A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Music

June 27, 1979: The Zenith, with stereo tuner, plays records, cassettes and eight-track tapes. The price is $469.95, including speakers. That's $1,376.31 USD 2008. And you can probably pick up one in a thrift store for $10.

Michael Jackson: End of the Jacksons?

Sept. 13, 1981: Michael Jackson tells Robert Hilburn that he's done touring with the Jacksons. "I sometimes feel like I should be 70 by now," Michael Jackson says.

"Our parents did push us, but it wasn't against our will," Tito Jackson says. "I think I'd die on my own. I'd be so lonely. Even at home, I'm lonely. I sit in my room sometimes and cry. It's so hard to make friends and there are some things you can't talk to your parents or family about. I sometimes walk around the neighborhood at night, just hoping to find someone to talk to. But I just end up coming home," Michael Jackson says.

Michael Jackson -- Master of Marketing

Jan. 15, 1984: Michael Jackson as a master of marketing. "Jackson is assuredly not the innocent he's usually presumed to be."

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept: Your Music

June 25, 1973: Phil Ochs (1940 - 1976) performs at the Ash Grove, 8162 Melrose, (1958 - 1973).

Monorail Planned for Downtown Los Angeles!

"She Was Gone ... Real Gone!"

Voters reject higher taxes. View this page Beatnik robbers tell victim to "play it cool." Woof, Daddy-o. Above, another mass-transit plan that never got off the drawing board. All right, you kids, no more chopped and channeled five-window coupes, understand? And no more lowered front ends on your T-buckets! Next, we're going after your Glass Packs. Nice headline -- does that mean some women aren't upset?

Above, FBI agents give the governor of Mississippi the names of about 10 men involved in the lynching of African American truck driver Mack Charles Parker. Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike addresses a Planned Parenthood meeting and calls California's laws against birth control unconstitutional.

Pop Fligh helps Dondi get out of a jam. View this page Isn't that awfully close to "Miss Procreation?" The Dodgers lose to the Giants and Milwaukee beats Pittsburgh in the 13th inning. View this page

Crash Kills Drag Racer at Dead Man's Curve, May 23, 1959

Dead Man's Curve: Sunset Boulevard west of Groverton Place

Found on EBay -- Elvis Presley

This isn't just any Elvis pin. According to the EBay vendor, this was purchased during Elvis Presley's appearances at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium. Although the dealer gives the concert date of 1958 (when Presley was actually inducted into the Army) the notorious performances were in 1957. Bidding starts at $25.

Paul Coates -- Confidential File, March 25, 1959

Confidential File Quiet Costs Merely $14 for 15 Minutes RIPLEY, Tenn, (AP) -- A businessman who doesn't like rock 'n' roll music bought 15 minutes of radio time yesterday and devoted almost all of it to silence. James W. Porter began his quarter-hour on station WTRB by shattering several records and then proposing a national "Can the Racket League." Now there, I thought, is a man after my own ear. I thought it just before picking up the phone to initiate a long-distance friendship with Mr. James W. Porter of Ripley, Tenn. "Mr. Porter?" I asked the pleasant drawl which answered. (It wasn't one of those deep, chitlin and black-eyed peas types of Southern drawls. Just the kind that has a hint of ham hock in it). "This is James W. Portah," he replied. "Can ah help you?" "Well, Mr. Porter," I said, "I'm a reporter." "There was the briefest moment of silent confusion. Finally, he said: "How's that again? Say your name is Portah, too?" We worked our way out of that small dilemma well within the three-minute time limit. When he understood that I was a "reportah" from Los Angeles, I asked him to tell me what he did for a living down there in Ripley. "You aren't by any chance a music critic?" I wanted to know. "No, suh, ah'm not," he replied. "Ah'm a tobacco growah by trade. Grow the finest brand of tobacco in Tennessee." It took a little effort, but I was able to stop myself just short of asking him if he thought that everyone should grow his brand of tobacco. Instead, I got right to the point. "Mr. Porter, is it true that you bought 15 minutes of radio time just because you didn't like rock 'n' roll?" And that you devoted the time to silence?" "You not jus' whistlin' Dixie, son," he said. "That's what ah did. Daw'gonnest thing evah happened to me. Ah got nationwide publicity. They even wrote me up in the Miami papers. Imagine that! Ah didn't think the story'd evah get outside of Memphis. nothing evah does. "Why, ah even got a call from some Yankee up in Chicago. Mean to tell you, the old boy got real nasty with me." "How's come?" I asked. (I'm highly suggestible). "Tole me to mind my own business. Asked what ah got against rock 'n' roll. Jus' tole him ah don't think rock 'n' roll is music. An, mistah, ah don't!" "Well," I asked, "don't the radio stations down there play anything else?" "Some," he said. "We get country music. And Grand Ole Opry. But," he added dramatically, "we jus' don't evah get any Lawrence Welk." Mr. Porter let that sink in a moment then went on: "Thass an ole boy ah can REALLY listen to, that Lawrence Welk. How about you?" "I don't dig him," I said. "Say what?" Mr. Porter asked. "Tell me," I said, switching the subject away from that dangerous area, "how much does 15 minutes of silence cost on a Ripley radio station?" "Ah paid 14 dollahs," he chuckled. "Course it's a small station. Probably cost considerable more over in Memphis. Ever'thing does." "Mr. Porter," I said. "Just one more question. Have you got a favorite song?" "Well, suh," he replied, "Ah'm a tobacco man. So ah'm partial to ..." " 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' " I chanced. "Son," Mr. Porter assured me, "you ain't just whistlin' Dixie."

Matt Weinstock -- February 4, 1959

A Taxpayer Votes 'No!' As mentioned here recently, the Internal Revenue Service has the legal authority to attack bank accounts of persons who are delinquent in their payments. The policy, however, is not to work a hardship on those earnestly trying to co-operate. Apparently one slips through now and then, as in the case of an angry man who lives in a suburb. He owed less than $60 and had agreed to pay $20 a month until the debt was canceled. But life can be whimsical. When one payment came due he suddenly had to take his wife to the hospital for the birth of their first child. He had $21 in the bank. Not wanting to be absolutely broke, he sent the government $10 and a note explaining the circumstances. First thing he knew some checks bounced. A lien had been put on his bank account. "What's this country coming to?" he asks, among other things. The other things are not printable. * * A NEIGHBOR caught short several weeks ago in a baking emergency, borrowed three cups of flour from a Palms woman. The other day the neighbor's daughter, 15, brought it back, with five Green Stamps for good measure. * * POINT OF VIEW Picture windows high and wide, Provide a spacious view outside; But some intriguing scenes have been From the outside looking in. -- W.B. FRANCE * * IF YOU press him, North Young, a Malibu artist, will tell about the time he and a friend from New York set up their easels near the LaBrea tar pits.  Toward dusk they completed their paintings. The New Yorker's was a portrait of a famous publisher holding his beloved but miserable pet poodle, which he had rescued from the pits. North admired it and asked what he was going to title it. He replied, "Hoist, With His Own Pet Tarred." The New Yorker then looked at North's composition, an abstraction showing two fossils anthropologists had dug from the tar: The left femur of a baby bear from Iraq and the skeleton of a rabbit from an ancient Chinese city. "How about yours?" he asked. North replied, "Iraq Cub Bone and aHankow Hare."  Obviously the fires, floods and landslides didn't do some Malibutes any good. * * KID STUFF-- Kevin, 10, was sent to the grocery store for a can of crushed pineapple but brought chunks instead. When his mother chided him, Kim, 4, remarked, "Well, I see the Lone Ranger goofed again!" . . . As an exercise in originality, Mr.Leatherman had his sixth-graders at Culver School make up limericks. Nancy Guinn's : "I have a fish named Noel, who lives in a very small bowl. He swims all day, in the saddest way, for I think to get out is his goal." * * DURING a discussion of a case with a private investigator Clyde Duber in his Spring Street office, attorney James Starritt, former LAPD detective captain, asked his secretary to go out and get some coffee. While she was gone a sneak thief, a glass partition away from the two sleuths, entered the outer office and stole her purse. * * LOOSE ENDS -- Yep, they finally made it, the Chattanooga Choo Choo Cha Cha -- but Charlie Park is pretending he didn't hear it . . . A furniture store at Sherman Way and Laurel Canyon Boulevard lists among its specials, "Antic Beds." Gal named Rosetta can't figure if it should be "antique" or not. Antic means grotesque and bizarre . . . Frank Barron, just returned from Miami, Fla., reports a restaurant has just opened there named the Diner Shore . . . A Newport Beach paper had this Miscellaneous For Sale ad: "Weight lifting equipment, barbells, etc. Lifted very little" . . . Those who know the place wonder if the current excitement will really blow the lid off Tijuana.

Paul Coates -- Confidential File, February 3, 1959

Bail Cut on Yanks in Tijuana Bail on some of the 20 U.S. residents held in Tijuana on gambling charges has been reduced from $1,600 to $400 and on others to $800. State Atty. Gen. Stanley Mosk was informed by telephone today. The alleged operator of the games was still held in lieu of $3,200 bail.   BY PAUL COATES Mirror News Columnist TIJUANA, Feb. 3-- Twenty Americans shivered in the unheated city jail here today, awaiting word on their request to have their $1,600 bail lowered. Nineteen men and one woman remained in jail of the 43 U.S. residents arrested in a raid on a gambling casino at Rosarito Beach nine days ago. Federal District Judge Eduardo Langle Martinez has promised a decision today. Without bail, the gambling suspects face several months in jail awaiting trial. The woman, Mrs. Rita Nathaniel, 35, of 2330 Coolidge Ave., West Los Angeles, probably will get her freedom today regardless of the judge's decision. Friends Raise $1,600 Employees and patrons of cafes in Santa Monica where she worked as a waitress were reported to have raised $1,600 for her bail and sent an emissary here with it. Last night, when I visited her in her cell, she was taking it bravely -- but there were lines of worry on her face. She is concerned about her children, a girl 14 and a boy 12. Blue with the cold, her worst complaint was that she hasn't been permitted to wash in nine days. Mrs. Nathaniel said she hadn't been afraid until the other American women had been granted bail, leaving her alone. Homes Mortgaged Mr. and Mrs. Harry Rungo of San Diego, who had been released earlier, visited the jail with cigarettes and $10 in change -- all they said they could afford -- to make jail life easier for the others. "Relatives in the East mortgaged their homes so we could get out," Runge U.S. Consul Gen. Robert Hale petitioned the court here for lower bail. Other expressions of concern came from California's Gov. Brown, who said he had instructed State Atty. Gen. Stanley Mosk to check on the rights of the California residents involved. Mosk wired Baja California Atty. Gen. Silva Cota: "The people of California are disturbed at reports of excessive bail being demanded of Californians and other Americans arrested. Mosk asked Cota to "use your good offices to investigate."  Brown said he will ask the U.S. State Department to "make representations to the government of Mexico" if there is no satisfactory response from Cota.  Ask U.S. Help U.S. Reps. Bob Wilson and James Utt also have asked the State Department to intercede. Baja California residents generally seem to deplore the high bail set in the case, fearing that it may frighten off the heavy tourist trade. But Ruben Padilla, director of tourism for the state of Baja California, said there has been no appreciable change in the number of visitors from the U.S. since the raid. He said, however, that "we want to do all we can to have this situation clarified so that it isn't damaging to tourism -- Mexico's biggest industry." He urged potential visitors to look at the raid "in its true perspective." The Mexican government repeatedly had said card and dice gambling were illegal, he pointed out. "The people arrested were breaking the law," he said.