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| February 17, 2008 - February 23, 2008 »
Hey look, it's the Gold Line pulling into Union Station! Oops, I'm about 50 years ahead of myself. Does this elevated train look familiar? Or maybe you remember this artist's conception of an elevated train, below, from January 1907.
And why would we need elevated trains in 1907? Because of the congestion. For example, this traffic jam on Main Street in January 1907. Now there are people in this world who don't believe streetcars caused congestion in the early 1900s. I know, because I hear from them whenever I refer to our "sainted" transportation system. As difficult as it may be to accept in 2008, the people living in the early 1900s complained bitterly about the streetcars. In fact, the Los Angeles Times said the streetcars caused "a daily blockade on Main Street."
And no, the elevated trains didn't get built in 1907 nor in 1958. We
just talked about them. Nor did we follow through on the plan to put
light rail down the middle of the Hollywood Freeway when it was being
built in 1947. Because one thing we like to do in Los Angeles is talk
about the terrible traffic. We talk about it, we study it, we draft
plans and then we put them on the shelf. The transportation plans that have
been performed for Los Angeles over the last century would fill a
library.
Yes, it's another transportation map. Note the big loop circling downtown Los Angeles--obviously this never got built. I hope I can find the original as it's a bit difficult to make out what they had in mind.
Speaking of transportation plans that never got built, here's one from 1923. Again, all roads lead to downtown Los Angeles. And in February 1958, Times reporter Ray Hebert took a look at the latest transportation plans being advocated by the MTA. By the late 1960s or early '70s, everything would be running smoothly, he said.
Click below to read Ray Hebert's full story
Page 1: Download 1958_0216_hebert1.jpg
Page 2: Download 1958_0216_hebert2.jpg
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Honestly, if you've seen one 1950s suburban tract home you have seen them all--Everything shiny, new and safely banal with no more soul than an empty shoe box! Of course now they have mature landscaping and burglar bars. I wasted an hour going out to find a model home only to discover that it looked nothing like the drawing. So here's the consolation prize. Note that this neighborhood (unlike Rigoletto Village) is close to downtown Los Angeles.
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Here's 50 years of "progress" in the portrayal of African Americans in newspapers' Sunday comic strips. The top panel is from Windsor McCay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland," as published in The Times on Feb. 9, 1908. To be fair, McCay used this Valentine's Day piece to caricature all the characters in his strip--which is, granted, a fantasy--but Imp comes off the worst by far. I love McCay's draftsmanship and I've always wondered why someone who drew so beautifully was so terrible at lettering. But Imp, even making a generous allowance for the context of the prejudice and stereotypes of the early 1900s, pains me, and I find the character deeply offensive. Which is why "Little Nemo" rarely shows up in the Daily Mirror.
Then we have the great strides in human compassion and equality as shown in "Tarzan," by Dick Van Buren and John Celardo, published in The Times on Feb. 16, 1958. Granted, blacks are no longer so grotesquely caricatured, but the superstitious native tribesmen still need a smart, brave white man to boss them around and the "Ape-Man" to save the day. Of course, the natives are merely foils so Tarzan can leap in and catch the villain, in this case, a murderous, plotting Frenchman. (And for the record, even as a kid I thought "Tarzan" was a stupid strip and refused to read it).
It will be decades before we get to strips like "Jump Start," "The Boondocks" and "Candorville" (below, a panel from Feb. 10, 2008).
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Photograph by Wayne F. Kelly / Los Angeles Times
OK, who are the men with former Dodger Roy Campanella?
Here's a clue: It was extremely unusual for the man on the left to be mentioned in The Times. When his name appeared in the paper, he was usually identified as a civic leader.
- Well, that's C. Norris Poulson in the middle, if I know my mayors. (Nathan Marsak) Absolutely right. He's the "easy" one. The other two men were prominent in Los Angeles in the late 1950s.
- On the right, Bernard S. Jefferson of the Urban League? (Nathan Marsak). Awesome. That's two!
- County Supervisor Ernest Debs? Interesting guess! But no.
- County Supervisor Burton
C.
Chase? Sorry, no.
- Councilman John
S.
Gibson? No, sorry.
OK, I apparently stumped everybody with this one. The man on the left is Franklin S. Payne, publisher of the Los Angeles Examiner, which is why The Times usually identified him as "newspaper publisher Franklin Payne." He died in 1970 at the age of 74.
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Feb. 16, 1938
Los Angeles
Feb. 16, 1908
Los Angeles
Feb. 16, 1908
Los Angeles
Don't go looking for the A.P. Macginnis home on the southwest corner of Bonnie Brae and Miramar--it's gone. But what a place: A 30-room house with an attic and a basement, Tiffany glass fixtures for the electric lights and hand-painted frescoes. Did I mention the 12 bedrooms and nine bathrooms on the second floor? The basement had a bowling alley, billiard room, gymnasium and a "plunge" (a.k.a. swimming pool). Cost was $80,000 ($1,758,963.88 USD 2007).
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Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
I went by Philippe trying to get a good angle on the MTA building.
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Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
I've been waiting a year to get this shot of the MTA headquarters. Happy Valentine's Day!
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Feb. 15, 1898
Los Angeles
Here's Dr. Wong, one of the characters who inhabited Bukowski Square in the 1890s.... Below, a rabid terrier bites a little girl on its rampage through the city ...
Feb. 14, 1958
Samuel K. Terry of Ocean Park has been a shortwave radio addict for many years.
During
World War II, he used to listen to Tokyo Rose lying about how many
American ships the Japanese navy sank each day. He had three sons in
the service.
He has continued to derive great pleasure bringing
in "distance" on his seven-band Zenith. He gets the Voice of Spain from
Madrid, Moscow, BBC from Melbourne, Big Ben in London giving Greenwich
meridian time, news from Montreal and police calls from Houston, Tulsa
and Cincinnati.
He was listening to a Chinese opera about a week
ago when a loud droning noise assailed his ears. It lasted about three
minutes and repeated in an hour and 20 minutes.
HE ATTRIBUTED it to the Geiger counter in the U.S. satellite Explorer and deplored what he considered the end of peaceful radio listening.
 Sam,
old boy, apparently you were felled by the long arm of coincidence.
Other air eavesdroppers say it isn't so. The signals from the Explorer
are so weak onlysuper-sensitive receivers can hear them.
Best guess of experienced shortwavers is that Sam caught some of the disturbance caused by the recent aurora borealis
or has local interference such as a faulty power transformer or that it
was just the Russians, as usual, jamming the Voice of America.
Sam, let's be nice to the Explorer, it's the only one we have.
JOHN BEEKMAN, former Daily News horse picker, is now public relations director for the Los Alamitos racetrack and general manager of a couple of subsidiary enterprises, a nine-hole golf course and a restaurant.
The
opening of the restaurant was set for a recent Saturday. Shortly before
post time, John was certain he had thought of everything--from spoons
to salad dressing.
Then Friday at 11 p.m., his boss, Frank
Vessels, asked if he'd fueled the cash registers with money. He hadn't.
As a newspaperman, he was so accustomed to getting along withou money
he'd forgotten about it.
So the place opened the next morning
bankrolled only with the $8 John had in his pocket and what he could
scrounge from the help. However, by assigning a messenger to run back
and forth to nearby merchants and the post office he muddled through.
WITH THE USUAL journalistic irreverences, John V. Horner was recently inaugurated as president of the National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
To solemnize the occasion, a special four-page edition of Horner's paper, the Star, was printed with the inevitable cartoon of Jack Horner thumbing a plum out of his Christmas pie. It reported that John Daly
was emcee, that Richard Nixon administered the oath of office and that
Gina Lollobrigida, who was there, measures up well to the acclaim which
has been heaped upon her."
The edition also had congratulatory letters from Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
Ike's
message, on White House stationery, stated in part, "While I am
confident that your administration will be highly successful, I feel I
must warn you that as president you undoubtedly will be faced ... with
a few problems. Your constituency will want to know, among other
things, will the Press Club's budget be precariously in balance? Will
you have to resort to increased taxes? If so, why? ... Do you expect to
hold 'summit' meetings with your counterparts in Paris, London, Moscow?
If so, where? These are some of the easier questions. There are more,
much more difficult. For example, would you turn in your suit if you
contact Asian flu? ... My best of luck to you."
SIGN ON A Volkswagen in Beverly Hills: "Made in Africa by Aunts (mine)."
Feb. 14, 1958
My very able assistant, name of Charlie, actually isn't very able.
In fact, at times, he's rather unable. But it doesn't really bother me.
First, because the kid listens attentively every time I explain his
mistakes to him. He's eager to learn. What he lacks in ability and
common sense, he makes up for in heart.
And second, Charlie works cheap.
What does bother me is that he repeatedly finds it necessary to draw me into his personal problems.
Charlie, if you'll recall, is an ex-Mirror News reporter who had a
habit of wandering off to Mexico every time he found a few extra bucks
in his pocket--and staying there for periods of from one to two years.
The last time he came back to Los Angeles, about a year ago, he brought
along a wife and infant son. She was a sweet, simple girl from a small
south Mexico village, completely unindoctrinated in the sly, devious
ways of American women.
And it's been Charlie's problem ever since to keep her out of earshot
of neighboring, more worldly women and yet to shower enough personal
attentions on her to keep her contented with her hermit existence.
And that's where I come in. Being a man of broad background, I'm
constantly being sought out by Charlie to make his personal decisions
for him.
Like yesterday. Charlie approached me with a revolutionary idea.
"I'm going to buy my wife a valentine," he told me.
I congratulated him on the decision. "Women," I told him, "are always
impressed by sentiments like that, Charlie. I'm proud of you for
thinking of it."
He thanked me and I thought that was the end of it.
But it wasn't.
About an hour later, he interrupted me while I was interviewing a skid
row fry cook. "If I do buy her a valentine, don't you think I'll spoil
her?" Charlie wanted to know.
"No," I promised, calmly.
"But it'll set a precedent," he argued. "I'll have to do it every year. She'll expect it."
"Charlie," I answered firmly. "You can catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than you can with 20 casks of vinegar."
Sufficiently confused, Charlie departed and I returned to my conversation with the fry cook.
And I'd estimate that it was two hours before I saw Charlie again. In
one of my hand-me-down trench coats and felt hats, he walked dejectedly
into my office.
"You been out on a story, boy?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I been out looking at valentines."
"And?"
"Nothing. Not one that expresses my love like I feel it."
It took me only a moment to come up with the idea.
"Charlie," I said, "go back to your desk and sit down and write one yourself. And give it heart, lad."
Charlie broke into a smile. "Great. Great idea! The personal touch--and on company time, too."
Again, he was gone. But shortly, he was back.
"I did it," he exclaimed. "You want to hear it?"
"Do I?" I said. "I wouldn't miss it for anything."
Charlie fidgeted for a moment. Then he stood at attention, holding a piece of paper nervously in front of him. He began:
"Because I love you dear, I gotta
"Have you for my enchilada."
There was a long and painful silence, which I finally had to break.
"That's it? That's the loving valentine message you're going to give
your wonderful wife?"
"You don't like it?" he asked. You could see he was hurt.
"Charlie," I said. "It not only doesn't make sense but it's terrible."
But like I mentioned earlier, Charlie can take criticism. He bounces back. It takes him a little while but he does.
In this particular instance, it took about 45 minutes before he
returned. He pushed a card into my hands. On it was a picture of a
poinsettia. I opened it and read the message.
"Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
"How's that for luck?" he asked. "It's been in my desk all this time and my wife really loves flowers."
"But Charlie," I started.
"She'll love it," he interrupted. "She can't read English."
Feb. 12-March 29, 1958
Los Angeles
They were such nice boys. Real gentlemen. Having them around the
apartment was just like company, except for the guns. They said they
weren't guilty of burglarizing that drugstore. They just couldn't prove
it and didn't want to go to jail. Why they laughed when the news called
them dangerous criminals. They said nobody understood them. Maybe they
did steal a few cars and hold up a couple of businesses after they
escaped from jail. And shooting that deputy four times? Well, one of
their hostages did warn them that something bad might happen if they
didn't give themselves up.
Bart, 22, Rhonie, 20, and Thomas, 19, got a hacksaw blade to cut their
way out of the San Luis Obispo County Jail, used bedsheets to lower
themselves to the ground and stole a car after finding the keys hidden
on the sun visor. In Paso Robles, they broke into a sporting goods
store and stole a carload of guns. They took a Lincoln convertible at
gunpoint and headed for Los Angeles.
They dumped the Lincoln in Van Nuys and split up. When police found the convertible at 14527 Blythe St., it contained two shotguns, two Winchester rifles and a bucket of
ammo. Thomas stole a car near the GM auto plant and headed north
to surrender to police. When he ran out of gas, he flagged down another
car and hitched to Santa Barbara, where he surrendered.
Bart and Rhonie stole a car from the parking lot of a Redondo Beach
bowling alley. At 12:30 a.m., they found Tom Garrett, 21, sitting in a
car at 102 S. Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach as he waited to pick up his brother Ray, 18, from his job at the telephone company.
The brothers took Bart and Rhonie back to the apartment at 1664 W. 205th St., Torrance, where they lived with their mother, Lola, 52, and sister Mary, 15.
For the next day, the fugitives stayed with the Garretts.
"I asked, 'What's going on here?' " Lola said.
"I'm sorry ma'am, but we're going to have to stay here until things
cool off," Bart said. "We have no intention of hurting anyone, so
please don't worry."
"It wasn't like you see in the movies," Lola told the Mirror. "They
didn't keep their guns on us all the time. In fact, several times I
could have picked up a gun that they left on a table or on the floor.
But I didn't feel that they were going to hurt us, so I didn't take the
chance."
Bart and Rhonie took turns sleeping while the other one watched the
family. They played cards, watched TV or just talked about high school.
"I made breakfast for them," Lola said. "They didn't ask me. I just
thought it was the thing to do. I don't like to be rude to my guests.
They read the articles in the paper about themselves and watched news
broadcasts on TV. When they were described as dangerous criminals they
just laughed and said nobody understood them."
As Lola ironed clothes, Rhonie tried to explain how he ended up in
jail. "He said he was not guilty, but couldn't prove it and he didn't
want to go to jail."
"For supper last night I made them fried chicken. Rhonie and Mary did
the dishes when we were through. About 8:30 last night they prepared to
leave. They told me they had planned to stay until Saturday but changed
their minds when they saw they were inconveniencing us.
"They tied us up, but they apologized. As they left, they turned and
looked at me. They said goodbye. They said they were sorry. They had a
gag in my mouth so I couldn't answer them. I just waved.
"I can't figure out how they got into trouble. They were real
gentlemen. They were careful about their language and did no drinking,"
Lola said.
"But the last thing I told them was: 'I hope you boys get straightened
out. I'd like to see you come out of this all right. This is no way for
you to live. Somebody will get hurt sooner or later.' "
And someone did get hurt--badly.
Bart and Rhonie stole a white T-bird from a man who was visiting one of
the Garretts' neighbors. They dumped that car on Commonwealth just
north of the Hollywood Freeway.
They got to Oakland by bus and bounced from one rooming house to
another, then hooked up with William, who bought a car for them.
Finally, Bart and Rhonie split up because they couldn't agree on the
"techniques of robbery."
Each of them pulled job by himself. Bart got $575 from the Central
Theater in downtown Oakland while Rhonie held up a Hayward fish market
and stole the owner's car. It was while he was fleeing from this holdup
that Rhonie shot Alameda County Sheriff's Deputy Robert Ficken/Fricken
four times. The deputy was reported to be in serious condition, but The Times never followed up on the story.
Police arrested Bart and William on Feb. 25, 1958, although the details of their capture weren't published.
A day before the FBI was to put him on its most wanted list, Rhonie
was captured March 2, 1958, after robbing a pawnshop on Clark Street in
Chicago.
Unfortunately, The Times never followed up on this case, so we don't know the rest of the story.
According to California death records, Bart James Blackburn died May 6,
1996, in Contra Costa County. He was 60. When he was arrested, he was
carrying a will that read:
"When I am dead please
notify Mrs. R.A. Blackburn of 6515 Agnes Ave., North Hollywood, and
give my remains to UCLA Medical Center for their studies.
"I found that life is like the
waves, forever washing itself against an indestructible Being, Death.
But they also have fog on their lives and as they must recede into
oblivion, so must I."
Records also show that Rhonie "Ronnie" David Rhonemus died Sept. 9, 1988, in San
Francisco. According to the FBI, his motto was "Die young and make a
good-looking corpse."
And what became of Thomas William Dyball, their companion in the
escape? His name never again appears in The Times. He would be 69 years
old.
The Times did report, however, that Tom Garrett was ineligible for
unemployment benefits that week because being held hostage made him
unavailable for work. In sympathy, Gov. Goodwin Knight paid him $40
with a personal check.
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Above, critic Edwin Schallert retires from The Times, where he started in 1912 (Click on the headline to read the entire story) ... Elizabeth Taylor is talking about giving up her career as soon as she finishes "Don Quixote" ... Mario Lanza, though seriously ill, will recover ...
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Above, an ad for the Del Coronado ... Capt. Earle Kynette compares himself to Alfred Dreyfus ... "Hammer Slayer Flees Hospital," now there's a headline that says "read me" ... A writer injured in the Japanese bombing of a U.S. Navy gunboat and three Standard Oil tankers on the Yangtze River says the Chinese are just as bad ...
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At top, Santa Monica African Americans begin the Union League ... Above, Cottolene, a blend of cottonseed oil and beef tallow ... Meet Joseph Margolis (1869-1945), who was active in politics until at least the early 1940s, in a story thick with dialect and broken grammar ... The Alexandria and Hollenbeck hotels contribute $1,000 toward the welcoming celebration for the Great White Fleet ... Firefighters take two of the company's horses out for exercise and one animal is killed when they collide head-on while galloping toward one another on Edgeware Road ... A 4-year-old girl is badly burned while playing with matches ...
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The Metropolitan Transit Authority takes its first steps toward "a speedy mass transit system." Will it build a monorail from the Valley to downtown Los Angeles? Reporter Ray Herbert is going to look at the implications for bus and streetcar passengers (yes, we still had them in 1958) and find out "just when Los Angeles can expect a fast, more efficient transit system." As the Daily Mirror keeps pointing out, congested streets in Los Angeles are a 100-year-old problem. Stay tuned...
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It's Sunday in 1938, and here's an ad from the real estate section ... And a panel from "Buck Rogers" ... Hitler plans to announce that he respects Austrian independence ... Paul Wright is convicted of manslaughter in the killing of his wife and his best friend ... Republicans celebrate Lincoln's birthday by calling on disaffected citizens to fight the New Deal ... Japan refuses to reveal its plans for naval expansion ... As a result, the U.S., Britain and France will abandon limits they observed on their navies ...
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The grand jury investigates gambling in Los Angeles ... A determined federal agent captures his quarry after a long chase ... The amusing tale of a plug hat ... A USC medical student files a lawsuit charging that he is due a huge inheritance ... Wedding bells for an 80-year-old retired dentist ... A man attempts suicide because he doesn't have the money to return to his sweetheart in New York ... A 36-year-old attorney, Stanford graduate Walter Rose, dies after surgery to remove his appendix ... Dr. Horace Wing, former instructor at USC Medical School, dies at the age of--well, we don't give his age. Just that he was born in 1858.
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Feb. 12, 1958
As you may have read, L. Ewing Scott, convicted wife slayer, was moved
from one County Jail cell to another because he was getting too chummy
with the prisoner next door, Caryl Chessman, convicted bandit under
sentence of death.
Naturally, the reporters covering the Scott case became curious about the nature of their chitchat.
Checking disclosed that, among other things, Chessman was trying to
persuade Scott to write a book, presumably about HIS experiences.
Actually, Scott, like Chessman, is more or less of an author, having financed, if not written a little number.
Only point in all this is that reporters suddenly realized they'd
stumbled upon a milestone. As reporter Carter Barber put it, "It was
the first literary tea ever held in the County Jail."
WHEN THE newly
elected president of the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., Bert
Abrahams of Bellflower, entered the Coronado Hotel dining room a few
nights ago, he received a standing ovation.
A moment later, when Gov. Knight and his lady entered, everyone stood up again.
When the applause died down, the emcee announced the invocation would be given. Again, everyone stood.
However, Moten Holt, [this name is nearly illegible--lrh] Riverdale,
Calif., publisher, who has a hearing defect, was overheard muttering,
"Who in hell are we standing up for this time?"
A STEADY STREAM of
taxpayers come into the city clerk's office to report the sale of their
properties so the new owners may be billed for such improvements as
lighting, sewers or paving.
A middle-aged woman completed this procedure the other day and the
clerk said, "Thank you for coming in. I presume you are Mrs. X., the
old owner?"
"I am not the OLD owner, if you please," she said, icily. "I am the PREVIOUS owner."
A WHILE BACK the big thing was to scale Mt. Everest first.
Recently it was a race between two teams to reach a rendezvous in the
Antarctic. Sputniks and outer space need not be mentioned.
Now the contest is on to find the Abominable Snowman.
A dispatch from Katmandu, Nepal, states an expedition sponsored by
Texas oilman Tom Slick will start the trek into the Himalayas today in
an effort to beat a Russian search party.
This is only a voice in a blizzard but I keep wondering why they don't
leave the Abominable Snowman alone. Why invade his privacy? If he wants
to remain aloof and abominable, I say let him.
AS HE WALKED past a finance company, Eugene Dean, South Bay builder, saw a sign in the window, "For Sale--Freezer."
A man of impulse, Dean went in and said, "I notice your getting rid of your freezer. Does that mean the end of cold cash?"
AT RANDOM--At
a very social event at a fancy Beverly Hills hotel a few nights ago a
lady's petticoat dropped off while she was dancing with a partner. She
stepped out of it and kept on dancing. That's the way Beverly
Hillbillies handle embarrassing matters. Not like the fellow who told a
colleague in a Spring Street office the other day after a party, "I
want to apologize. I forgot to say goodbye to your wife last night."
The colleague, a bachelor, is baffled.... ABC-TV has received more than
700 letters protesting the ruling of a committee of judges that Judge
Evelle Younger's appearance on "Traffic Court" is unethical, pointing
out the program's educational merits. A retired judge will likely
succeed Judge Younger after March 7 ... Anyone else hear the commercial
for "guided" cough medicine, which goes directly to the affected spot?
My, my.
Feb. 12, 1958
Graduation is supposed to be a pretty happy time.
But for the father of one graduate in this town, matters aren't too cheerful at the moment.
The man is of above-average income, and he and his wife have done their
level best to bring their boy up to the point where he'd be able to
face the world on his own with a little intelligence and responsibility.
But somewhere along the line, the father admitted to me yesterday, they
had failed. And when their son walked down the aisle of his high school
auditorium last week, the tears in his mother's eyes weren't tears of
pride.
They were of fear.
What actually happened in the last few years, neither of the parents
is exactly sure. All they know is that their boy has gone wrong and
that it's reached a point today where verbal communication between
parents and child have ceased.
The man came to me yesterday to show me another attempt at a solution.
It was a letter--a letter which he planned to leave on the pillow of
his son's bed last night on the off-chance that the boy would come to
home to sleep.
It read:
"Dear Son:
"It's probably foolish of me to write you this note, but it's the only way I can talk to you.
"Why did you lie to me this morning about that car? Has it reached the point where you can't tell the truth?
"Son, this is very hard for me to say, but it looks as though you're
going to begin your life as a man in prison. I've tried to warn you,
even paid your traffic fines to keep you out of jail, but it looks as
though it's all been wasted time.
"Maybe you think we don't love you. If that was true, why would we go through all this hell?
"You're gradually pushing us right out of your life and we don't know why.
"Is it because we haven't told the police about the things you've
stolen from us? Is it because we haven't told them about that '57
Mercury you're driving? Or the other cars?
"Sometimes I think you want to be caught, you want us to turn you in.
"And sometimes, I wish I had the courage to do it.
"Son, you still have a chance to do something about it, I think. I want
very much to talk it over with you. But only on one condition.
"You must be fair and honest with me.
"If you are, I'll do everything in my power to help you make a man of yourself.
"Although sometimes we can't understand you, we do love you.
"There's nothing more I can do or say. The rest is up to you.
"All we ask is that you return just a little of our love and that you be happy 24 hours a day.
"We're offering you this love out in the open, but if you keep up your
present pace, you'll only be able to enjoy it during visiting hours.
"Think it over, son. You're the man now. It's your move."
The note was signed, "Love, Dad."
It's a note, I'm afraid, not too dissimilar from the kind which many parents feel the need to write at one time or another.
But which few do.
Because adult characters never appear in "Peanuts," many comics readers may wonder what Charles Schulz's grownups looked like. Here's a sample from a short-lived cartoon strip carried in the Mirror.
Feb. 8, 1958
Los Angeles
James Charles Hope, 25, had been out of prison for a little more than a
year when he walked into the combination market and liquor store at 9911 S. Hoover St. just before closing time and drew a .32 semiautomatic.
The last thing he ever did was to hand a paper bag to the manager, Joe Paladino, and tell him to "fill it up."
What
Hope didn't know was that two officers were waiting for him in the back
room. Someone had tipped off police that there would be a robbery.
Officer A.S. Armas stepped from the back and killed Hope with a shotgun
blast to the face and neck, The Times said.
Hope's partner,
another ex-convict named Edsel F. Broyles, was arrested when he looked
in the window. He was "badly shaken by what he saw" but refused to talk
to police, the Mirror said.
And that was it as far as The
Times was concerned. Broyles was charged with suspicion of robbery, but
if there was a trial, nothing was written about it.
The Times
has more to say about an Officer Abel Armas (sometimes referring to him
as Abel F. Armas, other times Abel S. Armas) who joined the department
about 1953. It's unclear if this is the officer who was involved in
the shooting--perhaps yes, perhaps not.
However, in 1967, The
Times reported that Sgt. Abel F. Armas was justified in shooting a
17-year-old arson suspect in Ramona Gardens. Sgt. Armas was also a
member of La Ley, the Latin American Law Enforcement Assn., which was
trying to recruit Latinos for law enforcement.
By 1973, The
Times was reporting on Lt. Abel Armas, the LAPD liaison with the City
Council, over conflicting orders on preventing council members from
leaving a meeting if their absence would prevent the lawmakers from
having a quorum. Council President John S. Gibson ordered police
officers "not to take hold" of councilmen who were trying to leave, but
make it clear that "they should not voluntarily let them pass either
until they are excused," The Times said.
The next year, Armas
was transferred to the 77th Street Division and demoted from Lieutenant
2 to Lieutenant 1 after entering the recall race against Councilman
Arthur K. Snyder. Later that year, Armas drew a five-day suspension for
insubordination for going to a City Council hearing despite orders that
he not attend.
In 1975, Armas unsuccessfully ran against
Snyder in the District 14 City Council race. And by 1980, Armas had
been moved to the Rampart Division. By 1982, Armas had attained the
rank of captain and after retiring, he was appointed to the Youthful
Offender Parole Board in 1985.
Were there any more liquor store
holdups after Hope was killed in a stakeout? Recall that a liquor store clerk had
been fatally wounded during a robbery in December 1957, which might be the reason the LAPD set up such traps.
According to The Times' stories of 1958, liquor store clerks were
likely to be armed and they shot to kill. In one of the more bizarre
cases, an LAPD officer confessed to robbing a liquor store shortly
before Christmas because he owed nearly $2,000 in medicals bills for
his wife and 2-month-old baby.
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Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
The new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, Feb. 11, 2008. Note that more of the facade has been installed and there are two trailers full of ductwork parked at the base.
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Above: Future shock! Newspapers coming into the home by color TV? If they only knew how right they were ... The Navy bans low-level flights over Los Angeles after the Norwalk air crash ... Deputies arrest nine people in a holdup ring ... The former counsel to a House panel charges it with joining the White House in an "unholy alliance" with business to cover up his investigation of links between top Republicans and federal agencies ... And President Eisenhower advocates a $2-billion federal construction program to counteract rising unemployment.
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Jurors deliberate in the murder trial of Paul Wright, who is charged with killing his wife and best friend as they were doing something that couldn't be described in The Times ... Medicine being rushed to Bebe Kleinberger is mixed up with another package ... The Assembly vice inquiry sends the names of bookies to local police, urging action ... Some German women don't like Hitler and demand religious freedom "for all German Christians" ... The former "madcap prince" of Romania is expected to embark on a program of anti-Semitism.
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Officials relent and decide that the Japanese community is welcome to take part in the celebration of the Great White Fleet's arrival ... (Note that Gen. H.G. Otis is involved in planning the celebration) ... A heroic driver risks his life to keep his runaway team of horses from crashing into a streetcar ... Robbers beat Lum Sing, who was on his way to celebrate the new year in Chinatown ... Behold the Franklin automobile, with its air-cooled engine. No need to waste gas carrying water to cool the motor, as in other cars.
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