1954: Long Weekend

Honoring Forefathers: Michael Foote, Vivian Reynolds and John Jaynes, age 7 and in Mrs. Lauritzen's second grade class at Golden Avenue School, recreated a scene straight out of the American Revolution to honor "the beloved dead of other years who helped the cause of freedom."

Playing fife and drums, the trio recalled the "little drummer boy" who bravely marched with the Minute Men and local militia during the American Revolution.  With America barely nine years from the end of WW II, and the loss of loved ones still fresh in everyone's mind, the moppets' pageant stoked patriotic feelings on Veterans' Day.

In his photo caption, the old pro, Max Goodwin, editor of the Review, wrote, "Youngsters such as these, we pray, shall never know the sweat, toil and tears of the gallant men and women of '76…but emulate our patriotic forefathers."

Good Shepherds:  Sharing the front page of the Review with the little patriots was Kenneth Conrad preparing for the open house a week hence at Lemon Grove's first mortuary, 7387 Broadway.  The $45,000 establishment was designed, and construction supervised, by its founder.  The Conrads and their son, Gary, occupied an upstairs apartment in the building.

Kenneth and Marian Conrad planned a warm, inviting funeral home free of "the stilted formality that denies a pleasant picture to the survivors," as Kenneth said of the new building.  Pastels of gray and green with rose colored carpets and drapes, soft lighting and furnishings and accessories that "give a feeling of homeyness" characterized the chapel, foyer, waiting room and family room.

"We guarantee personal service," said Kenneth.  "We are on call 24 hours a day."

Nearly 60 years on, with Conrad Mortuary in the same location, and the family company run by Gary and Donna Conrad and their son Grant, the qualities of warmth, empathy, gentleness and detailed personal service have helped generations of bereaved families to cope with loss.

Morticians have a calling--this isn't really a "job," for the human dynamics at the end of life are complex and difficult.  Perhaps that's why, stretching back centuries,  most mortuaries are run by families.  Their responsibilities equal the ER in drama, urgency, heartbreak and the need for superior surgical skills in sometimes dire situations.  Centuries of warfare, epidemics and natural disasters have contributed to the rise of the funeral home as a necessary resource, together with clergy and hospitals.

Thus has the Conrad family comforted the living and shepherded the dead into the immortality that resides in all families.  As Thornton Wilder wrote, "The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude…There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

The Futurists:  This edition of the Review was a knockout on several fronts -- but the two-page spread that seized our attention was not ads for Thanksgiving turkeys, but the densely packed Legal Notices proclaiming "Notice of Hearing On and Petition For Incorporation of the Proposed City of Lemon Grove."

Wow.  This was actually It.  The start of our town's long march to cityhood and a ringing affirmation of the no-guts-no-glory sinew of local residents.

Legal Notices are usually consigned to the gulag at the back of a newspaper--but not these detailed statements endorsed by long lists of 'Grovians and replete with full names, addresses and plat map locations.  In other words, a goldmine of information for historians, statisticians, demographers and folklorists.

Max Goodwin knew he had a history-making edition, so he ran a front page story on incorporation, then arrayed the people's petitions as one huge center section.  If your name was on a petition, you could get additional free copies of the paper, free socks at Cressy's Dry Goods, 7816 Broadway, and a free photo taken on the new-fangled Polaroid Land Camera at Lemon Grove Camera & Sport Goods, 7848 Broadway, five doors from Michael's, where you got a free martini with dinner.

Ever the optimist, Goodwin wrote, "a decision is only a pitch-and-a-putt away."  The County Board of Supervisors had scheduled a hearing on incorporation for Nov. 30 at 2 p.m.  Robert Gauldin and Forrest Baxter, co-chairs of Organizations United for Incorporation, said that if hearings were completed in less than 30 days and not too many prickly "exclusion" petitions were filed, an election could be held before the new year.  

Visions of sugar plums!  Rudolf on the roof!  Santa in the chimney!

Goodwin revealed that incorporation supporters paid the paper $1,500 for their Legal Notices and planned a Nov. 16 informational meeting at 7:30 p.m. in the Lemon Grove Junior High auditorium.

"These meetings have become good get-togethers," wrote Goodwin, "and the speakers have avoided name-calling and accusations."

On that Veterans' Day, a who's who of petition signers (thousands of them) pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in support of this stirring preamble:

    We, the undersigned, each of whom is the owner of land in fee, or a purchaser of land under a written agreement…within the boundaries of the proposed city…do hereby petition and pray that all that territory or portion of the County of San Diego, State of California, lying within and enclosed by the boundaries hereinafter set forth, which is wholly unincorporated and has a population of approximately 18,500 inhabitants, be organized and formed into, and incorporated as a city of the sixth class under the provisions of an act of the legislature of the State of California…"

But what, we hear you cry, is "a city of the sixth class"?  In California, a sixth class city has at least 15,000 residents and five major characteristics:

     1  It is a municipal corporation that can hold real and personal property;

     2  It is governed by a five-member elected council, and a clerk, treasurer and sometimes a judge;     

     3  Either a council-manager or mayor-council structure may be adopted;

     4  Council members are uncompensated unless compensation is approved by the voters.  The council determines salaries of the clerk, treasurer and other officers and employees;

     5  And, a broad grant of power and authority is conferred upon the city council.

There is more to this, dear readers, but now you have the basics.  As everyone knows, the above shot fired across the bow on Veterans' Day was but the opening salvo of a 23-year effort to gain cityhood.  

The Noble Bird:  Some lucky person would win a 24-pound turkey on Nov. 23, raised on Hamlett & Son's Turkey Ranch, Lakeside, and fattened on feed from Mason Feed Supply (estab. 1891 in Lemon Grove).  Local supermarket owner Ernie Nosari said there was nothing to buy; you just registered your name and kept your fingers crossed.

George Scott Tells All:  They were lined up around the block for tickets to the Lemon Grove Men's Club luncheon at Michael's Pub and Grill -- yes, that same Michael's where countless deals, real and imagined, were hatched during the 1950s and 1960s.  George A. Scott of Walker Scott was the bait.

The switch was a one-week postponement of a luncheon in which Scott would reveal all about the multi-million dollar shopping center he planned to build on College at Broadway.  With local shopkeepers pacing the floor over the threat of "major competition, even bankruptcy if this thing goes through," the grumbling over the week's delay reached fever pitch.

"I will have considerably more information to reveal [after] the San Francisco trip," intoned Scott.  "It may be a year before groundbreaking takes place...but I have firm applications from 141 business firms who want locations in the College Avenue development."  

Apparently six of them were from Lemon Grove, but no word on the I.D of these Benedict Arnolds.

And get this:  "Women, normally excluded from club activities, are invited to hear Mr Scott."  Sheesh.  This, in a town where half the businesses were owned and operated by women in the 1950s.

Oh, well, what do we know.  We do know Scott built his mega plaza, the first such in the history of San Diego County.  The beat goes on and so does the struggle in our business district.

20 Flavors:  Moppets were lined up around the block for free ice cream cones in 20 flavors at the new Real Ice Cream Shop, 3435 Imperial (near the modern intersection of Lemon Grove Avenue and Broadway).  Owner Bob Campbell gave the kiddies a two-hour window to snag their prey--and adults could get freebies, too, if accompanied by a child.

And so it went on Veterans Day 59 years ago in the Big Lemon when children beat the drum for flag and country and ice cream, and their parents envisioned a new world.

 About this column:  Compiled by Helen Ofield, president of the Lemon Grove Historical Society, from newspapers archived at the H. Lee House Cultural Center.  Each week, we take a peek at the past with some news and advertising highlights from a randomly chosen edition of the Lemon Grove Review.  Ofield was awarded first place in 2013 and second place in 2012 in non-daily column writing from the Society of Professional Journalists.  In 2013 she received third place in the "History" category from the San Diego Press Club.