It is also true that the only constant in life is change!
I say these things because I had an unplanned trip to some of my old home areas in Southern California from the first of May to the thirteenth. And man, have things changed!
I have a friend that lives in the town I spent many years living in, Yucaipa, California. Yucaipa used to be a small, mostly retirement community, about 70 or so miles east of Los Angeles if you're on your way to Palm Springs or directions east out off Interstate 10. When my family moved there in 1973 from Redlands, another no longer small town about 10 miles west, it was full of orange groves, egg farms, a turkey ranch, and many mobile home parks for the decidedly retirement-aged residents of the era. The freeway through the area was 3-lanes, not the current 5-lanes, and the population then was, as I recall, around ten-thousandish. Back then, there were many vacant lands, and due to its rural area, many homes had septic tanks and not city sewer connections. Yet.
That all changed in the 1980s when the county and city decided to hook up many locations to a new sewer system, including the area we lived in. I remember that the day the Challenger Shuttle exploded, Tuesday, January 28th, 1986, I was in the process of digging out the access to our home's septic tank to help facilitate the pump out and switch to the 'new' city sewer. I was listening to a portable radio and heard a news flash about the accident. I stopped for over an hour and went inside to watch on TV what was happening.
Anyway, a couple of years later, after the sewer system was in and hooked up to most homes, residential lots that had been too small by zoning with septic tanks were now free to build many, many, more homes on that same sized lot. That helped make it the overcrowded, overly expensive, noisy town it is now. It, like so many towns of the area, are now too.
My friend is not doing well healthwise. I had planned on going to visit last year, but Covid canceled that trip. Now, a year later, and Stacy and I are all vaccinated, but my friend wasn't yet; however, she had been admitted to the hospital, and things then weren't looking good. Stacy couldn't take time off, part of being the department head and all, so I went to see what I could do if help was needed.
Adventure time!
To California, I go. To maximize the time available to be there, I flew via Southwest Airlines. From Spokane to Las Vegas and the three and a half hours layover turned into almost five hours due to software problems with the new 737-800 for that last leg of the flight. That plane, as well as all of my flights, were 100% FULL! None of those reported lightly loaded planes for any of my flights.
Loading the plane for the flight to Ontario, if we'd only known!
In Las Vegas, the plane sat on the taxiway just off the runway for almost two hours while the pilots tried to solve a software problem with one of the two air conditioning units that also help with aircraft pressurization.
As relayed by the pilot after it was decided to go back to the gate at the terminal, all had been fine with the preloaded flight plan until the tower unexpectedly changed the departure runway to another at a different location at the airport. Entering the new runway information apparently, upset the onboard computer, which somehow caused the one bank of air conditioners to fail? It was sweltering for everyone stuck in the plane while attempting to be fixed over the air. It was in the low 90s that afternoon and soon was probably pretty close to that in the plane too! Finally, it was decided that the situation could not be fixed; however, to continue with the flight, the pilots needed paper documentation that the plane was still safe to fly to Ontario, California, just at a lower altitude due to the pressurization being partially out of service.
Back to the terminal for the paperwork, the plane was shut down, and two people got off the plane, and two new people got on. While we waited for a half-hour longer, the cabin crew served everyone ice water. That did help. Then, back to the same runway, I'm guessing the crew didn't want to take a chance of switching to another runway after what had happened! Take off and on the way to Ontario, about 45-minutes away. Not very promising for the new Boeing product!
With the pressurization system not full strength, the plane was limited in how high it could fly. Instead of thirty to thirty-five thousand feet, that plane had to stay closer to twenty thousand feet, so we actually got to Ontario a bit faster by not having to climb to the higher altitudes. As the airliner was flying over the San Bernardino mountains and right over Lake Arrowhead, we were low enough I could easily see people on their boats on the lake. It reminded me of all the times I was flying Cessnas or Pipers over the same area. It looked amazing as it was still all very green on the mountain and the mountainsides as it wasn't all dried out like the lower altitudes already were, all dead and brown looking. I was even surprised at how much better the forest looked. The last time I'd flown myself over the same mountains, the forest was something like 30 to 40-percent dead trees due to drought and bark beetles. The forest looked much healthier this time in the few seconds I was able to look at it.
My flight was originally to get to Ontario before 5 pm, but it was closer to 6:30 pm with the delay. I got to drive the rental truck to Yucaipa in the dark! Never much fun if you aren't familiar with where you'll be driving. And while I used to drive those roads literally all the time when I lived in the area and worked for San Bernardino County, not much other than the basic roads are the same anymore!!
During the days I was there, I spent much of the time working on cleaning up and reorganizing her house. With her health not so hot, many things had been piling up since the last time I was there in 2018. I took two loads of collapsed boxes to the dump, along with old magazines and papers from the last few years. A lot of stuff. I took some boxes of canned goods to a food bank, donated quite a few things she no longer wanted or needed to the Goodwill, all kinds of stuff to be done, and I did as much as I could in the time I had.
While she was in the hospital just before I had gotten there, they had determined she was suffering from an infected kidney stone and was very sick in the hospital for almost a week. She had gotten a 'stint' inserted to allow urination, but she was experiencing problems, and I took her back to the hospital Emergency Room on the 8th. She was there for several hours while they did a cat scan and evaluated her condition. Since I was now down in Redlands and not knowing yet how long she would be in the hospital, I thought I would take the time to drive down memory lane since it has been close to twenty years since I had been in the area.
Driving Down Memory Lane....
Being close to the hospital and kind of in the western part of the town, I made this the area I'd start with being my old Jr. High, now called a 'middle school.'
Back in the early 1970s, I went here. 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. The lockers have long been gone, and the school wasn't all fenced in like most schools are now—lots of memories from here at Edward M. Cope Junior High School.
Above: Smiley Elementary, and I was there for one year, 6th grade. Then went just down the street to Cope. I had some of my best young friendships start here.
Above: This house is actually just across the street from Smiley Elementary and was where one of my best friends lived. I remember it being a different color, a kind of blue-greenish? The house looks like it is now being used as a school of some sort for the church on the grounds where it sits. When I had been there, though, his father was the pastor for the church, and his family lived there.
Above and below: From 1972 to 1979, this building became the 'family' business when my mom married the person running the Fox Movie Theater back then. Actually, there was a lot of history from the old Fox Theater building. In the lower photo, where the water feature now sits, used to be the ticket booth was, and you'd buy your ticket and walk through the double door right behind it and into the theater. Walking in and just to the right was the place to buy the popcorn, candies, sodas, and ice cream from the "Candy Girls," as they were called then. Many of the people that worked there over the years my family ran it were theater majors from the local colleges.
In the lower photo, all the holes were where the neon lights used to be attached, and as with the backlit white areas, it was very colorful. It looks like the original type of lettering is still in use.
The theater did pretty well until more theaters were built in nearby areas in Colton and Highland. Those new theaters, and many now also no longer exist, could play more movies and be willing to pay the higher rental percentage to show the newer films.
It was almost always two movies each week. "Back in the day" there used to be 'special events' with certain movies like "Chariot's Of The Gods," which were heavily publicized on TV and Radio ads as "for one week only!"
The distributor set the prices and rented the entire theater for the time period, usually charging more for admission to these 'special events.'
Often only to be "held over by popular demand" even if it wasn't doing well here. Back then, movies premiered on Wednesday nights and during the day on Wednesday, when I was old enough, I was the one to often drive with Art to L.A. and take the old movies back and pick up the next weeks films for both theaters as well as pick up the candy and supplies for each theater then too. Movies were shipped in heavy metal cases with several reels of film in each container. A movie was made up of several twenty-minute reels, so there were usually two to four cases per movie. They were VERY heavy and had to be hand-carried from the front door and up four flights of stairs to the projection booth (room) near the roof of the original auditorium.
Then it was just the one movie two times Wednesday and Thursdays with three showings on Friday nights and matinees and late shows on Saturdays and matinees on Sundays, except in the summertime. While the Redlands Theater was mostly rented from the building owners, Art and his brother Roy owned much of the movie theater and almost all of the equipment at the Euclid Theater in Ontario.
Above: it looks like the building is used for social and special events.
The two photos above, from the 1970s when it was a movie theater!
Above: This sign was never there in my era.
One of the other big parts of my life was life at the Redlands Municipal Airport.
My first job was as an unpaid helper at the airport at the big maintenance hanger when I was 15 years old. I went there after school and on Saturday mornings.
When summer came, I became a paid employee and worked there Monday through Friday and Saturday mornings. I started washing airplanes for flight time with the flight school that used to be in the small building attached to the hanger, photo below. The flight school had three aircraft, two red and white Cessna 150 two-seat training planes, and a slightly larger blue and white four-seat Cessna Skyhawk. The flight school was owned and run by Earl Grigsby, a World War 2 cargo pilot who occasionally talked about his experiences flying in China, taking cargo over the Himalayan mountain range.
For Christmas, my first year there, the guys that owned the shop, Redlands Aviation, Fred, and Denny, got me my first flight lessons with Earl. On Saturday mornings, I'd wash the three planes at about two hours or more labor for a one-hour flight lesson. My flight lessons with Earl often took place early in the mornings during the week before school. My grandmother would get me there around 6:30 am. I have the flight lesson then work the day at the airport in the summer. Long days! My grandmother would then be back to get me after 5pm and get me home. Later on, when we were involved with the theater, she'd take me to the theater, and I'd stay there until box office closing, then go home with my mom.
Back in my era, this was still the entrance to the building; it was then just a standard door with a small window in the door. Redlands Aviation was the name then.
Above: the tower looks like it still comes on at night, shining a white and green beacon indicating a land airport with a paved runway. The building, for decades, was red and white and built in the 1950s, I believe. I knew the guy, General Sessums, the street is now named for. He did a lot for the airport, but as often happens, he himself was a bit of a jerk!
The original public lobby for the airport. Sad in a way, everything needs to be fenced off and protected at a public airport. A lot to be said for the 'old days.' I walked in and around the airport hundreds or even thousands of times over the years I worked there. Saw a plane crash; another caught fire on startup at the gas pumps after I had filled it, exciting! So many memories and experiences from those years.
Oh, well. Luckily she was not hospitalized again while I was there. I did get many things done, as I'd said above. Then it was time to fly back to Spokane.
This was during the eastern U.S. gas crunch from the hackers. Which made it interesting when I went to fill up the rental truck before taking it back to the rental facility. I pulled up to the Mobil station on Haven Ave in Rancho Cucamonga, just off the I-10 and about a mile from the rental return so many people were stopping there too. The pump I pull up to says it is out of regular and mid-grade gas. I look around and see all the gas pumps have the same signage! No regular, no mid-grade, and the one fuel they did have, premium? And the price jacked up to $5.69 a gallon ($6.87 CDN)! Almost $50.00 to fill up a mid-sized truck that I had only used almost 10 gallons of fuel in. I wished then I had gone for them to fill the truck up instead of me filling it, then it would have only been $3.87 a gallon. Oh well, no way to know all would have happened to affect the cost.
This time it was from Ontario to Sacramento, about an hour flight, no layover. The travelers like me, continuing on to Spokane or even longer, to Seattle, didn't even need to get off the plane. So, the twenty of us going on got to see behind the curtain about what is done while getting the plane ready for another flight.
That done, and another full flight and the plane takes off going north.
These photos were from the flight after Sacramento with the clouds becoming denser with showers seen as the plane passed some areas.
The 737-700 plane, on the "base leg" of the airport flight pattern about to turn left again and line up to land in Spokane. Here going west before turning south to land and if you reader hasn't been to the Spokane Washington area, this is the western area away from the main city.
The flight got back about twenty minutes early and Stacy was there waiting to take me home, another two and a half hours later!
Getting back, I had brought the California heat with me for a few days then it got back to "normal" spring with temps back in the 60s (16C) in the daytime and upper 30s (3.8C) at night. Ah to be back to the peace and quiet of our rural little town!! And remembering when the areas we used to live in 1400 miles (2,200KM) away were quiet.
A long post! And more I could write too. Maybe later, part two!
Tad
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