One of the great friendships I made during my half-century of covering entertainment personalities was with Hall of Fame song writer Hugh Martin, who lived for many years in North San Diego County, including Encinitas. His most memorable work was for the 1945 Warner Brothers’ Judy Garland film “Meet Me in St. Louis.”
Today’s anticipated Christmas booty would never appear on the dreamscape of most youngsters during the 1940s or early ’50s. What toy land wonders we didn’t know about in those days weren’t missed. Comparatively speaking, post-World War II vintage toys were, at best, primitive.
The 2024 Olympics opened last week in Paris, but a lot of history has taken place during the last century that is worthy of note. Here are two stories I told you about in past columns.
For those who don’t know it, the late KGTV Channel 10 news anchor Jack White not only was a class act as a news reporter, but he was a master magician as well.
Thoughts of the approaching 2023 Christmas take me back more than eight decades of my life. I recall the anticipated booty that never appeared on the dreamscape during my 1940s and early ’50s. Of course, in those days, what toy land wonders we didn’t know about weren’t missed.
For television viewers, the name “Danny Thomas” appears on-screen at least once daily. The name appears during St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital commercials in a plea for donations. You’ll see his name on the side of the hospital building as “Danny Thomas, Founder.”
Before there were roads connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific and Mexico to Alaska, you could buy goods delivered via railroad freight and/or the U.S. mail. This was more than a century before the Internet, all courtesy of the mail-order catalogs of the Montgomery Ward and Sears & Roebuck companies. It was the Amazon of yesteryear.
Each of us has or will experience a good amount of history as life takes us from one day to the next. Do an assessment of your own life ... you might be surprised.
In lieu of today’s current financial climate in Washington, D.C., reviewing a bit of national banking history seems to be in order. Today, as it was yesterday, there always seems to be light at the end of a very long financial-ladened tunnel.
As “dire” as you think things are today in 2023 with our inflation-ridden life, in general could be worse ... and they were just throughout the 1930s. Hopefully, we won’t repeat those days, but somehow history has a way of repeating itself.
High on a bluff overlooking Arlington National Cemetery is the southern mansion of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. As Union casualties mounted during the Civil War, officials in nearby Washington, D.C., thought it fitting that fallen Federal soldiers be laid to rest on General Lee’s estate. However, the story is a bit more involved.
There’s little doubt that among our younger generations there are a great many who are unaware that the one-time world’s largest astronomical telescope is located on nearby Palomar Mountain, which is less than an hour’s drive from the North San Diego County communities of Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos or Escondido.
