February 3, 1966
Girls at San Luis Junior High wanted to wear granny dresses to school but the school officials thought that would be unfair to the boys, so Crazy Dress Up Day was born.
Today a kid would be suspended for bringing a gun, toy or otherwise, to school. Back then if someone was going to “Bust a cap” they were talking about cap guns. Having a cap gun was essential for cowboy wannabees in the 1960’s. Fire them and you smelled like danger. It didn’t matter that the barrel never snapped together right, or that the roll of caps always jammed after the third shot.

Janis Howard embodied the forces of good dressed as Matt Dillon.
Debbie Santana was a little girl, James Zevely was a doctor and Rosalind Dewlaney was a bum. Homelessness was more amusing in the 1960’s. Photos were by Jim Vestal.

It looks like seven high schools had a student correspondant contributing stories for the page. On the next page the County Office of Education was unveiling plans for a new facility at Dairy Creek, then a part of Camp San Luis.

The Brown’s Music Store top 20 list is an ad at the bottom of the page. The Beatles, Beach Boys, Motown, Mamas and the Papas and Broadway were all represented; some more than once. You can still hear many of the tunes on classic rock radio. Yeah, Zorba’s my ringtone.

1.    These Boots are made for Walkin’
2.    My Love
3.    California Dreamin’
4.    Day Tripper/We Can Work it Out
5.    Cryin’ Time
6.    I Fought The Law
7.    My World is Empty Without You
8.    What New My Love
9.    Uptight
10.    Lightning Strikes
11.    Michelle
12.    In My Room
13.    Georgianne
14.    Night Time
15.    Theme From Zorba the Greek
16.    No Matter What Shape
17.    Brown Paper Sack
18.    Five O’clock World
19.    You Baby
20.    Batman Theme

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February 8, 1966
Every Saturday for two years 15-25 workers, 75 percent volunteers, built new San Luis Obispo Church of Nazarene facility on Johnson Ave. Rev. George O. Cargill set to deliver the first sermon February 13, 1966. The crew included several professional builders as well as 82-year-old Thorwald Hatlin. The church had outgrown the former location at 652 Santa Rosa. The estimated value of the new facility was $300,000 and it took over two years to build. The building featured laminated arch construction, wall-to-wall red carpeting, fixtures of marbleized stone and air conditioning. The last sermon delivered in the old facility was titled “Hitherto Hath the Lord Helped Us.”

A posting on the Tribune’s website says the church will celebrate its 80th Anniversary Sunday April 19, 2009.

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This view of Highway 1 with Cal Poly in the background shows how much has changed in 42 years. The highway has a center divider and the university has a library and performing arts center, recreation center and other buildings. I should have climbed a little further up the hill but now the side road is part of a gated community restricting access.

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Pharmacist Doug Carpenter checks pills.

January 29, 1966
A few years ago I was taking pictures of a pharmacist and he adamantly did not want his picture taken counting pills. He had seen his profession visually reduced to a simple bean counting when the skills required were much more complicated. We found some other task to make an image.
Since then I have noticed, especially when TV covers a drug story, the two shots they always use are mechanical assembly line photos and the pill counting photo. When you are trying to tell a story in a short period of time, visual vocabulary can often lean on clichés.
In this case the story was actually about pills and the photographer Jim Vestal worked to make the photo interesting and different by shooting up through the glass.
The story was about new Food and Drug Administration tightening prescription drug rules.
Another story on the page was about “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” author Ken Kesey facing marijuana charges.

The Rolling Stones recorded and released the suburban drug themed “Mother’s Little Helper” in 1966. Guitarist Brian Jones would be dead in three years after his drug use lead to his estrangement from the band.

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January 8, 1966
Courthouses cost more than they used to.
About 40 years ago a new north county courthouse cost $52,000. Today’s newly dedicated Superior Court of California building in Paso Robles on Park Street cost $12.5 million. In fairness the new courthouse is much bigger, higher tech and lot has changed over the years.
For one thing the security features have been upgraded. Stacks of law books behind the bench served for years as a bullet resistant barrier.

According to the 1966 article, the facility on 10th street about to open was a first for Paso Robles.
Originally the city of Paso Robles and the courts shared facilities. City court was held in the city council chambers in the Taylor building and justice court was in the wing of the civic auditorium. The two courts were consolidated in 1952 into a district justice court, that later moved into the Veterans Memorial building. Justice of the peace courts from Shandon and San Miguel consolidated to Paso Robles in 1958.
The land for the 10th street courtroom was part of the original Hot Springs Hotel destroyed by fire in 1940.
Judge Dean McNutt was quoted:

“We are proud of the new courthouse and would like others to see it. The building is well designed for the various functions of the court. The furnishings and appointments will help engender respect for the law and add dignity to the proceedings.”

I just hope the jury box seats are comfortable. Every designer should be sentenced a week of jury duty so they can get this key component of the justice system right.

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Pismo Beach hosts the Clam Festival is this weekend, and Atascadero has Colony Days.

Clamming used to be a major event over 40 years ago, but at some point the clammers and resurgent otters began to outnumber the clams. The Chumash and the dunites could live off the clams on the beach but that era was coming to a close.

Extra low tides in January and June brought out clam hunters out in droves. This is from a front-page story from June 11, 1964:

OCEANO – C’mon in! The water’s cold and the clamming is great!
That seems to be the word today along the South County coast where more than 10,000 men, women and children braved the water along the 10 miles from Pismo Pier to the Oso Flaco area below Oceano.
Raymond W. Westberg, Pismo Beach State Park superintendent, said that a car count of persons was made at the three entrances to the beach at Pismo Beach, Grand Avenue and the Oceano ramp.
Bill Lovern, bait shop operator at the Oceano ramp, said there were 2,000 to 2,5000 clammers in his area at sun-up.
“They really slaughtered the clams,” he said.

A year-and-a-half later the Focus section ran a story under the headline “How long can clam population last?” on January 8, 1966.

Extra state fish and game wardens were brought in from other parts of the state to handle the huge crowds combing the area’s beaches for clams. Last January, when more than 150,000 persons swarmed to the county’s beaches, only five wardens were available for duty.

So many clammers invaded county beaches last January that the area supply of fishing licenses was depleted and wardens were unable to enforce licensing laws.
But this isn’t the case this week, and the public is reminded that all licenses expired last week.
Pacific Telephone Co. has added extra operators to handle the many calls from this county. Last year the local office was swamped with calls and had difficulty handling them all. Extra pay telephones have been set up near the beaches to ease some of the load.
The effect on the clam population itself is devastating. Fish and Game officials last year said that more than a million clams were taken from the county’s beaches and that clamming would “probably never fully recover” from the onslaught.

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October 1, 1966
Arroyo Grande celebrated their 71st Harvest Festival last weekend. By my reckoning that makes it the second oldest celebrated festival in the county.  The Harvest Festival began in 1937 and Paso Robles kicked off the first Pioneer Day in 1931. San Luis Obispo first celebrated La Fiesta de las Flores in 1925 to help restore the fire damaged Mission but that event faded out in the mid-1990’s.
Correct me if you have another nominee.
Markets were smaller in 1966, they didn’t supersize untill later. JoEllen Childers, Tribune south county sales representative, confirms that the Williams Brothers Market location is now the home of Donna’s Interiors.
I used to think Telegram-Tribune was a long name to place on the masthead of a paper, then I found out about the Five Cities Times-Press-Recorder. That’s a lot of ink to spill every week on a nameplate.
According to Tribune production manager Warren Blankenburg this TPR building is now home to Poor Richard’s Press and the Paint shop has been replaced by Mid-State, er, Rabobank.
For reasons lost to time these photos didn’t run in the next paper. My guess is that with over 48 hours between the event Saturday morning and the next paper hitting the doorstep Monday afternoon the editors wanted something fresher for the pages.
The photo they did use was shot Monday morning at Sinsheimer Elementary School as Educational Television was unveiled for 2,000 students across the county. KQED in San Francisco broadcast a program covering math, science and geography. Technical difficulties prevented several schools from getting a signal.
No word on how effective the programming was. Sesame Street would first air over two years later in Philadelphia, July 1969.
My guess is we will rely on teachers for the foreseeable future.
The main headline was one repeated often in The Telegram-Tribune throughout the 1966, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army are on the run.
If you have more information on the photos please share a comment.

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Visiting Cayucos area site of test drilling by state engineers are three members of the Morro Bay-Cayucos Joint Atomic-Seawater Reclamation Committee (left to right) Joe Giannini, Jack Lindemann and chairman Duval Williams.

January 9, 1966

The Atomic Age was on the march. Three years earlier Cal Poly had installed a micro wattage demonstration reactor. In nine months PG&E would announce their choice of Diablo Canyon as the location for their multi-unit nuclear plant.

Why not a nuclear fired electric plant in Cayucos?

Governor Pat Brown was in the midst of an ambitious construction cycle to bring water to southern California. President Lyndon Johnson was spending money on his Great Society programs. In a year one would be out of office and the other would be sinking in the mire of the Vietnam War but for a brief time there was a nuclear-fueled gleam in north coast booster’s eyes.

Quoting from the uncredited article:

CAYUCOS — Test drilling began this week near here to determine if this area is a suitable site for an atomic power facility.

Under direction of a state geologist, Cliff Farrell, corings were being taken to see how earthquake-proof and stable a site north of Cayucos is.

Cayucos is one of five California sites under consideration for a $100 million joint California-federal nuclear powered electrical station.

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Howard Martin, Fish and Game Warden stood in San Luis Obispo Creek today where it flows through the downtown heart of the city pointing to the trash and garbage which makes the stream an “open sewer.”

October 6, 1966

Today San Luis Creek is a downtown gem for folks looking for a little slice of nature in the middle of the city.
In 1966 the creek walking experience was closer to a visit to a third world country than a trip to Disneyland.

State Game Warden Howard Martin was up against generations of bad habits when he began contacting property owners along San Luis Creek.
For decades the San Luis Creek had been paved over, ignored and treated as a dump.

The first day story on October 10, 1966 quotes a Fish and Game report for the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

“The stream is being used as an open sewer. There are many pipes which sporadically spew untreated waste of unknown quality into the stream.”
They counted 89 pipes culverts and drains dumping untreated water downtown.
“All test fish exposed to the San Luis Obispo sewage treatment plant waste died violently within 10 minutes.”
Today the treated water is clean enough to use to irrigate playing fields. If Los Osos is interested, there is a history of the San Luis Obispo sewer being written here.

The second day story was headlined, “The creek polluters say we’ve always done it that way.”
Some shops in town had trap doors to make it easier to dump garbage into the creek.
At least it never got as bad as Cleveland, in 1969 the Cuyahoga River caught fire.
Environmental awareness was a growing issue in the 1960’s.

Creek Day is coming up all over the county.  CONFIRM the date and time…the information in the link looks like it is from last year.

(A now abandoned Week of Welcome activity used to be the Sewer Tour. A WOW group would hold hands and walk the creek from Safeway to the Mission with few or no flashlights. The tunnel would erupt with screams when a group stepped off into an unanticipated pool or tripped on an obstruction. Some traditions are worth forgetting.)

Photos by Jim Vestal

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The Lions Club and volunteer firefighters cooked the beans in City Park.

Drawing enthusiastic applause was the 10-mule team driven by Fred Healy of Paso Robles. The team pulled a train of grain wagons just as they might have in the early days when farmers brought their grain in from the Carrisa Plains.

October 8, 1966
Depending on how you look at it this post is about a month too early…or 42 years too late.
Pioneer Day 2008 will be here Saturday, October 4.
By the mid-1960’s Pioneer day was already a venerable institution.
The first Pioneer Day was held in 1931 but I’ll bet conversations weren’t that different. They had plenty of bank failures to talk about back then too.
Looking at the 1966 photos you can see changes in the town but the parade and bean feed look much the same as they do today.
Volunteers and local business keep the event close to its roots, lunch is still free after the parade.
As they say, “Leave your pocket book at home.”
***
Another story on the page was the beginning of a multi-part series on the health of San Luis Creek, the topic of the next post.

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