Rolltop-Roundup

Only 30 years ago - Part II

2008-07-17T18:00:00.000-07:00

When the Rolltop Roundup ended last week Chino was about to celebrate the Fourth of July sans any public celebration and fireworks except for the “safe and sane” ones sold at about 20 stands operated by local non-profits.

The result was “only” three grass fires, two roof fires, one dumpster fire and one injury, most probably the result of illegal fireworks.

Chino’s population was 35,500 in 1978. The area had 48,000 people. The city has more than doubled and the area more than tripled since then.

The industrial giant of Chino was the Freightliner truck plant, opened in 1973 and which this last month was reduced to rubble after being shut down for years. Most of the up to 950 workers went out on a 4-month strike that spring.

East of town the dairies were having a very good year, but were becoming plagued with the perennial problem which always comes with their good times—overproduction, which sends the price of milk down. There were 378 dairies in the Chino milkshed, 281 on this side of the county line. Cows numbered about 190,000 head.

School attendance in the fall was 12,908 in 15 schools, with an expectation for 1,000 more during the year. Four-track year around school plus an alternative standard session was the rule. The Chino Fundamental School opened in the former Gird Elementary, which was combined with the Gird Primary across the street.

When fall arrived so did the flu, which hit attendance hard.

The school board thought it had found an answer to the ungovernable smoking in the high school restrooms. It established, by a 3-2 voted, outdoor smoking areas at Chino High in the spring, but the idea didn’t last long. By fall all smoking had been banned. It never was allowed at the newly opened Don Lugo High.

The board also reversed its opposition position to builders fees to help pay for new schools, and asked the cities to impose them.

The Chino hills were ravaged by the worst wildfire in recent years. Started near the Aerojet plant by illegal target shooters, the Santa Ana-fanned inferno consumed 5,600 acres as it headed for Yorba Linda. Seven hundred fire fighters finally got it under control with a minimum of damage to structures.

On the political scene in Chino, newly elected councilman Larry Walker challenged the city ordinance banning political signs as a violation of free speech, so the city law was changed to allow them. Mayor Bob McLeod returned to his duties in the fall after several months illness, during which he had spent some time in a coma because of internal bleeding. He served two more years before retiring, a total of 16 in all.

Crime continued to be a concern. The city budgeted for seven new officers and began running a crime watch series in the Champion, showing where burglaries were taking place.

The Chino Hills branch of the Bank of America was robbed of $25,000 after an employee and her children were taken hostage at home and driven back to the bank to open the safe. They were later released.

Fire Station 5 on Ramona north of the 60 Freeway was opened, giving new protection to the fast growing area north of the freeway. Monte Vista Park was dedicated in October on the site of the old D Street and E.J. Marshall elementary schools.

Under new state law, school board members had seven months more added to their terms (I was one of them). The board elections were moved from March to November in odd numbered years. City council elections were moved from April to March.

Chino High won its first outright football title in 30 years, in the San Antonio League, by defeating Ganesha 14-13 in the final minutes of the season’s last regular game. Coach Lou Randall had been hired from Garden Grove that summer, to replace Mike Ellison who resigned before he even started. The Cowboys made it to the second round.

Only 30 years ago—Part I

2008-07-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

The year 1978 was a landmark year for Chino Valley. Long anticipated development came to the hills, the dairy industry was in its prime, youth brought a change to the city council, and Proposition 13 changed the way government did business.

Read it and weep: The 1977-78 season was the second wettest on record. January had 8.27 inches of rain, and February 10.66 inches in eight days, all coming after two years of drought. Creeks and many streets flooded. The wet ground produced mud slides that wiped out homes along Whirlaway Lane in the Chino hills.
Although the Chino Hills Specific Plan was still under development, property owners and home builders were anxious to roll. The county board of supervisors overturned the county planning commission’s denial of a 950-acre Creative Communities development, for 1,146 homes, at the north end of the hills, after some modifications. The development later became Rolling Ridge Estates.

Meanwhile, Chino saw a large portion of its zone of influence to the south snatched away in a political deal that rolled the future city limits back from Highway 71, which was supposed to be the dividing line with the future Chino Hills. The change involved three major property owners between the Chino Creek flood control channel on the east and Highway 71, south of Carbon Canyon Road (later renamed Chino Hills Parkway). The land owners convinced Supervisor Robert O. Townsend to shift the area to the county controlled Chino Hills zone of influence, because they didn’t like Chino’s industrial zoning for their land. Included was Fairfield Ranch, which became residential; the site where the Hindu Temple is now being built, and the land where the Commons at Chino Hills Parkway is also under construction.

Chino’s commercial development was moving north. New shopping centers were created on the northeast and southwest corners of Philadelphia and Central.

The city was experiencing a major political change. Youth moved onto the city council. Chino High graduates had come home to roost. Fred Aguiar and Larry Walker, the youngest to sit on the city council, were elected in March, unseating Angel Martinez and Leonard Frketich. Only Eileen Carter was re-elected. Both newcomers would become mayors after they cut their hair.

Chino had problems, too. There were several shootings, including fatalities, and many burglaries. A citizens group pushed for more police officers, but their efforts were partially stymied because of the passage of Proposition 13.

This statewide measure, putting a lid on property taxes, left local government in a quandary. Supervisors, councils and school boards had to pass annual budgets without really knowing how much money was coming in. The situation was worse than today’s dilemma, when the same agencies are having to figure out 2008-09 budgets without knowing what their allotments and pass-through revenues from the state budget will be.

It’s not hard to see why Prop. 13 passed, with all its shortcomings. Chino Valley householders had been warned that their assessed valuations would be going up 15 to 50 percent that year. Local governments set the tax rates based on their “needs.”

The Chino school board decided to cut summer school and reduce support of athletics and extra-curricular activities. At the high schools, the student body and the sports boosters stepped up their financial participation and the board restored some of the cuts.

And déjà vu. The state proposed to build a 400-bed psychiatric unit at the California Institution for Men. Needless to say, our council and other local officials fought vigorously. With the help of local legislators, and state budget difficulties, the plan was dropped.

Other significant actions:
—The traditional Chino Rancho Ride was abandoned in Chino Hills. A substitute ride was organized for Prado Park, but it didn’t last.

—The chamber of commerce, working with the citizen-based Southwest Hills Environmental and Planning Association (SHEPA) pushed for a four-lane expressway to replace two-lane Highway 71. This effort led to the eventual construction of the Chino Valley Freeway.

—Local agencies signed on to the adjudication of water rights to the underlying Chino Basin, setting the pattern for future water distribution in the area. The Pomona Valley Water Company serving mostly in the hills was put on the market. The City of Chino, probably much to its future regret, turned down an opportunity to buy it.

—A proposal to consolidate the Chino, Rancho Cucamonga and West Valley (in Ontario) courts was rejected after great opposition from Chino.

Except for about 20 stands selling “safe and sane” fireworks in Chino, there was no other organized program for the Fourth of July.

Intellectual pursuits

2008-07-09T19:15:00.000-07:00

I was in the dentist’s chair earlier this week. It’s pretty hard to say much there, but you have time to think. Fortunately I don’t have a dentist who asks many questions when you have a lot of tools in your mouth and are being poked, scraped and sprayed.

During a brief respite she asked me what I thought was going to happen to the economy. Try that one in a couple of sentences. Fortunately the conversation turned to Tiger Woods and his spectacular down win in the U.S. Open over the weekend and into Monday. We both prayed that his leg injury would not be lasting. I found out later that he’s out for the season.

As for the economy, that will take more thought. My one observation was that inflation is a cyclical condition that people experience when their government “prints” more money than it can back up. I’m not sure my readers are in a mood for such stuff after my discourses in recent weeks on terrorism, getting out of Iraq, the energy outlook, and whether capitalism is working the way it’s supposed to. The Roundup probably has an audience that prefers local history and travel columns.

A conversation did take place at the end of my cleaning that was reflective of today’s society. The dentist told me she would be lost without her daily newspaper, and I readily agreed that I felt the same way. Turns out we both grew up in families where the newspaper played an important role, both as a source of information and basis for social intercourse (i.e. informal conversation) with other people.

“Do you read the newspaper?” her young assistant was asked. A shake of the head.

“Where do you find out what’s happening?’

“The Internet.”

How sad, thought the two members of the Greatest and Baby Boomer generations.

After all that, topped by a discussion about how soon I should return for another checkup and cleaning, I left, forgetting to pay (I don’t have dental insurance). They know I’ll be back. Maybe we can discuss Africa.

There are some weeks when a Rolltop inspiration is slow in coming to this writer, so the temptation to get involved in something controversial is strong. As I was doing my morning stretching this week I tossed several ideas around, some based on current events. These include tomatoes, gay marriage, cost of medical care, global warming, inflation, welfare and stem cell research.

I can’t resist some comment about the hottest topic in California this week, and I don’t mean the state budget.

Gay marriage has been overshadowing the falling housing market this week. Counties began issuing marriage licenses under a recent ruling by the state supreme court, amid a great deal of public controversy over morality, values, tradition and a threat to our way of life.

Blame all these controversies on our stilted lexicon. We need another word for “marriage” that doesn’t throw people off. It’s bad enough what has happened to the word “gay” over the decades. There was a day when a “gay marriage”, like the term “cool,” meant something entirely different. Blame it on generational distortion. It worries me that our children today will look upon historical references to the nineteenth century era of the “Gay Nineties” with confusion. Back in my college days, we looked upon the annual spring “Gaieties” as something full of fun and joy. I wonder if they call it something else now.

Following that line of thought, even the word “sex” has a variety of meanings in our society. It can mean gender, procreation or recreation. The word shows up on census forms and patient’s information sheets at the doctor’s office. What a temptation it is to answer yes or no. Even an answer of M and F can be translated by a fun lover as “maybe” and “frequently.” In today’s society they should probably add “don’t know.”

To confound the situation is the reality that it doesn’t even take sex to have babies anymore.

I wish I knew the French language better. I’m sure they have words for these things that don’t raise so many red flags. Unfortunately, English is not a Romantic language.

Just so you know, I could have discussed Sudan and Darfur after listening to another intellectual talk this week. They have everything, genocide, religious conflict, oil, civil war and starvation.
The good news this week is that tomatoes are coming back to markets and salad bars.

Sweet music after tough talk

2008-07-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

On the evening of May 30 the graduates of my business school class of 1953 filed into Boston’s Symphony Hall to have dinner and hear a concert by the famed Boston Pops Orchestra. It was a winner.

When we left Boston 55 years ago, Arthur Fielder was the leader, a position he held from 1930 when he was named the first full time conductor, until his death in 1979.

About the time Richard Gird was buying the semi-desert Rancho Santa Ana del Chino in 1881, Boston was an historically dynamic financial and shipping center, and the citizens figured it was about time to add some culture to the city of the nation’s founding fathers. The Boston Symphony Orchestra was formed, and in 1885 an offshoot, the Pops as it was later called, was founded to present “concerts of a lighter kind of music,” including popular pieces from the era’s musical hits. Thus the name Pops, a model for many similar symphonies across the nation.

Our program that night had a western tinge, and was conducted by visiting maestro Robert Bernhardt from Chattanooga. He opened with the Cowboy Overture, did a couple of pieces by Aaron Copeland and finished the first half with Themes from Silverado. You could hear the hoof beats throughout.

In the second half Mr. Bernhardt showed up dressed as a ranch foreman and led the backup music for the Riders in the Sky, Grammy winning group that has carried on the tradition of the Sons of the Pioneers. Ranger Doug (guitar), Too Slim (bass), Woody Paul (fiddle) and Joey (accordion) may have mellowed with the years but they still are great stars of cowboy music and the audience ate it up.

The concert was a welcome respite from the heavy stuff we dealt with earlier, such as “Energy in the New Century,” and “Capitalism, Democracy and Development,” presented by current faculty members of the Harvard Business School.

Some of the other topics such as “The Crisis in CEO Success,” “How to Manage Urban School District,” and “New Opportunities for Productivity and Innovation,” we left to the reunion graduates of the classes from the seventies and eighties who are still in their executive prime.
This doesn’t mean that members of my class aren’t still active in the world of finance and leadership, but many of them are contributing lifetime skills to non-profit and health care organizations, donating back to society the benefits of their top business education and the good years they have had as corporate and business mavens.

Concerning energy, Professor Forrest Reinhardt assured us that oil will never get cheaper and that the few producers globally are in a position to hold back production. He said that there is no perfect competition in energy and we’re paying too much at the pump now.

Why? We’ve got the whole energy picture all wrong, he said. Oil is much mixed with politics. Supply and demand are topsy-turvy. For the future we need to produce what people want, and teach our children economics. Most important, we need to take another look at government regulation of energy for the long range and more subsidization for other forms of energy production. Keeping energy prices down as demand increases is too big a task for big business to handle. Besides, American big business has appeared to have ceded control to a few global biggies.

How about Capitalism? Move over Energy. It, too, requires better rules and regulation, according to Professor Bruce R. Scott, whose field is the impact of government policy on business.

First of all, would anyone like to define what “capitalism” is? Good luck, because different countries have different notions of how it works. In this country, the modern definition was set by conservatives around 1980 and is struggling in face of 21st century needs, concepts and desires. It falls short in face of the rising inequality the way income is shared, and the changes brought about by globalism.

Neither of these teachers are exactly college-cloistered socialists, as some conservative opponents of government regulation might think because of the Harvard connection. The business school is hardly a nest of liberal thinking. It’s job is to make future business and management leaders think and succeed.

Maybe that’s why “Riders in the Sky” were so satisfying. The class of ’53 has basically had its day.

(Postscript—in a quick survey at our table of 10 at the final night dinner, eight favored McCain, but eight also thought Obama would win.)

Back to Boston

2008-07-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

After 52 years in Chino, I think I’m safe in coming out of the closet.

When we arrived here in 1956 after a three-year stint in the Naval Supply Corps I wasn’t exactly downy cheeked, but I was wet behind the ears in the view of some old timers and good old boys who were running the town.

At that time, Chino wasn’t like Claremont, where great value was placed on college degrees, and when you were introduced at a group function your alma mater was appended to your name.

In Chino, the only college graduates respected were teachers, ministers, doctors and attorneys. For all others, the important attribute was whether you graduated from Chino High. Or if you had gone to USC, that was acceptable. Almost everybody rooted for the Trojans whether they attended the university or not.

So along comes this young guy, from northern California, and a Stanford grad to boot, throwing his editorial opinions around, sometimes stepping on toes, which often were imbedded in cement.
Nobody asked what advanced education I had, and I didn’t volunteer, except that it appeared in the story about our purchase of the newspaper.

Now that I’ve outlived most of the old guard, and the remaining ones have kind of gotten used to me, I don’t mind writing about the 55th reunion of the Harvard Business School class of 1953, held last week in Boston.

I found a couple of welcome exceptions to keeping quiet about degrees, both of the min the Rotary Club. I had been taken in a sits youngest member ever because it wanted to claim the local publisher. My predecessor had been a member of the Lions Club, breaking the tradition that the Champion publisher always joined Rotary.

One of my fellow Rotarians was Walter(Jack) Sprott, a senior resident of Los Serranos who still played golf in his eighties and was an active salesman when he died at age 91. He had been an All-American tackle at Stanford in the 1906 earthquake class, 45 years before I graduated from there with a journalism degree.

Then there was L. J. Scritsmier, who always showed up at our Wednesday meetings in overalls. He was a pig farmer, and rather successful, I found out. His farm had been in the northern Chino Hills, then moved to east of Chino. He revealed to me that he had attended Harvard Business School, which must have been about the time my father did in the twenties. I felt comfortable with these two gentlemen, and was sorry when they passed on while my ears were still drying out. “Scrits,” I was happy to note, was like me in that not all HBS graduates had ended up as captains of industry and finance.

The reunion reassured me on this point. I had a nice chat with classmate Marv Grossman, after I found out that he had been running a car wash in the San Fernando Valley for the last 40 years—quite successfully I might add.

Don Jordon, who I failed to recognize until I heard his wonderful Mississippi voice, who was one of the earliest franchise holders of Wendy’s International. Now he’s trying to get a small college for black women in Memphis back on its feet.

So I felt pretty good about “only” operating a successful independent weekly news-paper in a community which had 10,000people when I started out, and now has more than 150,000.

All the classes with 5-year reunions were under the same tents erected on the business school campus, on the Boston side of the Charles River, across from the Harvard Yard in Cambridge.

Who should I run into between sessions but Kurt Kenworth, former Chino ladder manufacturer and active chamber of commerce member, a member of the class of 1958. From my class I was approached by Dave Scott, a financial and operational consultant from Dover, New Hampshire, who had just started up a weekly newspaper because he disliked the closed shop politics of local government and the lack of ambition on the part of his local daily to do any-thing about it.

We had quite a chat, and I had to admire his vigor for getting so involved at an age of close to 80. I found that many of my colleagues had become involved in philanthropic endeavors, using once again the good training we had gotten in at the Biz School.

Should we pull out now?

2008-07-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, after airing some thoughts about whether or not the United States should pull out of Iraq this year, under the heading “A shocking idea,” I invited responses from readers. There weren’t many. Here is a selection from those who had their own thoughts.

From Paul R. Spitzzeri of Chino Hills: A total withdrawal is simply not feasible. A significant drawdown will likely take close to two years, but we’ll need to maintain thousands of troops in Iraq for an indefinite period. After 1,400 years of discord, Sunni and Shia factions are hardly likely to reverse their animosity any time soon. How can a democracy develop when 70% of Iraqis cannot read or write, women are second-class citizens, millions are tied to tightly-controlled tribal societies, and the educated and professional classes are in exile or in inertia?

The only viable economic product, oil, is now greatly underdeveloped and, as in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, is likely to be controlled by authoritarian governments in the absence of meaningful democratic conditions.

Writes Thomas W. McCarthy of Chino Hills:

The following seem to be indisputable facts:

—The expenditure of American lives stops as soon as the last American leaves the country.

—The loss of life, and damage to property of the Iraqi people directly resulting from American military action would cease upon withdrawal.

—The billions of dollars spent in this effort would be drastically reduced, if not eliminated altogether.

The following are very reasonable assumptions:

—The United States made a tragic mistake, including outright violations of inter-national law. It is very late, but it may not be too late to begin to correct the way the people of the world view our beloved country.

—The United States has a moral obligation to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Iraq. However, a small portion of the billions spent in destroying the country would have an enormous effect for good if spent helping people instead of killing them and destroying their homes.

—The threat of terrorism would be significantly reduced if we stopped our inhuman, illegal activities and spent our money and our energy in trying to make the world better instead of destroying it.

When millions of people have been forced from their homes and possibly more than 100,000 have died, I fail to see how the situation can get worse as a result of our withdrawal.

Says Tim Ricketson of Chino Hills:

No more American soldiers will die in Iraq.

No more innocent Iraqis will die at the hands of soldiers sent to war on false pre-tenses.

Billions of dollars will be saved, that can be used to rebuild our own infrastructure and schools and provide healthcare to millions.

Terrorists, which were not in Iraq before we started the war, will not have the “American enemy” to wage war against.

The war will no longer be a “recruitment tool” for al Qaeda, which is now stronger than ever, because of the war.

America can start rebuilding our image in the world by rejecting the aggressive pre-emptive war on a sovereign nation.

Iraq can go about rebuilding the country, running the oil fields, building the economy and establishing a government.

On the other hand, America will “lose face” in the minds of others. This seems as mall sacrifice compared to the pro side.

Chris Kober of Chino Hills has another point of view:

Don’t pull out. Figure it out.

The solution to the United States’ position in Iraq is not one of immediate action, but of rational discussion. There was obviously a rush to action in 2003 and similar haste in troop removal would result in an equally unpredictable outcome.

The removal of Saddam Hussein’s silently cruel stability and the ensuing upheaval has undoubtedly led to the skyrocketing oil prices. The immediate subtraction of the United States from the equation would lead to a civil war and more of the same. Any number of long term consequences would result once someone else grabs control.

While it may be tempting to cut one’s loses, or isolate from the rest of the world, or spread freedom to those who have never known it, level-headed conversation about the true consequences and effects of our action is the only way to find a correct solution.

High school fashion story

2008-07-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

The following Rolltop Roundup appeared in the Champion a few years ago—on May 24, 1967. Back then the column appeared on the front page. Was it written with tongue in cheek? I can’t remember.

I suppose that it is inevitable that the day comes when school authorities feel that the dress code must been forced. This day usually arrives well after the bounds set forth in official hand-books, notices and all have been exceeded. It also arrives about the same time the mercury goes into the high 90’s, when teachers are stricken with a malady known as Mid-May Agony, when students have a hard time staying awake in class after piling down a big lunch, and when the principal has just about had it up to here.

And so it was, this past week, that the official notice went out to high school students that:

Girls must not wear dresses more than two inches above the knees.

Boys must wear their shirt tails tucked into their trousers.

The word also went out reminding boys that T-shirts were not to be worn alone in place of a regular shirt – that is, no shirt without a collar.

Thursday, May 18 (1967)will go down in Chino High history as the day of the Great Rebellion. The boys all wore T-shirts in protest. Even some of the girls wore them. It was a smashing victory, for the order was changed to permit such shirts, as long as they either were colored, or had a pocket.

Sensing a story, the Champion sent are porter to the scene. But not without protest.

“There’s nothing uglier than girls’ knees,” said our representative. “Do you want pictures?”

His report, when it was all over, went something like this:

The dean of girls was in the principal’s office, asking if the two inches meant from mid-knee or the highest point on the knee. She was followed by the college prep English teacher who said she had girl students who were taking the order literally and wanted to know if it was OK to wear shorts and a halter, since dresses weren’t allowed more than two inches above the knees.

Then came the director of student activities who wanted to know if T-shirts were going to be sold in the new school store, or just shirts with collars.

The dean of girls came back in and said that the girls refused to standstill for being measured. She was followed by an aghast citizen who said she had just seen a blonde girl kissing a funny looking bearded character on a motorcycle across the street.

The principal told the vice principal to put out a directive that there would be no kissing on motorcycles. The citizen said the girl wasn’t on the motorcycle. “Forget it,” said the principal.

The student body president told the principal that the new dress order should have been negotiated between the students and the administration.

“All variances from the student hand-book should be negotiated,” he said. “If you’d sat down and talked this over with us there would have been no trouble. We all agree that girls’ knees look ugly, particularly from the back. But since you made an issue of it, they don’t care – all they want to do is protest.”

The girls’ gym teacher came in to say that the girls were complaining because their shower towels weren’t large enough to cover them properly. The principal noted that her shorts were more than two inches above the knee, and started to reprimand her.

“Sorry, sir,” she replied, “but that’s some-thing our teachers organization says must be negotiated.”

The dean of girls mumbled something about ugly knees. “What do you expect on gym teachers?” replied the vice principal.

Meanwhile, our representative had been making mental pictures of the coed knee situation. He also found they left a lot to be desired. About then the home making teacher walked in, and suggested that everybody relax.

“It’s almost summer. Let’s let it go as it is– by fall the dress material makers will realize they’re losing too much money on mini-shirts, and the hemline will drop. This is one of the virtues of capitalism,” she pointed out.

“What about the shirt tails and the T-shirts?” said the vice principal.

“That has to be negotiated,” said the student body president.

“So does your diploma,” reminded the principal.

Our representative learned later that the T-shirt order was a diversionary measure. It was initiated by the clever principal who was trying to take the student’s minds off the suggestion that everybody be allowed to go barefooted.

A shocking idea

2008-06-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

What would happen if the United States pulled out of Iraq this year?

Politics aside, there’s something to ponder if television gets boring, or the conversation hits a lull.

You might be surprised to learn it’s not an idle thought or just a political proposal by Democrat presidential candidates.

There are think tanks, academic symposiums, discussion groups and other thoughtful gatherings which can cope with such discussions without getting involved in emotions or political loyalties.

I heard it at an “intellectually stimulating” group meeting, from a respected expert, Dr. Robert Bunker, on terrorism and use of mercenaries. His work has appeared in military and security circles and publications. He thought the United States should pull out of Iraq before it selfdestructs militarily and economically.

Having been one who long felt that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place, I think that more discussion is needed, without emotion if that’s possible, taking a hard look at history and the future. From what I hear, the foremost reason to stay with the War in Iraq is one you might expect from the Chinese—we’d “lose face” by pulling out. We just can’t face admitting we may have made another big mistake like Vietnam, as more and more Americans are beginning to believe, according to the polls.

There is a feeling by those who want to keep on with the fight that it would be unpatriotic, if not counterproductive, to give it up. We would be letting our fighting sons and daughters down. They all volunteered for this and we must back them up. We must support parents and spouses who have already made the sacrifices.

Then there’s the matter of oil. If we give up in Iraq we will possibly lose control of major oil sources in the Middle East, having done nothing since the fighting started to reduce our dependence on it. At the least, the price of our gasoline will shoot up some more, affecting our whole economy.

But haven’t we already hurt ourselves by pouring trillions down the drain over there while we flounder in a debate as to whether we should raise taxes or cut spending at home?

What will other countries think about us, particularly our allies such as Great Britain, Germany, Turkey and Israel, who hope we will keep things stable in their neck of the woods? Or should we become isolationists again, like before World War I and II?

Of course, many countries already are sore because we forged ahead of the pack to get rid of Saddam Hussein, his weapons of mass destruction and his terrorist connections. That we kind of misread those things didn’t help. We also misread who would be the enemy in Iraq after Saddam was toppled.

But what will happen to our mission of spreading democracy throughout the world? Isn’t that the real reason we’re there, as the president suggested when other reasons turn hollow? Or are we putting the cart before the horse in assuming that’s what people of vast disparities and cultural backgrounds want for themselves? Don’t forget we often choose to support dictators and autocrats in many countries because they represent stability.

How about the terrorists? Won’t we unleash a world siege of terrorism if we pull out of Iraq now?

But wasn’t Iraq a hotbed of terrorism under Saddam Hussein when we brought him down? Or did we just succeed inremoving him as a counter force to neighboring Iran, which is now tweaking our whiskers in a big way?

Other issues involved are our support of Israel, and to the traditional values, rights and traditions that made us strong and great.

This is the 21st century and we’re a welleducated, financially well off civilized nation devoted to helping people improve themselves. We’re in a global economy where national boundaries don’t mean so much any more, facing nations that have been learning our economic system all too well. Even China and Russia are coming to realize that there’s more at stake for the future than can be accomplished by rattling sabers and threatening nukes.

Got some feelings about this? Draw up a balance sheet of pros and cons. Then write the Forum at Forum08[at]ChampionNewspapers.com with "Letters" in the subject line.

Notes left lying around

2008-05-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

I’m late this year in getting to my spring cleanup, which really only makes a small dent in what accumulates around the desk. In the old days the editor’s desk used to be a rolltop, as in Rolltop Roundup. It was a beautiful antique piece of furniture that perished in our fire of 1971, and was replaced with a built-in credenza that can handle even more junk…er, valuable pieces of historic information and artifacts. Plus my computer that stores unused bits of trivia for later use. Such as comments on the academy awards last March. My instant reaction to the Oscar bash at that time:

It’s finally behind us. The annual Academy Awards that draws as much hype as the Super Bowl, and is forgotten about as fast except by diehard fans.

This year’s Academy Awards were a tribute to mayhem, killing, torture and meanness. About the only awards that went to anything else were received by a couple of cartoons and the original screenplay author of Juno, the story of a pregnant teenager.

The “bests” of the 2007 movies mostly came from outside of Hollywood, which just couldn’t seem to come up with anything pleasing to the judges.

Future anthropologists will no doubt find fascinating the study of what today’s arts culture considers the best of its film efforts to shine. Of course, if the winning flicks tell us anything, there might not be a future.

I didn’t see many movies this past year, and I don’t watch DVDs. I did see a couple of violent movies, The Bourne Ultimatum and 3:10 to Yuma. I was duped into going to the first one by the reviewers and went to the second hoping to see a decent Western. There are so few of them these days. Bourne did capture Oscars for film editing and sound mixing. No surprise here. Both attributes practically knocked me out of the theater.

3:10 had a good share of violence, which like obscene language, seems to be a must with audiences these days.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that the Oscars had the lowest audience rating in two decades. Even the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in Fontana the same Sunday turned out to be a flop. At least it was less violent than some of the Oscar winners.

I had to go to Los Angeles two weeks ago, something I do only under extreme duress. Otherwise, I’d rather stay on this side of the 57 Freeway. I still haven’t forgotten the late afternoon last year when it took me two and a half hours to get from a meeting in Costa Mesa to a lecture presentation in Pasadena, a trip that should have taken only 45 minutes.

My latest destination was the 32nd floor of a new skyscraper at Seventh and Figueroa. I hated the thought of that morning traffic jam. Suddenly I remembered Metrolink, and got busy on the Internet to get the details. After a half hour of browsing (I’m slow on this medium) for the best schedule and other details, I had my trip all figured out. Leave downtown Pomona at 8:48 a.m. on the Riverside line, arrive at Union Station at 9:38 after a comfortable ride on which I read my morning newspaper. I went down a couple of flights to the Metro subway, which whisked me to within three blocks of my destination, in time to make my 10 a.m. meeting. All for $6.75 roundtrip, which is the senior rate.

The hardest part: figuring where to park in Pomona and figuring out how to use the ticket machine, but I allowed myself plenty of time for both, knowing next time I’d have it easier. Learned the hard way: the correct exit to take from the subway, which cost me two blocks.

As for getting into the huge building, I felt like I was going through airport security again. Boy, has this nation become paranoid.

I hate to throw away old Champions. They’re too much fun to read again. Under my computer shelf is a stack dating back to 2005. I found it necessary to do some downsourcing (my neodefinition for tossing stuff out) because it was becoming shreaded by my feet.

On page one of the August 20, 2005 issue was “Proposed Don Lugo stadium studied.” A study session lead by interim superintendent Mike Rossi led to the same conclusion that stadium backers are facing three years later—where’s the beef? Mike was top school dog while the board was out looking for a permanent one. The Don Lugo folks were getting antsy because a few months earlier Board President John Pruitt had announced that it would be built.

An earlier issue that month told about the county district attorney’s investigation of alleged conflict of interest involving the school board president, who happened to be Bobby Grizzle. The case is still awaiting trial, which means it’s gotten about as far as the Don Lugo stadium has. In the same old issue was the case of Raymond Yi, Orange County sheriff’s marshal arts instructor accused of pulling a gun on the Los Serranos golf course. After delays and a mistrial, it’s now being heard in the Chino superior court.

Chino Valley trivia time

2008-05-18T16:57:00.000-07:00

You’re an real oldtimer or a dedicated historian in Chino Valley if:
—You can remember where the first Chino telephone dial center was, and what the telephone prefix was when dial phones were put in.
—You can remember the name of the road along the base of Chino Hills that was replaced by Highway 71.
—You can locate where the first Battle of Chino monument was placed.
—You can locate the hitching ring on the curb in downtown Chino.
—You can remember the type of trees which lined Central Avenue north of town.
—You can remember where Chino Downs was and what it was used for.
—You know where and what Workman’s Circle was in Carbon Canyon.
—You can remember where Parnell Girls School was located.
—You can remember the name of the Chino High principal in 1955.
—You know where Chino’s first neighborhood park was.
—You know what dairy farmer’s yacht appeared in the movie “Some Like It Hot.”

The first dial center was on Seventh Street, opened in 1948. It’s now occupied by the Seventh Street Theatre. Back then Chino was in the LYcoming prefix area, but you only had to dial five numbers to reach anyone in the Pomona exchange system. In 1959 a new dial center was opened on Yorba Avenue north of Walnut, just after nationwide dialing was inaugurated. Chino became NAtional 8, or 628 as at present.

Highway 71 replaced Garey Avenue, which extended from south Pomona to Eucalyptus Avenue. Those going to Corona then went south on Pipeline to Carbon Canyon Road, now Chino Hills parkway, and east to Central Avenue, and south on what is now El Prado Road to Pine, and east to the Chino-Corona Road.

The first Battle of Chino monument was placed on Boys Republic property in September, 1946 at the north side of Eucalyptus Avenue where its bare cement pedestal can be seen today among the row of trees. After the symbolic cannon was twice stolen, in 1962 and 1964, ( and only once recovered) the monument was rebuilt with another cannon at now old Fire Station 2 just to the east.

One hitching ring remains on the curb near Sixth and D streets, where patrons of the bank tied up. A second one was apparently lost during rebuilding in the area.

Richard Gird placed olive trees on both sides and in the center divider of north Central Avenue. Later pepper trees were planted, emulating Ontario’s Euclid Avenue. The center divider was later eliminated (and later still restored). The last peppers removed in 1959 because of rot.

Chino Downs was a quarter horse breeder and trotting track south of Chino Hills High School. It was located between the intersection of Pomona-Rincon Rd with Highway 71, and the present Butterfield Ranch Road to the west.

Workman’s Circle was a Jewish retreat built in Carbon Canyon by Hollywood area people, and was located near the entrance of the present Oak Tree Downs at the south end of the golf course. Several of the cottages burned in the Carbon Canyon Fire of 1958. Club El Circulo, a swimming and horseback country club, was built on the site in 1961, but was short lived.

Parnell Girls School was located in a small valley west of Highway 71 and Riverside Drive, behind where the Great Indoors store is. It was razed in 1981 to make way for Rolling Ridge Estates, first major housing development in the north Chino hills.

Sebring Park, between Sycamore and Oleander northeast of Oaks and Walnut in Chino, was the city’s first truly neighborhood park. The ¾-acre playground and picnic area was dedicated in June 1965 on land bought by Star Developers, a local firm which built Parkside East on land acquired from the estate of Roy Sebring, early day Chino rancher.

Johnstone (Stone) Walker, a craggy faced Irishman, was principal at Chino high from 1948 to 1957, succeeding E.A. Morrison. He stepped down and was followed by Gerald Litel. Wilford Michael and Al Searfoss were next.

The 82-foot yacht Portola, belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Rose, owners of the old Chevonshire goat dairy on south Euclid Avenue, was used in the 1959 comedy hit “Some Like It Hot,” starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Before that, Gretchen and I and some friends rode the boat to Catalina Island and back as guests of the Roses.

Life without TV?

2008-05-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine living without television?

Impossible, you may say.

Television is a lifeline with the world at large. Without it we would never have seen man walk on the moon, the tragedy of 9/11 first hand, the fun of New Years following the clock from Australia to Hawaii, on-the-spot election results from Pennsylvania, or the reality of war in Iraq.

Television is an invaluable baby sitter for mothers at wits’ end, a meaningful supplement to teaching in the classroom, a way to get around expensive tickets to ball games and a relief from boredom.

It can do your thinking for you, take you to church, give you insights into crime fighting and courtroom procedure, drown out a spouse’s yak or a baby’s cry, teach you new culinary tricks and test your intellect. You can leave it on all day or evening, as many people do, and it keeps you company whether you’re watching it or not. It can help lull you to sleep, or bore you out of your gourd when you’re awake.

Comparing television screens has become one-upmanship at parties, in bars or with neighbors. Direct view vs. flat panel. High definition. LCD, plasma, rear projection, 60-inch screens. How you got a $1,200 set for $999. Satellite vs. cable. Your monthly cost and how you got your service for $29.95 (did you forget to say for how long?). Television setups are replacing the automobile as fodder for bragging rights. Of course, this is a man thing. The women are more concerned with Oprah, Dancing With the Stars and American Idol. Let the men worry about the size and the shape of the screen, unless it messes up the living room décor, which is a woman’s domain. With all these benefits, how can you do without it?

Believe it or not, some people do. They may not be pried away from their cell phones, but television is not part of their daily lives. They tend to read more, to have discussions at the dinner table, to become engaged in outside activities, play games like chess or bridge that require supreme concentration, or enjoy the peace and quiet of a noiseless house.

I have to admire them even if I don’t think I can emulate them. But my recent cable bill did give me pause, because I am not a heavy user of television. An hour a day maybe, unless there is a golf or football game on. I watch more television at other peoples’ houses than I do my own.

So when Time Warner raised my cable rate $3 this month, I stopped to do some figuring.

Television is still only costing me $2 a day. Not bad, I guess. It’s there if I want it, even if I only have an outmoded 27-inch screen. Every once in awhile they change the channels, which makes it tough on me because my set is so old I’ve lost the directions on how to plug in new stuff or eliminate channels now skipped.

My original remote failed a year ago, and my universal replacement doesn’t have things like “mute,” although I can reduce the volume to achieve the same thing. I find it hard to believe that some of my friends who have all the super-new television setups have to use two remotes to turn them on or off. That doesn’t say much for progress.

Since I use cable I don’t have to worry about the mandatory switch to digital, when analog is fazed out this summer. With great effort I went on line to order a couple of coupons from the government to buy those little black boxes I will need on a couple of sets around the house that still use a regular antenna. I hope my electronic order went through because I haven’t received the coupons yet.

Next I should write about my home computer. Considering the cost of my Internet hookup, the huge amount of time lost to crashes or adjusting to updates in my programs, and the questionable value to the betterment of my life, I think I was ahead of the game before I had one.

Old fashioned? Not really. I have a cell phone. I just don’t turn it on unless I want to call someone.

History bit bites dust

2008-05-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

Even brick buildings get blown down if someone huffs and puffs enough. Earlier this month one of Chino’s oldest buildings made way for new development.

A two-story brick structure in the Chino Industrial park was one of two buildings remaining from the old beet sugar factory that was the backbone of Chino’s economy at the turn of the last century.

Clearing of the old sugar factory superintendent’s office, and surrounding open warehouses, makes way for four new industrial buildings totaling 118,000 square feet on five and a half acres at 13501 Fifth Street.

This site was the heart of the sugar making operation brought here by the Oxnard Brothers at the behest of Chino’s founder, Richard Gird. He contributed land and water to bring a much needed boost to his farm economy and land sales, which were in the doldrums four years after he subdivided the Chino Ranch.

Still remaining from the old sugar plant is a double warehouse building housing the Shield Packaging company, once known as Shield Aerosol, until environmental regulations did away with that propellant. Before that it was occupied for many years by the Mary Carter Paint Company.

Xebec Building Company went through all the paces associated with dismantling a historic building, submitting a Historic Resource Significant Evaluation which determined that the century-old building was unsound. The Chino Valley Historical Society had no objection.

A monument sign and raised planters made of bricks from the old building will mark the site’s historical importance. The new buildings have been designed with elements reminiscent of the architectural style used in the late 1800s.

During the sugar factory’s construction in 1891, a Santa Ana wind blew down three quarters of the 30-foot high two-foot thick brick wall of the main building because the mortar hadn’t hardened. It was quickly replaced, and on May 8 the first shipment of factory machinery, mainly from Germany, arrived on 16 railroad cars. Flags of the United States and Germany flew from the factory staffs. The machinery was accompanied by a Germanspeaking staff of engineers and administrators experienced in the process.

They formed the nucleus of a German community which resided on the west side of the small town, mainly along Fourth Street, which was known as “Dutch Row.” On August 20, at 2 p.m., Mrs. Gird, who had earlier laid the first brick, turned on the steam to put the factory in motion.

In 1891, until the factory went into operation, the town of Chino had 12 dwelling houses and four or five businesses, including the Champion. Up to 200 workers came in to build the factory. By the end of the year there were 150 houses and 500 people.

At its peak in 1916, the factory produced almost 340,000 100-pound sacks of sugar during a 97-day run, operating around the clock. The factory operated annually from August through October.

The factory buildings were demolished in 1937, twenty years after the plant closed. After the 1917 “campaign” the Chino operation was combined with one in Oxnard. Beet growth here faced soil depletion and disease, and the war took away much of the help. Torn down was the mammoth brick main building, the palatial residence of the superintendent and the sugar workers’ clubhouse building. The land, owned by the American Beet Sugar Company, was subsequently acquired by Chino Valley rancher Paul Greening, who established the Chino Industrial Park. Included was the brick buildings taken over by Alfa Leisure, producer of recreation vehicles. His son Robert Greening took over the project upon his father’s death.

Several factory-employed families remained in Chino after the factory closed in 1917, and played a prominent role in Chino’s development. Among them were the Bertschingers, the Jertbergs, the Sholanders, the Wellses and the Grays. Although the closing had brought a major exodus of employees, many were seasonal anyway. By the end of World War I the community had developed other agricultural resources, and soon a cannery and a walnut packing house would become the center of the local economy. Years later it would be the dairy industry, some of it on land that once produced sugar beets.

The questionnaire

2008-05-04T18:53:00.000-07:00

I usually ignore questionnaires that come in the mail. I feel they are a waste of time, and usually mask some ulterior motive. Not only that, but the questions are often so one sided that an honest answer is impossible.

Recently I received two pages of questions so loaded that practically all the dots I would have filled in were in the “undecided” column.

Such as: “Should we work for serious tort reform to protect individuals and small businesses from predatory lawsuits?” What’s the matter with protecting all businesses from such suits? And what do “serious tort reform” and “predatory law suits” mean? Usually such definitions are in the minds of the beholder.

The last one on the list felt like I’d been tossed a grenade. “Do you agree that sowing the seeds of democracy and freedoms in the Middle East is a worthy goal?”

By what method, I wanted to know, before I gave anyone a blank check. If those “seeds” involve shrapnel and torture, I don’t think so. If they mean a grounds up education and enlightenment program, improving the economy and demonstrating that our social values are worthy of adoption, then I’d say that’s a good goal. But I wouldn’t use attempts to make Saudi Arabia a democracy as an example. That’s where their oil seems more important to us than enfranchising women or making them wipe out terrorist bases.

I marked “undecided” again.

This questionnaire came under the heading of “Republican Party Census Document,” sent to me because I’m a registered Republican. I have been since I started to vote, except for one exception, when I changed for a short time years ago in order to vote for a friend in a Democratic primary.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is not the Republican Party, although it claims to be. Not my Republican Party, at least. Mine wouldn’t ask stupid questions like “Should Republicans fight for a balanced budget,” when they know that few Republican administrations, or congress members, including the present ones, have really fought hard for balanced spending. That would mean eliminating protective regulations, subsidies and pork, thus losing supporters.

Anyway, to make the old guard happy I filled in the “yes” dot, knowing this was a traditional part of the Republican field of dreams. I left one section blank. It started with “Yes, I support the RNC and am enclosing my most generous contribution of (up to $500 or more).” I had finally found the real purpose of the questionnaire. All that other stuff fit in with “Is the sky blue?”

I was tempted to fill their tongue-in-cheek dot next to “No, I favor selecting liberal Democrats over the next ten years,” but I resisted. I know that all Democrats are considered liberal by the Republican National Committee, so it was a loaded question even if it was facetious.

Now if they had asked whether I would consider electing a liberal Republican, I would have told them something they didn’t want to hear. Or even a “moderate Republican” or better still a “pragmatic Republican.” But no such luck. Anything left of conservative Republican doesn’t sit well with the RNC.

I could consider voting for a conservative Democrat without breaking with family tradition. My father, who could have had “GOP” embossed on his white business shirts, once admitted to voting for FDR—I think it was for his third term in 1940. That was a shock to his young son, who had been promoting Republican Wendell Willkie on the playground.

As it turned out, it was just as well that Mr. Willkie wasn’t elected. He wouldn’t have survived his first term, because he died of heart disease a month before it would have ended. It was right in the middle of the war, and the Republican running mate, senate minority leader Charles L. McNary of Oregon, died six months earlier than Mr. Willkie. Can you imagine being without a president or vice president about the time the Battle of the Bulge was about to begin?

Mr. Roosevelt died five months after his fourth term election in 1944, but by then we were on the road to victory. Republicans and John McCain take note. Be darn careful of who and how old the running mate is.

If the liberal Democrats have a questionnaire, I wish they would send me one. I would anticipate questions like:
—Should we get out of Iraq by Veterans Day?
—Should the government take over the stock market?
—Should all Americans receive a guaranteed income?
—Should we open our borders to our neighbors?
—Does a balanced budget really matter as long as there are hungry Americans?
—Should business be taxed heavily to ensure that all Americans have medical coverage?
—Should the Alternative Tax on income be retained at a fixed level despite inflation?
—Should the federal government be more involved in setting standards of education?
—Should the minimum wage be increased to bring everybody above the poverty level?
—Will you enclose a most generous contribution of $25, or at least $2.50 to cover the cost of this questionnaire?

I’d be surprised if they even offered a row of “Undecided” dots.

Every life is a story

2008-05-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

Last October I wrote about receiving a letter from Claudette Bass of Chino Hills, an occasional correspondent, concerning the death of her beloved soul mate Squeaks, a 12-year-old mutt whose companionship had meant so much to her during her bouts with terminal cancer.

She was also thanking us for the two tickets to the L.A. County fair she won for her reply to my conundrum about the Balfour Declaration, a British foreign policy statement regarding the formation of Israel after the First World War. (There were two declarations, which she correctly mentioned.)

Mrs. Bass couldn’t get to the fair, because her illness kept her pretty well confined to her hedge-shrouded home on Lugo Avenue, where she lived with a number of cats and dogs, including Squeaks. It turned out, though, that she had been to the Irish Fair at the Fairplex after winning two tickets from us two years before.

She wrote me (longhand on decorative paper, because she had no computer or email) that Squeaks had helped keep her alive. “His rich, happy life with me is my only comfort as I mourn him and must face more chemo and treatment without him.”

I had to tell Mrs. Bass that we didn’t run animal obituaries, because we’d be flooded with them. I didn’t mention that she could buy advertising space for it, because I knew she had little money, and was just hanging in there.

Claudette attributed her winning answer to her great interest in world history, and her travels, including the Mideast. She was a prolific writer and poet, but had little success in being published for pay, and had boxes of rejects to show for it.

Her letters to the Champion included a response about the controversy over Ramadan song at Hidden Trails Elementary…

"As a Jew I have not experienced any downplaying of Christmas. It propels our economy and is a focus as soon as Halloween passes. I simply go about my life and accept this is the culture. And the fuss at a school board meeting over the language in The Handmaiden’s Tale… Suddenly a segment of parents were upset about the approved listings which were “contrary to our community’s moral and ethical standards.”

She compared this to the “intense necking and kissing” she saw at Ayala High when she went to pick up her son, the too-casual clothing worn by students, and the F-word language she heard from parents caught in traffic outside the school. To say nothing of what young people see in movies and on TV.

At other times she complained about rate increases for trash and sewers, and bemoaned the junk thrown along her street from passing cars, the broken glass which she found around her house “which has no sidewalks,” and the way the city cut the trees.

One time two years ago she sent me a packet of letters on a variety of subjects, and invited me to choose one for publication.

She praised the style of the Champion’s obituaries. “Each person seems specific and real, and although I never knew them…each mention is like a short story.” She said she had been an obituary writer at the age of 24 for a newspaper, but was let go because the editor wanted only the basic facts of birth, death and services, while she felt that family information should be included.

Despite her illness, “I want to be as active and as part of life as possible,” she wrote in March, 2006. She said that despite her physical condition at that time she did spring cleaning, weeding and mowed the lawn. She had come to the upper Los Serranos area from Alhambra about 11 years ago, but felt shunned by the neighbors. She and her husband had separated but he kept her health insurance going. Both he and their son Ethan now live in Texas.

Her house now is full of memories, writings published and not published, and until recently a large inventory of clothes the petite lady loved to wear. Her pets now number four cats and one dog

Last week I got a telegram from Texas to let me know that Claudette Bass had died two weeks before, at her home on March 12, an event apparently unrecorded in the community.

Her surviving pets and her house are being cared for by a homeless woman she took in to help her in her declining health.

World traveler, adventurist and author, who became a cancer-stricken recluse, she was 57.

I think she would be pleased that our readers would have more than the bare facts of her passing.

Were there trees here?

2008-04-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

One of the least documented aspects of Chino Valley history has been its trees. Chino’s celebration of Arbor Day earlier this month provided an incentive to delve into the question of just what trees existed here in the 19th Century when Don Antonio Maria Lugo received the Chino land grant, Isaac Williams took over the ranch and Richard Gird founded the community.

Around Chino Valley there are some very old oak trees, leading to speculation as to their age. It was suggested to me that some may go back 150 to 200 years.

I was skeptical. Chino Valley historically has been classified as semiarid, and I didn’t think that near-desert conditions were friendly to the development of mighty oak trees. Furthermore, I have never come across a reference to oaks in the historical material I have read about our valley.

Old photographs of our area show very little in the way of trees. Those that were here, except for willows, sycamores and cottonwood that lined the water courses, were brought in by settlers. It is interesting that the city chose sycamores for its new Shady Grove Park on east Chino Avenue, which won’t become shady until the trees grow.

I found reference to orchards planted by the San Gabriel Mission Indians who first developed the agricultural resources of our valley in the early 19th century. But these died from lack of care. Don Antonio Maria Lugo, who received the Chino land grant and many others from Spain and Mexico, planted 1,000 fruit trees within a fenced area near his ranch house located near the site of the present Boys Republic. These also died out from neglect over the years. As during the mission days, the emphasis at the pioneer Chino ranch was on livestock, and not crops other than those planted to feed the animals.

When Don Lugo’s son-in-law Isaac Williams took over the management of the ranch in the 1840s, he planted a small portion of the land with orchards again.

A front page article in the New York Herald of March 11, 1850, written from Chino the previous December by a writer identified only as “T.F.,” paints a picture of the ranch as a Garden of Eden, with vast green acres of lush soil, beautiful scenery, wild fowl in abundance and clear and often mild weather. He obviously visited here at the right time.

Richard Gird, who bought the Chino ranch from the heirs of Isaac Williams in 1881 started the succession of trees that we now enjoy in Chino Valley. He imported exotic species of trees which he planted around his ranch house on the present driving range at the Los Serranos Country Club. Unfortunately, all have fallen victim to disinterest despite an attempt at one time by Cal Poly to tag them for posterity.

Mr. Grid encouraged and helped new land buyers and tenants to plant trees as early as 1888 after he subdivided 20,000 acres of the ranch into small farms and town sites.

Some of the pioneer farmers planted eucalyptus trees as windbreaks, and in 1901, the Chino Land and Water Company and the American Beet Sugar Company planted 30,000 of the gums on the east side, on land that had previously been sand dunes and tumbleweeds.

Mr. Gird convinced the University of California to establish an agricultural experimental station here, on 15 acres he provided just south of the present Phillips Boulevard between Ramona and Norton, and ten acres west of his town core, on land close to Chino Creek, where artesian wells were found. This station evolved into the UC citrus experiment station at Riverside in 1906, forerunner of UC Riverside.

On north Central Avenue in 1891, Mr. Gird planted four rows of olive trees, one on
each side and two in the center divider. Walnut, chestnut, hickory and almond were also provided in that area.

Sunflowers were prolific in the valley, and grew as tall as a horse and rider. Farmers cut up the arm-thick stalks for firewood.

But oak trees over 150 years ago?

Quenstionable. Oaks can live for 500 years or more, are drought and disease tolerant and fire resistant. The young trees have tap roots that reach low into the earth for moisture, until a network of horizontal roots can spread out to provide stability. The main danger to the trees in domestic settings is overwatering.

According to Eugene C. Broderick, a direct descendent of Don Lugo, the front door of the Lugo adobe ranch house here was made of oak, and always open to travelers.

Confusing, interesting Capitol

2008-04-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

If the rest of the country views its national capital as confusing, it’s not surprising. A beautiful shrine, Washington D.C. is a mixedup mess when it comes to traffic, and this has to have had an effect on the government itself over the years. It takes a long time to get from here to there in Washington, or is that just a feature of a democracy?

The city itself was laid out for the horse and buggy era. Its designer was French engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant, hired by President Washington to design a capital on a site picked out by the first president himself.

The Frenchman chose Capitol Hill as the hub for major streets radiating out across the town. On this design is imposed a grid of north-south and east-west streets, providing a series of statue-bearing or parklike circles, where they all came together as roundabouts. Obviously, Washington and L’Enfant didn’t envision the automobile age, any more than the framers of our constitution envisioned the complexities of the computer age.

Throughout Washington the traffic signals are set on a fixed schedule, mostly unchanged day or night regardless of the traffic flow. New, grander buildings continue to replace smaller, older ones, providing space for many more occupants who increasingly clog old streets, narrowed still by the construction activity.

Last year I suggested here that we move the national capital to the middle of the country and start over, retaining Washington as a grand historical park while putting the capital more in touch with the people. Maybe someday someone will listen.

Other than that, my recent four-day stay for the National Newspaper Association’s annual governmental affairs conference was an interesting one. We didn’t pull the big names like we did the last time I was there. In 1994 we not only went to the White House as guests of President Clinton but heard such notables as Attorney General Janet Reno, health and Human services Secretary Donna Shalala and Republican senate minority leader Bob Dole.

Probably the most interesting person we heard this time was aging Theodore “Ted” Sorensen, special counsel, advisor and speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy. Now 79 and legally blind but distinguished looking, Mr. Sorensen continues to write, and remains associated with various organizations that keep him in touch with the machinery that runs the nation, with foreign affairs, and, of course, the Democratic Party.

He plans to publish his memoirs in a couple of months, so held back on any juicy observations that might be contained therein. He supports Barack Obama and predicts he will win the party nomination over Hillary Clinton. He said there will be no Clinton- Obama dream ticket and remarked that if she is elected president, the vice president wouldn’t be Number 2 in the White House anyway.

He reviewed President Kennedy’s policy on Vietnam—“their war, not ours,” and recalled that his president, while supporting the Eisenhower use of “advisors,” had wanted to reduce their number to 700 and get the South Vietnam government to clean up its act.

Equally interesting was Norman J. Ornstein, political analyst and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank “dedicated to preserving the foundations of freedom.” You may have read his newspaper column or seen him on CBS News.

He finds the current election unique in his lifetime. He started out thinking the Republicans would be the ones to have convention problems, now it’s the other way around. He feels Hillary has an uphill battle now, but believes the Democrats have a 70 percent chance of winning the November election, unless something big happens, like another terrorist attack.

The country is unhappy and the economy is uppermost in people’s minds, and concerned that they have no safety net, he said. They are also unhappy with the disfunctionality in Washington. This all weighs down Republican John McCain’s chances.

We went up Capitol Hill, which is like a fortress. Traffic barriers and security screening everywhere. Construction of a new visitors center in front of the capitol building shuts off this area to pedestrians.

A highlight of the visit was to the new journalism museum, the Newseum, a $450-million building which is supposed to open April 11, and should be on the list of all visitors. Sponsored by the Freedom Forum, it is located on Pennsylvania Avenue close to the Smithsonian museums, and replaces the old, more compact Newseum closed in Arlington in 2002.

The museum houses 15 theaters, 14 major galleries and two broadcast studios, most of which had not yet been completed so we couldn’t see them. We did participate in the interactive kiosks and closed TV sets where we could test ourselves as photographers, editors, reporters or news anchors. Plan to spend a half day. Great place for kids, too.

Community voices

2008-04-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

Last week while I was on a trip to our nation’s capital, Sandra Rose filled my weekly column with some poignant thoughts about the Chino meat packing house situation and her family’s history with its predecessor.

For the past two weeks, letters to the Forum have been piling up, exceeding the space we could devote to them. One reason was the annual excursion into opinion writing by students at Chino Hills High, covering a great many areas, from local traffic conditions to the national election and Iraq war. I wish we had room for more.

So this week I am foregoing my own observations to allow us to print more letters, from both students and adults, because I think they represent a good sampling of the thinking of our readership.

Next week, a look at Washington D.C., now that I’ve thawed out and my notes, which were in my suitcase that I FedExed home, have finally arrived.

Blood, sweat and tears

2008-03-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

My Guest contributor today is Sandra Rose, a Chino resident and daughter of Frank and Reva Salter, founders of the Chino Valley Meat Packing Company that is today the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company, center of the abused cows investigation. Mrs. Rose, who has been very active in the Inland Valley Humane Society, and her mother, who has been honored often for her community service, are very sensitive about current developments at the family’s old plant.)

By Sandra Rose

In 1958, my father was a dairy calf raiser who came home from feeding calves covered with milk and manure. He had an idea and wanted to move up in the business world by becoming a meatpacker.

There was no meat slaughtering plant in Southern California that specialized in dairy cows that were no longer milk producers.

He borrowed money from a wealthy dairyman on a handshake agreement. In those days, they were as good as gold. A man’s word was his bond. My mother worried. What if we couldn’t pay it back? Why take such a big risk? We had enough to live on.

My mom and dad were always a team. So off they went to find property to build my father’s dream. Chino, with all its resident dairy farms, seemed the perfect location. Finding a location was easy compared to designing a USDA approved facility.

The plans were drawn and redrawn until every drain and its location was approved by the USDA. So many people and entities looked over the drawings that it would be impossible for any important part to be overlooked. Even though all the health and safety concerns were met, there was one very necessary item overlooked by everyone.

The offices were two story, and there were no stairs in the drawings to get up to the second floor. Everyone had been so concerned about the correctness of the “kill floor” that they missed the most obvious. They ended up adding a metal stairwell that was so steep it was like being on board a ship. Today OSHA would probably never approve it.

My family still lived in Long Beach, so everyday after school and every weekend we drove to Chino to see how the construction was coming along. It was my father’s pride and joy, after me.

One can imagine how complicated it was to build a beef slaughtering plant. The meat is moved along on rails that hang from the top of the building. The building must be strong enough to hold a massive amount of weight. The kill floor was designed and built larger than we would ever use so that at some future time, production could increase. The coolers could always be added onto later if anyone wanted to expand production.

I remember the plant’s first day of operation. It was like launch day at Cape Canaveral (now Kennedy) in Florida. We were in the middle of Mission Control without computers. Check the boilers, check the rails, check the coolers, etc. USDA veterinarians and meat inspectors were everywhere. It must have taken an hour for the first cow to be processed. Every step had to be checked and approved. And every step was checked and approved.

During the 15 years from 1959 to 1978 that my family owned the business, 100 to 125 cows were processed daily.

Some great stories came out of those years. Like the time a live cow made it through the “kill floor,” jumped off the loading dock area, and ran to the dairy next door. A Chino Police Officer shot it in front of a USDA veterinarian so that the meat could still be processed.

When you own your own business, your family spends most of their hours there making it all work. It was truly a second home to my father, my mother, and me.

My parents took great personal pride in the building, the grounds, the cattle, the meat, and the whole business. I was just a kid and spent time running around the hay stacks and the corrals. Wild chickens used to lay their eggs in the bales of hay. It was like an Easter egg hunt every day.

The carcasses were wrapped in damp shrouds before being pushed into the huge coolers. The next morning at 1 a.m. I would often go with my father into the coolers to help pull off shrouds so the trucks could be loaded to leave at 4 a.m. When I was older, I actually worked in the office doing the paper work that sent the trucks into Los Angeles for their deliveries to meat buyers.

My father died in 1975, and my mother ran the business for almost three years before selling it in 1978. She dealt with Teamsters, cattle buyers, meat inspectors, and employees. Many of our employees had worked for us since we opened in 1959. I remember during my father’s funeral one employee, who always had a smile on his face, coming up to my mother to give his condolences.

The greatest sympathy card received by my mother was sent by a well respected man in the meat business. He hand wrote the very simple statement that “Frank left the memory of a good name.” I am afraid that this is what the current owners and operators of our old building have lost. My family left much blood, sweat, and tears behind on those grounds, and my heart is broken.

Chino gets a bum rap

2008-03-13T16:47:00.000-07:00

"Beef recall tarnishes Chino’s image” screamed the page 1 headline of the Daily Bulletin on Thursday, although there is little supporting data in the story to support the declaration. Back in the Champion’s early days, its editors often took issue with the San Bernardino newspapers regarding information concerning this area.

Chino’s image is not tarnished, despite the opinion of the daily. A community that lived for decades with a “prison town” image, only to have it fade away as both the prisons and the city grew, has come a long way because of the positive things that have taken place here. There’s no cause for the shame that outside newspapers would like to impose on us.

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin is now published in San Bernardino, where it is both edited and printed. It has become more evident in recent days that the newspaper is becoming out of touch with the community. (In a story on the same page, a Chino police officer was identified as a member of the Montclair police department.)

The Westland/Hallmark cow treatment raises interesting questions: Are the two employees videotaped mistreating the slaughter-bound cows being made the scapegoats for a broader crime? And did the U.S. Department of Agriculture go overboard on the issue of the national meat recall?

Obviously, the buck doesn’t stop with the two employees. Management had to know what was going on. While company officials acted responsibly in shutting down operations immediately, we assume the district attorney is taking a hard look all the way up the management ladder to see who had knowledge of what was going on.

And how about the USDA trying to dump the whole liability on Westland/Hallmark by saying the joint companies will be responsible for the cost of the recall. For one thing, USDA says there is no evidence that the meat processed by the Chino plant contained any contamination or that anyone has been harmed by it.

It was the USDA itself that was negligent in this case. But why? Because the government cut back in its funding for inspections. Why? Because of budget deficits. So the taxpayers and voters have to bear part of the responsibility. The paradox is, what we save in taxes we are losing in higher costs for the products we consume, because of the recall.

Visiting the bookshelf (again)

2008-03-07T13:35:00.000-08:00

Bill Bryson entered my home via a Christmas package. I told him he’d have to get in line, that my literary pile was already growing because of the holidays. The pile included biographies of Earl Warren and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

I have just finished “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid,” Mr. Bryson’s exaggerated but funny memoir of growing up in mid America. The Thunderbolt Kid is his alter ego fantasy derived from reading comic books.

It’s so much fun to read a book that makes you laugh out loud, which the Thunderbolt Kid did. Particularly just after you’ve wrestled with biographical tomes about people like Eisenhower and Warren.

I first met Bill Bryson in his “Walk in the Woods,” the story of his trek along the Appalachian Trail with a longtime friend. In that one, the author had just returned home from 20 years in England after meeting his wife and settling there, and was catching up on American morals and mores. Being both an academic and a liberal, he suspended his humor long enough to express anger at what he saw, both from a conservation aspect during the jaunt through the east coast mountains and his new contact with his native land a couple of decades after he left it.

Likewise, in Thunderbolt, he has some harsh recollections of dark occurrences that linger in our heritage, such as racism in the pre-civil rights south, and social concerns such as the state of education and juvenile delinquency, among others.

I guess that much of my amusement came from the fact that Mr. Bryson’s humorous recall of schoolboy antics and misdemeanors, although apparently exaggerated, brought back memories of the deviltry of my own childhood 20 years earlier. This allowed me a second chortle, to match those I had while reading his Peck’s bad boyhood.

It turned out that there’s some truth to the powers of the Thunderbolt Kid. I had almost finished this part of the Rolltop Roundup early last week when he zapped it off my screen and out of my C-drive, rendering it lost forever. That’s why you got Metrics and Measures instead. I had it in mothballs for just such an occasion.

Ike, our 34th president, grew up in the heart of America, in his case God-fearing Abilene, Kansas, much like Des Moines, Iowa, the Bryson birthplace. This endowed them both with a strong moral feeling about their country, despite their penchant for hijinks, but their lives took very dissimilar roads.

Michael Korda traces “Ike, an American Hero,” from Kansas through West Point, to a lengthy but rather unproductive Army career between two world wars, then through his rise from lieutenant colonel to five-star general in World War II. Much of the book deals with the Africa and Europe campaigns during which Ike rose to international fame. His post-war political career and presidency get much less space, although the latter provides the reader with flashbacks on the era of the civil rights revolution.

The bridge that linked Ike to Earl Warren was his appointment of the California governor and erstwhile presidential candidate to the role of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953.

The civil rights revolution is also at the heart of Los Angeles Times editor Jim Newton’s “Justice for All,” covering the life of Earl Warren, the Alameda County prosecutor who became Chief Justice of the United States during the country’s historic growth years of 1920 to 1969. It is a fascinating look at the transition of crime-tough, conservative DA Warren into a somewhat liberal member of The Brethren, particularly his role in famous rights decisions. Here again I found dark memories of such injustices as the Japanese internment during World War II, which Governor Warren supported, and the great racial injustices that he later marshaled the Supreme Court to rule against.

In moving faster on civil liberties than President Eisenhower was prepared for, but John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson welcomed, Chief Justice Warren encountered the enmity of Ike, who reportedly remarked that appointing him was “the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made.”

If there is any common denominator among these biographies it is that the subjects all grew up in poor families (the Warrens in the San Joaquin Valley), were intelligent but notably lazy high schoolers, yet rose to their ultimate heights through hard work and achievement. Despite their adulthood dissimilarities as writer, military leader and lawyer-justice, they nevertheless turned out to be fine examples of the American tradition of making the most of opportunities.

How now, metrics and measures

2008-02-25T20:31:00.000-08:00

Metrics never have taken hold of this country. The last major effort to convert occurred in the seventies, just after engineers had abandoned the slide rule in favor of computers, which were more adept at dealing in tenths.

Recently I read where the subject of continuing to teach fractions was being debated, but as long as this country is “off the metric,” it would probably be a good idea, even though few people use fractions in adult life, except to cut pie. When was the last time you added, subtracted, multiplied or divided a fraction? Mainly they’re used in school for thought process development.

Our non-metric time and distance measures remain in another world. Time is divided into 60 seconds, years into 12months. The Gregorian, rather than the lunar, calendar remains a world standard. Distance for us remains a matter of fractions for the most part, like one big U.S. track meet. The World Olympics are another matter, which we adjust to every four one-hundredths of a century.

I got to thinking the other day, what if we converted time to metrics?

We have already developed the idea often years makes a decade, 100 years make a century, and l,000 centuries make a millennium (even if we aren’t consistent about when a millennium starts).

The problem is, how to divide our years, months, weeks and days into tenths. Unfortunately, things weren’t set up that way during the Creation, nor has anything better evolved. In a year, the earth insists on making 365 revolutions of the sun, and in a month the moon insists on going its own way, translated into lunar cycles, which are anything but divided into tenths. The length of a day is actually 23 hours,56 minutes and 4.091 seconds, called the mean day. The year is actually 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, 9.5 seconds.

Julius Caesar established the Julian Calendar in 46 BC. The actual length of the year turned out to be CCCLXV and a fourth days (darn fraction). Every fourth year, with a few exceptions, a day was added and we called it a leap year. It wasn’t until730 AD that it was discovered that the calendar year was too long, but nothing was done about it until about 10 days had accumulated. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII dropped the 10 days after Oct. 4, moving the calendar ahead to Oct. 15.

I suppose we could divide days into 10instead of 24 hours, and hours into 100minutes instead of 60. That leaves us with the need to redo the second, of which there are 86,400 in a day. So let’s create seconds based on 100,000 in a day, or 10,000 in an hour, and 100 in a minute. Fine, but then how do we redefine geographic distances and geometric angles, since they are all involved with degrees, minutes and seconds which the world has come to accept. Galileo, where are you?

Pondering the mysteries of Creation and the fallibility of the metric system, we have to accept the words of William Cowper (1774) and zillions of preachers since then that “God moves in a mysterious way.”

A commission of French scientists developed the metric system in 1799. The U.S. Congress authorized it to be used for weights and measures in 1866. Science, pharmaceutical and manufacturing sectors adopted it.

In 1964, the National Bureau of Standards policy was to use metric system except when it would obviously impair communications or reduce the usefulness of a report.

I was on the school board soon after, and when kilometers started appearing on highway signs along side mileage, we decided to add metrics to the curriculum, in addition to new math, which turned out to be a ridiculous way to confuse students. No wonder the math requirement was boosted another year for graduation.

The U.S. Trade Act of 1988 declares that the metric system is the preferred system for weights and measures. So length (and height) is in meters as well as in rods, furlongs, cords, cables, hands, leagues and knots. Mass in kilograms as well as pounds, tons (U.S. or British), etc. Time remains in seconds, electric current in amperes, temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius (centigrade).Volume can be measured in gills, area in acres and hectares; weight in bales, carats, drams and stones. Paper and other objects are packaged in gross, quires and reams. We use horsepower for engines (also rpm),gauge for guns and caliber for ammunition. At least one metric standard all students quickly learn is that 100 pennies make a buck. Now if they would only learn to spend it wisely.

CORRECTION: In last week’s Rolltop Roundup the name of C.C. Moseley, who established the Cal Aero flight training school here, was misspelled. Major Moseley moved his school here from Glendale, not Burbank.