Burbankers Remember

 

Edited by Wes Clark

 

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An old TV show began, "There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them." If this is the case for New York City, there must be over 90,000 stories for Burbank!

 

The idea of this page is to capture some of the memories, lore and interesting tales about life lived in Burbank. The criterion for inclusion is that the tales be specially about life in Burbank - there are other forums for the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere. And, after all, the web site is named "Burbankia," right? I'm looking for things like using old Lockheed linen for dresses, or Burbank's Breathing Bush, or Love From Above - stuff like that.

 

To submit your Burbank stories contact me!

 

Wes

 

2/8/12 - Buena Vista Street Memories, by Wes Clark:

I posted an interesting photo to Burbankia, Lockheed workers rolling out assembled P-38 "Lightning" warplanes. This image should cheer any lover of liberty because the P-38 was the scourge of Nazi Germany. Indeed, there is flyer testimony that these planes terrified Nazis. Anything that would terrify Nazis has to be praiseworthy, right?

I like this photo because I know this intersection very well; I used to ride my bike up Buena Vista St. (left to right) past it. Later, with my driver's license, I'd drive past it on my way to work at the family business, The Lincoln Cafe, a hole in the wall which catered to Lockheed workers. In fact, I lived on Lincoln St. 2 1/2 blocks away to the left of this photo. I know that marked Buena Vista and Vanowen intersection very well, too. I once led an expedition of two into a flood control waterway tunnel and emerged back into the sunlight there. We carried rolled up burning newspapers for light like the angry peasants in a Frankenstein movie.

Vanowen ran parallel to the railroad tracks and ended at a tee at Buena Vista; you had to take a left and head towards Lockheed (and this photo site) or a right and down towards my neighborhood. During the Sixties, at this tee, there lived a single mother whom I am convinced was one of the most unfortunate women in Burbank. She owned, or more likely, rented, a house which was set down at the end of Vanowen. Despite the fact that the Burbank traffic engineers put red flashing lights and barriers in her front yard, drunks heedlessly roaring down Vanowen frequently wound up in car wrecks in her front yard when they didn't turn onto Buena Vista. I said that it was set down; what made it worse was that her house was inset somewhat low into the ground at that point, so that cars got some air time on the way into her front yard. This happened innumerable times in my youth; my Burbank pal Mike says it still does. (In fact, there was a crash about three weeks ago. He says the street hardware there always looks new!) She had an emotionally unstable son whom all the neighbor girls were afraid of. I was never glad of his company at the nearby park. As I recall, he talked about sex constantly. At the time I thought that if ever a kid was destined to be a rapist, it was he. Life must have been hell for that poor woman.

Inevitably, I was a Lockheed employee for a time (my father worked there and it was the biggest employer in town), from April 1979 to February 1980, and I labored in the area shown in this photo. A menial maintenance worker, I used to drive a small, gasoline powered Cushman scooter and picked up various bits of trash found collected in this area. Once, somebody had called in a bomb threat in the building later erected where this shot was taken. Lockheed management cleared the building and deployed myself and some other dispensables from floor to floor to empty waste cans. When our labor senior steward learned of this, he told us to cease and desist immediately. It was the one and only time I felt like the union was on my side.

Lockheed was driven out of California by the strident anti-business regulations as well as the environmental costs levied by the state legislature. The astronomical Worker's Comp rates didn't help, either. Making calculations with a Google street map based on the lengths of P-38s from Lincoln St., it appears that there is a Marriott Hotel swimming pool now where this image was taken. Where there was once bustling wartime activity there is now leisure activity.

Two last bits of hometown trivia: Buena Vista Home Entertainment, part of the Disney Corporation, was named for the street in Burbank. Why? Because the Disney Studios sits on the lower end of the street, about 2 1/2 miles away. On the northernmost terminus of Buena Vista St. sits St. Francis Xavier Church, which Mike and I have always informally called the "Flip Off Church." Why? Here's what you see from the street.

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12/19/11 - I Know Who Killed Burbank's Celebrated Breathing Bush, by Rob Weaver:

"Steve Brown. He was my little brother's best friend. They were in about 5th grade when we took them to the breathing bush late one night around 1969 - 1970. They just about jumped out of their skin when the bush breathed. But then on a dare, Steve, who was built like a fireplug, suddenly let out this terrific yell and ran as hard as he could into the bush. We heard a loud crack and thump and Steve, howling in pain staggered back out of the bush. In the dirt under the bush was what looked like half a metal football with a broken pipe sticking out of the end. Silence fell upon us. The bush breathed no more. Pandemonium broke loose as we realized that Steve had killed the breathing bush. But then a dower sadness ensued as the consequence sunk in. We would no longer be bringing the unbelievers to the bush to savor their terror when the bush took a breath. It was a long drive back to Van Nuys."

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12/5/11 - Some notes from Marti Baldwin's mother, as told to her:

The first has to do with the Gregg Building which is located on the south east side of Olive, just above the Radio Shack (formerly the drug store). This probably took place in the mid to late 1920’s or early 1930's but I am not sure. Apparently the man who owned the building did not like it when anyone parked their car on his property. He would be upset if even part of their car was over the property line and would go out and carefully pile rocks on the part of the car that was over the line.

Another story had to do with the old John Muir building which was located across from Burbank High where the Office Depot is now. Apparently, also in the 20's, on Halloween, some boys swiped someone's cow and somehow got it into the school and led the cow all the way upstairs to the cupola area at the top of the building where they left the poor thing tied up. They did not find it until the next morning when its frantic mooing caused someone to go look for the source of the sound.

My parents were married in 1937 and lived on Doan Drive. At that time, the street was not paved and there was a woman who was agitating for pavement. Her name was Mrs McCoy and she said that she wanted the streets paved with "Ashfeldt." Consequently, they called her "Ashfeldt McCoy." Around this time, there was a huge rainstorm and the street got a large pothole in it which got larger by the day. The residents had complained about the pothole which had grown very large and when it rained the hole filled with water so it could not be seen. The city's police car came down the street and almost disappeared in the water filled hole. Shortly after that Mrs McCoy got her wish and the street was paved.

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11/11 - Some random notes from Fermer Kellogg, a Burbank old-timer, as told to Mike McDaniel

The 3G Distillery was made into a sub factory for Lockheed just before WWII; that is how it went out of business.

The winery that is now Jefferson Elementary school had a guard who drank a little too much and once broke open one of the big vats; it flooded several of the homes below it.

Fermer and his father (who after working at the Empire China factory went to work for the Union Ice Company here in town) would go to Jeffries Barn on fight nights and shave ice off of big blocks into troughs to put beer in. These would be chilled by fight time for the patrons to buy.

A hobo jungle was a place under the Verdugo Bridge where people who rode the freighttrains would stay. It was off of a railroad spur that went by. One guy would come by to Kellogg's mother's and grandmother's house and ask to trim bushes for a meal. He brought his own shears. Kellogg found out from one of the guys there that his grandmother's house was noted and described on the underside of the bridge as a friendly place to get a meal for a little work.

The Menasco property was once a dairy and his family would go into the cow fields and pick mushrooms that grew there fertilized by the cow dung.

Another dairy was at the intersection of Hollywood Way and the tracks called Thompson's Dairy. There was also a slaughter house near there and his family went there to get meat.

The original Valhalla Cemetery entrance was off Hollywood Way where the Portal of the Folded Wings is today. The famous Aimee Semple McPherson had an interest in an adjoining cemetery; she also built the church on the corner of Providencia and Third Street; Kellogg heard her preach there every Sunday.

Kellogg knew of a bookie house on the corner of Delaware and Sixth Street it had 26 phone lines going into it.

There was a Montgomery Ward store on San Fernando Road between Magnolia and San Jose. No one shopped there so they left and it became a junk yard by the name of Martins' Junk Yard.

The area below where Glenoaks and Elmwood intersect was originally wheat fields; many people went there to work the wheat.

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7/5/11 - From Bruce Foreman (via the BHS Senior Bulldogs Newsletter) - The Snow of '49

Herb, Your photo in the last issue of the recent snow storm brought to mind my experience of the snow storm on Jan. 13, 1949. I remember it well but not because it was your wedding day! I was in the middle of my first year at the University of Redlands, and that was the day, with the foolishness of youth, I decided to ride my Whizzer motor bike from Burbank back to the University (72 miles away). It was a one cylinder, belt drive miracle on a reinforced bicycle frame and might go 35 mph on a level road with the wind behind me. I started about 2 PM, struggled over the hills in Eagle Rock, through the Pasadena traffic. It was getting cold and dark and it began to snow! In Southern California? Who ever heard of such a thing? On Foothills Blvd. just beyond Upland some Bozo made an illegal u-turn in front of me and WHAM!, I smashed into driver's side door. (Did I mention that I had no lights?) I'd burned out both generators about Covina but thinking myself invincible, I decided to keep going. Well, after a delightful ambulance ride to the Fontana hospital, and a half dozen stitches to my forehead later, I called my family to tell them I was okay. "What do you mean 'okay?' What happened? Where are you?" The upper classman who lived across the hall came and drove me on to Redlands not too much the worse for wear. But that was the end of the Whizzer. It was trash. I lost my driver's license for a year and lost any desire to ever get on a two wheeled motorized death trap again. My next vehicle and the first car I ever owned was a tank, a 1932 Oldsmobile!

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7/1/11 - From Charles Catlin - The Family Home

My name is Charles Catlin. I was looking over your collection of early Burbank photographs and found my uncle, Louis Catlin, in the John Muir Junior high school program 1933-4. The Catlin family are one of the founding families of Burbank; we moved into the area just before the turn of the century. My grandfather, Charles W. Catlin, already in law enforcement as a sheriff, hired on as a constable in 1911. My father, William E. Catlin, was on Burbank's police force for 38 years and I believe Louis, also, was on the force. Our home built before 1900 is on 915 E. Orange Grove St. and is still there.

It was moved to its current location by a coal-powered tractor in 1901 from the area down by the Los Angeles river because of issues with annual flooding. The story goes that my grandmother wasn't comfortable with the whole idea of moving a house so she sat in the front doorway for the whole trip! My family sold the house several years ago and I have no interest in reacquiring the house. I will be moving to Arizona in the next couple of months and saying goodbye to California after living here for 57 years.

(The story about the house came down to me from my father who was born in 1911, so it is third hand.)

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6/27/11 - From Nickolas Carreon - The Dip

Every day I would travel east on Victory Boulevard to go to school, and I would pass the Dip. At five points - the most dangerous intersection on the planet - there was a hand-made sign in the median in the middle of two-way traffic on Victory Boulevard that read: "Left Turn OK For The Dip." I don't suppose we'll ever know how many people lost life and limb crossing oncoming traffic from multiple directions in an attempt to get a pastrami sandwich.

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8/16/10 - From Tim Avery - Best Airport Food Ever

Click here for article

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7/9/10 - From Mike McDaniel - Operation Cookie Lift

One way Burbank supported the troops in the Vietnam War was via "Operation Cookie Lift." This was started by Doris Vick, who would have people bake cookies for the soldiers from Burbank and ship them to Vietnam in old film cans from the studios.

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6/4/10 - From Wes Clark - Walking Home From School

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6/3/10 - From W. Martin - the Cornell Theater

Ahhh....The Cornell Theater. As I sit back enjoying a cold bottle of my favorite suds, a warm breeze gently stirs the leaves, and my mind drifts off to the summers of my youth, a lifetime ago. The Cornell was the place to be on Saturdays. We would pile into our parents cars and get dropped off for an afternoon of movie fun. The experience started with the line forming outside, usually for a double-feature matinee. The line was a place to clown with your friends, ogle the girls, and of course, stare in wonder at the coming attraction posters on display. The lobby of the theater was a mind-blowing assault to the senses. The smell of butter-drowned popcorn tickled your nasal cavity, while the candy display case delivered the fatal blow to your wallet. With a garbage can sized drum of popcorn, you would race to your worn-out, taped-up red felt chairs, planting your feet firmly to the fly-tape like sticky floor. The lights would dim, the camera would whir away, and the film would begin... Truly the best days of my life.

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5/28/10 - From Wes Clark - Pneumonia Alley

I want to preserve the Burbank memory of one of the interesting features of life working in Lockheed's B-1 plant: Pneumonia Alley. My father, who worked often at the B-1 plant adjacent to Empire Avenue (he was a Lockheed employee from 1955 to 1976), first described the place to me. I found the term amusing. Later, when I worked at the Lockheed reclamation yard at B-1 (1979 to 1980) I got to know the place well. It was a breezeway formed by two closely adjacent buildings which obtained a common roof at some point in its life - at least, that's what it seemed like. The name came from the fact that both ends were open, and a constant breeze flowed through the place. It was pleasant in the summer, but foul and objectionable on very cold days - hence, "Pneumonia Alley." You can see workers emerging from the alley in this wartime image by no less a photographer than Ansel Adams!

Like my father who got me my job, I used to work in plant maintenance, which meant that I was required to shuttle around B-1 in a small Cushman scooter picking up trash, moving things, etc. Whenever I had to drive through Pneumonia Alley I got the distinct impression that I was not in a plant where cutting edge technology airplanes were built, but, rather, a Disney dark house ride. Specifically, the Snow White ride, at the part where the dwarves were working in the mine and singing "Heigh Ho." Pneumonia Alley was always rather poorly-lit, and looking to the left and the right while driving through it one could see the various cutting machines being used to manufacture parts, with machinists walking around tending big pieces of aluminum and pushing what looked like mine cars. It was actually rather picturesque in an industrial fashion - or hellish, depending upon your point of view.

I was once given the assignment to clean the interior of some large ductwork that extended over a portion of Pneumonia Alley; I have never forgotten this job. Being 23 and agile, I was the stuckee for this mission, which required me to fit into a metal space approximately three feet square (I am 6' 4"), and to crawl along its length, all the while swiping the interior tops, sides and bottom with a rag. The length of the ductwork was perhaps 150 feet. Fortunately I didn't suffer from claustrophobia! What they didn't tell me, however, was that hot air normally flowed through this ductwork. Whatever it was that produced the hot air was shut down, but I found things getting quite warm about mid-length. It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to do the job, and it felt like the air in the long middle section of the duct was over 100 degrees. A Tunnel through Hell! By the time I emerged on the other side I was thoroughly drenched in sweat, and spent the next few minutes gulping down large amounts of water.

So it is a curious fact that my most vivid memory of a place called Pneumonia Alley is of suffering from great heat!

I performed three other interesting maintenance jobs while at Lockheed... One required that I wear rubber hip waders into pool of God-knows-what-chemical and manually peel off big accumulated hunks of plastic from the surroundings. This was on a device that carried big sheets of aluminum along a track and sprayed a very thin coat of the yellow chemical and the plastic onto the sheets, the excess falling into the pool. I recall thinking when I was standing in the pool, "Well, it doesn't get much more industrial than this!" How wrong I was.

One time somebody phoned in a bomb threat, and management sensibly had the interiors of the buildings cleared. The Burbank Police arrived with Fire Department pumper trucks, etc. Quite a scene. We maintenance guys were assigned to go from office to office emptying trash cans - until the Union stewards got wind of it and angrily voiced their objections to management. We were soon told to desist.

The job that really caused me intense mental reflection, however, was the day I had to scrub down a big, greasy, computer-controlled milling machine with methyl ethyl ketone (MEK), an industrial strength solvent. This machine was a nasty mess because the milling process threw large amounts of oil and aluminum shavings all over the device. Obviously, in order to paint the machine the oil had to be thoroughly removed. I had the good sense to wear thick rubber gloves but, for some reason, I didn't wear a respirator. Being a young, tough and immortal former Marine I figured I didn't need it (real men are not intimidated by industrial solvents), or one wasn't handy - I forget. The job took me about an hour. I didn't notice the fumes as being especially objectionable at first, but the longer I worked the worse I felt. Finished, finally, I removed the gloves and staggered outside for some fresh air. As I sat on some big pipes feeling my brain cells die off one by one I could see the plant rotating around my head, and had to grip the pipes in order to keep from falling over. I forget how long I sat there, dazed, but I have never forgotten the thought that came into my head: "If you attempt to make a career out of this job you will be a drooling idiot by the time you are thirty-five." It was then that I decided to quit Lockheed and go to college to gain a degree in electrical engineering, which I achieved four years later.

It's funny, every now and then I'll have a dream about once again working in Lockheed's cavernous plant, or driving through Pneumonia Alley. It isn't a bad or upsetting dream, and upon waking I am left with the notion that there were industrial sights left to see or places still to explore...

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5/28/10 - From Kathy Falk - Memories of Dad

My Dad's name was Bill Brake. He gave me nothing specific, just little tidbits through out the years. Telling us about the then non-existent Burbank Mall. Mentioning that his Dad worked for the Ice company and how they would always have extra people at their dinner table during the Depression. His love for roller skating at the rink, I believe in Glendale.

He had the same Kindergarden teacher that we did, Mrs. Winter. My Grandmother lived on Scott Rd. There was an open field across the street and we could see the Coca Cola plant and the Colima (sp) (was that the name) theater, which, of course, we attended on occasion. I'm sure there was more, but we were kids and we heard what we wanted, the the rest is history... Sad to say. Interesting fact: My Dad met my Mom crossing the ocean on the Queen Mary. They were both in the military and coming home from Europe.

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Mike Toon's True Stories - Some of which are Burbank stories.

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5/25/10 - From Eldridge Ballew Keller (via the Senior Bulldogs Newsletter) - Life in Wartime

I just wanted to give a little story of living across the railroad from Lockheed.

My Dad had retired after 30 years in the army when we moved from Virginia to Burbank. Quite a trip in a second hand car, 3 kids, and Mom and Dad. Dad never learned to drive a car, so Mom did all the driving.

We lived on Myers St. a few blocks from the railroad, and Lockheed. My Dad started his second career at Lockheed, and spent 20 years working there. Before the war started, he could walk to work, crossing the railroad tracks and he was there.

Lockheed was camouflaged as a grape vineyard, the San Val outdoor theater was also camouflaged, but I don't remember what it was supposed to be. We had soldiers and anti-aircraft guns in various streets in our area. The soldiers weren't much older than we kids were, and at Halloween they went trick or treating with us. Can you believe that would happen in these days?

My dad was a block warden, going street to street to be sure all of the windows of the houses had no light showing through. Remember the ration books, the saving stamps, the saving bonds, etc.?

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5/10/10 - from Jim Baldridge - Burbank Restaurants

Did you or do you remember going to Frank's Steakhouse in Burbank? Wow... I sure do. When I was looking on the net I came across their website.

My dad was a "regular" back in the mid 60's and 70's and used to take me and my brother there almost every weekend... loved the food there! Cheap, basic, diner classic stuff. My father passed away last month (he was 77) and the last time I talked to him (a week before he passed) he has said that the original owners had retired (Frank's) and sold the restaurant to new owners, kind of made me a little sad in a way hearing about this, but, hey, life goes on and things change I guess. I'll sure remember those pancakes with dad on Saturday mornings... they always were the best!

Also, I hear that they have re-opened the Deli restaurant again that was changed to Harry's family restaurant that I remember for years, but no website on them as of yet. The Burbank Deli was another great food stop, I used to go there sometimes with BHS buddies for a quick lunch or a coke back in the early 80's... wow, great times!

Response from Wes Clark:

Burbank restaurants... I have some stories about Burbank restaurants...

I ate at Frank's once and only once, as an eighteen year-old in late September 1974. I remember it well: Dad took me there for dinner one night, and since I was due to enter Marine Corps boot camp the following week this fact emerged in a conversation with the waitress. (Dad always chatted up waitresses.) The waitress got sort of misty-eyed, made some comments about how young and good-looking I was and gave me a free dessert. It felt really weird, like I was going off to war or something. I never ate there since. It wasn't that I was avoided the place, it was just that it really wasn't one of our Burbank haunts.

My primary Burbank haunt with the Old Man was Albin's Drugstore on the corner of Hollywood Way and Magnolia. I was stationed at Camp Pendleton from 1975 to 1978, so it was an easy drive to Burbank on the weekends. (My parents always measured my drive by the number of cassettes I listened to in the car and would ask, "Was it a two or a three cassette drive?") Every Friday night after I arrived home Dad and I had dinner at the counter of Albin's, more or less by default. (Mom was at the family business, the Lincoln Cafe, where we would join her by 8 PM to help out with the Lockheed swing shift crowd.) I recall walking up Hollywood Way to Albin's front door from the parking lot one night and thinking, "Another Friday night, another dinner with Dad at Albin's. Will this ever change, I wonder?" Nothing lasts forever, of course, and now Albin's is gone like my father. How I would like to have one more meal there with him...

I suppose as long as I'm on the subject of Burbank eateries I should mention the continuing attachment Dad and I had with the Tally Rand. Beginning circa 1970 or so Dad would take me and our family friend Angela (our mothers worked together as waitresses at Sargeant's) to dinner there on Sunday nights. I guess Mom was working Sunday nights and so was Angela's Mom, which is why they weren't around for these trips. Sometimes we sat in the front, sometimes in the back, where the funny cartoony wooden cut-outs of a fox hunt were mounted on the walls. Anyway, my dinner never varied - it was the "Scottie," a patty with some melted cheese on the top, served with a baked potato. This went on for years. Fast forward to one Sunday night in March 1975, when I was in the Marines. Dad and I ate at the Tally Rand and I had a Scottie for old times. About an hour into my usual Sunday drive back to Camp Pendleton my stomach started feeling queasy. Finally I could hold it in no longer... about a mile from the front gate to Pendleton in Oceanside I pulled over on I-5, rolled down the window and threw up violently. Funny... I was more upset with myself for getting vomit on the front door of my prized '74 VW Bug than I was about feeling sick. That evening was a very bad one, and the next morning - probably looking sleepless and very green around the gills - I reported in sick and got assigned light duty for the rest of the day. Apparently I had a bout of food poisoning from the Tally Rand Scottie. I have never eaten there since!

Since Mom ran the Lincoln Cafe and had to cook for a living, she hated to cook at home. So we dined out a lot on Saturday nights.

On these Saturday nights during my stint in the Marines Dad and Mom and I often ate at Genio's. I have fond memories of the many fine steaks I consumed there, always with coffee, a large baked potato and slathered with butter. (As a young Marine I was an enthusiastic and careless eater.) They also had a Pong video game in the waiting area that took many of my quarters. Genio's had an unbeatable ambiance; it was darkened and quiet - and the food was consistently good. The only special story I can remember about it was the time that, dining there one Saturday night as a family, we resolutely decided to stop looking at Cadillac Eldorados and keep our Ford LTD for a while longer. The following day we bought a 1975 Cadillac Eldorado. So much for strongly-worded Clark Family resolutions. While I was in the Marines and off duty in Burbank, my uniform was jeans, sneakers and a tee-shirt. Hard to believe I actually went to nice resturants dressed in this fashion.

After I got out of the Marines I lived at home for a time (1978-1979), and while this was the case my parents made a practice out of eating our Sunday breakfast at Don's, on Glenoaks. Our breakfasts at Don's were expansive. We'd buy the Sunday Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and spread the pages all over the table, reading while waiting for our food. We knew all the waitresses by name and felt like visiting royalty.

Our other big family haunt was Leon's in North Hollywood, now long gone. But that's not Burbank.

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5/10/10 - from Joseph Brown - the 1940's:

I lived in Burbank only six years of my present 77. But since that period of 1942-45 coincided with my teenage youth, that Southern California city will always have a fond place in my memory and heart.

My family moved to Burbank from La Crescenta, just "over the hill," in early 1942 when my Dad, a technical writer at Vega Aircraft (later merged with Lockheed) couldn't get enough gasoline due to World War II rationing to make the daily commute.

We bought a small three bedroom tract house at 1630 North Fairview Street (for only $5,000, which wouldn't buy its garage today.)

The war clouds which had gathered when we lived in La Crescenta (I recall Pearl Harbor day there) had now burst wide open. Hitler was gobbling up Europe; Japan was bloodily solidifying its grip on half the Pacific, and Burbank was on a wartime footing. Batteries of anti-aircraft guns now ringed the Lockheed plant a mile from our house and blackouts were an occasional fact of life.

One night in 1942, in fact, those AA guns erupted in anger as searchlights pierced the sky. Turned out a flight of US Navy planes flying at high altitude had lost radio contact with the ground. Fortunately no one was hurt before the error was discovered.

Our neighbors on Fairview Street were on a wartime footing, too.

We appointed an air raid warden, rigged our homes for blackouts, and set up local first aid stations "just in case." To test the stretchers we hoped we'd never have to use, Arthur Q. Bryan, a neighbor whose career was the voice of Egghead and Elmer Fudd in Hollywood cartoons, volunteered. When Bryan's 300-plus pounds didn't burst the stretchers, we knew we had made them well.

After elementary school, I enrolled at John Burroughs Junior High (later upgraded to a high school.) I walked to school each day, an exercise I didn't mind because my route took my past the back lot of the Warner Brothers movie studios. Many a day I was late getting home, preferring instead to crawl under the studio fence and live out daydreams on movie sets there. While Americans were fighting real battles overseas, I fought my own on one elaborate jungle set made up to duplicate a Pacific island battlefront. My favorite, though, was to stand at the helm of a pirate ship left over from Warner epics of the Thirties. Errol Flynn was no better a swashbuckling captain than I was.

Later in the 40s, our family had expanded to eight (my Mom and Dad, a brother, two stepsisters and two half sisters - eight in all) and the Fairview house became too cramped for comfort. My Dad then bought a larger replacement at 726 East Orange Grove, "on the hill," in Burbank parlance, and there I remained until I left home in 1948.

To augment my family allowance, I delivered the local newspaper, the Burbank Daily Review, and mowed lawns on Saturday mornings. How well I remember the banner headline in the Review toward the end of my paper carrier career: "FDR Dies."

On weekends I rode my balloon-tired bike out to Santa Monica and back, usually having to stop and repair a flat tire now and then; once, I biked roundtrip to Castaic, about 30 miles away.

I enjoyed my days as a Boy Scout in Burbank Troop 13, especially the times at summer camp at Camp Bill Lane in Big Tujunga Canyon. Fellow scout Dan Sites and I spent one Eastern vacation backpacking into Big Santa Anita Canyon.

From Burroughs, I had transferred to Burbank High School and there cemented many friendships, some of which remain to this day.

BHS was also the place where my career as a writer began. I was editor of both the school newspaper and yearbook, having changed from a music class, in which I played the trumpet so poorly my teacher threatened expulsion, to journalism, at the suggestion of my newspaperman grandfather, Tom Brown of San Francisco.

While a student at BHS, I also was a "stringer" correspondent on school affairs, mostly sports, for the Burbank Daily Review. We had many students of note to write about (of note later in life, anyway) such as Frank Sullivan, who became a leading pitcher after his school days for the Boston Red Sox (as well as one of the tallest in major league baseball), Vic Tayback, later of "Mel's Diner" fame, and a pert young student named Mary Frances Reynolds who, after winning a Burbank beauty/talent contest and Hollywood screen test, changed her name to Debbie Reynolds (at BHS she was simply "Frannie.")

Before Los Angeles Basin smog wreaked its havoc, I enjoyed hiking into the small hills just east of Burbank, sometimes camping overnight in Stough Park or traversing the six miles or so to the summit where a one-armed forest ranger stationed in a fire tower there always welcomed me warmly.

When I last visited, the Orange Grove Avenue house had been demolished and replaced by a garish modern apartment building although the two tall curbside palm trees out front remain.

Stough Park also remains, a treasured oasis in my memory. Only now a large upscale restaurant, the Castaway, is located between it and the town where once there were only trees and brush. In 1948, I went west from Maine to attend a 50th anniversary reunion of my high school class at the Castaway. Funny how many of the classmates I schooled with had turned so old. And when the then-present BHS marching band showed up and played the school alma mater ("Hail, Burbank High School, hail to the blue and white...") there were few dry eyes in the room, including mine.

Tom Wolfe had it right: "You can't go home again."

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4/27/10 - from Douglas White - Gardens Greens Grabbers:

During the 70's there was a flurry of potted plant thefts in Burbank, all covered by the Burbank Daily Review. It went on for about six months or a year - roughly the time it took to outfit a house and porch with potted plants. It was either made-up by the folks at the paper to fill space, or, was real and I am sure the police never searched for the culprit, or, something... Only in Burbank.

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4/26/10 - from Michael Reighley - The Cornell Theater

I remember well the Cornell Theater. I also remember when they tore it down. [In 1980. It closed in 1978. - Wes] I was working at the McDonalds across the street on San Fernando. My friends and I were able to sneak into the old abandoned theater. We saw how water had leaked though the old dome shaped roof and soaked the seats and sticky floors. Others had been in there as well and tore up the big white screen. We went out to the massive lobby and saw that someone had smashed the snack bar candy display cases - glass was everywhere.

The door to the forbidden upstairs was open and we could not help ourselves but to go up to the projection room. There we could see the old theater that was seemingly massive through the holes where the projectors once stood. We toured around all the nooks and crannies of the building. Behind one door were all the letters that they used on the marquee. Behind another were tickets - thousands of tickets. The Cornell was a neat place to hang out for double features when I was a kid; sneaking in food from the Shakeys bunch a lunch - one friend brought a whole pizza once. The snack bar sold pickles for a while and sometimes they would get away from people and roll down the sloped floor only to land at your feet. I miss the single screen theaters of those days and I guess they are gone forever. The Cornell though will live in my mind forever - dead and alive.

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4/26/10 - from Darryl Eisele - Well Rescue

In early 1941, my parents moved from a little house on Grismer to a brand new house "way out in the valley" on still-unpaved Keystone Street just off Burbank Blvd.

There were few buildings on Burbank Blvd. and the lot between Keystone and Lamer was deep with weeds when they moved in on April 5, 1941.

It was only a couple of weeks later when my sister Marilyn (she had just turned six) fell down an abandoned well in that lot to a depth of about 20 feet, near the corner under what now is Chili John's. The fire trucks had to come from Third and Olive and when they got there, their ladders were too wide to fit down the well.

My dad saved the day by tying a loop in a long rope and bringing her up...