@George-Those pictures are amazing. They really tell the story.
@Bruce-Here is a winter newspaper delivery story for you. My family's second winter in MI found my older son, Brian, delivering (Detroit News) papers one Sunday morning. That weekend, his dad and younger brother were on an Indian Guide camp-out at one of the local cabin camps. It had snowed on Friday and Saturday (3-4 ft), but Sunday brought the fiercest wind I had ever seen. So, as a good mother should, I offered to drive Brian on his route. The sky was gray, outside temp was in the high 20's, but the wind chill was in the negative twenties. The snow was blowing and in some places had drifted as high as the mailboxes at the driveways' edge. So, I dutifully drove my son on his route. The only other person driving on the roads that morning was the mother of the other paperboy (Oakland Press) whose dad and younger brother were also on the IG camping trip.
Below is a map of the main aqueducts that provide water to all of the San Diego area reservoirs, including the Sweetwater and Otay lake reservoirs. The aqueducts are large underground pipes that begin at the Lake Skinner treatment facility in Riverside County.
Also, below is a picture of the Colorado River Aqueduct intake facility near Parker Dam on Lake Havasu.
As I mentioned in a In Memory post,Robert Perdue was the Quality Superintendent for the Sweetwater District. Robert was the boss of the current general manager, Jim Smyth, when Jim was hired as an engineer. Sadly Robert passed away in 1985 of a heart attack.
George - those pictures and maps are amazing. Thank you! I see the All American canal at the bottom of the state that my dad worked on - probably in the 1920/30's. Here is a cool image of the AA canal from space:
As far as living in the same house, my parents lived in the house that Rosie's dad built for them in 1954 until they died. I sold it last August after 60 years. A lot of memories in that house. Now I don't have anyplace to stay when I come visit.
Reporting here from Aspen:. The snow is steep and deep this winter. I love my snowblower. We'll still be sending water to you from the Colorado River.for awhile.
Treasa: Good story. Luckily for me I only delivered milk in Detroit with my Uncle Rey in the Summer. I had never thought about what it would be like in the winter. Moms are truly something else. Maybe they ought to have a special day, just like the fathers, no?
I don't know how the paperboys escaped Jimmy Hoffa and The Teamsters' wandering eye(s), but I do know that he is reported as having died in Bloomfield Hills (the same suburb my parents were married in). Maybe I should post the wedding day 8mm films on the internet.
John: I asked a former ASB president of the HHS (a little younger than us) about purchasing his parents hosue and he told me he was not interested because Chula Vista was turning into a "resort' town and he figured he could make $$ renting it as a vacation rental. There are some houses down in Corinne's neghborhood that are advertised in just that manner.
I wonder how much water gets into Otay Lakes via the Dulzura Conduit (there are photos here somewhere) vs from the Colorado River.
The last time I remember encountering the Continental Divide was skiing in A-Basin/Arapahoe.
I recall it snowing 10 feet one weekend in Mammoth*. On one occasion, there was so much snow you could walk onto the roof without ever touching the deck from behind that tree on the left. I may be mistaken but that might be one of the Marvelettes and her dawg. Woof, Woof.
*Apparently the Mammoth record is 16 feet in four days in December 2010, right about the time of my birthday.
Thirty five degeees is downright tropical here, the banana belt.
Actually, my son-in -law grows bananas and mangoes in his 50' Community Greenhouse Dome (to prove you can grow anything anytime. anywhere) It looks like the Garden of Eden, his actual name (Eden, not garden)
This is a new model, but Windstar, John Denver's think-tank, gave him Bucky Fuller's dome from their property they had for 30 years. He will use it as a classroom. Bucky was a regular lecturer there
I am sure most, if not all of you remember going to the local drive-in theaters like the Big Sky on Main St., Harbor in National City and South Bay near IB.
The South Bay and Santee are the only drive-in theaters left in all of San Diego. Recently Hollywood stopped making movies on 35mm film and went all digital. Since digital projectors have improved and apparently produce enough light, theaters around the country are switching to digital. The South Bay recently replaced the 35mm film projectors with digital systems and then fired the projectionist. Projectionists around the world are losing their jobs to technology. Now any employee can insert a disk, enter the codes (provided by the distributer) and set the timer. Projectionists were the highest paid employees in theaters –a soon to be lost profession.
I worked at the South Bay Drive-In in the summer of 1965. I had multiple tasks each evening:
The first thing I did was sell tickets at the entrance. A challenge was to spot cars that may have people in the trunk. A clue was cars with just the driver or appearance of an extra load in the trunk. I would ask them to open the trunk then asked everyone to get out and buy a ticket. Management wanted us to move cars in quickly so that people would have more time to get to the snack bar before the picture started. So we missed a lot of folks in trunks, but most of them ended up buying food and drink in the snack bar where the theater made a lot of money.
At the Intermission, I worked in the snack bar. We were allowed to eat anything that was not packaged such as hot dogs and French fries. But not candy. If we wanted to drink coffee or soft drinks we needed to bring our own cups. The theater is located near some open fields, so often the snack bar was “invaded” by tiny frogs. They liked to jump into the grease where the French fries were cooked.
Later in the evening, I “walked the lot”. I carried a bag with tickets and change and would stop cars trying to sneak in through the exit. We were told to be polite and just tell them how much they owed for tickets. Most paid, but a few said they had made a wrong turn and departed. A police officer came buy often to help out if there was trouble.
Also, I kept a lookout for cars that had brake lights lit up. Often when occupants were “making out” on the front seat, one of them would unknowing put their foot on the brake. Brake lights are bright and make it difficult to see the movie screen from cars behind. I would knock on the window, and tell them I did not care what they were doing, just please “keep your feet off of the brake”.
Each Wednesday around about 2am, after the last show, I was paid a flat $7 (a lot in 1965) for putting up the marquee, no matter how long it took. The job was usually completed in less than an hour. I had to work on a narrow ledge about 8 feet off the ground. If I did not have enough letters, I would have to go over to the Big Sky (owned by the same company) and borrow some. Their marquee was high behind the screen so it could be seen from the freeway. It also had a narrow ledge where the letters were kept in small storage bins.
Here is a drive-in intermission message from the early days:
SOUTH BAY DRIVE IN--HOME OF MOVIE STAR MATHEW MODINE
Mark Modine was the manager of the South Bay Drive-In when I worked there. His family lived in a mobile home park located behind the theater. They had 8 kids and a burro. During the day the kids would ride the burro around the drive-in lot. Modine was promoted to a VP position in the Sero Company, the owner of the theater. He was able to get one of his older sons, Mathew, into the movies. Mathew Modine has been in a number of movies like “Memphis Bell” and "Pacific Heights". I had heard that his sister still works at the South Bay.
The San Diego U-T ran an article on Mathew Modine a few years ago and it covered his living near Imperial Beach. Here is a section of that article:
Incidentally classmates Jim (Lacina) Bradley and Larry Walton also worked at the South Bay. When we were attending Southwestern we met the SB projectionist, W.T. Ross, who was also taking courses and he got us the jobs at the drive-in.
Until recently, there was no digital motion picture system that could match the resolution or brightness achieved by the carbon-arc 35mm projectors used in regular and drive-in theaters until the 1980s. I have not seen movies with the newer systems, so not sure if they are the same.
These projectors were neat precision instruments that exceeded the brightness of later Xenon lamps that replaced the carbon-arc light source on 35mm projectors.
The carbon-arc produced a very bright white light with the same technology used in search lights. Two carbon rods--about the size of a fat pencil--had a high electrical power applied. When they touched, they would burn at the tip with a light so bright it could only be viewed through a thick "smoked" glass.
The 35 mm film had better resolution than digital projectors. Resolution is measured by the number of lines/rows of pixels or rows of electronic scanning for classic television. Here are some comparisons:
Classic Television since the 1940s--NTSC standard: 525 lines
HDTV: 1024 lines of pixels
Ultra HDTV now used in theaters: 4096 lines of pixels
35mm resolution equivalent: 6000 lines
Possible future Ultra HDTV: 8192 lines of pixels.
In the 1950s, Cinemascope was invented as a way to help movies compete with television. With this regular 35mm film was used, but the picture was "squeezed" by a special anamorphic lens on the camera. The projector used a similar anamorphic lens that widened the picture:
This is what the 35mm film looked like. Note the squiggly lines on the right are the sound track. I got this piece of damaged film from the South Bay projectionist. (I don't remember the film and don't know the actors)
How the scene appeared on the screen projected through the anamorphic lens:
Regarding drive-in movies: In the summer of ’66, I had two jobs in order to raise money for traveling through Europe the following summer. One of them was working in the snack bar at a drive-in theater in Huntington Beach. At first I rotated with the other workers, doing the food-serving (onto the customers’ trays), and working the cash register. I was ready to pull out my hair with the tedium of filling popcorn boxes, filling soda cups, etc., and the others didn’t like working the register because of the pressure to “rush” and the confusion some of them experienced, so I opted to become sort of a register specialist….getting faster and faster (no gold stars). George was spot on with his reference to employees bringing their own mugs or glasses, because the sodas and coffee were dirt cheap, but they did inventory by counting the cups. CAVEAT: if you go to a snack bar at a drive-in, don’t eat anything that isn’t in a pre-sealed package, like candy. We sold anything to the public that had been dropped on the floor, other than upside-down pizza. [true!] And…what we sold as “butter” ladled into the popcorn – which cost extra – was heated lard with yellow food coloring added. I cracked up when I saw George’s intermission ad; I remember ours as including a cartoon Italian chef who pushed “the pepperoni pizza with the musha-roomie-room sauce.”
Thank you <<everyone>> for sharing so much with us, i.e., all of your wonderful photo's, clips, video's & "Flash from the past" great stories on this amazing HHS Message Forum. -- So much fun! -- Enjoying this connection very much & continually appreciate you & look forward to your next postings. ,,..
Below is a better picture of a drive-in theater newspaper listing and also a listing for regular theaters, including the Vogue. These are from the San Diego Union in 1963. Note the adult-only feature at the South Bay.
Interesting that Andie also worked in a drive-in snack bar. I agree with her food comment (My daughter worked at Roundtable Pizza and says that she will never eat there.)
I know Tom Liscom worked at the Vogue. (I bought pool supplies from him for many years until we took out our pool)
One thing more about "walking the lot" was that at the end of the show, I went to the exit area to attempt to recover speakers that people forgot to take off their windows. I often heard a pop when the speaker cords were pulled out of the pole and at times heard cars hitting poles. When some patrons discovered they still had a speaker they would toss it out on the pavement. So I recovered some of these each night.
Every afternoon, it was the projectionist's job to repair and replace speakers and poles. That job took a few hours. Projectionists belonged to the same union as movie cameramen. You can see the union "bug" at the end of movie credits:
Yo Adrienne, Yikes: Do I want some colored lard with that order? The process of "re-purposing" food from the trash was not unique to drive-ins. I'll mention Jack-in-the-Box and not mention a famous pizza place.
My first drive-in experience had to be the Harbor, followed by the Big Sky and then the South Bay.
The only film that I definitely remember was The Great Escape at the South Bay.
It appears that the Harbor continued to operate into the 1990's since Mrs. Doubtfire came out in 1993.
Coming up next, why did the drive-ins fade away?
South Bay (1974) looking like it did when I saw Steve McQueen (1963-64?)
Reverand Robert Schuller (a distant relative) started his ministry in the 50's in a drive-in-theater in Garden Grove, Caifornia. People could come to church in pj's or whatever. As his congregation grew he built the Crystal Cathedral there in the 60's where he could preach to 100's inside and out, having both a drive-in and walk-in option.
Perhaps the drive-ins would have survived if more offered this, as people could just fall asleep on Saturday after the movie and wake up to the sermon Sunday morning. (confession optional)
I remeber another theater that was a little more obscure. It is called the George Gillow Backyard Theater. We were in Jr. High when George used to show movies in his back yard theater. Complete with a projector room, screen and seats arranged. The premier showing I remember was "The Creature From The Black Lagoon." Still a great classic. Apparently George's interest in movie theaters goes back long before he worked at one.
I MUST CONFESS SHAYNE, that is an interesting notion. However, where would the Holy Water come from? Hopefully not the lard bucket.
(I was rooting for the Broncos, but they just weren't bucking in the stall it seems. All is not lost, Andrew Luck went to Stanford, where my nephew went to Law School. The Cardinal is happy.)
Long hair? Hollenbeck Canyon Semi-Official Badger Patrol photo circa 2015.
Can we turn the radio back on for 3 or 4 minutes?
"Friends will arrive, friends will disapper" [by the bucket-full]
Probably would get the water from Colorado. All water is holy water. But if you are in South Sudan, take one of President Carter's water filters to avoid Guinea Worm. 3 million cases in 20 countries before, now 126 cases since he took his filter to Africa. You wear it like a necklace.
Poor Manning, He is only as good as his last win Quad injury. He may hang up his jersey. How is Michele"s knee? She looks fab! Is that a TBT foto?
And the image of George's Cinema Paridiso in his backyard is enchanting What did you think of the Globe choices George? My cousin will send images of the E Street Garage for the Chula Vista Historical Society when she returns home from Arizona in March. Thank you for the follow up Such a wonderful tribute to Grandma and Grandpa Fender.
stopped making movies on 35mm film and went all digital. Since digital projectors have improved and apparently produce enough light, theaters around the country are switching to digital. The South Bay recently replaced the 35mm film projectors with digital systems and then fired the projectionist. Projectionists around the world are losing their jobs to technology. Now any employee can insert a disk, enter the codes (provided by the distributer) and set the timer. Projectionists were the highest paid employees in theaters –a soon to be lost profession.
The theater is located near some open fields, so often the snack bar was “invaded” by tiny frogs. They liked to jump into the grease where the French fries were cooked.
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