Image not recoveredWilliamSHart.jpg
Don’t want to tell you how to live your life, especially on a Tjirsdau. And I know it’s early, even for me. But you might not want to yawn in front of the horses. It makes them recalcitrant. We’ve got just a dandy of a trail ride through SCV time ahead. There’s the day it was 146 in Newhall and it was even hotter in Placerita Canyon, were the county was going to put a freeway through.

Ahead we have wild gunfights with drug dealers (Relax — with this time traveling thing, I happen to know we win) and other banditos. We also have, I’m so sorry to say, one of the darn saddest traffic accidents in a century of driving.

(CAPTION: On June 23, 1946, exactly 60 years ago today, famed silent superstar, William S. Hart, died, leaving his mansion and ranch to the county, which precipitated nearly 10 years of acrimonious and often hilarious legal battles amongst his son, ex-wife and the county. Here is an old Bill Hart movie poster for “Every Inch a Man.” I’ll take the high road and let you local wags and rascals snicker and come up with the New York congressman Anthony Weiner jokes. But remember, when you get to heaven, Bill will be there and he will be armed for bear.) 

Well. Give those cinches an extra tug and let’s mosey into the mystic… 

WAY, WAY BACK WHEN —

— June wasn’t a great month for legendary locals. On June 21, 1841, Antonio del Valle died, just a couple of years after being given the entire Santa Clarita Valley in lieu of back military pay.

— One of the valley’s most famous rascals, General Edward Fitzgerald Beale, formed the San Fernando Asphaltum and Mining District on this date, in 1865. Beale and his crony, General Andres Pico, were supposed to be in charge of keeping order in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys. Frequently, they and their partners ended up with lots of mineral rights and mines. 

JUNE 23, 1921 —

— Jack Pilcher of Chatsworth moved to Newhall on this date and leased the Lamkin Garage. A few years later, Pilcher would join the Sheriff’s Department and become one of America’s most famous lawmen. He would die in one of the most bizarre accidents, taking a bullet between the eyes when a fellow officer’s revolver fell from his shirt pocket and discharged.

— On this date, A.B. Perkins started building an overflow pond from the Newhall Water Company’s main tank. At first, the pond was to be used as a swimming pool for the local boys only (Sorry! Sexist 20s! No girls allowed!). Then, the local girls got up a fuss, as rightly they should, and they were allowed in. The pool had no chlorine. No diving board. No white concrete bottom. No heat. It was just a gravel and cement-lined 30-by-60-foot swimming hole so the kids didn’t have to make the 6-mile round trip to the Santa Clara River. The pool was dug by volunteer labor. Cost of the cement was $180, plus a few other expenses. A.B. Perkins raised the money just by passing the hat. Other locals donated lunches, lemonade and other help.

JUNE 23, 1931 —

— The SoCal Gas Co. was building their big new natural gas pipeline throughout the SCV and it caused Signal editor A.B. Thatcher to speculate why we had so much unemployment in America. Thatcher blamed the machinery: “Those 40-foot long, 26-inch wide joints weigh 3500 pounds each and the crane picks up two at a time and lefts them onto a truck. Formerly, 15 or 20 men would work a half-day to load them. Now it takes about two minutes.”

— Today, in the 21st century, we’re paying four bucks a gallon for petrol. Back on this date, the locals were sad to see a big Southern California gas war end. Prices stabilized to about 16 cents for a gallon of gas. Sixteen cents. I could fill up the ol’ Mr. SCV green pick-up for $4 instead of $100. (SIDEBAR: Even though it has nearly 200,000 miles, I’m betting I could make a ton of money renting out a 4-wheel drive 1995 Chevy in 1931!)

— With us being pretty much cemented here, most of us don’t pay any mind to a flora commonly called puncture vine. The weed has spines so sharp and thick, they could puncture car tires and certainly some country boy or girl’s bare foot.

— Engineers were out at the ol’ Newhall International Airport, measuring the field. They began enlarging it and it would eventually have an el-shape.

— This story is a real gut-clencher and I’m so sorry 80 years after the fact. On this date, Mrs. Theo Tourneur was clipped by a passing motorist on the Ridge Route. Mrs. Tourneur’s car was hooked on the front bumper by the jerk hit-and-run driver. Her car spun out of control, then fell over a 400-foot cliff. Mrs. Tourneur suffered various injuries, including a broken kneecap. Her daughter was severely bleeding and injured. For 50 hours — four separate times — Mrs. Tourneur climbed to just about the top of the cliff, only to slide all the way back down to the bottom. She used her own clothes, tearing them off for bandages for her daughter, who would eventually die, mostly from exposure and shock, down there in her mother’s arms. Finally, a trucker had pulled over just to stretch his legs when he happened to look over the cliff and see the bodies and wreckage. Getting help, he lowered himself by rope and helped pull Mrs. Tourneur to safety, then retrieved the body of her dead daughter. Mrs. Tourneur had left Alabama with her husband a week earlier and was to meet him in Bakersfield. When she didn’t show, an all-points bulletin was released and a massive search employed. Thousands of cars passed by over those two days and none of them spotted mother and daughter. Poor, poor thing. Can you imagine going through the rest of your life with that kind of memory?

  JUNE 23, 1941 —

— CHP officer Mike Fidler saved a mother and her infant from murder. Eldon Ray Nicoles showed up at his estranged wife’s house, grabbed his infant son from her arms and ran down the road with him. His ex-wife got in the car and gave chase. When she caught up with her sprinting ex, he wrapped his hands around his baby and threatened to choke it to death unless the woman let him get into the car. That began a wild, high-speed suicide ride, which was stopped by officer Fidler. Fidler finally forced the car off the road, and, at gunpoint, made Nicoles surrender. No one was harmed, fortunately.

— All 21-year-olds in the SCV were ordered to register for the draft.

— On this date, Ernie Hickson hosted a party of international mucky-mucks and film stars. The occasion? The changing of the name of his spread from The Monogram Ranch & Movie Studio to Placeritos Ranch. Today, that location is known as Melody Ranch. One of the guests was the star of many a Western, Chief Many Treaties, from Montana.

JUNE 23, 1951 —

— Dope fiends broke into the Smidt Pharmacy and liberated about $500 in prescription drugs.

JUNE 23, 1961 —

— Alcohol and chains don’t mix. Just ask Ed Jaquette. He was arrested after breaking into a trailer park and assaulting strangers with a 4-foot section of chain he had fashioned into a medieval weapon. Jaquette ran into the home of Aubrey Carpenter and attacked he and his wife. Aubrey grabbed a handy hunting rifle and aerated Ed’s shoulder, then sat on him until the cops came.

— An unknown arsonist started a 100-acre fire in Castaic, using a Molotov cocktail.

JUNE 23, 1971 —

— Forty years back, Mighty Signal publisher and San Francisco resident Scott Newhall tossed his hat into the ring to run for the mayorship of Baghdad by the Bay.

— Same week, North Oaks Park was dedicated during a searing heat wave. I was there. Didn’t like it.

— It was a time of social protest and Canyon High’s valedictorian, Deborah Chilson, lambasted the school, citing “…a smothering bureaucracy combined with student apathy and irresponsibility to hamper educational progress.” She also went after Canyon’s “Potty Patrol,” where students bathroom disciplines were monitored.

— A plan from the distant Regional Planning Commission ignited a local uprising that would eventually result in the L.A. County Board of Supervisors being hung — alas, in effigy. The RPC alerted residents of Placerita Canyon that they intended to come in and put in a major four-lane divided highway through the quiet community. The out-of-town planners noted they would remove at least 100 heritage oaks and several homes to create their project. Planning also promised to take out the Placerita Creek and line it all in concrete. The local homeowners successfully fought the RPC, but it does raise the question — where DO we get such bureaucratic bozos?

— It was a shoot-out of Old West proportions. Two undercover cops were taken out to remote Texas Canyon for a narcotics buy. The purchase went sour when the drug dealers turned out to be strong-arm robbers. A gunfight, with 50 shots being exchanged in the dark. One perp was wounded and another twisted his ankle when he ran out of the woods and into the arms of about a dozen law officers who had been following the bust. “Are you guys cops?” asked the crook, Dick Martin. “I think you’re looking for me.” Then, more gunfire ensued from the shrubbery. Martin tried to escape and was, ahem, subdued with a pistol butt to the head. The Sheriff’s deputies eventually rounded up four suspects and a large arsenal of weapons on their person and in the trunk of their car. 

JUNE 23, 1981 —

— History is circular. While Magic Mountain’s Goliath ride just closed for inspections after a woman died of an aneurysm in 1981, 30 years this weekend, the park’s Roaring Rapids was closed by the county because of safety questions.

— We get hot June days sometimes, but it seems inflation hit the thermometer at the old Santa Clarita National Bank. Just before lunch, the giant digital temp reader noted it was 146 degrees on Lyons Avenue. 

—   —   — 

Thanks so much for the good company, saddlepals.  You think you might want to try this again next Thursday? I’ll be here, with the horses and the stories, under the watchful beam of The West Ranch Beacon. Until then, vayan con Dios, amigos!