Lazily feeding his face – while getting stung by bees

One day after I got off work at Lehigh Southwest, I took a drive to think about my Dad, who passed away the year before. I took a dirt road not far from the entrance to Sand Canyon, and I came up on some commercial bee hives. There in broad daylight, at 3:35 in the afternoon, was a black bear lounging against some hives. He had torn two of them open. He was sitting on his rump, leaning against some hives with his arm resting on them, scooping honeycomb into his mouth, swipe after swipe. He looked like a chubby guy eating a bag of chips, moving as little as possible, just swinging his arm back and forth to bring food to his mouth. I couldn't help but laugh out loud at him. It cheered me up to see that bear.

– Johnny Powell

Johnny Powell was raised in Tehachapi and he married a Tehachapi girl and they raised their family here. He worked at the local cement plant when it was still called Monolith, then Calaveras and now Lehigh Southwest.