Excerpt
It was an ordinary weekday in Depression-era Leucadia when romance bloomed for Betty Drexler.
She was standing behind the counter of her restaurant, The Blue Goose, a sign saying Try our 30 cent Dinner looming on the wall behind her, when a tall man walked in. He had the kind of lanky stride Gary Cooper made famous in High Noon, and when he looked at Betty it was with the bluest eyes she had ever seen.
I think it was love at first sight for both of them, said Jenny Hare Dowling, Bettys great-niece.
His name, Betty discovered, was Charles Ragland. He was working with a construction crew, building a bridge on Highway 101 at Ponto. The Blue Goose had a sign outside saying Hamburgers 10 for a dollar, and Charles had come in to buy hamburgers for his entire crew.
He came in every single day while the bridge was being built, Jenny said. After he and Betty were married her family always called him Wimpy, after the hamburger-loving character in Popeye.
Although Jenny isnt sure which construction company built Pontos bridge, she is sure that a company with the glorious name of O. U. Miracle built all the original sidewalks in downtown Encinitas. Until the recent Streetscape project you used to be able to read the words Oh You Miracle, and the date, May 1929, stamped in the concrete on some of the curbs along 101. And you can still see it in a few places along Second Street, Jenny said.
It was Eric Larson, who has lived in Leucadia since the late 1950s and who was the original developer/chief of the control tower at Palomar Airport, who told me the story of how he wound up in an Oscar-winning movie by accident.
In 1953 Warner Brothers decided to make The High and the Mighty, about a transpacific flight from Honolulu to San Francisco, he said. At that time Eric was working as an air traffic controller at the Oakland Airport, across the bay from San Francisco.
The planes captain was played by John Wayne, and the passengers included a 27-year-old actor named Carl Switzer, better known as the pointy-haired Alfalfa in The Little Rascals.
The plot focused on dramas in both the cabin and the cockpit, as first one engine, then another, failed, Eric said. The director, William Wellman, wanted authenticity, so he decided hed use a real air traffic controller, whoever happened to be working when the film crew showed up.
That day Id gone to work wearing, as I always did because we were expected to look sharp, a white shirt and a tie, Eric remembers. I felt a tap on my shoulder. Someone said, Youre gonna be in a movie. Then they handed me my script.
After the scene was shot William Wellman unwittingly sabotaged the authenticity. He trotted over and told me I was fine, but my shirt wasnt, Eric said. It was too dazzling. Then he pulled off his own jacket, a garish yellow and blue plaid. Here. he said. Wear this.
The High and the Mighty was considered to be John Waynes finest actingIt was the first time hed been off a horse, Eric saiduntil he surpassed it in 1969 with the role of Rooster Cogburn in True Grit.
The last tale in this trilology comes from Skip Darwin who, as a 19-year-old bride in 1950, lived with her husband, Fred, in a tiny 2nd story apartment behind the famous Encinitas Boat Houses on 3rd Street. (The place is still there, but vastly remodeled.)
We were so young we thought it was heavenly, Skip remembers. Even though the toilet was in a shed outside on the back porch, and the bath was in the kitchen, inside a closet. It was built-in so there was no room to undress. We just stripped in the kitchen, opened the closet door and jumped in. Although we had to wait until everyone left before taking a bath it was fun for a couple married just a few months. The rent was $30 a month.
During the eight months they lived there, Skip said, they saw a lot of their friend, Glen Bud Hare, who had graduated from San Dieguito High School with her class of 48. Bud Hare would later become extremely successful.
As a CHP officer, often first on the scene of accidents, he invented a special splint for paramedics to use to protect the injured. (An early version of the Hare Splint is on display at the Police Museum in Old Town.) But back in 1950, Skip said, Bud was just a kid rattling around Encinitas in a truck delivering dry cleaning.
One night Fred and I, and Bud and his girlfriend, went grunion hunting at Moonlight Beach, she said. Late at night the tiny grunion washed up on the sand to lay their eggs. In the light of our torches they gleamed, silver streaks, all over the beach. We ran like crazy to catch them before they got back in the breakers.
They were drinking beer and laughing, Skip remembers, when they noticed that Bud was no longer with them. Fred walked down the beach hollering Bud? Bud?
Hed fallen asleep with his face in a pool of water. He didnt seem to be breathing! Skip said. Fred frantically gave him artificial respiration, until he showed faint signs of life, and then the young Darwins carted Bud back to their tiny apartment.
Doctors still made house calls back then, Skip said. I cant remember which doctor came and looked at Bud, but he assured us Bud was fine. He slept all night, woke up muttering Where am I? and ate a huge breakfast of friend grunion. And then he got really angry with us because the doctor sent him a bill.
Later, after hed become successful, Bud was very generous to the class of 48 Skip said, including mailing everyone copies of Mac Hartleys beautiful book Encinitas History and Heritage. When Bud died, soon after our 50th school reunion, he was putting together an album of memories for all of us. When any of us sent him material for it hed send us our favorite movie.
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