Left foot in the left stirrup, swing the other foot around and you should see a couple of twitching hairy pony ears and a time vortex right in front of you…
WAY, WAY BACK WHEN —
— Back on April 8, 1874 — two years before Newhall was founded as a town — oil refining began at Lyon Station, near Eternal Valley. The refinery then moved over to Pine Street.
— You could buy a hot lunch for 15 cents at the Woodard coffee shop in Newhall. Fifteen cents hardly buys a stick of gum nowadays.
APRIL 8, 1920 —
— Nell Bailey was drawing smiles and attention, 80 years ago. The lovely teen was employed as a gas station attendant at Newhall Gas. Gasoline was about 12 cents a gallon back then.
APRIL 8, 1930 —
— Local sheriff’s deputies were busy on this date, capturing some bootleggers with 1,000 gallons of moonshine in their truck. Same day, they caught a slaver, smuggling Chinese immigrants into the SCV. The smuggling of Chinese was pretty good underground business and brought in $500 per person.
— It was the great Depression and for some, times were very tough. Newhall Elementary, in a kind act of decency, asked that relatives forsake the custom of bringing flowers and gifts to the stage when the school announced their 8th grade graduates. Seems many folks couldn’t afford fancy gifts and the school didn’t want those less fortunate to be embarrassed. I’ve heard that this custom has been somewhat revived in 2010…
APRIL 8, 1940 —
— Life was so slow in the little Santa Clara Village, as we were sometimes called back then, the lead story in The Formerly Mighty Signal on this date was that they had three positions open at the post office.
— Don the Mechanic — the kind that fixes cars, not kills people — had a special running on this date. He’d overhaul any motor at $3 per cylinder.
APRIL 7, 1950 —
— Just for the public record, noted and allegedly handsome historian The Time Ranger was born at 5 a.m. in Springfield, Mass.
APRIL 8, 1950 —
— A most rare inch of April rain canceled outdoor Easter services a half-century back, pushing the dawn observances indoors. Nonetheless, the local farmers and ranchers were happy.
— Our big rodeo was just around the corner and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Posse announced they’d attend for the parade. That would be over 500 riders in some of the fanciest get-ups you’ll never see this century.
— One of the wackiest trials this century continued with a local little girl stealing the show. For some strange reason, Erlita Madray was called to testify in the estate trial of William S. Hart. Bill had left his ranch and most of his holdings to L.A. County to build a park. His ex-wife and son contested his will. Going into its third month of testimony, the trial wanted to know what kind of man Hart was. Attorneys for his son were trying to paint him as somewhat of a pervert and even accused him of producing some pornography in one of his Western novels, “And All Points West.” The page in question was not even his text, but rather, an illustration of a Latin woman with an alleged plunging neckline. Erlita had been given an autographed copy of the book by Hart and his son’s lawyers were trying to establish the book was objectionable. The judge, the dozen-plus attorneys, the jury, the clerk and even Erlita were shown the extremely innocent illustration. Said the little 12-year-old: “I don’t think she has a neckline to plunge.”
— The bizarre line of questioning of the little Newhall girl Erlita continued, with Bill Junior’s lawyers trying to convince jurors that the famed silent star was somehow twisted. They brought up a conversation Hart and the little girl had about a mephitis nigra. The attorneys tried to make it seem it was something bad and Erlita snapped at her inquisitor, asking him if HE knew what a mephitis nigra was. He confessed he didn’t. Erlita enlightened him. It’s a skunk.
— Here’s a rather bizarre story. Firemen at the Mint Canyon firehouse found an injured doe in the middle of the road, exhausted after being chased by dogs. The firemen took the deer back to the station house and there, visiting, was a Dr. Douglas from the County Livestock Bureau. Douglas bedded the baby animal down and bottle fed it a combination of coffee and milk. It died the next day. Immediately following were the jokes about the firehouse coffee being able to kill just about anything…
APRIL 8, 1960 —
— Railroad terrorists were at work up near Lang in Canyon Country. They piled 15 railroad ties and two tree trunks in the middle of the tracks, along with other heavy material, in an attempt to derail a train. Passers-by saw the pile and alerted authorities, averting a possible fatal accident.
— Young Juanita Heinley of Agua Dulce attended a dinner at the Biltmore. Juanita’s been working for the local Parks & Rec department since before the invention of grass.
APRIL 8, 1970 —
— A happy anniversary to Old Orchard Elementary. Forty years ago April 3rd, they opened their doors to 640 students. Les Tanner was principal.
— This was the worst day in the history of the California Highway Patrol. Four officers — Walt Frago, Roger Gore, James Pence and George Alleyn were gunned down by Jack Twining and Bobby Augusta Davis. All of the officers were from the Newhall CHP station. The oldest — the oldest — of the four victims was just 24 years old. The two perps had threatened to kill a pair of motorists up old Highway 99. Later, they got into a gunbattle with first two CHP officers, killing them both, then shooting another two. Twining held Newhall man Glenn Hoag hostage in a house above Denny’s in Newhall. CHP Lt. Paul Vasquez had an eerie, calm phone conversation, discussing whether Twining was going to kill himself. Vasquez help talk Twining into releasing his hostage. Surrounded by police, he later killed himself with a shotgun he had taken from a fallen officer. Twining’s partner, Augusta is still in Pelican Bay maximum security prison in Crescent City. For the last 30 years, he has refused to talk about that day. An article later came out in an issue of Black Panther Magazine, the official organ of the extremist party. They applauded the killings, calling it, “…a victory for the people.”
APRIL 8, 1980 —
— College of the Canyons baseball game was postponed not for any of the usual reasons like rain or the sprinklers going on. Playing a make-up game at Trade Tech in downtown L.A., the game was stopped when a man stepped onto the field and started shooting at people with a shotgun. He injured three, fortunately none of them being Cougars.
— Our bribe-prone county supervisors made the headlines again. Two of them, Ed Edelman and Pete Schabarum, took more than $10,000 from a garbage company that wanted to build a toxic waste dump in Sand Canyon.
— In the local paper’s classified section, they ran a short advertisement for a local, “PUTO MECHANIC.” In some languages, “puto” means a male prostitute or catamite. We think our paper meant, “PINTO MECHANIC.” The previous definition would give a whole new meaning to blowing up the gas tank…
Thanks again, so very much, for the company, time pals. You’ve made my birthday weekend just a bona fide treat. I’m off to Palm Springs to celebrate #60 with my best pal, Phil Lanier, from Chicago. Phil’s b-day is on April 5th, 1950. Not to worry. I’ll be back in time to lead you folks out on another West Ranch Beacon Time Ranger adventure next Thursday. Until then, vayan con Dios, amigos!