Growing up near Disneyland has created its own little psychological dramas but now someone has stolen my hometown, Anaheim, and I can't find it anywhere. I suspect it's really gone because this week I reconnected with a former childhood friend (now a Folsom-area Realtor®) Stephen Lewotsky, and he confirmed for me that Anaheim is really missing. And seeing Stephen, along with reading Internet Crusade's RealTalk all this week and the various "Older Than Dirt" posts, has reminded me of all the things from my childhood that are long gone now. I assume things have changed in your hometown too and I encourage you to tell us about them.
Anaheim is now a big "redeveloped" city (I don't recognize the block shown prominently on the city's website) but when we lived there it was really more like a good-sized town. There was a true old-styled downtown with street parking. Downtown had the Fox Theatre (I saw both of the movies on the marquee in the photo there-- "Paper Moon" and "A Touch of Class" and just about went to jail for a 'curfew violation' after leaving a group of friends to walk home after some meaningless teenaged dispute-- cops could scare you that way back then), the Pickwick Hotel, and the SQR store (where I and my grandmother would annually trek to get 'nice' school shoes from the same shoe salesman, George I think, that measured me properly for most of my first dozen years-- the everyday sneakers we wore ALWAYS came from the Van's factory outlet on Santa Ana Street by the railroad tracks, were NOT cool then like PF Flyers were-- [Run Faster, Jump Higher], and cost about $1.50 a pair). These are gone.
The town core was bounded by North, South, East and West Streets and every parcel outside of these was as likely to hold a strawberry field, an orange grove, or a corn field as it was a commercial building. Lincoln Avenue was straight as a rail-- I understand it now winds circuitously through a maze of retail stripmall shopping centers and fast food places. The best restaraunt in town was family-run Werner's Dinner House and Mrs. Werner made all the pies well into her 80's, I believe. I got lost trying to find Werner's and a slice of lemon merangue by cutting through downtown the last time I visited. Lost. Turns out Werner's was long gone by then anyway.
The stadium where the California... no the Anaheim... no the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim play was open in the outfield and everyone knew it as "The Big A" after we watched it get built on an old watermelon patch. General admission was $.50 and I still have the 1970 Alex Johnson bat they gave away on "Bat Day" at the stadium (no one ever called it a ballpark then... it was massive, modern, and beautiful). At night, you could always tell if the Angels won that day because, if they did, the halo would flash. There were no mountains in the outfield then.
Disneyland's parking lot, I'm told, made an uncle rich when his ranch land ended up in the way of tourism. Every night during the summer you could set your watch by the first fireworks blast. Kids with 10pm curfews knew they had to start home after the 'Grand Finale' spattered hundreds of torches into the sky. Tom Sawyer's island was the best place to get lost at night in the park (it was open until 9pm as I recall and there were always good make-out shadows there). The Monsanto ride was the quick make-out ride since you sat huddled by twos with your 'intended' in a small cup that rolled nicely through a "Fantastic Voyage-styled" trip through the human body.
The Anaheim Bulletin was the small paper and it competed with the Orange County Register. I delivered for the Bulletin, wrapped in rain and rubber-banded dry and tossed from a two-wheeler, collected door-to-door and solicited new subscribers to build my route (my first dance date in junior high, Roberta Davenport, was on my route and had a father who was a detective... when I arrived to pick her up I knocked, froze when he answered, and blurted out 'collecting... for the Bulletin...' before I could recover). Later I worked for a print shop downtown, Joy Art Company (somewhat of a coincidence now I'm blogging to help create opportunities for a different printer).
I found my old neighborhood after driving through on a business trip a few years back. It looked remarkably the same... maybe even a little nicer than I remembered. The kids playing 'over-the-line' were gone from the street, nobody was riding a mini-bike up and down the block, and I didn't smell anyone cooking dinner even though it was late afternoon. I guess everybody was stuck in traffic on the 57 freeway trying to get home from work or something. Hey, speaking of the 57 freeway, back then we used to sneak across Steve Lewotsky's back fence and have our first swigs of Southern Comfort out in the middle of what must now be the carpool lanes but then was just a big field for 'messin' around in' by us kids. Things have changed since then... I haven't had a drop of Southern Comfort in at least 30 years!
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