With Labor Day past, the end of summer is approaching. Meanwhile, Alta Magazine‘s summer issue, purchased in late July, was sitting untouched. I decided I’d better get to it.
As always, the quarterly devoted to California and the West has Inland Empire insights, often in unexpected places.
A profile of James Darrah, the new artistic director of Long Beach Opera, yielded the detail that “in high school in Rancho Cucamonga” he fell in love with Greek mythology and Shakespeare. (That was Etiwanda High, class of 2002. Go, Eagles!) Also, that he performed in dozens of plays “at the University of La Verne.”
Darrah, by the way, was raised in St. Louis, meaning that he and your St. Louis-friendly columnist may share a fondness for Ted Drewes frozen custard.
A conversation between Alta editor Will Hearst and Paul Saffo about their favorite little-known spots in the West includes two Mojave Desert sites: Giant Rock and the Integratron.
One-page guides by Farley Elliott to “wacky, wonderful and off-the-grid sites you shouldn’t miss” around the state include four in the IE: the near-ghost town of Amboy, the former film set Pioneertown in Yucca Valley, the Mecca Hills Wilderness in Riverside County and the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Chino Hills, a “stunning Hindu temple.”
Shamefully, I’ve yet to visit any of them, not even the temple, which I’ve been meaning to see for years. And now a San Francisco-based magazine has beaten me to it. Oh, the ignominy.
Is that all? Hardly.
Four pages are devoted to Biddy Mason and the long-gone community of Jumuba, near San Bernardino, where the then-slave lived from 1851-55, and where a California Historical Marker denotes the site of Fort Benson. The alleged fort was, as the article puts it, the home of a man “who in 1856 stole a cannon and put it in front of his house.”
As an IE bonus, the writer is Susan Straight, Our Woman in Riverside. Like the Hindu temple, I now have an itch to visit this historical marker too.
I’ve saved the strangest for last. While half-reading an article on Pulitzer-winning writer Hamlin Garland‘s last years as a spiritualist in the mold of Arthur Conan Doyle, I perked up at the detail that what sent Garland spirit-hunting was a letter from a man in Redlands.
Do tell.
Gregory C. Parent, writer Abby M. Gibson relates, “told a fantastic tale about a period in 1915 when his clairvoyant wife, Violet (now deceased), had received messages from California mission priests, neophytes and Spanish conquistadors detailing where she could find buried Indigenous artifacts.”
Parent claimed he’d unearthed 1,500 metal crosses from before the 12th century — a finding that would upend our understanding of state history — and that many were “at his Redlands apartment.”
Traveling from L.A. to Redlands, Garland went up to see Parent’s etchings — sorry, his crosses, displayed in 17 glass cases — and was “spellbound.” To confirm the fantastic story, Garland hired a medium, who assured him this was all on the up-and-up.
Eventually, however, Garland and his daughter consulted actual experts. They determined that the crosses, rather than dating back 700 years, “were probably only 10 to 15 years old,” Gibson writes, “and most likely had been purchased at a five-and-dime.”
Hey, what’s seven centuries between friends?
I thank Alta for the entertainment and edification.
A weekend in NoHo
With my friend in North Hollywood traveling again, I housesat at her duplex, using it as a base camp for exploring the 818 over the Labor Day weekend.
I knocked two distant restaurants off the LA 101 list with lunches at Van Nuys’ Kobee Factory and Northridge’s Brent’s Deli. (At a mere 29 out of 101 restaurants completed, this is a hopeless task, but at least I’m staying nourished.)
I walked the Great Wall of Los Angeles, a mural tracing city history, which runs a half-mile in length along a concrete wall of the Tujunga Wash drainage channel in Valley Glen. It’s really something. If I can find an excuse to write about it sometime, I will.
And I toured a landmark business that will be the subject of a column later this week. For now, let’s just say Batman is involved and leave it at that.
As Robin might say: “Holy cliffhanger, Batman!”
Mark your calendar
My first public appearance since COVID-19 is coming Oct. 3 in Riverside at a history book fair featuring local authors. It’ll be from 2 to 4 p.m. at Crown of Life Lutheran Church, 5939 Magnolia Ave. Other familiar names will be on the bill as well. More details as the date approaches.
brIEfly
As a young man in the mid-1960s, Sirhan Sirhan exercised horses at ranches in Norco and Corona. At the Granja Vista del Rio Rancho in Corona on Sept. 25, 1966, he suffered head injuries when he was thrown from a horse against a metal fence rail. His family said Sirhan was never the same after the accident. Within two years, neither was America.
David Allen serves time here Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.