By Rufus Baker
Do you remember...
Meet me at Curtis Corner, “the daily message in the personal column, sending young lovers to the corner of 4th and Santa Monica?”
A day of fun for $1.91 at Pacific Ocean Park?
Stan Laurel waving to passers-by from his Ocean Avenue balcony?
Back when your phone prefix was Exbrook or GLadstone and you probably had a party line?
Do you remember...
Cashing in your Blue Chip stamps at the redemption center at Lincoln and Bay?
Skating at the rink on the pier?
The “dutchess” selling penny candies from a jar in her tiny market at 12th and Arizona?
Hot Lips and Fingertips performing each weekend at O’Mahoney’s Whip on Main Street?
Back when cable TV in Santa Monica meant only the Z Channel?
Do you remember...
Sunday grocery shopping to the sounds of Dick Lane’s KHJ Polka Parade in the supermarket at 4th and Broadway?
Buying Scout uniforms at Campbell’s, toys from Haber’s, hardware in Noonan’s, pottery from Beryl’s, books at Martindale’s, browsing the Horace Heidt Arcade, inhaling the organ music from Henshey’s mezzanine, or bowling at Harold Lloyd’s Llo-da-Mar, later the Samoa Lanes?
Back when Third Street routinely flooded at Wilshire outside Ralph’s, before the city installed sewer drains?
Do you remember...
Bob & Al’s burger shack, next door to the original Muscle Beach, on the lawn of the municipal lifeguard headquarters?
Snax Fifth Avenue, with its half-dozen, well-worn stools across from the main Post Office?
Mama, Papa and Baby Burgers from the A&W stand on Wilshire?
Sweet 16 on Montana, the Zanzibar on 4th, the Crandall House on Lincoln, the Scuttlebutt on Wilshire, the two Friars, Coffee Dans, or Bucky’s swinging doors on Pico?
Back when the IHOP was on Ocean Avenue at Broadway?
Do you remember...
The open-air beach trolleys with nautical names plying the then-only Promenade in town?
Crossing the 7th Street bridge to Samohi?
Washington Elementary School on 4th Street and Charnley Jo-Helen School School on Montana?
The city’s first handicapped parking space, on 7th Street, designed for Democratic activist Margaret Cavanaugh’s electric cart with the JFK464 miniplates?
Good morning, Josephine! — The weekly greeting in eyepatched Gordon Macker’s Independent Journal column?
The Oscars at the Civic Auditorium?
Back when the bus from LA was green?
Do you remember...
The rich aroma of fresh leather permeating Molloy’s Shoe Repairs on Broadway, where all the workers were deaf and mute?
The impressive Stanton McDonald Wright murals at the city’s 5th Street Carnegie Library?
America’s first fully automated radio station, airing, “the beautiful sounds of the surf, KSRF” from a glass cubicle at the entrance to POP?
Santa Monica’s daytime only radio station KDAY, with 4th Street studios next to Montgomery Ward catalogue store?
The after-hours club Mirror-Go-Round on Main Street?
And back when Mrs. Pryday used to come on Friday to lead singing classes at the city’s public schools?
If you remember all of these things, if you truly remember, well, then, dearie, you’re much older that I!
(Rufus Baker is a Santa Monica-Malibu school district substitute teacher and former newspaper reporter. He has lived in Santa Monica since the 1950’s.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 20, 2002. Read the original PDF.