CCAL) will learn their playoff fate on Sunday afternoon when the section announces its pairings.

In its Oct. 23 playoff projections, MaxPreps predicted Enochs would get the 11th seed in Division I and travel to sixth-seeded Elk Grove to face the Thundering Herd (7-3, 6-0), the champion of the Delta League.

That was assuming the Eagles could defeat Modesto on Friday night, which was easier said than done.

The Panthers took a two-point lead, 23-21, early in the third quarter before the Eagles’ offense exploded for 42 second-half points, including 28 in the fourth quarter.

Ammar ran for three consecutive touchdowns — two from 17 yards out and then a 32-yarder — to give the Eagles a 41-23 lead early in the fourth quarter.

“At halftime we had a talk with the team, kind of talking to each other,” Ammar said. “We said ‘we’ve got to get our heads into it, put our minds together and work as a team. So we did that. We came out and executed ... the scoreboard shows that, and we came out with a win.”

Ammar finished with 129 yards rushing and 149 passing, but he wasn’t a one-man show.

Junior running backs Aiden Muhammad and Logan Edwards also had a big night. Muhammad ran 18 times for 145 yards and a touchdown, while Edwards had two TD runs and caught a pass from Ammar for a score.

It’s that three-pronged offensive attack — and a better defensive effort in the second half — that gives Traub hope of pulling off an upset in the playoffs.

“Two years in a row now we’re going to the playoffs after about an 11-year stretch of not,” Traub said. “It means a lot to them, these seniors. We’re facing a giant next week, they’ve got us slated for Elk Grove. So we know we have our hands full.

“But last year we had our hands full with Del Oro and we went 28-21. So, any given day, any given team.”

Modesto ended its season 2-9 overall and 0-5 in the CCAL. But the Panthers put up a gutsy fight in the season finale that coach Dylan Miller can carry over to next season.

Senior quarterback Eli McCabe had a nice night, passing for 312 yards on two touchdowns and on 33 attempts.

Down 11 points, McCabe led the Panthers to the Enochs 16-yard line with about six minutes to play, but his pass was tipped and then intercepted by Muhammad.

A few plays late Ammar launched a long pass to Skyler McCauley, who ran the rest of the way for an 84-yard touchdown.

Miller said he was proud of his team’s effort.

“It was the last game of the season, we wanted to send our seniors out right,” Miller said. “We didn’t have the on-field success that we wanted this year, but we did make progress and hopefully that’s a step in the right direction.“

MODESTO, Calif. — An iconic Modesto bookstore is writing it's last chapter in its history. Yesterday's Books on McHenry Avenue, the city's last independent bookstore, is closing after 42 years of selling used books.

"It's very sad," said longtime customer Marcia Swisegood.

She says she has come to the bookstore for over 25 years.

"We were not only able to return our books. It was like a lending bookstore," said Swisegood.

She says you could read a book, bring it back and get store credit.

The COVID pandemic made its mark on the book store and it was never able to turn the page.

"What went through my mind was just I can't believe this is happening who am I letting down," said owner Paula Kiss.

Kiss has owned the book store 15 years, but has worked here off and on for 32. She says she simply ran out of options.

"There are super loyal people who are here all the time, but primarily people are shopping online," said Kiss.

What makes the book store so special is the wide variety of used books, many of which readers can't find anywhere else.

Laura Bailey and Kate Borges are repeat customers and librarians for the Modesto Garden Club.

"We shop here all the time looking for good buys on garden books and we're really going to miss it," said Bailey.

When asked where would they go now, Borges said "Further out I guess."

18-year old Dancik Flores, an aspiring writer himself, is nostalgic about the store as it prepares to close this year.

"There's a section in the back where there used to be a little table, but it's not there any more with the grandfather clock. My mom would take me here and we would spend a long time in here looking at books and stuff," said Flores.

Unlike in the recent past, lines are long to buy books now. So if you want to check them out, you may want to hurry.

At its height, the store had a used inventory of over 100,000 used books of all kinds of genres.

The store employed nine employees before the pandemic and now only employs five.

Owner Paula Kiss says her next chapter in life is becoming a nurse.

The store is located at 3457 McHenry Avenue in Modesto.

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California’s Central Valley is a major agricultural region that accounts for approximately half of the fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S., and in its center sits Modesto and its airport Modesto City-County Airport-Harry Sham Field (KMOD). Until 2019, its long-time lone FBO was known as Sky Trek Aviation but its new owners decided to make a change. “I think they felt it was time to do something new and something fresh,” said Otto Wright, general manager of what is now known as the Modesto Jet Center (MJC). “Nobody really knew where Sky Trek Aviation was, so it was kind of a nice way to announce who we are and where we’re at.”

Farming makes up a large portion of the FBO’s clientele, according to Wright. “You’ve got guys who will fly in here with Citation Xs wearing dirty cowboy boots, jeans, and a big hat and that’s kind of normal out here,” he told AIN. Those customers help drive the location’s peak activity periods, which come at the beginning and the end of the growing season. With almonds a big local crop, one would think that they would be a readily-available snack in the FBO, but with all the growers passing through MJC, Wright has eschewed offering them to avoid showing favoritism to any particular brand.

The facility offers a 3,000-sq-ft terminal that was built in the early 1990s. It features a large passenger lobby, pilot lounge, 12-seat A/V-equipped conference room, business center, and Wright’s particular pride and joy: a fancy coffee machine. “You’ve got to have good coffee in the FBO business, and people come from all over the place because of our cool coffee maker,” he said jokingly. A major remodel was delayed by the Covid pandemic but is back on track for the third quarter of the year.

Located 70 miles from the San Francisco Bay area, weather has been an issue at times at KMOD. “Modesto was not considered a good alternate because we would always get this fog that would settle in in the wintertime. But in the last number of years, we have not had that same fog, so the climate change has actually been sort of positive for us,” noted Wright.

With more than 80,000 sq ft of hangar space that can accommodate aircraft up to the latest ultra-long-range business jets, the FBO is home to 20 aircraft including MJC’s managed aircraft and charter fleet and a mix of turboprops and light jets. “Before the crash of 2008, Sky Trek used to have Globals and Gulfstreams based here because they didn’t have any room in San Jose,” said Wright. “It’s taken 14 years but some of that business is starting to try and come back and we think it will.”

As proof of that conviction, the company, a sister to charter operator Axis Jet, is awaiting approval to start construction on an $8 million hangar project that will add a pair of 30,000-sq-ft hangars. “The one thing we don’t have here right now is private hangars with their own offices and private bays,” said Wright. “That’s one of the things that a lot of the Bay-area larger operators are looking for.” MJC hopes to break ground in the first quarter of 2023. The facility has four acres of aircraft parking of its own, but it also has access to much of the ramp of the formerly commercially-served airport for larger or military aircraft.

The Avfuel-branded location pumps approximately 750,000 gallons of fuel annually from its 50,000-gallon tank farm (30,000 gallons jet-A and 20,000 gallons avgas). Its NATA Safety 1st-trained line staff operates 3,000- and 2,000-gallon jet fuel tankers and a 1,500-gallon 100LL truck. Self-serve avgas is also available.

The FBO, which has a staff of 12, is open 24/7. “We have a night guy because it’s not like we get an avalanche of activity that happens in the middle of the night but we usually get a helicopter or two,” Wright explained. “We’re going to have a security person here anyway, so having a line guy who can fuel a helicopter in the middle of the night is pretty important.”

When it comes to customer service, Wright encourages his staff to do whatever they can to help a customer. “Many of them have been brought up here, so they treat this as their home,” he said. “When we have clients coming through, they go out of their way to be welcoming for transients, but our based tenants are considered like part of the family because they probably are. Everybody knows everybody in a small town.”

Turns out the Central Valley likes its Halloween attractions with a little Celtic flare, fantasy and fire thrown into the mix.

While residents of Stanislaus County and surrounding areas have plenty of Halloween-themed attractions to visit during spooky season — from pumpkin patches and corn mazes to haunted houses and morbid tours — one came out ahead of the bunch.

We asked Modesto Bee readers to vote in our nonscientific poll for their favorite Halloween attraction, and the winner was clear: the All Hallows Fantasy Faire in Angels Camp.

The fair started 14 years ago in neighboring Sonora, but moved to the larger Calaveras County Fairgrounds in Angels Camp two years ago.

The two-day event is part Halloween celebration, part Celtic New Year ceremony, part giant costume party and part fantasy fair. Expect a large slate of live bands, as well as craft vendors, costumed entertainers, children’s activities, food booths and more.

The weekend’s festivities include a fire ceremony Saturday evening that features live performances and the burning of the Celtic Harvestman. Visitors are encouraged to write notes to loved ones, which are put into a basket and then burned together with the harvest effigy.

“When coming up with the original idea for the All Hallows Fantasy Faire, we wanted to give people a new experience of Halloween that did not morph into the modern haunted house ideal ... with people running around with chain saws, fake fog and hospital operating tables to scare you, or make you sick,” said All Hallows creator Patrick Karnahan, who co-owns the event with partner Lissa Britt. “There is way too much of that in the real world as it is. Our idea is to be fun, different, family oriented, still fun for adults, and put some of the creativeness back in to participate.”

The event will have adult and children’s costume contests both Saturday and Sunday, for multiple categories. Karnahan estimates 60% to 70% of attendees dress in costume each year.

Karnahan is known for his Celtic and historical-themed events. He is the founder and owner of the Calaveras Celtic Faire, which he started some 38 years ago.

Out of almost 6,000 online votes, the Top 5 finishers in our reader poll for best regional Halloween-themed attraction were:

This year’s All Hallows Fantasy Faire will run noon to 10:30 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29-30, at the Frogtown Fairgrounds. Tickets are $20-$25 depending on day, with senior, child and military discounts available (children under 5 free). For more information, visit allhallowsfaire.com.

Since 1998, the city of Modesto has been involved in litigation against Dow Chemical and PPG Industries for knowingly selling tetrachloroethylene, a cancer-causing chemical also known as PCE, to dry cleaners across the city. Now, the 24-year court saga has moved forward as Modesto won $4 million in damages last week for one of the sites.

The San Francisco Superior Court also found that Dow Chemical acted with “malice” and levied $56.3 million in punitive damages on the multinational American company.

Modesto officials were pleased by the verdict.

“The city has been pursuing the case in state trial and appellate courts for 24 years and is gratified by the verdict,” Modesto spokeswoman Diana Ruiz-Del Re said.

But Ruiz-Del Re said there’s still more work to be done. In addition to the one property — the former Vogue Cleaners at 409 Seventh St., now a bar called el Cachon — there are more than 20 other sites the city plans to litigate, she said.

PCE, which has been linked to cancers and other adverse health conditions, has seeped into the soil at 23 properties across Modesto, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has reported. Those properties once were dry cleaners but now include homes, grocery stores, bars, restaurants, gyms, barbershops and more.

They include the Modesto Medical Market on McHenry Avenue, the Laundry Express on Coffee Road and UPS Century Center on Oakdale Road.

PCE can move from the soil into the air of nearby buildings through a process known as vapor intrusion. In all but three of the 23 Modesto properties, CDPH reported that there’s not enough information to know for sure if residents, gym-goers and shoppers are breathing in the chemical, but it said it is “possible” or “likely.”

In one of the locations where the city evaluated the indoor air in 2016 – the site of Holy Land Bakery, June Bug’s Bar and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers training center on Phoenix Avenue at Yosemite Boulevard – a CDPH report found that the buildings likely had “elevated” levels of PCE. But the testing was cut short “due to licensing delays and subsequent vandalism.” There was not enough information at the time to say if the chemical could be harming people’s health.

Many other locations have not been tested since 2003. CDPH recommends that Modesto test the air and soil in all of the studied locations, as well as the stores around them, which include residential areas (and swimming pools), all of Coffee Plaza and Oakdale Plaza, the In-N-Out Burger in the Wood Colony Plaza on Pelandale Avenue, as well as parts of the Walmart shopping center on McHenry Avenue. The city did not immediately respond to questions about its cleanup plans.

The Environmental Protection Agency says PCE produces “unreasonable risk of injury to human health” and can cause cancer if touched or inhaled. California began clamping down on the use of PCE in 2007. The official ban on the chemical begins Jan 1.