Monday, April 06, 2009

Back When Brea Was a Small Town

Anonymous recalls the City of Brea back in the 1970s when things were smaller, and asks the old timers what they think about the new hustle and bustle...

Brea has changed more than any other city I can think of. The main street, Brea Boulevard was so very small, just 2 lanes and there was no mall and really no shopping to speak of. (and I'm not referring to the 1930's, but the 1970's.) Their library was in a small strip mall. I remember a yardage store that was always hoping. I think it was called Jeanne's. Now, Brea is a bustling town. Lots of restaurants, a large mall, a big modern library and city center. I'm wondering how the old-timers like the change.
Sounds like Anonymous is an old timer too.

13 comments:

  1. I grew up in SOCAL. I lived in Brea during my high school years. Back in the '60s Brea was a town that was full of people that worked in the oil industry. I've moved to Illinois when my Navy hitch ended in 1977.

    In 2005, I visited a couple of old high school chums. David is now living in a gated apartment community, near a freeway in Irvine. The place looks like an over-sized Taco Bell with a pool. He and his wife have to work four jobs just to make ends meet.

    My old buddy Bob is King of the Hill on an overlook near Apple Valley. He couldn't afford the cost of living in Brea any longer so he got out. It was a short visit, but it was sure great to see them.

    Brea, once a quaint little burg for wildcats, has morphed into a fast paced place I've no desire to visit again. After a tour of Brea, I started driving to Yorba Linda, but it is all wall to wall houses and strip malls. Gone are all of the fruit and avocado orchards that put the "Orange" in Orange County. Now everything looks like it's designed by Taco Bell/Disneyland Architects. I got disgusted and turned around. I never made it to Yorba Linda.

    Illegal immigrants are way out of hand and the citizens of the state are paying dearly for it. Our country will soon become part of the "Great American Union" before long. We'll either be rich individuals or somebody's slave at the rate we're going.

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  2. I too remember Brea as a small town. I did not grow up there but I spent 21 years in Brea and loved the quaint small town feel of yesterday. I am sorry to say it is gone and Brea just does not have the same appeal to us. It has grown so much that you cannot tell when one town starts and the other ends. My husband and I went back to visit a couple of years ago and we were sad to see that everything in the town looks just like every other town. I miss the Jeanne's Yardage, the Sam's Place, the Alpha Beta and Kap n Keg. I remember the folks that started these stores, they were warm and genuine with true family values. Gone are the days of the kids riding their bikes down Impreial Hwy to the creek to catch crawdads. My husband grew up in Brea and he has wonderful stories to tell about this old town. I guess one might say that progress is not always such a great thing.

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  3. Remember the term " Guada La Harbra?

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  4. Brea was way out in the country to me as a little boy living in Garden Grove.Brea in 1955 was where my family bought a resturant called The Hub across the street from the park with the swimming pool. Carly's husband may have eaten at our resturant, at the counter with round bar stools or in one of the booths with red and white table cloths, breakfast, lunch or dinner. Burgers came in a red basket lined with wax paper with chips.
    My dad Dick Williams would take me to work with him sometimes and let me help wash the dishes. Our family, The Crew, would make up brown bag lunches by the dozens to be picked up by the oil industry workers every morning heading off to work. Also they would make and deliver lunches to the Brea City Council meetings.
    I loved to go across the street to the park and swim and splash in the pool. I had my first experience jumping off a high dive board there when I was five years old in 1955. What a rushing drop that was!
    We lived in Garden Grove and drove up Harbor through Fullerton and Hillcrest Park to get to Brea and the resturant. Two lane roads in the country all the way there with orange trees everywhere. Now I hear it has changed into another, different city. I drove thru Brea somethimg ago and noticed that where our resturant used to be is now a KFC. If anyone remembers the Hub Resturant please post a memory.

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  5. your family might have bought THE HUB from my grandparents Frank and Velma Bickel!!! We ate there almost evry Sunday after church! The old Hub turned into a plumbing store and the KFC was on the corner and they both are no longer there just a parking lot! My family is still here and I have just recently noved back! Glad I have all my good memories to share with my friends family and my kids and grandkids!!!

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  6. how about the HELMS BAKERY MAN???? Gene Xenos was his name he had the best doughnuts and macaroons!!! I loved it when he would pull the drawers out and we could pick out a glazed doughnut!!!!

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  7. Mom grew up on Shell lease up Site Dr. Dad lifeguard at plunge in 1936. Summer job in H.S. Me and my Brother and Sister 2nd generation Brea schools. My two boy's 3rd. generation Brea schools. Use to ride the cows for fun where Brea mall is today. Rabbit hunt behind Brea Jr. High. Had many a beer at Sam's place. All changed now that the rich and famous moved in. Feel like a stranger in my own town. Sad.

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    1. my uncle was Sam Landa.. I remember walking to school passing the bar every morning. My mother used to work there with him. Brea is no longer Brea of old that is for sure.

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    2. I remember watching the mall go up...My Uncle was Sam Landa the owner of Sam's place. His wife Mozelle "Tommy" just passed lat year at the age of 90. My mother used to work at Sam's with him...

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  8. Your next assignment. I failed PE for not shaving my mustache and side burns but did play varsity basketball. Dress code would not allow shoulder length hair, sideburns below the middle of the ear nor mustaches and beards. Staff enforced the dress code at the photographer’s room for Sr. picture day. I was not allowed in. Saturday was make up day for pictures and no staff was around. They took my Sr. picture. The annual was completed and guess who’s picture was the first student to have a mustache and long hair and sideburns in the Brea Olinda H.S. annual?
    Clue, Mr. Putnum did not like it at all.

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  9. Part of my childhood, I was called a "hillbilly from the sticks" because I grew up in a rural area on the edge of a semi-rural subdivision on the northwest side of Brea, about 5 miles or so from the actual town of Brea. The library in Brea was too far away for me to get regular rides there, or walk there, so instead I would walk about 1.5 miles south on Puente St., to a Bookmobile, to borrow my books. I was an avid reader (as a child) of travel books, and dreamed of going to countries like Switzerland & The Netherlands. By the time I became a teenager, my dream came true as my family moved to Europe and we did a lot of travel there. I remember once in a while when I was growing up in the rural Brea area, I did get into the town of Brea (this was the mid-1970's) and it was a One-Horse Town. One library, one municipal building, one movie theater, one bar & grille, and a couple other restaurants on the outskirts of Brea, such as a Love's Barbecue. That one haunts my dreams for some reason, it keeps coming back along with the nearby supermarket (the name of which I don't recall.) I was away from Brea for several years. When I went back for a visit, sometime in the mid-1980's, the One Horse Town became a Suburban-Sprawl-Town complete with a mega shopping mall (The Brea Mall.) My desciption is just that, a description, because I am not saying that there were any "good old days." The evolution of Brea is fine, though I miss the orange groves that are no longer there. The last time I visited Brea was in 2006. It's still a friendly joyful place, as it always has been. I remember living on that rural hillbilly edge of Brea, and regularly seeing mountain lions and tarantulas. In the years I've spent living in the Midwest & the Central South, people would seem surprised and possibly terrified by my true stories of the mountain lions and tarantulas. But the mountain lions never came too close, and the tarantulas never attacked, even if they came into your yard. We just ignored them and they eventually went away. I went back to this rural area in 2006, and it's more semi-rural now, with many more suburban-style subdivisions. There used to be a nursery nearby (when it was very rural), whose name I do not recall, but I seem to recall a particular day in the mid-70's I was there and it was scorching dry heat of about 105 degrees, and getting an orange soda from a rather retro (for then) soda machine, that looked like it was from the 1940's, or even 1930's. ANYONE OUT THERE KNOW THE NAME OF THIS NURSERY ? IS IT STILL THERE ? It would have been near the far north end of Puente St., and off to the east on some dirt road. If you wish, you may share your relevant memories of this account of Brea & rural Brea, with "Monterey Jackson" by e-mailing joyacademy8@yahoo.com ; and put the name "Monterey Jackson" in the subject line.

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  10. It was called "California Living Nursery" at the site of the old avovcado packing house. About 2006 Olsen Homes bought the property and built a tract of nine homes. I live on Puente just north of this location. Brea has lost all of it's charm as well as most of Orange County.

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  11. I grew up in Orange right off Santiago Blvd and it also was all orange and avacado groves. Like most of OC they are gone now too. We used to play Brea in athletic league play when I was in HS in the early 70s. I remember it as being way out in the middle of no-where. Apparently the golf club my parents belonged to, Western Hills, was in Brea also. It seemed like it took forever to get to Brea but I loved it. I moved from OC in 75 and when I went back a couple of years ago I couldn't believe what Brea is now. Sonora, El Dorado, Valencia nd Brea HS all seemed out in the middle of no-where but sadly it is all wall to wall houses now

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