Top of a Mighty Signal September Saturday morn to you, saddlepals and saddlepalettes. We’ve a most interesting adventure ahead, what with dumbbell deer hunters, record heat waves and poison water flowing out of Bouquet Canyon.
Again.
For you grizzled veterans, you know the drill. Sit tall in the saddle and look somewhat disgruntled. The rest of you yuppies just grin out of context like you’re just happy to be atop a fine steed whilst snapping a bevy of selfies.
Vamoose, shall we?
WAY, WAY BACK WHEN
AND, IT’S MOVING OUT OF CALIFORNIA — On Sept. 10, 1879, Demetrius Scofield founded the Pacific Coast Oil Co. It would later become Standard Oil of California.
AND, IT’S STILL ABANDONED — With the Civil War still being feverishly fought, Fort Tejon was abandoned. Sept. 11 marked the 160th anniversary of that withdrawal. The garrison was created to help protect travelers, and to deter raids by bandits and Indians on ranches.
RATHER IRONIC: MOVING OIL ON HORSE-DRAWN WAGONS — The oil business wasn’t always a cash cow. Early refiners in Pico Canyon initially carted huge barrels of oil to the Newhall Oil Refinery via wagons. On the bright side, it was mostly downhill for the 7 miles. Cost of moving one 40-gallon barrel back then? A buck. Pico No. 4, the first commercial oil well in California, was pumping out about 10 barrels of crude a day in 1876.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1924
LIVING A MOST INTERESTING LIFE — Jerry Ryan won’t make the history books, but he had a most interesting life. Before he settled down to retire in San Francisquito Canyon, Ryan was a miner in the early gold rush days of California. He helped the Korean government set up mining equipment in that country, toured much of China, Egypt, the Holy Land and Europe. He later helped build the California Aqueduct. He died on this date.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1934
AN ODE TO THE HOLY SOUL, BEATING IN MEN’S HEARTS — We had a terrible truck accident on this date when one double rig’s fuel line and brakes gave out. The driver tried to slow the racing big rig by rubbing it against the side of the mountain on the road into Newhall. The truck caught fire and two other big rigs crashed into it. It was feared that all three drivers were dead. They made a remarkable recovery, despite having terrible burns on their faces. The men shared a room at the little Newhall Hospital on 6th Street, added some paint to their facial masks and pretended they were clowns to cheer up a kid in the next room over. One of the teamsters quipped that no one had ever been killed in the tiny rehab except out of kindness.
TODAY? YOU CAN GET LIFE JUST FOR THINKING ABOUT A CIGARETTE — It’s interesting how the fabric of life has changed. Most of the cases heard before the local judge involved fish and game or forestry violations. Two guys were found guilty and fined $50 each for smoking in the woods in Saugus.
LIVING THE HIGH-ON-THE-HOG GOVERNMENT LIFE — The Civil Service had posted four jobs in the agriculture field. Three of them paid $4,600 a year. The Signal came out against the ridiculous high salary rate and demanded that they be lowered to conform with the times and the rest of the country’s pay rates. Hard to believe that 88 bucks a week was considered extravagant.
WHEN WE WERE TOO POOR TO PLAY POOL — Seems like the locals weren’t exactly spending their few pennies at the Haskell pool hall. They had to close it down. Hard to believe. One pool hall in a small town and no one to hang around it. The next week, the billiard room was sold to Dick Bell.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1944
PERT NEAR PERFECTO — A pitcher listed only as “Johnson” nearly pitched a perfect game for the Bermite squad. (For you new-timers, Bermite was one of America’s largest ammunition factories and rested right on Soledad by the Metrolink station.) In the eighth inning, he walked one, who stole two bases to get to third. Other than that, Mr. Johnson ended up with a no-hit, no-run game for the bomb squadders.
BRING BACK THE MOTOR STAGE!! — Right around the same time the Saugus Cafe reopened its doors, so did the historic Motor Stage Cafe. It had opened and closed its doors over the years and had been a staple of the local scenery. Geez. Sure wish someone would open a coffee shop for dinner in Downtown Newhall and call it, say it with me, The Motor Stage Cafe.
MORE WAR TO FIGHT — For some young SCV men, they were hoping there was still some action left in World War II by the time they got there. For others, they hoped the draft would pass them by. One of the last call-ups for wartime duty was held for local men. Ten young fellas were called up.
THE GOVERNMENT DOES AMERICA A SOLID — Another sign of the impending end of all fighting was that the government eased up on baking requirements. Private industry could now use milk solids in their bread.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1954
WORK CAN NOT ONLY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH, BUT FATAL — Oil refining can be one of the more dangerous jobs on the planet. There is the omnipresent threat of fire or explosion, but mostly, men were hurt from slipping or from the heavy equipment surrounding them. On this date, Jerry Roberts was killed in a drilling accident when a huge pipe tong slipped on the rig and struck Roberts square in the head.
FOREVER HOME OF THE MIGHTY INDIANS, NO MATTER WHAT THE SCHOOL BOARD SAYS — Until the population boomed and they started turning Hart High into a trailer park, the campus was one of the prettiest institutions around. One person who deserves the credit is architect Gus Kallonzes, who designed the original look of brick and trees.
WHEN LABOR DAY WAS DEATH DAY — With the poor roads and behemoth cars roaring through the valley, the accident and death toll were absolute nightmares here. The Labor Day weekend was horrendous, with two people killed in car accidents and another 43 taken to hospitals.
KIDS ARE OUR BIGGEST BUSINESS — When you think about it, the Santa Clarita’s school system is the valley’s biggest enterprise, touching the lives of most of the people here. When school started across the valley in 1954, we found we had roughly a 10% increase from the previous year across the board in enrollment.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1964
HOCK, PTOOEY, I CAN STILL RECALL THE GAG REFLEX AND ACIDIC AFTERTASTE IN MY MOUTH — In an attempt to stamp out a $16,000 deficit from the year before in cafeteria operation, the William S. Hart Union High School District installed coin-operated vending machines in their then-three schools — Hart, Placerita and Sierra Vista. Nutrition pretty much went downhill after that.
RE: THE ABOVE — No. Forget “pretty much.” We went from delicious, hot, healthy food served by charming nice ladies to sub-Appalachia gas station soggy mystery meat soggy sandwiches and packaged chips with a pull date of 14,036 A.D.
OUR ANCIENT FIRE CYCLE — The brush keeps growing back and the brush keeps burning. On this date, there was a 3,500-acre brush fire in Bouquet Canyon. Surely lost count years ago how many times there has been a major fire in that canyon.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1974
HOW THE HOLY HECK DO WE GET AWAY FROM THE ELEPHANTINE, INDIFFERENT AND OFT EVIL LOS ANGELES COUNTY? — On this date, Signal Editor Scott Newhall penned one of his infamous top-of-the-front-page editorials. This time, the paper endorsed, for the first time, the Santa Clarita Valley breaking away from Los Angeles to form its own county. Scotty pointed out that L.A.’s property taxes jumped 49 cents per $100 per valuation, while neighboring Ventura raised to just 9 more cents. We also noted that L.A. County was just the leftovers of a byzantine system designed to benefit a few politicians and power brokers. The Canyon County movement would fail twice at the polls.
BUT THEY WERE SMALL GLASSES — To locals, he was known simply as Thirsty George. On this date, the Canyon Country man was thrown out of Dillenbeck’s Market (up in Canyon Country, on Sierra Highway, near Soledad, for you SCV youngsters) for opening up a cold bottle of wine in the deli section and drinking it in the store. He didn’t pay for it and was kicked out. The next morning, when the crew arrived at ChiChi’s Pizza to open, they found someone had broken in. There, on the floor, was Thirsty George. He had confessed to drinking 40 glasses of beer before passing out. Ah, those hot Saugus summer nights …
RE: THIRSTY GEORGE — Can you imagine, if George were around at today’s prices and being accountable for downing 40 beers? That would certainly push him over the $950 misdemeanor/Bidenomics limit in California …
THE OTHER THIRSTY GEORGE — At the absolute other end of the heaven-on-earth spectrum was former Hart High Principal George Harris. My pal was one of the best guys ever to call this valley home, ever, period. On this date in 1974, he retired after serving the school district for 27 years. Someone down at City Hall or in the Hart district should name a boulevard or school after the fellow. After an amazing life of service, humor and good deeds, he died in 2006 at the age of 95. Up until his later days, he still played a mean if not questionably scored round of golf …
SEPTEMBER 14, 1984
THE LAST DEER HUNTER — The last thing 21-year-old Felipe Rosales did was to venture into the bushes in the predawn hours to relieve himself. He and four friends had been deer hunting and camping in upper Sand Canyon. One of his hunting buddies mistook him for a deer and shot him dead.
THOSE LAST, SUFFOCATING, STRANGLING THROES OF SUMMER — It was not a fun week. A smothering blanket of heat, humidity and smog lay over the valley, with temperatures hitting the 110s — and higher. Making matters worse, the heat wave coincided with the first day back for most schools and football practice. Gary Saxton, 43, picked the absolute wrong time of the year to wind down his vacation. He just returned from bicycling from San Francisco to Newhall. Forget pedaling along with the Pacific Ocean on your right. Those last 30 miles in from Santa Paula were more than a bit grueling. For the rest of us, we didn’t even have the luxury of whimpering out the justification: “At least it’s dry heat …”
WHEN HART & CANYON PLAYED AT MARVEL COMIC BOOK SUPER HERO LEVELS — The last games both Hart and Canyon played in 1983, they each won a CIF football championship. Opening up the 1984 season, Canyon opened up a big jar of whip-you-know-what on Hart, 21-6.
A KIND AN UNSCATHING TRIBUTE TO AN ANCIENT AND NOBLE WEAPON — On this date, famed Signal editorialist and scalawag, Scott Newhall, penned one of his infamous front-page editorials. This time, it wasn’t a crooked politician, bloodthirsty dictator or corrupt government agency that was Señor Newhall’s target. Scott wrote rather fondly of his constant companion for many a decade: the No. 10 New Model Royal typewriter. Whether it was at the helm of The San Francisco Chronicle where he was editor for so many years or here at The Mighty Signal, Scott wrote most of his epic opinion pieces from that ancient, 1914 machine. Rumors circulated about Scott donating it to some horse patootie of a junior varsity plagiarist, blindly hoping some of the adverbs might rub off …
AND NO. THAT’S NOT WHERE TODAY’S THRIVING SUSHI INDUSTRY GOT THEIR PRODUCT — Russ Peters sued the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for $9 million. Peters claimed DWP dumped water laced with copper sulfate, a chemical commonly used to abate algae growth in ponds and reservoirs. Peters ran a trout farm 9 miles down from the Bouquet Dam and on several occasions, discovered thousands of his fish floating dead in his ponds.
• • •
Well. As Tarzan always liked to say, “Oooon-GOW-wah!” As I sometimes like to say, “Hami kwa umi?” That’s from the ancient Tataviam tongue, which means, in a deeper, philosophical sense, “Where are you going?” Sure hope to heck that come next week, it’s right back here at The Mighty Signal hitching post for another exciting Time Ranger adventure. Switching to Spanish in the same paragraph, “¡Vayan con Dios, amigos!”
What’s keeping you? If you love local history and reading about ghosts, myths and monsters, visit Boston’s bookstore at johnbostonbooks.com. Pick up JB’s two-volume set of “MONSTERS” on local horror and macabre …
