Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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It always amazes me, when I think I have exhausted all of the files of my mother Marion Deaver, I find something new. Yesterday I was searching through the file drawer and found a file that I had created when I started organizing all of this that was titled "Garlock". I obviously had forgotten about it so I pulled it out. It was a gold mine! There was an article about the dedication of the historical landmark placed there in 1960 to honor the early residents of Garlock. In case you don't know,...
Last column’s topic was Mojave Airport as of 1986. We noted how the Space Port, as it is now called, has grown considerably since then. I promised I would write about “another view” of Mojave, as written by a reporter from the New Yorker Magazine after he had visited the airport to cover test flights of the Voyager as it prepared for its around the world flight and record attempt. The August 4, 1986 magazine article featured the opinions of Burton Burnstien. He first interviewed Dick Rutan...
It was time to paint my office at home since it had never been painted in the time I have lived there. This required me to go through old totes of photos, etc. that were above the closet that had not been seen for a long time. Their contents were mostly old photos of the kids and their school “stuff.” Then I found something of mine! I had saved a copy of the Enterprise Newspaper because it featured a photo of my daughter Meg on a “slip and slide” when she was seven. The photo allowed me to note...
Believe it or not, I discovered a box full of things from my mother that I didn't know I had. I stuck it in my closet when I moved to Tehachapi, and assumed it contained old photos. It actually contained all sorts of things, including an eighth grade project my mother, Marion Deaver, completed on California History. She was born in 1907 and compiled a book about the state IN 1921 when she was 13. When I first looked at it, I thought it was a book on California Missions. It was much more. She...
I decided this week I would not search for articles of my mother, Marion Deaver; but rather search my memories and write about Christmas at the Deaver house when I was growing up. Once, as an adult in my thirties, I remember the topic of Sunday School was about making memories for Christmas. I felt sad at the time because I couldn’t think of any specific memories of what we did on Christmas morning, which was the requested topic. I vowed to make it different for my children and have specific t...
Recently I noted that I have been unable to locate my mother’s original copy of the White House Cookbook, originally published in 1887. My mother’s version was revised in 1900, according to documentation she had received about it. But…I couldn’t find it anywhere. I went to my Brother Bill Deaver’s house and went through some of his boxes of “stuff” to no avail. In the meantime I ordered a reprint of the book from Amazon and thought that way at least I could write about it. (not cheap, either...
I never cease to be amazed at the things I find in closets. Recently I had a whole patio full of old timers laughing and talking and remembering. They had all come home for the weekend for the Old Timers Picnic and they always land on my patio when there is nothing else to do except laugh, eat, and maybe have a beer or two. One of my late husband’s friends said he remembered that Ed had some old photos which, of course, everyone had to see. Up on the closet shelf was a box I had forgotten about....
Conducting my usual “digging” through my mother Marion Deaver’s files, I stumbled onto an Outline of Major Assumptions, Policies and Proposals for the Tehachapi Area General Plan in 1958. In light of the recent retirement of City Planner David James, who was instrumental in designing the city’s new General Plan in recent years, I thought it would be interesting to see how the city began its process for a general plan in 1958. I found a report to the Citizens’ Committee of the Tehachapi Planning...
Brochures are used to promote something, from weekend events, schools and cities. While searching through my mother Marion Deaver's files, I found some old brochures promoting Tehachapi. I think the two that I found were created in the late '50s or early '60s, by their content and the graphics included in them. Both were sponsored by the Tehachapi Chamber of Commerce and encouraged readers to come to Tehachapi and perhaps live there. One of them called Tehachapi "The Valley of Many Acorns and...
The Loop asked me to write a column on July 4th memories, so departing from my mother’s history, I am going to search my own brain. My parents brought me to the fireworks in Tehachapi each year when I was little and parked along Highline Road so we could see the show from a distance (and I do mean distance!) That way my dad, who always drove, could make a quick getaway back to Mojave along Tehachapi-Willow Springs Road, and onto Oak Creek Road back to town. That yearly trek instilled in me a l...
Three years into its infancy in 1962, Nat K. Mendelsohn – president of California City Development Company, and main visionary for the desert city of California City – declared that much growth and improvements were indeed taking place there. I found a news release in my mother Marion Deaver’s files, along with part of a brochure for the city listing all of its potential. Mendelsohn said that there were 10,000 residents and property owners in the three-year-old community in February of 1962....
Most of us remember the 100th birthday of the city of Tehachapi held in 2009 in front of the steps of the present city hall complete with a jumbo-tron. But some of you have been here long enough to remember Tehachapi’s 50th anniversary, which my mother Marion Deaver wrote about in 1959. In 1909 the downtown was lit by a dozen gasoline street lights which shone down dimly each night on the dirt streets of the city. If a fire broke out, volunteer firemen rushed to the scene with a hand-drawn t...
This week I am departing from my usual theme of my mother Marion Deaver's articles on history. This time I am honoring some other members of my family who recently ran a half marathon to raise funds for other family members and friends who are battling breast cancer. My son Clayton Strahan knew that his aunt Teri Strahan has been battling breast cancer for over two years. He also learned that his childhood friend Heather Almond Utterback, who now lives in Oregon, was also in the same type or bat...
Digging around in my brother Bill Deaver’s cupboards in his garage, I found some more of my mother Marion Deaver’s “stuff”. In one box was a 1960 copy of the Mojave Desert News, then owned by Bill and Milt Smith. I always enjoy looking through these old publications, because they were so “folksy.” Today’s news on the Internet has hard news, usually bad, gossip of famous people, or trash. Often print media includes local sports, weddings, and hard news about the local area – and sometimes attempts to “stir the pot” about local government. The 19...
"The wildflowers are blooming!" When my mother, Marion Deaver, exclaimed this on a weekend it meant we were headed for the desert to check out the wildflowers. My mom knew each of her favorite spots and which wildflowers would be blooming there in a year with "appropriate" rainfall. That meant that there would have to be fall rains to help the seeds germinate, and spring rains to bring them up and to bloom in all their glory. We would travel to "Nine Mile Hill", east of Mojave, to look for...
I have a copy of the September 1958 Bonanza Magazine that was my mother's. It was published in Randsburg and was listed as Vol. 1 No. 1, so it appears it was the first issue. The magazine, published by E.Z. (Erv) Sauke, included "stories of the old west, and its boom towns." I have written a column from this magazine before, but I did not look at every story in it. This week I found an article written by Barry Storm, who wrote adventure stories throughout the west. His stories were "wrapped...
Searching through my mother Marion Deaver’s files for a column, I found an article she wrote probably in the late ‘50s or early ‘60s about a Mojave Chamber of Commerce meeting. Some of those in charge, including Milt Smith, Mojave Desert News co-owner; Robert Byers, owner of Byers Furniture; and D.C. Sparling, owner of Kayo’s Trailer Park, were appointed to a committee to research the possibility of filing a request for a Kern County Grand Jury investigation. Some chamber members believe...
Rather than writing about local history that my mother recorded, I decided to write about history in the making – in 2015. Last week I attended a meeting of the East Kern Economic Development Alliance, a group of East Kern movers and shakers, who meet every other month to discuss how to improve the cities and communities in Eastern Kern. The group’s logo is East Kern – Innovation rising. Each time the group meets, a different topic is discussed to provide information to those present on how t...
I decided this week I would not search for articles of my mother Marion Deaver’s but rather search my memories and write about Christmas at the Deaver house when I was growing up. Once, when I was an adult in my thirties, I remember the topic of Sunday School was about making memories for Christmas. I felt sad at the time because I couldn’t think of any specific memories that we did on Christmas morning, which is what they were referring to. I vowed to make it different for my children and hav...
As usual, I was looking in my mother Marion Deaver’s files to find a column. Every time I think I have run out, I find some other nugget that my mother wrote. This time I stumbled on to a speech given by California Governor Goodwin J. Knight, whom my mother affectionately referred to as “Goody Knight”, although I am sure not to his face. I glanced at the top and saw that it was a speech by the Governor and I thought it was the one given by him when he dedicated the Oroville Dam, which my mother...
October 27, 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of the now famous speech delivered by Ronald Reagan at the Republican convention for the nomination of Barry Goldwater. Hearing that reminded me of the times that I had met Reagan, and I decided to write about those memories and others of my brother Mike Deaver, who worked for Reagan, both in California and Washington, D.C. We lost Mike in 2007, from pancreatic cancer. I saw Reagan at Edwards Air Force Base July 4, 1982, as he and First Lady Nancy...
When I was growing up in Mojave I remember the local Western Auto, located on K Street. I loved to go in there – they had everything for sale. My dad would go in there when I had a flat on my bike, and he finally bought the thorn resistant ones, because of me riding through vacant lots as short cuts that were full of “goat heads”. Yesterday I had no idea what I was going to write about for this column. I found several articles that my mother Marion Deaver had written that I could choose from, bu...
As usual, when going through my mother Marion Deaver's files, I find things that start another trail of research. Such was the case when I found a photo of a grave with the notation "jawbone cemetery" on the back. This perplexed me, because I had never heard about any cemetery in Jawbone Canyon. I asked my son Clayton Strahan, who has been in Jawbone roaming around over the years if he had ever seen such a small cemetery, and he had not. I searched online and came up with nothing. So, I turned...
I was searching for a column subject in my mother, Marion Deaver's stuff and I was thinking that I might be running out of ideas when lo and behold – I found an article written by her in November of 1966 about Tehachapi apples. Talk about perfect timing. I learned from the article that in 1966 the apple crop was "one of the earliest in 40 years and brought the apple crop to a close by Thanksgiving." This year the apple crop might end even earlier, due to the strange weather this valley has e...
I found a program from the 11th Annual World Championship Gold Panning Contest held at Tropico Gold Mine in some of my things after I cleaned out my storage unit recently. I thought I would look in my mother Marion Deaver's files to see if I could find some photos of the contest, and in the process found two more programs and a bunch of photos my mother took over the years of the event. The programs included ones from 1968, 1970, and 1971. The event was started in 1960, and I remember going...
