It just hit me the other day that The Mighty Signal’s world corporate headquarters sits smack dab in the middle of Honby.
Not Newhall.
Not Saugus.
Certainly not H•E•Double•Hockey•Sticks•No Valencia.
Honby.
Honby was never Venice, Rome, Paris or Palmdale. It was never a thriving community. Today, it vaguely straddles Soledad Canyon Road like a tawdry, flea-ridden and disinterested …
Excuse me. I’m informed by this newspaper’s crackerjack legal squad that we cannot print the noun that was supposed to appear after, “disinterested…” in that this is a family newspaper.
But, it does rhyme with “cooker” and coincidentally starts with the same first letter as “Honby.”
Home Depot is in Honby. So are the Metrolink Station, Mike’s Tires, that tony real estate development in the middle of the Santa Clara River and a bevy of trailer parks.
Up until the 1970s, there used to be a public school here, aptly named, Honby Elementary. When I was at Hart back when bison by the billions roamed the valley floor, I was president of our local gang of toughs, the Honby Men’s Club. Of course, Randy Lawrence, a local developer, was in the Honby Men’s Club so it couldn’t have been that tough. Randy, a premie, wrestled in the 45-ounce-and-under class. Sad to say, the HMC sort of had a full-page ad in our high school yearbook, so that further denigrated our status as hoodlums.
Plus, back in the 1960s, gangs, and bands, went for the Group Look thing. Our Class of 1968 were fiercely individual and we could never agree on matching fashion ensembles, like mod jackets and Beatle boots. Or opera capes. Or leather motorcycle jackets. I also feel “Honby Men’s Club” just looks — well.
A little effeminate on a motorcycle jacket.
My best friend Phil Lanier and I, both of us outlaw biker types, always wanted to start a motorcycle gang called, “The Wordsmiths.” The logo would be a burning skull with soiled wings, sitting in the carriage of an old Royal manual typewriter. Above the skull would be our home town: Honby. I’m sure other towns would want to form their own chapters. You know. Like New York. If Steinbeck had been alive, I’m sure he’d want a Monterey chapter, after, of course, he pledged with us. As an intern, Steinbeck would have to do menial chores, like tending the rabbits.
I’ve never cared much for Canyon Country mainly because back in the 1990s, they sort of conquered Honby. Not a shot was fired, but those land-hungry so-&-so’s one night just took the place over. There used to be a huge “Welcome to Canyon Country” sign. It was a smidge west of Whites Canyon. Then, some bloated imbecile in the Canyon Country Chamber of Commerce just moved the darn sign three miles down Soledad, where the Metrolink station is today, effectively swallowing up peaceful Honby along with its several million trailer park inhabitants and their walkers with the tennis balls.
Somebody at this paper shamed them into moving the sign back to its original location although despite that person’s pleas, no member of the Canyon Country Chamber was guillotined for the landgrab.
Dear Mr. Santa Clarita Valley:
OMG! I am SO triggered!! You said, “Guillotined!” Are you ACTUALLY calling for chopping off the heads of local tireless business and industry leaders!?!?! That is completely SICK!! What if everybody called for lopping off people’s noggins!!!? And adding unnecessary and juvenile exclamation marks!!! This creates an environment of intolerance, racism, head-&-neckism and would result in the complete annihilation of the Santa Clarita Valley’s thriving hat industry! I’d work with my friend, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to introduce legislation to chop YOUR head clean off but would be afraid the escaping swamp gas would cut Earth’s existence down three years to nine!!!!!
Big fat butthead!
Working to pull America together,
Congresswoman Katie Hill (D-Honby)
Dear Congresswoman Katie:
Actually, we’ve gone over this maybe a million times or more. I was writing more in the lines of hyperbole. When I say “My feet are killing me,” Katie, I don’t literally mean that my feet get a demonic look in their eyes (which, as feet, they don’t have), reach up, wrap themselves around my throat and start choking me.
If they did, do you know what that would make them?
Yes.
Bad feet.
You know. Like Maxine Waters has?
Best wishes,
Dr. Acorn McGillicutty,
SCV Mobile Podiatrist Care
Where were we? Yes. Honby. Where The Signal today lives.
I think this newspaper should be proud of our Honbian heritage. Many important historical events occurred in Honby. Like when the apes fought the extraterrestrials for world domination. Looking around many enclaves of today’s Santa Clarita, I am relieved the monkeys won.
John Boston is a past honorary mayor of Honby, president for life of the Honby Men’s Club and a local writer with stacks and stacks and stacks more awards than Signal Editor Tim Whyte, who once played either hockey or saxophone for the Extraterrestrials.
