Bill’s Memory Machine “My mother and father,” Mike said, “were very frugal. They were very cost-conscious, so my mother didn’t have money for carpeting, obviously, or even rugs, so she’d take old pieces of clothing …

The Last Rewrite That night I spoke to winos and street types who talked about murder, to councilmen and cops who spoke of shooting “to incapacitate,” and to people at the Knickerbocker Hotel who knew …

The Debris of What You Really Do When I was in high school, the Summer of Love hit, and grudgingly I became a hippie, tried to pull off laid-back when in my heart of hearts …

Mr. Jello Will See You Now While we have been talking, the sun has been relentless, but Jack remains impervious to my discomfort in my heavy clothing. At one point, I ask whether I can …

Dead Reckoning The coroner’s longest day on the job was, of course. September 25. 1978, the day of PSA Flight 182. When the airliner crashed at 9:04 that morning. Stark was in his office, finishing …

The Polio Years I began to wonder whether I would just be a cripple the rest of my life or permanently stretched out in an iron lung. While I lay moaning in the back seat …

Shifting Sands The boaters are all for the proposed harbor expansion. Many of them surf themselves, or are ex-surfers who switched to boating in their later years — but they say surfing is a "one-on-one" …

God’s Country Remembered My wife and I are driving up El Cajon Boulevard. It hasn’t changed much, not really. Businesses come and go (there wasn’t anything remotely like the Hung Vuong Pho restaurant back then), …

The Great Families Who Created This Town Are Still Angry “I’d rather have a monarchy than a republic. The majority of people here cannot rule themselves. We Californios didn’t support the idea of the Mexican …

Seals A girl was called (sometimes you can still hear it in Coronado) a toad. As in "Hey, there were a lot of good lookin' toads at Bully's last Thursday" or "Hey, where's my toad; …

A Quiet Place South of Here The sea urchin is a major object of the villager’s sea harvesting. The wind and sea are calm enough for harvesting sea urchins fewer than half the days of …

So I’ve Heard When I was having my appendix taken out a few years ago, the anesthesiologist put the mask over my face, asked me to count backwards from a hundred, and then, assuming I …

The Idealization of Jessica Trump She paused for a moment. I could hear her thinking, and then she said, “My spring break is next week, and I haven’t made any plans. I could catch a …

Silver Screens: A Short History of San Diego Cinemas The years preceding America’s entry into World War II introduced more neighborhood theaters like the Roxy (1939) in Pacific Beach, the Strand in Ocean Beach, and …

Morale Seemed So High Mark said he’d had some bitter experiences with black sailors on the ship. When a group of recruits came on board, he lined them up to get some paperwork information. “Hey, …

Did Somebody Call a Cab? There was a strike. Yellow Cab drivers walked out in August, 1976, and by October they were crossing their own picket line. The strikers burned some Yellow Cabs, assaulted some …

Starting at State At faculty meetings he would administer avuncular homilies on absence from our offices during the period we were expected to assign for conferring with our students (“Now, ladies and gentlemen, you know …

The Eyesore Inventory Thoryk and his partner, a real-estate development company owned by San Diego Gas & Electric, found a co-conspirator in San Diego City Hall, which solicited and approved Thoryk’s remodeling of the historic …

Pop the Hood and Open Your Wallet Drive in at midday. See the gas attendants, red rags dangling limply from their grease-stained back pockets, leaning against pumps, waiting. But after a Padres or Chargers game …

Sandals, Bell-Bottoms, a Medallion The canyon was just a dream for a little boy. We had trails, paths, and forts. There was a lot of bamboo growing in the canyon, which isn’t indigenous to this …

Prehistoric Gas Station an Eyesore? It's the newer Old Highway 80, built in 1932, that Miller's fronts. A visit to the site reveals two things: the buildings are in better shape than they appear to …

For Big Kids Only The foot of Redondo Court was a focal point for a couple of reasons. It was the end of a line when streetcars ran through Mission Beach, creating a natural stopping …

Some People in This Town Don't Like Herman Baca Baca's aptitude is in organizing his friends. At Sweetwater High School in the late Fifties, he was president of “Los Solteros” (“The Bachelors”), a club of …

A Lullaby of Broadway “I was sitting in my room,” declared one hotel resident, “when I heard a knock at the door. I opened the door and three or four men forced their way in. …

The Deadly Circle The fear of ejecting over the heavily populated Red River Valley and of becoming prisoners of war kept Cunningham and Driscoll in the plane until it began tumbling and burning just over …

Survivors "We tried to have a respectful pow-wow," agrees John Rouillard, head of American Indian Studies at San Diego State. "There's a definite trend, starting probably with the Alcatraz takeover in 1969, of young Indians …

Light Housekeeping Our man Downen evidently has been slowly phased out of his lighthouse-keeping duties by automation. A fog sensor device is now used to trigger the fog horns automatically when visibility is less than …

A Sword for Its Army and a Lily for Its Heart Dorothy had a floral display at Art Alive to worry about; one of the iris-show clerks backed out because her horse was due to …

John Steinbeck Was My Father One of us, a doctor's son, mentioned that his father had urged him to follow in his footsteps. Was there pressure on John to become a writer? He shook his …

Creation of the Salton Sea Rockwood tried to construct a jetty between the half-mile-long island in the river — soon to be called “Disaster Island” — and the Mexican cut. In theory, log pilings, sand, …

When Men and Mountains Meet Julian was at least a four-day trip from San Diego, even for the fastest of team drivers. The trip from Old Town to Foster (above Lakeside, now covered by San …

Just Say Nay As a "matter of confidentiality," the board will not release test-positive trainers' names, though if information is obtained from other sources, they will confirm it. Harvey Furgatch, a former boardmember, thinks the …

My Life of Crime I married my third wife in ’78. She was pregnant. We went to the swap meet in Spring Valley, and I was doin’ dealings for some turquoise rings, and I looked …

Offbeat Tourist Spots You don’t have to go to Northern California in order to see redwoods. A substantial stand of trees estimated to be about seventy years old and ranging up to eighty feet tall …

We Used to Play Acoustic Delta Blues on the Corner of Prospect "We used to play acoustic delta blues on the corner of Prospect and Herschel. We would put on really nice suits and shine …

Two Divided by Two Learning some of the courtroom shortcuts made things easier for me — places north of Date Street where you can park all day for free, the back entrance to the county …

Are the van Dams Fit Parents? In their neighborhood, with the type of activity they had in their house, who knows what other types of things were going on in that house? It all stems …

Loser’s Guide to Lakeside Most of Lindo Lake is nice, with grass and ducks, but on the north side of the lake is a small ditch where future generations of white trash like to hangout, …

Home Before Dark “Part of the procedure before praying is washing their feet in the sinks. That was another problem. This was going on in the restrooms, creating water on the floor. It was not …

I Don’t Need This Aggregation Reggae (the music played by impoverished Jamaican blacks, often revolutionary in nature) blasts from the back yard of a nearby fraternity party. Young men holler, wiggle their behinds, and wave …

Don’t Bust That Bottle on My Account “The last real trouble he had was when bikers — predominately members of the Mongols, a particularly tough East County outfit — would frequent the hotel and often …

SD’s Tennis Curse San Diego has played its own role. Great weather, ample facilities, and the region’s heavily middle-class economy depolarize tennis, blunting country club snobbery, and turning tennis instead into just another California outdoor …

Read about San Diego architecture by Susan Vaughn. Tower Envy San Diego’s least successful tower aesthetically is Sea World’s 320-foot Skytower. Unlike the 984-foot Eiffel or many other towers throughout the world, where you ascend …

National City Confidential DeForest pointed out that 90% of NC businessmen, who are primarily Anglo, live outside the city and “therefore don’t elect city officials and don’t contribute to officials’ campaigns.'’ He asserted that he …

South of Broadway: The Pigeons in Horton Plaza He used to own the Off-Broadway Theater next door, the last burlesque house on the West Coast, “I paid $5 a week rent, and I took in …

The Derek, Frieda, and Abbe Chronicles At the corner of Magnolia, the only area on Renette Avenue where apartment buildings now stood, I spoke with the managers of each of the four apartment complexes, all …

This is a Test Sketch briefly the condition of the country at the close of the Revolutionary War until the inauguration of Washington. 2. What officers constitute the cabinet of the President? Sketch the history …

On Top of the City Higgs is seventy-four, has been practicing law since 1934, and was president of the San Diego County Bar Association in 1940. His voice is raspy but his sentences are clear …

How to Read a Mug Adolf Hitler's strained smile was frightful, it gave away too much, even embarrassed him, and he always brought a hand up like a claw to cover it. No one has …

Prodigals They speak better English, with better intonations and slang. They listen to American music and Japanese groups like Lunatic Lion or Ayumi Nakamura, whose album covers and song titles burst with English, who slip …