We’ll be politely riding past a few local Native American villages on this morning’s trail. Relax. The names are sometimes tough to pronounce. Let me do the talking. You saddlepals just smile and nod politely, like you understand.
We’ve some interesting vistas just around the bend, saddlepals. You know the drill. Check the cinches. (OK. For some of you newer yuppies, that means look under the horse’s tummy and make sure that not only is a cinch actually there, but that it’s tight.) Saddlehorn should be closer to the horse’s ears than his heinie. Make sure there’s a comfy blankie under said saddle.
Up through that whirling vortex that is the Santa Clarita that was, we’ve got baby-faced gangs, crooks, toe-shooters, movie stars, presidents, cowboys, Indians and more gee-whiz cocktail party info than you can possibly squeeze onto a double paper plate.
WAY, WAY BACK WHEN
AND NOT A SINGLE KEMOSABE TO BE SEEN — OK. I’ll just say this once and you see if you can repeat them with perfect pronunciation. They are the names of old Tataviam villages from the northern part of the valley. From the Piru area: Kouung, Hufant, Etsent, Akauaui, Kashtu, Pi’idhuku and Kamulus. From around the old pre-dam Castaic Lake: Sabau; Auuapya and Kashluk. From near Castaic: Kashtuk and Tsawayung.
NINE KIDS? I’D HAVE TROUBLE REMEMBERING THEIR NAMES — For the historical record, in 1872, there used to be two Elizabeth Lakes, one named East, the other West. The waterway was also called Rabbit Lake for a while. Lake Hughes was named after the sheep herder, Patrick Hughes. Munz Lake and Munz Ranch Road was named after John Munz, who arrived in 1898 and started a huge cattle ranch spanning thousands of acres. John’s wife was named Martha and they had nine kids. I’m guessing John and Martha liked each other very, very much.
HERE’S A TIP’S FOR YA — A little trivia for the old-timers. The original Tip’s restaurant used to sit at Hollywood and Vine.
LETTING BISONS BE BISONS — FYI, May is the traditional bison birthing month. You might want to check Hart Park to see if there are any new arrivals …
MAY 23, 1926
OUR ACCIDENT-PRONE WOULD-BE PRESIDENT — I’ve oft mentioned that Santa Clarita’s only legitimate presidential candidate, Henry Clay Needham, was the Gerald Ford of his day in the accident department. That isn’t quite fair to the 38th chief exec. Needham was a walking hospital ward. He had once spent months in bed after being butted by a goat. He missed being nominated by his Prohibitionist Party in the 1920s for the presidency because he got food poisoning the morning of the convention. And, on this date, he was severely injured when he fell off a ladder, attempting to fix a water tank on his ranch, which today is the Needham Ranch industrial park in Newhall.
DIDN’T WAIT THE 40 MINUTES — There used to be a reservoir on the Seelinger ranch where Home Depot sits today. The Seelingers’ 18-year-old drowned in it after a post-dinner swim on this date. Folks figured the boy simply died of cramps. The water was just 6 feet deep where he drowned.
DOBE TURNS 5 — Little Harry Carey Jr. had his 5th birthday at his parents’ San Francisquito Ranch. It must have been a heck of a production. His folks put on a Navajo Indian rodeo and hosted a barbecue with cake, ice cream and all the fixins. Each guest was fitted with a genuine cowboy or cowgirl hat. Harry was enshrined in our Walk of Western Stars about 20 years back …
MAY 23, 1936
THE LONELIEST ROAD — Ninety years ago, Signal owner A.B. “Dad” Thatcher took a day off and went for a drive on the old Ridge Route, which had recently been bypassed by the newer Highway 99. “On the old Ridge road, there is almost absolute solitude,” wrote Dad of his adventure. “I think four cars passed me, one way or the other, in all of the 25 or 30 miles.” He spoke of the beauty and majesty of the back country. Funny. It’s the same exact experience today.
MAY 23, 1946
SOME MAJOR LEGAL/HISTORY TRIVIA — The first libel suit in the valley’s history was filed 60 years back. The little Soledad Justice Court saw Morris Kates, proprietor of the Soledad Hotel (where the Way Station sits today) file papers against his business neighbor, Jerry Blowers. The latter owned the barber shop and displayed a poster in his window making derogatory comments about the hotel and Morris’ race (human; we researched it). Seems Blowers was upset about $100 he lost on an election bet.
HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICTY — Sometimes a small exchange can shout volumes about a community. Eighty years back, Earl Hurt was manager of the Safeway grocery store (today, on Main near Market). He was rather astounded when a young man came up and presented him with 41 cents and a confession. It seems five years earlier, the young man had stolen a half-pound of butter (16 cents) and a paring knife (25 cents) — total value of 41 cents. The fellow said his conscience had been bothering him for a half-decade. Dumbfounded, Hurt accepted the money and didn’t point out that 8 ounces of butter was now 28 cents.
MAY 23, 1956
BEFORE THERE WAS A MASTER’S COLLEGE — A couple of dude ranches were in full flower a half century back. There was the 2-Shay Ranch up Bouquet Canyon, near present-day LARC Ranch. Then, there was the Happy Jack Ranch, phone number 534. Today, that’s The Master’s College. Interestingly, the owner would pull a Donald J. Trump. Some fool hunter a quarter-mile away was hunting deer on his property and not checking what was behind his target. He fired at the deer, missed and the bullet traveled across the canyon, nicking the owner in his ear. At first, he thought he had been bitten by a rather large mosquito …
AMEN, BOY HOWDY, TALK ABOUT INVITING BAD KARMA — On the other end of Christianity, someone broke into the Catholic Church and stole three bucks in loose change from the poor box. Guess the culprit was poor in coin and spirit …
POOR THING WALKED FUNNY THE REST OF HER LIFE — Don’t hire Cash Shockey as your rifle instructor. He was giving beginner instructions at his Placerita Ranch to a 13-year-old. When he turned around, she shot her big toe off. That’s gotta be good for a discount …
MAY 23, 1966
AX-HAPPY BUREAUCRATS — Some of you über old-timers will remember that San Fernando Road between Newhall and Saugus was lined spasmodically with trees. Cottonwoods, if memory serves. The state (ours) came in and chopped them all down 60 years back. Said they were a hazard because in particularly hard storms, the branches would sometimes fall. A Highway Department spokesman also said they were all dead or dying. They weren’t, but that didn’t stop the ax-happy gang from lopping them all down. The city of Santa Clarita has done a very nice job in the here-&-now of making that stretch of highway tree-lined. As for the cottonwoods? They fill up the river today along Railroad Avenue before the former Saugus Café.
WELL IF THAT DON’T SOUND IRONIC — Rain delayed the opening of the Lyons Avenue Bridge over then Highway 99.
YOUTH GONE WRONG — Hard to believe, but a gang of pre-teens was responsible for thousands of dollars in bicycle thefts in the SCV. The little thugs were swiping about $2,000 a month in children’s bikes. They would strip down the two-wheelers, file off numbers and resell them as rebuilt or for parts. Some of you will remember that you could buy a working car for $50. A new kid’s bike could go as high as $100 in 1966.
WOULD YOU LIKE SOME HELP OUT TO THE CAR WITH THIS, SIR OR MA’AM? — This weekend 60 years back, they held the groundbreaking ceremony for Thriftimart shopping center at the corner of Wiley Canyon and Lyons. Dear me, I was a box boy there for a while. Funny. We’ve come full circle. This was before the days of the question: “Paper or plastic?” Today, it’s back to 1966 and the main choice is paper for a dime or, “I brought my own bags …”
MAY 23, 1976
GUESS THEY’RE GONNA HAVE TO SCRIMP & SAVE FOR THE NEXT 364 DAYS… — Ouch. Hart District super Clyde Smyth had knots in his stomach over his proposed budget. While the campuses had approximately $12 million to work with, all but $179 was already doled out. Not much wiggle room …
OUR SELF-SUFFICIENT VALLEY — Welfare cases were few here in Santa Clarita. Less than 800 a month asked for county assistance. That worked out to .08 of one percent of the county-wide totals.
THINK THE COUNTY SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE PLANTING THE MEDIANS? — Speaking of the county, they stopped watering the median strips throughout the SCV, causing all the greenery to dry up. As a protest/performance art, someone placed the skeleton of a steer on one of the dried-up center dividers and called it the Baxter Ward Memorial Green Belt, in honor of our one-term supervisor.
I’LL TAKE SEVEN JUMBO JACKS, A SMALL COKE AND A NEW WALL — Fifty years ago, Jack-In-The-Box’s corporate slogan was “Watch Out, McDonald’s!” The phrase could have tweaked to say, “Watch Out, Canyon Country.” In putting in their new Soledad Canyon branch, the burger joint came in and unceremoniously yanked out the back fences of four of their neighbors. The homeowners weren’t notified. Construction workers came in and just yanked all four fences. Jack was supposed to replace them with brick walls, but a masons strike postponed that. Neighbors were left with yawning chasms until the strike ended.
THE CREEPY CRAWLIES — Swimmers were attacked by a creature not from the Black Lagoon but the Castaic Lagoon. Seems some microbe was causing a rash to break out in hundreds of bathers in the new man-made lake. The culprit was something called cercariae, a microscopic and worm-like creature that attached themselves to tiny water snails, which were put in to keep water clear by eating algae. Copper sulfate was dumped into the lake to kill the cercariae. Parks and Rec offered a human sacrifice in the form of a volunteer employee who later went swimming to see if he’d get an itch.
MAY 23, 1986
‘SEXFREAKS’? IN SAUGUS? DO YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE AN ADDRESS? — Publisher Scott Newhall penned another of his famous Signal front-page editorials. This one? “Send Your Sexfreaks to Saugus.” It was about the city of Los Angeles voting to send their, ahem, Scott’s pun not mine, “hardened” criminals to Castaic.
POOR NEWHALL LAND — Cripes. Are they still even in town? A year earlier, they were caught chopping down a 500-year-old heritage oak without the proper permits. It was a paperwork faux pax and the tree had been OK’d to meet its doom, just not on that particular date. NL was supposed to plant and maintain 100 oaks as part of their penalty. A year later, they had only been able to give 25 to Hart Park and zero to Placerita, which, oddly enough, with a creek running through it, didn’t have the water. Newhall Land said while they had plenty of land, they didn’t have the location or water for the flora’s upkeep.
RELAX. IT’S NOT THE MARSHA McLEAN CARTEL — Detectives arrested the McLean brothers on this date. They were captured for possession of $338,000 in cocaine. Nope. They weren’t at all related to current city councilwoman, Marsha McLean. The two bros were Colombian-born nationals. I know. “McLean” doesn’t exactly sound Colombian, does it?
START THE PRESSES!! — A little Signal trivia for you. For the first time since the 1960s, your hometown paper was printed in the hometown. We lost our presses in a fire when The Signal was located on 6th Street. On May 15, 1986, this august periodical was printed on the newly installed Goss Urbanite presses in the brand new world corporate headquarters on Creekside Road. The presses could churn out 36,000 copies in four hours.
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From the swirling vortex just up yonder, it looks like that’s our time portal back to the Santa Clarita of present day. Give The Mighty Signal drovers a hand with your mounts, taking off saddle and tack, brushing down your horses and maybe offering that nice apple you’ve been keeping in your jacket pocket as thanks for a most excellent ride. See you back here in seven with another exciting Time Ranger adventures, amigos and amigo-ettes. Until then? ¡Vayan con Dios, amigos!
Local historian and the world’s most prolific satirist/humorist John Boston has launched his new eclectic bookstore — johnboston-books.com. His hilarious adventure/family/supernatural sequel to the national bestseller, “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” — “Naked Came the Novelist” — is on sale now. Ditto with his two-volume “Monsters” series about the supernatural in the SCV.
