Today’s post-vacation column is kind of a grab bag — not to be confused with a “go bag.” Although yours truly was on the go with two bags.
Anyway, let’s see what’s in the bag that I can grab. At the top are a couple of items that have been bumped from recent columns more than once, and now in a moment of desperation they’ll get their moment in the sun.
Stuffed
My July 31 column on the Museum of Riverside’s 100th anniversary exhibit — in place through Jan. 5 at 3865 Market St. — lingered on the stuffed mountain lion, a favorite of local youngsters for decades.
Some 20 years ago, longtime visitor Christina Miller of Riverside took a granddaughter. The mountain lion and other taxidermied animals made quite an impression.
The 4-year-old was later heard telling someone excitedly: “My grandmother took me to the dead animal zoo!”
Meanwhile, the stuffed donkey at the entrance to L.A.’s Olvera Street, a photo op for generations of kids, is gone due to a lease dispute. But in news reports, it was the local angle that captivated me.
In the Woodstock era, Olvera Street employed a live donkey from Pomona named Cirila. Cirila was retired in 1972 and was replaced by a taxidermied donkey.
Outsourcing is bad enough, but imagine the indignity of losing your job to a dead version of yourself.
Walk of life
After Ontario’s Jay Littleton Ball Park was lost to a fire Aug. 22, I rounded up stories from you all for my Sept. 15 column. Among them was one from Richard Jaquess of Fontana. Jaquess said that in a Colt League baseball game in 1964, he struck out on three pitches hurled by Gary Ovitt.
I ran into Ovitt the next day at the Ontario Chaffey Community Show Band concert. The former Ontario mayor and San Bernardino County supervisor had been glad to be reminded that he’d done well on the mound one day.
Games didn’t always go so well.
“There were low moments too. I had one game where I didn’t strike anyone out. In fact I walked 13 batters,” Ovitt recalled. “The coach wouldn’t take me out. He said, ‘You’ll get the next one.’ I didn’t. But we won anyway.”
Also striking
A few of you commented on my Sept. 20 column on mid-century bowling alleys.
Georgia Morris, now of Jurupa Valley, grew up in El Segundo and considered its Imperial Bowl her home away from home.
“It had 30 lanes, an ‘old time’ coffee shop, a lounge that served nice dinners, a pro shop, a billiard room and much more,” she says. “It was a stop on the PBA junior all-stars tour with bowling stars like Norm Duke. Of course times changed and the bowling alley closed.”
I hate when times change.
Yolanda Fintor, now of Van Nuys, said my column brought back fond memories of L.A.’s Manchester Bowl, which her father owned in the 1940s.
“I was in my teens and he hired me to rent out bowling shoes to league bowlers who came at 6:30,” she says. “I stayed and did homework until the second league arrived at 8:30. In the two years I did that, I learned to bowl and joined a league myself.”
She concludes: “I agree with you that the heydays of the bowling era were fun days. I wish they had lasted.”
Steve Bryant of Riverside says his favorite bowling center was his city’s Tava Lanes, which had 32 all-wood lanes. Although the 1950s center closed in 2005, Tava Lanes is so beloved, you can buy a retro-style T-shirt with its logo online.
“It was such a nice place,” Bryant says, “that my mother allowed me to go there, even though, being Southern Baptist-raised, she very much disapproved of bowling alleys.”
Steve Ledder of Sun City, meanwhile, grew up going to an eight-lane bowling alley in South Pasadena.
“Good to know that there are still some going strong. Couldn’t beat the atmosphere,” he says. “Thanks for the trip down memory ‘lane’ (pun intended).”
After that groaner, I know some bowler is going to push this column’s “reset” button.
Farewell, SLC
A customer orders at Silverlake Coffee in Los Angeles on Sept. 22. The family-owned shop closed for good on Sept. 29. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
I was in San Francisco for five days, a vacation I hope to tell you about later if space permits. My absence meant missing a few local events of note, as welI as — sob! — the final weekend for Silverlake Coffee, the L.A. shop at which I was a semi-regular and about which I’d written Sept. 18.
On the penultimate weekend, though, I made it in both Saturday and Sunday. Besides the emotional draw, I had not one but two completed punch cards to turn in for free drinks. My choice: an espresso banana smoothie, 24-ounce version. Might as well milk it.
Everyone had seen my column online.
“You really captured this place,” one barista told me. Said another: “You made us all cry.”
Owner Larry Lim confessed: “I knew you were a regular, but I had no idea this place meant so much to you.”
It did. Silverlake Coffee was a pandemic-era haven for me.
Before you ask, I do have favorite Inland Empire coffee shops: in Pomona, Claremont, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, Redlands and Riverside. They’re places where I’m comfortable spending an afternoon at my laptop tapping out columns and emails. But on weekends it can be a relief to get out of the area and give myself a break.
Back to Silverlake Coffee. With my favorite breakfast sandwich one day and a chocolate croissant the other (I once deadpanned to Lim that the croissants, which filled a plate, were too small), I sat out on the patio two final times, reading my newspapers and enjoying the morning.
Did I get Silverlake Coffee out of my system? I suppose. The back-to-back visits were emotionally satisfying. I felt like I’d completed something. Beyond redeeming my punch cards, I mean.
brIEfly
A recent donation to Pomona College has a sly nod to a campus in-joke about 47 being the most important number in nature. The college uses 47 in fun ways, like its Cafe 47 coffeehouse and the clock tower that chimes on the 47th minute of each hour. Thus, the check from alumni Sam and Emily Glick, which will support financial aid, is for $2.47 million — more specifically, $2,474,747.47.
David Allen’s column does not appear 4/7ths of each week. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.
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