A few column topics from 2020 are still hanging on into the new year, with reader responses or other tidbits waiting, patiently or not, to be shared. I’m going to try to clear those out over the next few columns before 2021 heats up — and I don’t mean the stretch of predicted 70-degree weather.
Of time and Cucamonga
Recent columns on Rancho Cucamonga’s 1977 founding and the origins of its name brought some funny comments.
A newsroom colleague recalls the time when KTTV-Fox11 weatherman Pablo Pereira was talking on air about how windy it was in Rancho Cucamonga and added, in a scholarly touch, “and while it’s not well known, ‘Cucamonga’ actually means ‘sandy place.’”
The anchor asked: “Oh, really? In what language?”
Pereira, suddenly less sure of himself, replied: “…a, uh, local language.”
That would be the Tongva language, unless there’s a dialect particular to Rancho Cucamonga with which I’m unfamiliar. Exactly what “Cucamonga” means is uncertain, with “sandy place,” “place of the light over the mountain” and “place of many springs” as prime candidates. “Sandy place,” being the least romantic, may be likeliest to be true.
I lean toward my own translation: “place of much stucco.”
As I wrote, many other names were bandied about in 1976-77 for the city that would encompass Alta Loma, Cucamonga and Etiwanda, among them Altacucawanda, an attempt to name-check all three. Former Rancho Cucamonga reporter Wendy Leung finds that too commonplace: “I prefer Foncho Cucalomawanda because North Fontana folks feel like they’re part of Etiwanda anyway.”
Reader Chris Frausto, a devotee of local history, shares a story. More than 30 years ago, a local historian visited her son’s elementary school class in Etiwanda. Her son came home “so proud to tell me how our city got its name,” she says. And how was that?
The alleged historian “told the children that when the Sycamore Inn was a stage stop, the stage arrived expecting a meal. The cook was sick that day and the purveyor asked the travelers if there was a ‘cook among ya.’ And that is how the city got its name,” Frausto relates. “I considered that a terrible thing to tell our little kids.”
Dad jokes as local history? Sad.
Drive-in fans
Responding to my column on Inland Empire drive-ins past, reader Alan Curl was surprised that I hadn’t seen any 2020 movie releases, given that some area drive-ins are still in operation.
I did see “Knives Out,” a 2019 holdover, in May at Montclair’s Mission Tiki, and am aware that Riverside’s Van Buren and Rubidoux are operating too. As I told Curl, I’m just not a drive-in guy. And maybe I wasn’t a 2020 movie guy either. “I too am an indoor movie guy,” Curl replies, “but will also resort to any port in a storm.”
My list of old drive-ins wasn’t meant to be complete, thank goodness, because at least one was passed over: the Lake Drive-In in Big Bear. “I was never lucky enough to see a movie there myself,” reader Chris Runnels admits, “but I know in the ’70s when I was a kid, it was under the same ownership as the Lake Arrowhead theater. The screen was still up as recently as a few years ago, but it’s gone now.”
Meanwhile, reader Charles Barr says he worked in the 1960s at L.A.’s Gilmore Drive-In, owned at one point by the same company that had our Mission, Rubidoux and Valley drive-ins. Gilmore was located behind the Original Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax in L.A., part of a complex owned by E.B. Gilmore that included a self-serve gas station and a stadium.
“Once or twice a year the Gilmores would show up at the drive-in and show us their permanent pass to come in and watch a movie for free,” Barr says. “I always got a kick out of it as it’s not like they couldn’t afford to pay. He and his wife were always very nice.”
Japanese American history
I wrote in November about the Harada House, a Riverside landmark that’s an important part of Japanese American history. The Harada family won a court battle to buy the property in an era when Japanese immigrants had few rights and was sent to internment camps during World War II. Afterward, a daughter operated the two-story family home as a rooming house for fellow internees trying to re-establish themselves.
Reader Carl Schafer said their story brought back a related memory from his days as a student at Santa Barbara Junior High in 1945.
“One day, the principal came to our homeroom class to tell us that we would have a new classmate and that he was a Japanese boy who had been in a relocation camp,” Schafer writes. “The principal was very proud of the diversity in our school — he called it ‘a little United Nations’ — and asked us to warmly welcome the new student.
“His name was Takazumi ‘Taki’ Asakura. We did warmly welcome him and he was a friend all through high school,” Schafer continues. “I do know that later he served in the U.S. Air Force.”
brIEfly
Of the nation’s 3,006 counties, Los Angeles County is the riskiest due to earthquakes, wildfires and pollution, according to the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s new National Risk Index, but I’m pleased to say that Riverside County placed No. 7, followed by San Bernardino County at No. 8. The Inland Empire scored high due to wildfires. Remember, what doesn’t kill us or force us to evacuate makes us stronger!
David Allen makes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday’s newspapers weaker. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
The Link LonkJanuary 06, 2021 at 06:08AM
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In any language, ‘Rancho Cucamonga’ is funny - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
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Funny
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