Well. What do you think. Should we just stumble out to the den, turn on the cable and see if there’s a John Wayne movie on or should we slip into a comfortable pair of jeans, sit atop a fine horse and go visiting history close up?
I vote the latter.
Fascinating trail ahead, saddlepals. There’s giant peaches, water woes, buckets of blood and how the valley celebrated the end of World War II.
I find that if you take a little black coffee and rub it on your eyelids, it helps put the morning into perspective …
WAY, WAY BACK WHEN
BILLION-DOLLAR INHERITANCE — Back on Aug. 24 in 1853, Don Antonio del Valle sort of willed half of his Rancho San Francisco to his son, Ignacio. Actually, what Tony did in his final days was promise his grown-up boy that if he married, settled down and produced heirs, he’d get a chunk of the Santa Clarita and part of Santa Barbara with all the goodies within. Can you imagine that kind of inheritance today? It would be worth billions.
THE SCV’S LONGEST-STANDING TYPOGRAPHICAL ERROR — In 1845, around Aug. 25, the governor of California deeded a huge spread to a former French sailor who jumped shipped years earlier off of the Ventura coastline. Francisco Chari became a cowboy in the area and worked in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys before making his fortune. He called his new spread the Rancho del Buque — French, for “Ship Ranch.” In 1850, when American cartographers came to redraw the new California maps, they saw all the wildflowers up the canyon and thought that “Buque” was Spanish for “Bouquet.”
AUGUST 23, 1925
NOT A PLUG NICKEL EITHER FOR SANTA BARBARA — We were lagging a smidge behind in helping out the quake victims from the big Santa Barbara shaker from earlier in the year. Our goal was to raise $169 throughout the valley. The quake, later estimated at a 6.8, destroyed much of downtown, killed eight, injured more and did $8 million in damage and left many homeless. Months later, no one in the SCV had donated a dime.
JUST PEACHY! — L.G. Goodnight had a good crop of peaches. They were so big, they were displayed in downtown Newhall. Neighbors quipped the fruits were as big as pumpkins. Not quite, but some of them were 13 inches in diameter. That particular batch was called Million Dollar Peaches and they came from a pretty hearty tree.
RUNNING OUT OF WATER — Funny how most of the folks in the valley don’t even think about water. Locals were watching the well levels very closely. A hot summer depleted the levels in 1925. Don’t forget too, right around the same time, local businessmen felt the valley wouldn’t grow more than its population of around 1,000 because there wasn’t enough water. Actually, we’re sitting on ga-trillions of gallons in natural aquifers, but folks didn’t know that at the time nor would they have the wherewithal to pump it to the surface.
AND ALL THAT TIME WASTED IN THE HEAT HARVESTING THE STUFF — It’s amazing how many times this has happened in the olden days. But yet another hay truck caught on fire and it’s not like you can feed it to horses charbroiled …
AUGUST 23, 1935
WHAT BLOOD ALL OVER MY FACE? — NOTE TO SELF: Next time you shoot somebody, wipe the blood off your face. When officer Cliff Woodruff stopped Romuldo Vincente for driving erratically, he was a smidge suspicious. Besides being almost paralyzed by nerves, his face was splattered with the blood of his recent shooting victim. Seems Romuldo was accused of flirting with a friend’s wife. The friend attacked him with a knife and Rommy put four slugs into him at close range.
YET ANOTHER HUNTING WHOOPSIE — Former baseball player and Newhall lad Don Cooper nearly bled to death in a hunting accident. He was carting out a buck while one of his friends walked behind, carrying two rifles. The pal slipped, fell and a gun discharged, nearly shattering his thigh bone. Fortunately, the rifle was the smaller caliber one. Cooper had borrowed Tom Frew’s high-powered monster. That would have taken both legs off. Or, maybe it would have just missed completely …
MA’AM? MAY I HAVE THIS DANCE? — We do make mistakes. Check out this correction from the contrite hearts of The Mighty Signal: “The Hopi snake dances are in progress in Arizona. Mrs. Maude Luse says the report that she was to attend is false.”
AGUA DULCE: NOT EXACTLY NEW YORK CITY AT 2 IN THE MORNING — I know for me I would do a thousand chimpanzee backflips if I owned Vasquez Rocks. Not so for Henry Krieg. The landowner noted: “I’m not so hepped (sic) up on them. It’s a dumb, dull place in the summer.”
AUGUST 23, 1945
WHEN WAR WAS OVER. FOR A TIME. — When it was announced the Japanese had surrendered, Newhall, like the rest of America, danced in joyous frenzy. Above the masthead of this newspaper was the following text, all in 60 point: “Newhall rejoiced with all the nation Tuesday. All business suspended immediately after the President’s broadcast. Flags were broken out. At Bermite, President Lizza called the employees together, announced the great news and declared a holiday until Monday. On Spruce Street the Firestone burglar alarm busted loose. Led by the sheriff prowl car a cavalcade of motor cars swept up and down with wildly blasting horns. People on the sidewalks answered with whoops and shrieks. A tide of shredded packing paper appeared from somewhere. Smiles and happy faces were universal. Victory had come!” And yet, as it’s been since time immemorial, somebody was at war somewhere on Earth with somebody else.
THE INSTANT SHRINKAGE OF SCV POPULATION — Immediately, good old patriotic Pat Lizza downsized the Bermite munitions factory in Saugus. During the war, it ran around the clock, employing about 2,000 workers. The next day, Lizza kept a skeleton crew of 100 and laid off most of his employees.
FRUIT SALES MUST GO ON — “Peace, Goodwill” and — Freestone peaches? The Newhall Shopping Bag market ran a rather large grocery ad, noting that “Victory Is Ours!” and that they had some mighty fine sales going on.
AUGUST 23, 1955
WHEN THE POST OFFICE DOESN’T KNOW WHERE ANYBODY LIVES — The last three weeks, we’ve been moseying and chatting about those carnsarned new street addresses imposed upon valley establishments by L.A. County. Almost overnight, we went from two and three-digit addresses to county-mandated five-digit IDs. Perhaps the people who suffered most were the local Post Office staff. They had virtually no idea where much of the mail was supposed to go.
AUGUST 23, 1965
THE MIA TEACHERS — The average turnover for a high school teaching staff each year was one-eighth the population. The William S. Hart Union High School District’s rate was one in four. Part of the problem was that the district had an inordinate number of first- and second-year teachers, who normally have a higher attrition rate.
CAN’T PLAY SOFTBALL TODAY, GOTTA FIGHT THE LOOTERS — One of the oddest ripples from the earlier Watts Riots (or, “Uprising,” as the politically correct like to sniff) was felt here in the valley’s men’s softball leagues. The Saugus Rehabilitation Center squad had to forfeit their championship. Because they kept sending personnel to stand watch in the inner city, they didn’t have enough players to field a team in the tourney.
AUGUST 23, 1975
WHO SAID BARTER IS DEAD? — On this date, a Canyon Country woman and her 18-year-old stepson were arrested for allegedly contracting a hit man to kill her 54-year-old husband. The woman offered a man whom she thought was a stone cold killer $500 cash, a Honda motorcycle and — I just love this part — a second-hand Gremlin to off her better half. The “hit man” snitched to local police. Get this. Upon hearing that his wife was trying to murder him for his $5,000 life insurance policy, he went to the Valencia station to try and bail her out. His son was booked down in Lennox. Ain’t love grand?
MR. PROVERBIAL ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN — After getting his spine and neck all twisted in a car accident, a Long Beach man was hospitalized, treated and released. A few days later, he was injured again in a fistfight. He went to Magic Mountain with his wife to “get a little rest.” While on the White Knuckler roller coaster, the contraption stalled and somehow, his car got bumped by another, sending Mr. Joel Linebarger back to the hospital for the third time in a week.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK — Maybe they should have tried a small training class. On this date, county workers at Castaic Lake lost a perfectly good pickup truck to the murky deep. While employees had their back turned, their maintenance truck slid backward on the boat ramp. A week earlier, lifeguards lost a $20,000 boat that caught fire on the water. Maybe the staff should have stuck to wearing red shorts and doing the dog paddle as opposed to being let close to machinery …
AUGUST 23, 1985
BACK WHEN THE AGUA DULCE POST OFFICE HAD A HELICOPTER? — You couldn’t do this today in Valencia. An Agua Dulce family took the Post Office literally. They had two mailboxes, one at regular level and the second was on a pole about 20 feet in the air. Yup. Their second box was for airmail.
• • •
Whether you’re moseying back home to wash a pickup or take a well-deserved nap, wishing you, dear friends, good adventures this fine summer day. See you back here at The Mighty Signal hitching post next Saturday with another exciting Time Ranger adventure. Until then — vayan con Dios, amigos!
Local historian and the world’s most prolific satirist/humorist John Boston will be soon launching a new eclectic bookstore and multimedia/commentary website on writing — johnboston-books.com. Look for “Naked Came the Novelist,” his long-awaited sequel to “Naked Came the Novelist” coming this fall.
