Phew! You will have to excuse me if I do not get out of the saddle. I just rode in from Parts Unknown and I’m afraid if I climb down, both me and the pony are going to collapse in each other’s arms into sweet dreamland. Now this is OK. We all have to cowboy up. Besides. With time traveling all we have to do is make it through the time continuum vortex. I will be in yesteryear before I rode 4,000 miles round trip and I’ll be fresh as a daisy. (“Big” Bill Bonelli was one of the West’s most colorful characters in the 1940s. From the governor to the L.A. Times, he had a decades-long battle with some of the state’s most powerful figures. He also owned the Saugus Speedway)

Today, on our history special, we have census figures, water pressure, a local highway made of gold, nude CalArts graduates, and, one of my favorite phrases, “…an ax-wielding Canyon Country man…” 

WAY, WAY BACK WHEN —

— Prior to the Big Bang, the Santa Clarita was a highly-compressed point of matter and wasn’t even called the Santa Clarita Valley then. Beat that.

— Prior to 1914, all California license plates were privately made for individual customers. 

MAY 20,1920 —

— The Deciduous Fruit Growers Association, that would be the agricultural get-togetherers, not the rock band, met at the Swall Hotel on this date to talk about, well. What else? Fruit trees that shed their leaves at the end of their growth period.

MAY 20,1930 —

— Newhall Water Company was busy modernizing. They started installing the first water meters on this date. They also handed out rather complicated tables for residents to figure out their water pressure depending on their address and time of day. “To find your new pressures, deduct your estimated altitude from 1466 and divide the result by two, which will give you the approximate answer in pounds, subject to deduction for frictional pulls.” Say what?

— We got our census figures back and there were 3028 people in the greater valley (when we were the Soledad Township, our boundaries stretched all the way to Gorman, Palmdale and Chatsworth). Of that figure, there were 1104 people living in Newhall and 151 in Saugus.

— It was the Great Depression and money was more than tight. Local deputy Sheriff J.D. Story quipped that he was going on vacation to the midwest with his family and that he withdrew 75 cents from the bank to finance it.

— Retired entertainment mogul Charlie Mack used to live on 8th Street in a spectacular rock house. On this date, his house guest for the week was the silent film star, Clara Bow. Clara spent the week horseback riding.

MAY 20,1940 — 

— On this date, Newhall Land and Farming sold 20 acres at $550 per to the Los Angeles Unified School District. The Newhall Avenue frontage would be used to build the first high school in the SCV. Tom Frew’s dad was president of the local school board and had been working for two years to help make the deal.

— William S. Hart finally won his “Tumbleweeds” suit. Hart had sued United Artist 11 years earlier for denying him profits on his film by “dumping” a cheap film in 7,000 of their theaters instead of releasing his. The epic silent Western cost a staggering $302,000 to make. Hart won a $278,210 judgment. Interestingly, UA got a slap on the wrist and a big L.A. judge earned a felony conviction for bribery and jail time for being paid off in the first trial, won by UA.

— The war in Europe touched home here. The Nazis bombed Holland, killing hundreds of thousands. Joe Gibson and Ted Kornelissen had relatives there.

— Several oldtimers acting as sidewalk supervisors really gave N.M. Ball something to think about. Ball was building the Sierra Highway/Placerita Canyon intersection. Seems the locals pointed out that Ball was using a lot of rich soil for his road — “auriferous” they called it. In English, gold rich. An ex-assayer estimated that the road base the construction company was putting down had gold, silver and platinum in it to the tune of between $2 and $14 a ton. 

MAY 20, 1950 —

— Bill Bonelli Jr. ran for the state assembly. His father, “Big” Bill Sr. was just starting what would be a decades-long feud with the powerful Los Angeles Times over liquor licensing. The Times would run, just a few days before the election, a trumped-up front page story accusing the Bonellis of being Mafia gangsters. The Times printed a retraction — after the election Bonelli Jr. would lose.

— Congressman Richard Nixon ran for California senator on a lead plank of counter communism espionage.

MAY 20, 1960 — 

— I can’t say it was a message from God, but it does make you scratch your head. Some out-of-town preachers set up an old fashioned revival meeting in a big circus tent at 9th and San Fernando. The tent, all the bleachers, porta-potties and stage were ripped to shreds by a freak tornado touching down. It hit the tent and only the tent.

— Maybe it’s something that ought to be brought back and added to the City’s Cowboy Music and Poetry Fest. We used to have a big event called Placeritos Days, celebrating the big discovery of gold in Placerita Canyon by Don Francisco Lopez in 1842. The 1960 event had over 5,000 people in attendance at the park.

— On this date, the international arm of Rotary granted the SCV a charter membership for 28 individuals and businesses. Jim Keysor, a San Fernando Valley Rotarian, was responsible for bringing that first Rotary Club here. If the local Rotary doesn’t know it’s their 40th anniversary, everyone should really fine themselves severely at the next lunch…

— Newhall matriarch Martha Ann Arman died at 93 at this date — leaving 93 descendants.

MAY 20, 1970 — 

— The building of North Oaks park continued to stall. One county engineer called the vandalism on the site, “worse than Watts.” Vandals had poured sand into bulldozers and broke water mains, flooding and eroding the site to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

— Long before there were plans to level rustic Placerita Canyon and turn it into a condo project, there was another Golden Valley. It was a half-trillion dollar project to make Gorman into a major city. The William Morris Talent Agency was part owner in the project. The Supervisors, of all people, nixed the idea, noting that there were too many earthquake fault lines within the project.

MAY 20, 1980 — 

— They were wild times at CalArts and the avant garde campus was world famous for bizarre antics at graduation. BFA Ana Han accepted her degree nude, save for a G-string and high heels. Patricia Burns stumbled to the podium in a strait jacket. John Boyce “hacked off” his “hand” (complete with special effects fake spurting blood) after accepting his diploma from president Bob Fitzpatrick, followed by sprinting to a rented helicopter that flew him away.

— Got one better. CalArts prez Bob Fitzpatrick was whisked away from the graduation ceremonies in a hot air balloon he piloted. The balloon only traveled a few miles and landed in a field. Fitzpatrick neglected to arrange someone to pick him up, so he tried hitching a ride back to the campus. Problem. When someone pulled over to give the tony arts administrator a lift, they noticed his “blood”-spatted hand and suit and screeched away. Bob the Bloody had to walk back to school.

— For the first time in decades, a California condor chick was hatched in the wild. Audubon Society and Fish & Game officers attended the birth, somewhere in the Sespe.

— Here’s something they haven’t done in a long time — the Castaic Spring Parade through downtown. Too many trucks today?

— An ax-wielding Canyon Country man (and how that flows tripling off the lips) attacked his nearly ex-wife and her boyfriend in their bed. The boyfriend was able to wrestle the ax away from the hubbie. Get this. The man and woman were still married, living in the same house and waiting to settle up property. The man comes home and catches HER in HIS bed with HER boyfriend. That is cold. I guess you could call it, “The Ax Man Cometh…” 

Well. That was a perfectly swank ride. I’m going to find an Epsom salt bath for me and the pony and feel rather confident after a good soak, nap, beer, doughnuts and red meat that we’ll be doing another one of these trail rides next Thursday in the West Ranch Beacon. Until then, vayan con Dios, amigos! 

© 2010 thebostonreport & John Boston. All rights reserved.