You’re an real oldtimer or a dedicated historian in Chino Valley if:
—You can remember where the first Chino telephone dial center was, and what the telephone prefix was when dial phones were put in.
—You can remember the name of the road along the base of Chino Hills that was replaced by Highway 71.
—You can locate where the first Battle of Chino monument was placed.
—You can locate the hitching ring on the curb in downtown Chino.
—You can remember the type of trees which lined Central Avenue north of town.
—You can remember where Chino Downs was and what it was used for.
—You know where and what Workman’s Circle was in Carbon Canyon.
—You can remember where Parnell Girls School was located.
—You can remember the name of the Chino High principal in 1955.
—You know where Chino’s first neighborhood park was.
—You know what dairy farmer’s yacht appeared in the movie “Some Like It Hot.”
The first dial center was on Seventh Street, opened in 1948. It’s now occupied by the Seventh Street Theatre. Back then Chino was in the LYcoming prefix area, but you only had to dial five numbers to reach anyone in the Pomona exchange system. In 1959 a new dial center was opened on Yorba Avenue north of Walnut, just after nationwide dialing was inaugurated. Chino became NAtional 8, or 628 as at present.
Highway 71 replaced Garey Avenue, which extended from south Pomona to Eucalyptus Avenue. Those going to Corona then went south on Pipeline to Carbon Canyon Road, now Chino Hills parkway, and east to Central Avenue, and south on what is now El Prado Road to Pine, and east to the Chino-Corona Road.
The first Battle of Chino monument was placed on Boys Republic property in September, 1946 at the north side of Eucalyptus Avenue where its bare cement pedestal can be seen today among the row of trees. After the symbolic cannon was twice stolen, in 1962 and 1964, ( and only once recovered) the monument was rebuilt with another cannon at now old Fire Station 2 just to the east.
One hitching ring remains on the curb near Sixth and D streets, where patrons of the bank tied up. A second one was apparently lost during rebuilding in the area.
Richard Gird placed olive trees on both sides and in the center divider of north Central Avenue. Later pepper trees were planted, emulating Ontario’s Euclid Avenue. The center divider was later eliminated (and later still restored). The last peppers removed in 1959 because of rot.
Chino Downs was a quarter horse breeder and trotting track south of Chino Hills High School. It was located between the intersection of Pomona-Rincon Rd with Highway 71, and the present Butterfield Ranch Road to the west.
Workman’s Circle was a Jewish retreat built in Carbon Canyon by Hollywood area people, and was located near the entrance of the present Oak Tree Downs at the south end of the golf course. Several of the cottages burned in the Carbon Canyon Fire of 1958. Club El Circulo, a swimming and horseback country club, was built on the site in 1961, but was short lived.
Parnell Girls School was located in a small valley west of Highway 71 and Riverside Drive, behind where the Great Indoors store is. It was razed in 1981 to make way for Rolling Ridge Estates, first major housing development in the north Chino hills.
Sebring Park, between Sycamore and Oleander northeast of Oaks and Walnut in Chino, was the city’s first truly neighborhood park. The ¾-acre playground and picnic area was dedicated in June 1965 on land bought by Star Developers, a local firm which built Parkside East on land acquired from the estate of Roy Sebring, early day Chino rancher.
Johnstone (Stone) Walker, a craggy faced Irishman, was principal at Chino high from 1948 to 1957, succeeding E.A. Morrison. He stepped down and was followed by Gerald Litel. Wilford Michael and Al Searfoss were next.
The 82-foot yacht Portola, belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Rose, owners of the old Chevonshire goat dairy on south Euclid Avenue, was used in the 1959 comedy hit “Some Like It Hot,” starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Before that, Gretchen and I and some friends rode the boat to Catalina Island and back as guests of the Roses.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Chino Valley trivia time
Friday, May 16, 2008
Life without TV?
Can you imagine living without television?
Impossible, you may say.
Television is a lifeline with the world at large. Without it we would never have seen man walk on the moon, the tragedy of 9/11 first hand, the fun of New Years following the clock from Australia to Hawaii, on-the-spot election results from Pennsylvania, or the reality of war in Iraq.
Television is an invaluable baby sitter for mothers at wits’ end, a meaningful supplement to teaching in the classroom, a way to get around expensive tickets to ball games and a relief from boredom.
It can do your thinking for you, take you to church, give you insights into crime fighting and courtroom procedure, drown out a spouse’s yak or a baby’s cry, teach you new culinary tricks and test your intellect. You can leave it on all day or evening, as many people do, and it keeps you company whether you’re watching it or not. It can help lull you to sleep, or bore you out of your gourd when you’re awake.
Comparing television screens has become one-upmanship at parties, in bars or with neighbors. Direct view vs. flat panel. High definition. LCD, plasma, rear projection, 60-inch screens. How you got a $1,200 set for $999. Satellite vs. cable. Your monthly cost and how you got your service for $29.95 (did you forget to say for how long?). Television setups are replacing the automobile as fodder for bragging rights. Of course, this is a man thing. The women are more concerned with Oprah, Dancing With the Stars and American Idol. Let the men worry about the size and the shape of the screen, unless it messes up the living room décor, which is a woman’s domain. With all these benefits, how can you do without it?
Believe it or not, some people do. They may not be pried away from their cell phones, but television is not part of their daily lives. They tend to read more, to have discussions at the dinner table, to become engaged in outside activities, play games like chess or bridge that require supreme concentration, or enjoy the peace and quiet of a noiseless house.
I have to admire them even if I don’t think I can emulate them. But my recent cable bill did give me pause, because I am not a heavy user of television. An hour a day maybe, unless there is a golf or football game on. I watch more television at other peoples’ houses than I do my own.
So when Time Warner raised my cable rate $3 this month, I stopped to do some figuring.
Television is still only costing me $2 a day. Not bad, I guess. It’s there if I want it, even if I only have an outmoded 27-inch screen. Every once in awhile they change the channels, which makes it tough on me because my set is so old I’ve lost the directions on how to plug in new stuff or eliminate channels now skipped.
My original remote failed a year ago, and my universal replacement doesn’t have things like “mute,” although I can reduce the volume to achieve the same thing. I find it hard to believe that some of my friends who have all the super-new television setups have to use two remotes to turn them on or off. That doesn’t say much for progress.
Since I use cable I don’t have to worry about the mandatory switch to digital, when analog is fazed out this summer. With great effort I went on line to order a couple of coupons from the government to buy those little black boxes I will need on a couple of sets around the house that still use a regular antenna. I hope my electronic order went through because I haven’t received the coupons yet.
Next I should write about my home computer. Considering the cost of my Internet hookup, the huge amount of time lost to crashes or adjusting to updates in my programs, and the questionable value to the betterment of my life, I think I was ahead of the game before I had one.
Old fashioned? Not really. I have a cell phone. I just don’t turn it on unless I want to call someone.
Friday, May 9, 2008
History bit bites dust
Even brick buildings get blown down if someone huffs and puffs enough. Earlier this month one of Chino’s oldest buildings made way for new development.
A two-story brick structure in the Chino Industrial park was one of two buildings remaining from the old beet sugar factory that was the backbone of Chino’s economy at the turn of the last century.
Clearing of the old sugar factory superintendent’s office, and surrounding open warehouses, makes way for four new industrial buildings totaling 118,000 square feet on five and a half acres at 13501 Fifth Street.
This site was the heart of the sugar making operation brought here by the Oxnard Brothers at the behest of Chino’s founder, Richard Gird. He contributed land and water to bring a much needed boost to his farm economy and land sales, which were in the doldrums four years after he subdivided the Chino Ranch.
Still remaining from the old sugar plant is a double warehouse building housing the Shield Packaging company, once known as Shield Aerosol, until environmental regulations did away with that propellant. Before that it was occupied for many years by the Mary Carter Paint Company.
Xebec Building Company went through all the paces associated with dismantling a historic building, submitting a Historic Resource Significant Evaluation which determined that the century-old building was unsound. The Chino Valley Historical Society had no objection.
A monument sign and raised planters made of bricks from the old building will mark the site’s historical importance. The new buildings have been designed with elements reminiscent of the architectural style used in the late 1800s.
During the sugar factory’s construction in 1891, a Santa Ana wind blew down three quarters of the 30-foot high two-foot thick brick wall of the main building because the mortar hadn’t hardened. It was quickly replaced, and on May 8 the first shipment of factory machinery, mainly from Germany, arrived on 16 railroad cars. Flags of the United States and Germany flew from the factory staffs. The machinery was accompanied by a Germanspeaking staff of engineers and administrators experienced in the process.
They formed the nucleus of a German community which resided on the west side of the small town, mainly along Fourth Street, which was known as “Dutch Row.” On August 20, at 2 p.m., Mrs. Gird, who had earlier laid the first brick, turned on the steam to put the factory in motion.
In 1891, until the factory went into operation, the town of Chino had 12 dwelling houses and four or five businesses, including the Champion. Up to 200 workers came in to build the factory. By the end of the year there were 150 houses and 500 people.
At its peak in 1916, the factory produced almost 340,000 100-pound sacks of sugar during a 97-day run, operating around the clock. The factory operated annually from August through October.
The factory buildings were demolished in 1937, twenty years after the plant closed. After the 1917 “campaign” the Chino operation was combined with one in Oxnard. Beet growth here faced soil depletion and disease, and the war took away much of the help. Torn down was the mammoth brick main building, the palatial residence of the superintendent and the sugar workers’ clubhouse building. The land, owned by the American Beet Sugar Company, was subsequently acquired by Chino Valley rancher Paul Greening, who established the Chino Industrial Park. Included was the brick buildings taken over by Alfa Leisure, producer of recreation vehicles. His son Robert Greening took over the project upon his father’s death.
Several factory-employed families remained in Chino after the factory closed in 1917, and played a prominent role in Chino’s development. Among them were the Bertschingers, the Jertbergs, the Sholanders, the Wellses and the Grays. Although the closing had brought a major exodus of employees, many were seasonal anyway. By the end of World War I the community had developed other agricultural resources, and soon a cannery and a walnut packing house would become the center of the local economy. Years later it would be the dairy industry, some of it on land that once produced sugar beets.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The questionnaire
I usually ignore questionnaires that come in the mail. I feel they are a waste of time, and usually mask some ulterior motive. Not only that, but the questions are often so one sided that an honest answer is impossible.
Recently I received two pages of questions so loaded that practically all the dots I would have filled in were in the “undecided” column.
Such as: “Should we work for serious tort reform to protect individuals and small businesses from predatory lawsuits?” What’s the matter with protecting all businesses from such suits? And what do “serious tort reform” and “predatory law suits” mean? Usually such definitions are in the minds of the beholder.
The last one on the list felt like I’d been tossed a grenade. “Do you agree that sowing the seeds of democracy and freedoms in the Middle East is a worthy goal?”
By what method, I wanted to know, before I gave anyone a blank check. If those “seeds” involve shrapnel and torture, I don’t think so. If they mean a grounds up education and enlightenment program, improving the economy and demonstrating that our social values are worthy of adoption, then I’d say that’s a good goal. But I wouldn’t use attempts to make Saudi Arabia a democracy as an example. That’s where their oil seems more important to us than enfranchising women or making them wipe out terrorist bases.
I marked “undecided” again.
This questionnaire came under the heading of “Republican Party Census Document,” sent to me because I’m a registered Republican. I have been since I started to vote, except for one exception, when I changed for a short time years ago in order to vote for a friend in a Democratic primary.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is not the Republican Party, although it claims to be. Not my Republican Party, at least. Mine wouldn’t ask stupid questions like “Should Republicans fight for a balanced budget,” when they know that few Republican administrations, or congress members, including the present ones, have really fought hard for balanced spending. That would mean eliminating protective regulations, subsidies and pork, thus losing supporters.
Anyway, to make the old guard happy I filled in the “yes” dot, knowing this was a traditional part of the Republican field of dreams. I left one section blank. It started with “Yes, I support the RNC and am enclosing my most generous contribution of (up to $500 or more).” I had finally found the real purpose of the questionnaire. All that other stuff fit in with “Is the sky blue?”
I was tempted to fill their tongue-in-cheek dot next to “No, I favor selecting liberal Democrats over the next ten years,” but I resisted. I know that all Democrats are considered liberal by the Republican National Committee, so it was a loaded question even if it was facetious.
Now if they had asked whether I would consider electing a liberal Republican, I would have told them something they didn’t want to hear. Or even a “moderate Republican” or better still a “pragmatic Republican.” But no such luck. Anything left of conservative Republican doesn’t sit well with the RNC.
I could consider voting for a conservative Democrat without breaking with family tradition. My father, who could have had “GOP” embossed on his white business shirts, once admitted to voting for FDR—I think it was for his third term in 1940. That was a shock to his young son, who had been promoting Republican Wendell Willkie on the playground.
As it turned out, it was just as well that Mr. Willkie wasn’t elected. He wouldn’t have survived his first term, because he died of heart disease a month before it would have ended. It was right in the middle of the war, and the Republican running mate, senate minority leader Charles L. McNary of Oregon, died six months earlier than Mr. Willkie. Can you imagine being without a president or vice president about the time the Battle of the Bulge was about to begin?
Mr. Roosevelt died five months after his fourth term election in 1944, but by then we were on the road to victory. Republicans and John McCain take note. Be darn careful of who and how old the running mate is.
If the liberal Democrats have a questionnaire, I wish they would send me one. I would anticipate questions like:
—Should we get out of Iraq by Veterans Day?
—Should the government take over the stock market?
—Should all Americans receive a guaranteed income?
—Should we open our borders to our neighbors?
—Does a balanced budget really matter as long as there are hungry Americans?
—Should business be taxed heavily to ensure that all Americans have medical coverage?
—Should the Alternative Tax on income be retained at a fixed level despite inflation?
—Should the federal government be more involved in setting standards of education?
—Should the minimum wage be increased to bring everybody above the poverty level?
—Will you enclose a most generous contribution of $25, or at least $2.50 to cover the cost of this questionnaire?
I’d be surprised if they even offered a row of “Undecided” dots.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Every life is a story
She was also thanking us for the two tickets to the L.A. County fair she won for her reply to my conundrum about the Balfour Declaration, a British foreign policy statement regarding the formation of Israel after the First World War. (There were two declarations, which she correctly mentioned.)
Mrs. Bass couldn’t get to the fair, because her illness kept her pretty well confined to her hedge-shrouded home on Lugo Avenue, where she lived with a number of cats and dogs, including Squeaks. It turned out, though, that she had been to the Irish Fair at the Fairplex after winning two tickets from us two years before.
She wrote me (longhand on decorative paper, because she had no computer or email) that Squeaks had helped keep her alive. “His rich, happy life with me is my only comfort as I mourn him and must face more chemo and treatment without him.”
I had to tell Mrs. Bass that we didn’t run animal obituaries, because we’d be flooded with them. I didn’t mention that she could buy advertising space for it, because I knew she had little money, and was just hanging in there.
Claudette attributed her winning answer to her great interest in world history, and her travels, including the Mideast. She was a prolific writer and poet, but had little success in being published for pay, and had boxes of rejects to show for it.
Her letters to the Champion included a response about the controversy over Ramadan song at Hidden Trails Elementary…
"As a Jew I have not experienced any downplaying of Christmas. It propels our economy and is a focus as soon as Halloween passes. I simply go about my life and accept this is the culture. And the fuss at a school board meeting over the language in The Handmaiden’s Tale… Suddenly a segment of parents were upset about the approved listings which were “contrary to our community’s moral and ethical standards.”
She compared this to the “intense necking and kissing” she saw at Ayala High when she went to pick up her son, the too-casual clothing worn by students, and the F-word language she heard from parents caught in traffic outside the school. To say nothing of what young people see in movies and on TV.
At other times she complained about rate increases for trash and sewers, and bemoaned the junk thrown along her street from passing cars, the broken glass which she found around her house “which has no sidewalks,” and the way the city cut the trees.
One time two years ago she sent me a packet of letters on a variety of subjects, and invited me to choose one for publication.
She praised the style of the Champion’s obituaries. “Each person seems specific and real, and although I never knew them…each mention is like a short story.” She said she had been an obituary writer at the age of 24 for a newspaper, but was let go because the editor wanted only the basic facts of birth, death and services, while she felt that family information should be included.
Despite her illness, “I want to be as active and as part of life as possible,” she wrote in March, 2006. She said that despite her physical condition at that time she did spring cleaning, weeding and mowed the lawn. She had come to the upper Los Serranos area from Alhambra about 11 years ago, but felt shunned by the neighbors. She and her husband had separated but he kept her health insurance going. Both he and their son Ethan now live in Texas.
Her house now is full of memories, writings published and not published, and until recently a large inventory of clothes the petite lady loved to wear. Her pets now number four cats and one dog
Last week I got a telegram from Texas to let me know that Claudette Bass had died two weeks before, at her home on March 12, an event apparently unrecorded in the community.
Her surviving pets and her house are being cared for by a homeless woman she took in to help her in her declining health.
World traveler, adventurist and author, who became a cancer-stricken recluse, she was 57.
I think she would be pleased that our readers would have more than the bare facts of her passing.
Copyright 2008 Champion Newspapers - Published April 5, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Were there trees here?
One of the least documented aspects of Chino Valley history has been its trees. Chino’s celebration of Arbor Day earlier this month provided an incentive to delve into the question of just what trees existed here in the 19th Century when Don Antonio Maria Lugo received the Chino land grant, Isaac Williams took over the ranch and Richard Gird founded the community.
Around Chino Valley there are some very old oak trees, leading to speculation as to their age. It was suggested to me that some may go back 150 to 200 years.
I was skeptical. Chino Valley historically has been classified as semiarid, and I didn’t think that near-desert conditions were friendly to the development of mighty oak trees. Furthermore, I have never come across a reference to oaks in the historical material I have read about our valley.
Old photographs of our area show very little in the way of trees. Those that were here, except for willows, sycamores and cottonwood that lined the water courses, were brought in by settlers. It is interesting that the city chose sycamores for its new Shady Grove Park on east Chino Avenue, which won’t become shady until the trees grow.
I found reference to orchards planted by the San Gabriel Mission Indians who first developed the agricultural resources of our valley in the early 19th century. But these died from lack of care. Don Antonio Maria Lugo, who received the Chino land grant and many others from Spain and Mexico, planted 1,000 fruit trees within a fenced area near his ranch house located near the site of the present Boys Republic. These also died out from neglect over the years. As during the mission days, the emphasis at the pioneer Chino ranch was on livestock, and not crops other than those planted to feed the animals.
When Don Lugo’s son-in-law Isaac Williams took over the management of the ranch in the 1840s, he planted a small portion of the land with orchards again.
A front page article in the New York Herald of March 11, 1850, written from Chino the previous December by a writer identified only as “T.F.,” paints a picture of the ranch as a Garden of Eden, with vast green acres of lush soil, beautiful scenery, wild fowl in abundance and clear and often mild weather. He obviously visited here at the right time.
Richard Gird, who bought the Chino ranch from the heirs of Isaac Williams in 1881 started the succession of trees that we now enjoy in Chino Valley. He imported exotic species of trees which he planted around his ranch house on the present driving range at the Los Serranos Country Club. Unfortunately, all have fallen victim to disinterest despite an attempt at one time by Cal Poly to tag them for posterity.
Mr. Grid encouraged and helped new land buyers and tenants to plant trees as early as 1888 after he subdivided 20,000 acres of the ranch into small farms and town sites.
Some of the pioneer farmers planted eucalyptus trees as windbreaks, and in 1901, the Chino Land and Water Company and the American Beet Sugar Company planted 30,000 of the gums on the east side, on land that had previously been sand dunes and tumbleweeds.
Mr. Gird convinced the University of California to establish an agricultural experimental station here, on 15 acres he provided just south of the present Phillips Boulevard between Ramona and Norton, and ten acres west of his town core, on land close to Chino Creek, where artesian wells were found. This station evolved into the UC citrus experiment station at Riverside in 1906, forerunner of UC Riverside.
On north Central Avenue in 1891, Mr. Gird planted four rows of olive trees, one on
each side and two in the center divider. Walnut, chestnut, hickory and almond were also provided in that area.
Sunflowers were prolific in the valley, and grew as tall as a horse and rider. Farmers cut up the arm-thick stalks for firewood.
But oak trees over 150 years ago?
Quenstionable. Oaks can live for 500 years or more, are drought and disease tolerant and fire resistant. The young trees have tap roots that reach low into the earth for moisture, until a network of horizontal roots can spread out to provide stability. The main danger to the trees in domestic settings is overwatering.
According to Eugene C. Broderick, a direct descendent of Don Lugo, the front door of the Lugo adobe ranch house here was made of oak, and always open to travelers.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Confusing, interesting Capitol
If the rest of the country views its national capital as confusing, it’s not surprising. A beautiful shrine, Washington D.C. is a mixedup mess when it comes to traffic, and this has to have had an effect on the government itself over the years. It takes a long time to get from here to there in Washington, or is that just a feature of a democracy?
The city itself was laid out for the horse and buggy era. Its designer was French engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant, hired by President Washington to design a capital on a site picked out by the first president himself.
The Frenchman chose Capitol Hill as the hub for major streets radiating out across the town. On this design is imposed a grid of north-south and east-west streets, providing a series of statue-bearing or parklike circles, where they all came together as roundabouts. Obviously, Washington and L’Enfant didn’t envision the automobile age, any more than the framers of our constitution envisioned the complexities of the computer age.
Throughout Washington the traffic signals are set on a fixed schedule, mostly unchanged day or night regardless of the traffic flow. New, grander buildings continue to replace smaller, older ones, providing space for many more occupants who increasingly clog old streets, narrowed still by the construction activity.
Last year I suggested here that we move the national capital to the middle of the country and start over, retaining Washington as a grand historical park while putting the capital more in touch with the people. Maybe someday someone will listen.
Other than that, my recent four-day stay for the National Newspaper Association’s annual governmental affairs conference was an interesting one. We didn’t pull the big names like we did the last time I was there. In 1994 we not only went to the White House as guests of President Clinton but heard such notables as Attorney General Janet Reno, health and Human services Secretary Donna Shalala and Republican senate minority leader Bob Dole.
Probably the most interesting person we heard this time was aging Theodore “Ted” Sorensen, special counsel, advisor and speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy. Now 79 and legally blind but distinguished looking, Mr. Sorensen continues to write, and remains associated with various organizations that keep him in touch with the machinery that runs the nation, with foreign affairs, and, of course, the Democratic Party.
He plans to publish his memoirs in a couple of months, so held back on any juicy observations that might be contained therein. He supports Barack Obama and predicts he will win the party nomination over Hillary Clinton. He said there will be no Clinton- Obama dream ticket and remarked that if she is elected president, the vice president wouldn’t be Number 2 in the White House anyway.
He reviewed President Kennedy’s policy on Vietnam—“their war, not ours,” and recalled that his president, while supporting the Eisenhower use of “advisors,” had wanted to reduce their number to 700 and get the South Vietnam government to clean up its act.
Equally interesting was Norman J. Ornstein, political analyst and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank “dedicated to preserving the foundations of freedom.” You may have read his newspaper column or seen him on CBS News.
He finds the current election unique in his lifetime. He started out thinking the Republicans would be the ones to have convention problems, now it’s the other way around. He feels Hillary has an uphill battle now, but believes the Democrats have a 70 percent chance of winning the November election, unless something big happens, like another terrorist attack.
The country is unhappy and the economy is uppermost in people’s minds, and concerned that they have no safety net, he said. They are also unhappy with the disfunctionality in Washington. This all weighs down Republican John McCain’s chances.
We went up Capitol Hill, which is like a fortress. Traffic barriers and security screening everywhere. Construction of a new visitors center in front of the capitol building shuts off this area to pedestrians.
A highlight of the visit was to the new journalism museum, the Newseum, a $450-million building which is supposed to open April 11, and should be on the list of all visitors. Sponsored by the Freedom Forum, it is located on Pennsylvania Avenue close to the Smithsonian museums, and replaces the old, more compact Newseum closed in Arlington in 2002.
The museum houses 15 theaters, 14 major galleries and two broadcast studios, most of which had not yet been completed so we couldn’t see them. We did participate in the interactive kiosks and closed TV sets where we could test ourselves as photographers, editors, reporters or news anchors. Plan to spend a half day. Great place for kids, too.
