Well, saddlepals. Mwa-ha. Mwa-ha-ha. Happy Darn Halloween! May you trick or treat at the nosebleed end of high-income neighborhoods tonight and may all the houses hand out 5-pound boxes of See’s Candy and $75 Starbucks gift certificates.
Bonus?
All of us are already dressed like cowboys and cowgirls, so’s no need to go home and change after today’s splendiferously painted trail ride into Santa Clarita’s rich history.
I’d truly like to make a big deal that as of 2 a.m. Sunday morning, we’re off Daylight Saving Time and you all get to monkey with your alarm clocks by setting them back an hour.
Problem is, we being time-traveling saddlepals, we do this every darn Saturday, sometimes setting back our watches millions of years.
Hah. Daylight Saving Time. Baby stuff.
This morning, we’ll hear a rare sound — Bill Hart speaking in a movie.
There’s drunken coyotes, runaways, Playboy bunnies and we’ll see just how much of an earthquake pounding the Castaic Dam can’t take.
C’mon, saddlepals. Let’s take our extra hour of sleep and see how much we can sell it for in bygone days …
WAY, WAY BACK WHEN
WHEN NEWHALL WAS SAUGUS AND SAUGUS WAS SURREY AND MORE NONSENSE — One of the most confusing tidbits of local history is the founding of Newhall. You really need a legal pad, several sharp pencils and an IQ above 163 to figure it out. Bear with me.
Back on Oct. 28, 1876, the Newhall Train Depot held its ribbon cutting. You know where that was at?
Saugus. But Saugus wasn’t really invented yet.
You see, the first townsite of Newhall was actually in the neighborhood of the present-day Saugus Cafe to McDonald’s/Taco Bell shopping center area. There’s many offered reasons why Newhall just up and moved. Historians before me site everything from drought to wind to trains having to chug uphill from the Newhall Tunnel. Whatever the reason, the citizens moved the first Newhall train station in 1878 to where the Jan Heidt depot currently rests. The few who stayed in the original Newhall location then built the community of Saugus on the foundations.
More confusing, there was the Lyon Stage Depot where Eternal Valley cemetery is today. Around the same time, the Lyon Station people picked up everything — lock, stock and barrel — and moved to the same site as the new Newhall (around 6th and Main Street today).
The Lyon Depot had recently been purchased by Andrews Malezewski and, for a while, that town was named Andrews.
So let’s repeat, without punctuation: Newhall started in Saugus which would later be called Surrey then Saugus again while at the same time Lyon Station would turn to Andrews which would become also Newhall.
Phew.
PRE-HALLOWEEN HALLOWEEN — While our native Tataviam Indians didn’t trick or treat, they did believe in ghosts and goblins. The Native Americans felt it was terrible luck to see three owls together, or hearing a fox howl, or having ravens fly over your head.
ANNIE GET YOUR GUN — In the 19th century, famed local cowgirl Annie Briggs was out riding her horse up Castaic way on Halloween day. She steadied her horse and stood in her saddle to inspect fresh grizzly bear claw marks 13 feet up in the air on a tree. Annie hightailed it back home.
OCTOBER 31, 1926
EAT RIGHT, GET A FREE GOAT — My dad always liked this story because he was a health nut and I was but a lowly fast food connoisseur. Walter Allen of Lang lived a story oft told. He was given just a few weeks to live by his doctors. He decided to live his last days in Lang, raise goats and farm honey. To his surprise, he lived for decades on a natural diet. A chiropractor, he promised to give a free goat to anyone who wanted to live a life of natural foods. Sad end to the story, though. I think the guy eventually died …
WE TIED WITH THE FLYBOYS — The Douglas Aircraft semi-pro team made a spectacular entry for their game with the Newhall-Saugus Tigers. The DAs flew in on a big airplane. They also flew out with a 3-3 tie. The game was called due to darkness.
NO RELATION TO DOBIE GILLIS — Young Master Harry “Dobe” Carey Jr. hosted a huge Halloween costume party at the Saugus family ranch. Besides his local friends, dozens of famous actors attended. Dobe got his nickname for his red hair, same color as the ranch’s adobe bricks. He would follow in his famous parent’s footsteps and star in 90 movies.
OCTOBER 31, 1936
GET YOUR BUTTS TO CHURCH! — You won’t see this on the front page of any newspaper anymore. One of The Signal lead stories noted that the Sunday of 90 years ago was deemed “Go to Church Day” and urged that every able-bodied soul do just that.
STOP THE PRESSES! — I just loved the small-town innocence we used to share. Here, in its entirety, is the third lead story of this newspaper from this date in 1936:
NEW CORN POPPER
The Newhall Bakery has put in a new corn popper, one of the very latest electric machines that pops the corn, butters it, and keeps it hot till you get ready to eat it. The machine has all the latest gadgets that makes it almost automatic in everything but raising and shelling the popcorn.
THE ELECTRIC OCT. 31 CURSE — On Halloween day, Alice Ward dropped dead while paying her bill at the SoCal Gas Co. office. Alice was 58. She was the second person within 10 years who dropped dead, on Halloween Day, paying her electric bill in person. Guess the safe thing to do is mail it in …
OCTOBER 31, 1946
POed — On this date, Bermite president Pat Lizza donated some property in downtown Newhall for the construction of a new post office. The land was originally near Market and Main. The owner of the munitions plant said he would have done it sooner, but didn’t know he owned the property.
A FATALLY ELECTRIC ‘TRICK’ — In one of our oddest industrial accidents, Silas Beaudro died on Halloween Day after getting his metal surveyor’s measuring chain caught on a high-tension wire near Val Verde. Standing in some water, Silas yanked the chain taught and was fried on the spot.
OCTOBER 31, 1956
THE CASE OF THE FREEZING WAIFS — An arson mystery of a fire started in Circle J Ranch was cleared up. Two scared little runaway girls were found surviving in a nearby canyon. The hungry waifs confessed to trying to start a campfire to fend off the cold and it got out of control. The girls were fed, clothed and taken back to their homes in Pacoima. They had originally planned to run away to Oregon and got as far as Newhall. Happens to the best of us.
ANSWERING THE AGE-OLD QUESTION OF WHAT DOESN’T GO WITH RED WINE — A freight train derailed near Ravenna, rupturing two tank cars, one carrying red wine, the other condensed milk. I am at a loss just what you’d serve with red wine and condensed milk. There probably were a lot of inebriated coyotes and raccoons in the neighborhood though.
SMASHING PUMPKINS — Nope. Not the band. Halloween 1956 was especially messy. Not only did local boys collect the orange gourds to smash on unsuspecting residential and commercial property, but we imported teens from the San Fernando Valley to steal the fall squash. The SCV was an absolute soupy mess come the morning of Nov. 1.
OCTOBER 31, 1966
HOW TO MAKE $$$ BY LOSING $$$ — It used to be part of the famous LaSalle movie and cattle ranch near Calgrove. Some 500 acres of it went on the auction block after a failed real estate deal to build a housing project. The 500 acres were sold — back to the original owners — for $2,016,628.71. The real estate developer ended up losing $600,000 on his failed project.
NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN — Jim Paschal, personal friend of mine, set a Guinness Book of World Record on Halloween Day for tying his shoes 56 times while holding his breath. And that was before the days of Velcro. (I’m betting there’s a few thousand of you time riders taking a moment to see how many times you can tie your shoes while holding your breath!!)
OCTOBER 31, 1976
EARTHQUAKE TRICK, NO TREAT — This date will be remembered for something that DIDN’T happen. A rumor, based on a Halloween Day’s hoax, started around town that an earthquake greater than 8.0 on the Richter Scale would be centered in the SCV. Parents took kids out of school and some families even left town.
NOT QUAKING IN OUR BOOTS — Same week, county inspectors announced that the Castaic Dam was pretty darn close to indestructible. We had been visited a few weeks earlier by a minor tremor. The 350-foot-high Castaic Dam is designed to settle deeper into the soil during earthquakes and would hold up even in the event of a record 8.5 quake. No need to shiver. The Tejon rattler was probably around an 8.0, according to CalTech, making it about the same size as the San Francisco quake. An 8.5 would be (and Skip Newhall up in Heaven correct me if I’m wrong) 100,000 times greater than the SF nightmare of 1906.
UNION GOONS — Public employee unions spent lots of money to defeat Canyon County in the 1976 election. That’s when locals tried to break away from Los Angeles to form our own government. The firemen spent $120,000 to help defeat the general election item. Overall, developers and unions spent $30 for every no vote and proponents spent $1 for every yes vote. Proposition F, the measure to create California’s newest county at nearly 1,000 square miles, was defeated countywide by a 65-35 vote. It passed locally by a similar margin.
OCTOBER 31, 1986
FROM THE DUH DEPARTMENT OF DUH — On this date, Pacific Bell noted the SCV was, yet again, too crowded. In 1960, Bouquet Canyon had just the one 252 prefix. In 1986, residents and businesses had 251, 252 and 298 prefixes. PacBell announced they would add 296 by March of 1987.
WHAT’RE THE ODDS? A DISHONEST POLITICIAN — Gov. George Deukmejian stopped by the SCV on a campaign swing. He noted that he had increased the Highway Patrol by 38%. A local paper noted that, actually, the CHP was short on officers and the 38% increase came from the Duke just switching over a few hospital police and prison guards to the ranks of the CHP.
OH NO WE DIDN’T!! — College of the Canyons hosted a symposium on “Issues Facing Teens” and hoped for a turnout in the hundreds. Ten showed up. Meanwhile, across the valley, hundreds swarmed Front Row Center Videos. Why? Rebekka Armstrong, Playboy’s Miss September, was signing autographs.
SMOKE IN YOUR BURRITOS & EVENING GOWNS — That old Sodom & Gomorra hangout, Casa Grande, suffered $125,000 in a kitchen fire. It was almost as bad next door at Margo’s trendy dress shop. She sustained $50,000 in smoke damage. That worked out to about two dresses at Margo’s. I mean that in a nice way.
HART SPEAKS — KCET did a special on William S. Hart and added Hart’s only known movie speaking part. In 1939, our local cowboy, who, at the peak of his career was one of the most famous people in the world, reedited his last film, the silent epic “Tumbleweeds.” Hart added a tagline about the closing of the West: “… the pounding hoofs of the pursuing posse … the clouds of dust through which came the faint voice of the director: ‘OK, Bill, OK … Give old Fritz a pat on the nose for me.’” We hear the Friends of Hart Park have a copy of the video. It would be a hoot to hear old Two-Gun Bill speak. He was a bona fide cowboy, but his eastern seaboard accent seemed a little out of place with the chaps and sombrero.
PARROT TRICK — For our last Halloween hijinks, thieves broke into a Saugus house Halloween night and stole a foot-tall lime green and orange parrot. Bird’s name? Ogilthorpe. The parrot was named after the enforcer goon from the hockey comedy, “Slap Shot.” Coincidentally, “Ogilthorpe” is also the little-known nickname of Signal Editor and (former) hockey player, Tim Whyte …
• • •
Surely appreciate the company on our travels. We’re lucky to live here, aren’t we? Look forward to seeing you all next week in a brand new Time Ranger adventure, and, until then — ¡Vayan con Dios, amigos y que pasen un feliz y seguro Halloween!
Visit John Boston’s bookstore and eclectic online store with unique gifts for readers and writers at JohnBoston-Books.com. Lifelong SCV resident Boston, with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, is the most prolific humorist and satirist in world history.
