Joy Ride part two
Having made it though the intersection at Eagle Rock Blvd we had of course passed the Spanish mission style building that had been Eagle Rock's Library since 1915 until it achieved historical landmark status and was immediately mothballed in 1970. This necessitated opening a new library four blocks away on Caspar Ave for reasons I look forward to hearing someday. The old building was given a shot as a cultural center which might have succeeded if it was still a functioning library but now that all printed and digital cultural materials were four blocks away…………..
Unknown to Michael and me at the time of our traffic light excursion was that some twenty years later, we would enter the old library to attend the initial meeting of the Eagle Rock Independent Theater Troupe. There was a surprisingly good turnout and things looked promising until a few people insisted on leading the group through a regimen of mission statement development that eventually destroyed every bit of enthusiasm and buried the entire effort. A tragic missed opportunity since the whole mission statement extravaganza was brilliant source material that would have made for a terribly wicked black comedy.
There was a slightly uphill ten-block stretch ahead of us before Colorado crossed Townsend Ave which many decades earlier signaled the town's outskirts – hence the name Townsend which came from "town's end." We passed one storefront where Ingrid had done people's nails and then another storefront where while a student at Occidental I had once bought from Robert's Men's Clothing a jet-black, double-breasted corduroy suit for nine dollars.
Then came the corner building where I filled the back of Dorazi's mother's convertible with the two sections of the Sunday times, and helped her deliver them by standing on the back bumper as she sped through town, flinging my section to where ever she threw hers.
Then across the street from where the Oinkster is now located we passed the former offices of The Eagle Rock Sentinel which had been the local paper from 1930 to 1970. Hank Frazier had been the photographer for the paper when I was in high school and the two or three of his photos that made it into each issue were always a source of mystery. The captions helped somewhat but either the printing equipment, Hank's light meter or lack there of, or maybe just Hank himself proved incapable of producing an image you could decipher. Carey would bring the paper to school, point to one of Hank's photos and ask, "Is it just me?" .
I was still maintaining a constant speed as we neared the Townsend intersection. We passed Casa Bianca that opened in 1955 and where in a few years after our joy ride, Marc and Josie would meet each other when they started working there.
Michael, Marc and I all agreed that if we made the light at Townsend, instead of turning left and heading home, we would keep driving on Colorado until we were stopped by a red light or ran out of gas. Our house was north of Colorado above Hill Drive on Kincheloe, a short dead end street about fifty yards from the 134 freeway. With the help of a realtor friend, Ingrid and I had bought the house before it went on the market from an eighty-five-year-old former Arthur Murray dance instructor. His last name was Kincheloe, the same as the street. His father had been one of the original developers of the Hill Drive area and threw in a street named after himself.
The Mr. Kincheloe we were buying the house from had spent little time in the house since it was built in 1959. Neither the oven nor the fireplace had ever been used. Mr. Kincheloe was in a hurry to leave Los Angeles with his twenty-something live-in girl friend. I don't know what she planned on doing with the pet ferret she let run loose in the living room but I did overhear her on the phone making last-minute arrangements for herself. She was trying to convince some church official on the other end of the line to provide her with a hurry-up baptism. She was pressing the elderly Mr. Kincheloe into marriage but he refused to cooperate until she was baptized.
We lived in the Kincheloe house for ten years a few blocks away from where Ben Affleck lived while attending Occidental and where he and Matt Damon wrote the screenplay for Good Will Hunting.
We drove by the old Pillar's building which was a discount clothing store when I was in high school. It was a favorite target for the Avenues gang graffiti which Carey and I, being gringos, could never understand. We had no idea what was meant by the markings, nor did we have any clue what they said. We couldn't read a single word and weren't even sure if they were words. The graffiti was even more mystifying than Hank Frazier's photos.
We drove past Tritch Hardware and through a green light at Townsend with Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley now in our sights. Tritch Hardware is a family business that began in the 1920s and has continued without change other than a seismic retrofit to the two-story brick building. It is still there and unlike Home Depot or Lowe's you can go in and buy a single screw or bolt instead of a box holding a lifetime supply. The place has everything and the congested catacombs inside look like a 19th century version of Blade Runner. You could spend days looking for an item if the employees, who resemble civil war veterans, weren't there to find what you're after. The items that fill every conceivable square inch of the interior have no recognizable brand names as they've been sitting on shelves in Tritch's store before companies like Stanley, Kohler and Channel Lock existed. Any items made of metal, although they've never been out of their packaging, have acquired a patina that appraisers drool over on Antiques Roadshow.
We continued on Colorado with only the Figueroa and Ave 64 intersections remaining between us and the Suicide Bridge. Colorado Blvd begins a gradual uphill climb that starts at Eagle Rock Blvd and continues to Figueroa. I lived in Eagle Rock for fifty years and never noticed it until Michael and I one evening rode this stretch on bicycles in 2010. We went with a dozen other people from the Midnight Ridazz – a counter culture splinter group made up of disheveled bicycle enthusiasts who relish late-night rides and beer.
There's a U.S. Post Office at the corner of Colorado and Figueroa. Previously it had been where Eagle Rock Lanes was located and was one of two bowling alleys in Eagle Rock when I was in high school. In 1973 I had watched Secretariat win the Belmont Stakes by thirty lengths on a television set in the bar at Eagle Rock Lanes. The other bowling alley which is still operating is called All-Star Lanes and features karaoke and Hawaiian food. The place has a dark vibe left over from the 1950s when a woman shot her two-timing husband in the chest on lane 6.
I maintained our speed and we got a green light at Figueroa where Colorado begins a steep uphill section that runs a quarter mile until it comes to Ave 64. This same stretch of uphill has been here since the early 1900s when H.S. Sternberger set up a stand to sell fruit and cold drinks where Colorado meets Ave 64 and which he referred to as the "rite spot." The automobiles of the era would often boil over at this rite spot having climbed a few miles from what was to become Eagle Rock Blvd. Sternberger eventually replaced the fruit stand with a restaurant that looked out over the fairways of the Annandale Golf Club. Years later he sold the property to a fried chicken franchise. His twin sons opened another restaurant named Sternberger's Diner on Figueroa south of York Blvd across from the Highland Park Recreation Center. The building is there today with a sign that reads "Famous Spot." Their specialty was a hamburger on grilled sourdough and with the twins being horse owners, Munson was a regular.
The fried chicken franchise that took over the rite spot was Henry's - a drive-in serving baskets of "Chicken in the Rough" with shoestring potatoes, hot biscuits and honey. The menu logo showed a chicken holding a broken golf club and a sign on the top of the building read "The Rite Spot". It was part of the first international fast food franchise operation that began in the USA.
In 1936 Beverly and Rubye Osborn were in their pickup truck looking to escape the dust bowl and heading west. The truck hit a bump and spilled the chicken Rubye had brought with them in a basket. While she went about retrieving pieces of chicken she supposedly said to her husband Beverly, "This is really chicken in the rough." Where upon Beverly was consumed by a vision of selling baskets of fried chicken to people on the go. They returned home to Oklahoma where they sold Rubye's wedding ring to start their business. Fourteen years later in 1950, Time magazine ran a feature article on their empire of 250 outlets that reached from Johannesburg South Africa to the corner of Colorado and Ave 64.
When Michael, Marc and I made the green light at Ave 64, Henry's was long gone and had been replaced by another restaurant called the Nightwatch. It didn't last long I think in part because the dining area for some reason was always filled with the smell of the urinal cakes in the men's room.
We made it across the Colorado Street Bridge which went up in 1915 and has since been known as "Suicide Bridge" for obvious reasons. During the great depression a woman tossed her baby off the 150 foot high bridge and then followed after her. The woman died but the baby survived unhurt as her fall was cushioned by a cascade of small tree branches on the bank of the river that flows down from Devil's Gate Damn and under the bridge. For decades drivers on the bridge have reported seeing the ghostly image of a woman leaping off of the bridge.
Our luck continued to hold as we made it through busy intersections at Orange Grove, Fair Oaks and Lake Ave. We finally caught a red light as we neared Pasadena City College and headed home. I thought of submitting our feat of consecutive green lights for consideration as a historical roadside marker but I was afraid they'd mothball the Mizer.