Eric Bergquist

Eric Bergquist is standing in the dark suit next to the podium, not behind it but leaning to his right, talking with the emcee perhaps.  This is a shot from the 2013 Trailblazers Hall of Fame induction, where his father, legendary desert rider, Larry Bergquist, a.k.a., "The Desert Fox," was inducted posthumously in April.  His dad was legendary, and Eric was, and probably still is, a great desert rider in his own right.  I regrettably did not attend the event, though Eric was generous and considerate enough to invite me.  A personal friend was in the hospital recovering from surgery.

I can't remember the first day that I met Eric.  He lived one block away on Conata Street in Duarte.  One of my prominent memories of this guy was when he rode his black chopper stingray bike down to our house on Elda Street.

I found the above photo at http://trailblazersmc.blogspot.com/.

Helen Lam, Realtor Extraordinaire

I first met Helen Lam when I started working as a Realtor at Realty World The Foothills in Duarte in the summer of 1986.  I started working there because Mark Peterson, a good friend of mine at the time, was doing fantastic work there as a Realtor with Pete Cordero.  The both canvassed Baldwin Park and sections of La Puente and El Monte, getting loans and buying up property, fixing them up, and selling them or renting them out.  Together, they did remarkable work.  Why is it that I am always on the outside of partnerships looking in?  Since I knew that Mark worked there I asked if I could work there with him.  He welcomed me.  I didn't get much training.  Carol Hinds explained to the new agents up front that she would not be going out on our first transaction to help negotiate it with me.  Fine, I thought.  Well, it turned out that it wasn't fine with her.  In my first transaction, I represented the seller; the buyer was represented by another agent in our office.  I do not remember her name.  She had red hair.  Well, that's no help, since there about 3 different agents with red hair. So, back to Helen.  I was an independent Realtor for 18 months.  Helen Lam had a beautiful red-haired secretary working for her.  The young woman was getting married.  There were problems.  I don't know what they were.  So, she left.  And since my 3 transactions had all fallen out of escrow in the same week, I asked Helen if I could work for her.  She agreed and we formed a decent partnership.  Helen was an award-winning sales agent.  She would post 3 to 5 listings per week, sometimes more, and her colleagues would shake their collective heads at how she did it.  I think that she even gave a presentation one time on sales within the office, but pride kept a few away.  Still, she earned the respect of agents who wanted to do well.  She could get more work done now that I, a Realtor, was also her assistant.  She promised me bonuses from the commission of sales, and she delivered on those promises.  She is a smart woman.  But what stands out about Helen was that she was award-winning.  She had won the confidence of so many homeowners in Duarte, Monrovia, Arcadia, anywhere she talked real estate.  The Hearthstone owners in particular loved her.  She was a decent marketer too.  At Halloween, she would distribute medium-sized pumpkins at 5 in the morning to the Hearthstone homeowners.  I know because I helped her deliver them.  I used my red pick-up truck to go down to the Food Mart in LA at 4am and load up the truck with a large carton box on a pallet in my truck and drive it on the 10 Freeway back to the Hearthstone streets and deliver these pumpkins.  It was fun and comical.  At each intersection, we would unload the number of pumpkins that matched the number of homes on that street, and Helen and Richard's great kids, Amy and Andrew, would place the pumpkin's on the residents' front porch.  Of course, there would be a sticker with Helen's name and face and phone number.  Like I said, she was a terrific marketer.  At Christmas time, she would buy dish towels, staple a business card to them, and hang them on the residents' doors.  On the 4th of July, Helen had purchased flags with wooden sticks.  We'd march up and down the Hearthstone streets with American flags and run them through the soft or hard ground at the corner of the respective driveways.  That was the fun part.  After we finished, Helen would treat everybody to a good breakfast at Crystal's Coffee Shop.  A good place to eat.

 

The BLVD CAFE

 

What a great memory!  I remember this cafe.  My memory of it was that it was on the decline or that it was a holdout against modernity.  Nobody that I knew ate here, or at least they never told me that they ate there.  That may not be totally correct.  Someone may have mentioned before that they grabbed a burger and chili there.  But that is it.  I do remember a large avocado tree in the empty lot to the east of this cafe.  I remember cutting through it occasionally to make my way over past the Santa Teresita Hospital and on up to Royal Oaks for my walk home.  I loved that walk.  I never thought of the distance of that walk, only the time.  It would be 30 to 45 minutes.  But I loved that 30 to 45 minutes.  I loved getting lost in introspection, pacing my walk and enjoying anybody who crossed my paths.  Step by step, foot by foot with a cushioned grind of the sand and pebble beneath my tennis shoes.  The sun was never a bother.  In fact, I welcomed it.  I used to walk the trail behind the row of 2-bedroom houses on the north side of Royal Oaks Drive.  This was my path.

Susie Tomasian, BLVD Cafe, 1982.  There was a family named the Tomasians who lived near the southwest corner of Greenbank and Royal Oaks.  When I was in the 5th grade at Valley View, I walked Tammy Tomasian home.  She let me carry her books.  Hey, wait a minute!  I don't know if this woman in the photo is related to the Tomasians who lived on Greenbank.

ALL YOU CAN EAT SUSHI

This place used to be called "All You Can Eat Sushi," and Steve Hardy and I used to do just that and beyond.

During my high-school years, this place was called Zorba's.  And they made some pretty good burgers.  I stopped there a few times on my way home from school.  For some reason, I remember how good their coke was; the carbonation must have been fresh.  When the restaurant was All You Can Eat Sushi, Steve Hardy and I used to eat here at least once every two weeks, maybe more.  We got to be such regular customers here that I think that the owners/managers got nervous about profits seeing two tall guys walk in and sit at the sushi bar and go through several bowls of soup, a few cups of rice, followed by a more than one request for extra ginger at no cost.  So the sushi chefs began serving our sushi with more rice than fish.  Steve and I saw this and didn't appreciate it.  If they were going to advertise "All You Can Eat," well, we were there to test that theory.  But they would not relent.  We were getting filled up on rice sooner.  Steve called our sushi "Arroz Montana" or "Montana de Arroz" in protest.  We'd gone there so often that we knew the manager and he was regularly very kind to us and always happy to see us.  In fact, we were there one time when Kirk Ludwig and his wife were there.  Steve was congenial; I shrunk.  But it was good to see Kirk; I did not recognize his wife.  Kirk and his brother, Kevin, produced this fantastic video when we were in high school, where Kevin rides down a gravel pyramid and crashes his bike.  Kevin is sprawled on the floor from apparent injuries, and his bike was mangled.  The ambulance arrives.  The EMT guys step out of the ambulance and over to Kevin.  From the back of the vehicle (a borrowed station wagon), they withdraw a stretcher and placed it on the ground between Kevin and the bike.  Each EMT takes one wheel of the bike, carries the mangled bike and places it carefully on the stretcher and loads it into the ambulance and drives off, leaving Kevin to rise from the scene unaided dusting himself off trying to make sense of the scene.  The Ludwig brothers are genius.  Loved their sense of humor.  It was hysterical.  A star was born: Kevin Ludwig.  And since then I'd always admired Kirk's artistic ability and smart sense of humor.  My one and only girlfriend from high school, Sylvia Schiaveto, lived around the corner at Highland and Second Street.  I liked her so much that it completely overwhelmed me and I didn't know how to act.  Sorry, Sylvia.  

In this same complex were automotive shops.  One, in particular, was John's Auto, a German man with a terrific sense of humor.  His name was John Janek.  My friend, Ron Palige, his dad knew and worked with John a few times.  He always helped with repairs on my dad's '62 Volkswagen.  Dad went to him repeatedly.  John was always fixing something on my dad bug.  I remember when I was visiting John on my own with my cars, my 1980 Volkswagen, that John was had gotten to be a lot nicer or patient.  I had my Volkswagen from 1975 to 1978 when I purchased my first new car, a truck, actually: a 1978 Toyota long-bed truck.  I remember that Pat Moore pointed out to me that one of the plastic frames that captured the brake light and reverse light was off-color.  It was grey when it should have been black.

The Trails Restaurant, 1952-2001

The Trails deserves its own post.  It was located at 2519 East Huntington Drive, Duarte, CA.  Its phone number was 626-359-2850.  As a family, we loved the Trails.  So many wonderful memories.  A great lounge bar that as an adult I enjoyed once or twice.  But I liked the fact that it was a great place for adults to stop for drinks and a steak after an afternoon at the Racetrack (for those of you from around Duarte, you know I am talking about Santa Anita Race Track).  My  mom loved The Trails.  She loved their soup, their split pea soup blend; I think that it had some lentils and vegetables.  The soup was brought to the tables in a stainless steel tureen and ladled into shallow ceramic dish bowls at the table.  Regardless, my mom loved it; that, and The Trails' cheese bread.  For an entree, she would often order shrimp or halibut.  Their halibut steaks were some of the best.  The halibut steaks were good size.  The meat was flaky.  Hard to find fault with the Trails' halibut.  Their cheese bread was terrific.  Like many restaurants with a western motif, it had terrific wood furniture, cowboys printed on the place mats, and wooden chandeliers.

My dad loved The Trails too.  He enjoyed teasing the friendly waitresses.  The Trails used to serve their salad dressing in large stainless-steel cups that could have easily passed for small bowls.  The cups had large looped handles through which you could slip your thumb.  In these cups, the Trails would put salad dressing and croutons.  Croutons were popular back then; they were perceived as a real smart, real elegant way to jazz up a salad.  My dad's favorite dressing was blue cheese.  But as much as the blue cheese, my dad really liked the cups.  So he asked the waitress if he could purchase one.  She said yes, gave him a discount on the price, and he took one home.  He loved those cups.  Over the years we had a few of those cups at home.  He used them mainly for chilled beverages during the summer.  Maybe once I saw him drink coffee from them.   


The above picture is not exactly it, but close.  The handle was rounder, and the lip was wider.

Here are a few more pictures of The Trails and here is an article that reviews a few of Duarte's old landmarks.  A short write-up on Jim the organist, who used to play Cabaret and Mack the Knife.  Less is more, but here is something extra.

I think that that is what is so horrible about city governments.  That they make decisions on landmarks after a certain age, knowing that the residents who had a long-time emotional ties to them have either moved or died or are too old to care or take on city hall.  On this fact, they can game the old-timers and bamboozle the younger residents.  It may not even be a conscious calculation, where the city with government-connected developers act once 10 or 15% of residents with 25 years residency have been measured. 

Of course, there is the issue of apathy.  What is apathy?  Apathy means that home owners are overwhelmed and that they don't want to be disturbed by civic issues.

Arcadia

This is Huntington Drive, I believe, at First Street, in Arcadia.  It's Christmas, 1963.

Here is another shot from an earlier year, 1955.



Santa Anita Race Track, 1930



Film crew filming a race at Santa Anita Racetrack, which was really Lucky Baldwin's estates, 1935.


This is the estate that belonged to Anita Baldwin, Lucky Baldwin's daughter.  The photo is a 1915 photograph.  This estate was demolished in 2000 to make way for luxury homes tract.  You can see the homes through the gate just north of Foothill Boulevard on Baldwin Avenue in Sierra Madre.


Balloon hangers at Ross Field in Arcadia, 1922.  Dirigibles were clearly the machine of choice for air reconnaissance between wars WWI and WWII.  The site is probably the location of Arcadia's Methodist Hospital.


Arcadia Regional Park, 1938.

Our mom used to take me and my younger brothers to swim and to play here.  I loved the swimming.  The colors of the pool--pale blue against the alabaster walls of the dressing rooms all under a powder blue sky.  She gave us some terrific memories of love and play. 

View of Mt. Baldy from Monrovia.

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US citizens of Japanese ancestry from San Pedro, CA arrive in 1942 at the Santa Anita Racetrack for internment.