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Last year, I wrote a sarcastic appraisal of “Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascinating People of 2005”. I was astounded at her choices. which ranged from insipid to banal. Little did I realize at the time, but this post turned out to be the biggest international lure in bringing visitors to “Here in Van Nuys”.

I can see that many people come to this blog because they are looking for “Van Nuys Flyaway” or “Van Nuys and crime” or “Van Nuys and history”. But when I start getting people from New Zealand and Iceland and Russia who all type in “Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascinating People of 2005” it becomes absolutely fascinating to me that anyone would care at all about her show–and that I could lasso the masses by merely posting the name “Barbara Walters” on my site.

Granted Ms. Walters, for the past 50 years, has been one of our finest journalists. She is drawn to the temporarily famous and infamous as a dog is to raw meat. Not even Dominick Dunne and Oprah Winfrey can hold a candle to the longevity of Ms. Walters’ proximity to the most important and meaningless persons in our world. ABC has jealously kept her at their network since at least 1976. They must know something about her feminine charms and the secret scented “BW” spot that turns men into animals.

Perhaps there is something more than her well known guests that draw admirers around the globe to her. She must be a new prototype of a sex goddess, who radiates a carnal attractiveness through the cathode ray tubes. There are new sex goddesses who are decades younger than Barbara Walters, but she is perhaps the most overlooked hottie of 2006, one who can bring more visitors to a blog than the words, “Paris Hilton Nude”. She did date Henry Kissinger after all.

Barbara Walters: you are the most fascinating woman of 2006.

Illustration by Tabby.com

“On September 11, 2001, we found that problems originating in a failed and oppressive state 7,000 miles away cold bring murder and destruction to our country”-George W. Bush, January 31, 2006

Why did we attack Iraq when the attackers on September 11th originated mostly from Saudi Arabia and Egypt? Do we have a right and a duty to bring “democracy” to oppressed countries? Is our survival predicated upon the emergence of freedom in former and present tyrannies around the globe?

I don’t know the answer to these questions. We cannot retreat into isolationism and ignore the rest of the world. Yet, what if we had very little to do with the Middle East and removed all our troops from that region of the world, and even stopped supporting Israel and sending money to Egypt, Palestine and Iraq? Would things actually improve? Is there a way to be actively engaged by practicing tough love and packing up and leaving those hideous tribal factions to war among themselves?

“America rejects the false comfort of isolationism”, this President said. But we seem to live it. How many Americans speak another language besides English? What news program carries stories in depth from Lithuania, Ghana, Brazil or Serbia? How many Americans travel abroad every year: 7% or less than one in ten. We have troops in every country, but if we are willing to station troops in the lands of other people, then we should accept Polish soldiers stationed in Topeka and Russian troops at their base in Fairbanks, Alaska. After all, if we cannot be isolationists, other nations cannot either.

“The Palestinian people have voted in elections, and now the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel”, he told us. But what if the “failed and oppressive” state of tomorrow emerges in the Gaza Strip? Will America say it is our duty to invade and make over Palestine?

“I have authorized a terrrorist-surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of Al Qaeda…” For how many years will the government monitor our conversations, correspondence and emails? Our republic and constitution is a little over 200 years old. Will we endure 200 more years of a state of war where our fears trample our respect for the law and constitutional precedents?

“We must confront the larger challenge of mandatory spending and entitlements”, he warns. Yet the massive and ill run Medicare prescription drug bill is his creation. If we can afford a war overseas, to bring benefits to people who didn’t ask for them, can we not at the very least bring protections to the American people who demand and deserve them?

He promises that we will break our addiction to oil. That has been said by every president since Jimmy Carter. I still look around me on the freeway and see Hummers, Jeep Cherokees, Cadillacs. I see suburban housing sprawling 100 miles away from the center of every major city in America. How will these gas guzzling and wasteful patterns of living be amended and changed? Words from the Presidential pulpit are not enough. No matter how dazzling the grammatical flourishes of young, well paid speechwriters.

“I propose to double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years”, he said. And will your “base” give up those mystical and magical beliefs in creationism and that all biology must somehow conform to the fundamentalist prejudices of devout Christians? Will Kansas and other states allow sex education to be taught with all the facts and images? Some call themselves “pro-life” and prohibit the teaching of how human life itself is created!

Republicans are fond of saying that they wish for a court which does not “legislate from the bench.” But what about this chief executive– who won’t legislate at all– but merely presumes that his own office allows him to spy on his fellow Americans, to make war without cause, to increase our debt to catastrophic proportions and bring the rest of the world to despise the home of the free and the brave?

“We have committed $85 billion to the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans”, he promised. But there are tens of thousands who are still without homes, and the old city on the Mississippi is dying. There needs to be an environmental and regional plan for the entire state of Louisiana on the order of what the Netherlands did in the 1950’s. Wetlands destruction and global warming are at least part of the answer of why the hurricanes of the past few years have been so catastrophic. But first we must ask what type of nation would fail to provide trailers for homeless people? Those same unoccupied mobile homes are then parked in fields: while bureaucrats quibble over whose department is responsible. Mr. President: have you no decency in allowing New Orleans to die in front of our eyes?

We listened to a beautiful and inspiring speech last night delivered by teleprompter. If all we have is a figurehead in the Oval Office pretending to lead us, one who considers that his law trumps all other laws, what hope is there for our nation or the world?

PHOTO: Brochure for 1932 farm property in SF;Model home in Reseda, CA 1951. Courtesy of San Fernando Valley History Digital Library

Letter from “Hap” Rogers (HAPYROGER@webtv.net) of Yerington, NV:

Hello again Andrew:

Sure I don’t mind if you print my letter to you. Like I said
being almost 80 years old now I do have a lot of memories of San
Fernando Valley from 1935 until we left there in 1963. Our two boys at
that time were 9 and 12, our eldest just getting out of Shirley Ave
School and was to start in Sequola Jr High in September, and it did not
have a very good reputation at that time. To me the Valley had grown
large by then and I had always liked it the way it was when I was young.
All the towns were separated with farms, walnut orchards, orange groves,
and near us in the 30’s and 40’s was the Runnymede Chicken Ranch over on
Lindley Ave just north of Saticoy St.

The house my folks bought back in 1935 at 7732 Jellico
Avenue was $2100.00, on a commercial acre, and monthly payments were $18.00
per month. But at that time my dad was only working for Pacific Electric
17 days a month at $5.00 per day. The last I heard those lots were still
zoned as R/A so you could still have farm animals on them, I’m sure that
has been changed by now. And I have also heard they are in the
$1,000,000 range now. That tract of 40 houses were on 40 acres, and
there were 100 more of them built in El Monte and they were the originators
of what is now the FHA.

The house we left in Reseda on Welby Way to move up here in
1963, we bought new for $9545.00 in 1951, and sold it for $19,995.00. Two
years ago last November, my wife was down there visiting family, went by
to see the house, stopped and talked to the man there and he told her he
had just sold it for $350,000.00. Prices have gone crazy down there, but
here also, due to so many Californians selling out there and moving up
here.
We have a motel here in Yerington which is now in escrow. My
wife says 42 plus years in here is good enough. Don’t know what I’ll do
then, but we do have a nice house here that we bought last July,
anticipating the motel being sold. A long way from what I was doing in
the Valley. I was chief engineer for a rubbish truck manufacturing
company there in Sun Valley, and prior to that was an engineer for a
equipment manufacturing company on Tujunga Ave in North Hollywood.

Oh well, maybe I’ll try to write my life history when we get
out of here. And yes, I did see about Kevin’s [Roderick’s] book and I did forward him
the letter I wrote to you earlier this morning. Hope you don’t mind.

Keep in touch and if I can help on anything let me know, and
incidently, I’m known as “Hap”, not Mr Rogers.

My Best To You,
Hap, in Yerington, NV

Just as I had predicted on August 28th and 30th, the handing out of special stickers to hybrid drivers, which allow them to drive alone (and mostly on the phone) in the car pool lane, is turning out badly: LA CURBED reports via the Daily Democrat.

Over 200 stickers a day are handed out, and 1400 hybrid cars a week are entering the car pool lane. The purpose of the diamond lane was to reduce traffic congestion. As more low polluting cars, driven by one person, enter the once restricted lane, the rest of the non-hybrids will sit in traffic and emit more pollution. Once the number of stickers reaches 50,000, CALTRANS bureaucrats will “study” (under the hot breath of the Gubernator) if the car pool lanes can handle even more hybrids. Will politics or statistics determine the outcome?

The auto biased, pandering bill “was authored by Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, D-Woodland Hills, and drew bipartisan support when it was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September 2004. It needed federal approval, and took effect in August,” the Daily Democrat reports.

The single driver is the greatest cause of congestion on the road. As anyone who has ever crossed Laurel or Coldwater Canyon between 6am-9am can attest. If the Diamond Lane is OK for hybrids, then we should also open up the new Busway to anyone who drives a hybrid car.

PHOTOS: San Fernando Valley History Digital Library: Owensmouth High School Football team, 1924;LA River in N.Hollywood and N. Hollywood at Vineland Ave. bridge, 1938.

More memories of the San Fernando Valley in the 1930s and 40s from Hap Rogers:

“The concrete lined Los Angeles River, back in the mid 1930’s, was only a small muddy ditch
that started out in the west valley and went along the north side of
Canoga Park High School, near where the school had their outside GreekTheatre. As it headed east, we kids used to go down and catch crawdads where it went past the old brick yard near Van Alden St in Reseda. From there it continued on east past Balboa Ave to where the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin is now located.

As I can remember, it was the flood
of the winter of ’37 – ’38 that did all the damage to North Hollywood.
Many lives were lost. I was in the 4-H back
in those days and our club leader, Lyle Harriman, took several of us to
North Hollywood to see the damage the storm had done. It looked like a
small Hurricane Katrina had gone through there.

Getting back to the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin, I believe that
winter storm of ’37-’38 is what prompted the building of the dam and
basin. Much of the property in the basin was owned by the Ghiglia family
and was farmed by my brother-in-law in partnership with Frank Ghiglia.
There he had many acres of alfalfa, banana squash, the big crop being
tomatoes for the then, San Fernando Cannery. In the early
’60’s, they leased the norththwest corner of the land at Balboa &
Victory Blvd to farmers raising sweet corn. Their main entrance to their
farm area was at Victory Blvd just over the railroad tracks from
Hayvenhurst Ave.

Back during WW II, the Army had a Nike Missile site set up
there on the south side of Victory Blvd where I think Woodley Ave ended.

In the late ’50’s, or early ’60’s the City of Los Angeles wanted the Ghiglia
land for a recreation area and they raised the electric rates so high that
it was not profitable for them to pump water for irrigating from their
own well, so the Ghiglias sold out to the city. They
also moved here to Nevada, bought a ranch not far from
us at the old town of Weeks, where the Pony Express once stopped, and
not far from the old Army Post of Fort Churchill, of the old pioneer
days.

Shortly after that in 1964, my brother-in-law and his wife, (my
wife’s sister) sold their house on Calvert St just a block east of
Fallbrook Ave, in what was in those days known as Walnut Acres, in
Woodland Hills, and also moved here near us in Nevada.

During and shortly after WW2, San Fernando Valley was growing.
Gone were the fields of sugar beets, tomatoes, alfalfa, wheat fields,
orange and walnut groves, olive trees, chicken ranches, cattle ranches,
and in came the tracts of houses, factories, storage buildings, etc.
The farming in the valley was through.”

PHOTOS: San Fernando Valley History Digital Library

Harold “Hap” Rogers of Yerington, Nevada lived in Los Angeles from 1926-1963 and sent me this email about some of his memories:

“Hello Andrew:

I have just read one of your articles my brother-in-law
e-mailed to me. I have not read all of it yet though. I am now 79 years old, be 80 in May, and remember most of your
things mentioned in your article.

I was born in West Los Angeles, (Sawtelle) in 1926. My dad
worked for Pacific Electric Railroad, the Red Cars at the old
Venice-Ocean Park Car Barn. We moved from Venice out to Northridge in
November 1935, which at that time was North Los Angeles.

Barbara Stanwyck and one of the Marx Bros had a horse ranch up at the
corner of Reseda Blvd and Devonshire, and talked the city into changing the
town’s name to Northridge Village. The people living there got to
vote on the name change and settled on just “Northridge”.

We lived on Jellico Ave., which at that time went north from Saticoy St, just one
block and ended at Stagg St. which was a dirt street. The street one
block west of us was White Oak Ave, one block east was Texhoma Ave and
next to it was Encino Ave, also a dirt street at that time.

I went to Reseda Grammar School and later attended Van Nuys High School, class of Winter
1944.

I very well remember the Red Cars going up Van Nuys Blvd to
Sherman Circle at Van Nuys Blvd & Sherman Way and from there going West
to Canoga Park along Sherman Way, then the next car coming out from the
Subway Terminal in Los Angeles would go on North to San Fernando.

After getting out of the service in 1946 I also went to work for Pacific
Electric in the West Hollywood Car Barns in the late 40’s. I made many
trips to Cahuanga Pass for repairs to cars that had
mechanical problems there and in the Hollywood area around Highland Ave
& Hollywood Blvd.

Later in the 40’s I went to work in the oilfields on a
drilling crew for TideWater Associated in and above the Porter & Sisnon
Estates in the Chatsworth Mountains.

I can remember back in the early days of WW2 when they closed
Saticoy St between Hayvenhurst and Woodley in order to extend the runway
at Van Nuys Airport and brought in the P38’s. The closure was only to be
temporary until after the war and was to be opened again, but that was
never to happen.

There are many fond memories of San Fernando Valley for me and
I never thought I would leave there, but in 1963 it had grown to much
for me and we sold our house in Reseda and moved to Nevada.

If you need more information I would be happy to help with
what I can remember.”

Sincerely,

Harold C. “Hap” Rogers
Yerington, Nevada