Old Hamburger Stands of Orange County

Dave Smith submits a few memories of living in Santa Ana during the 1950's and 60's.

He mentions Kenny's Hamburger Stand in Tustin. I wasn't around back then, and have never heard of this place, but wanted to know if anyone else did...

I Lived on West 17th Street in the Alladin Apartments during the late 50's and early 60's. Went to Wilson Elementary and Smedley Jr. High School before leaving California.

Santa Ana was a great place to live! Orange groves and Walnut Groves all over. My dad was a plasterer that helped build Disneyland....

Remember going To Tustin on the weekends, which was then, considered to be way out in the country! Kenny's Hamburger stand was there and what a treat it was to have one of those great burgers on the weekends...

There was a corn field on 17th and Flower where my Mom used to buy vegetables. Hard to believe it was there when looking at that area today....

Some great memories of a fun childhood in Santa Ana!

I did a search on the Internet to see if I could find more information about Kenny's, and ended up finding a reference to it here on OCThen! A year ago, I posted an article about people's favorite OC restaurants, and someone mentioned Kenny's in a comment, dated June 25, 2006. It was located on 17th St and Tustin, and it seemed like they always gave you a pound of potato chips.

For that matter, who remembers any of the old burger joints of Orange County that don't exist anymore? I know there was a small chain called "Hamburger Handout" that has since bit the dust. In Garden Grove, the Pink Spot, located on Chapman Ave and Brookhurst. In front of the Garden Grove Theater, there was Zesto's. And then of course, Wimpy's in Huntington Beach.

Post a comment, and let's hear your memories of Orange County hamburger stands that have since went out of business.

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Santa Ana Valley High School, the Early Years

Today we received letters from two people writing about their memories of attending Santa Ana Valley High School in the early 1960s. Both of these people graduated from Santa Ana Valley in 1962.

The first is from Sharon...

Hi Steve.........a friend of mine sent me you site, and it sure brought back memories. Just for information:

I was born in Santa Ana in 1945. Went to Valley High School the first year it opened. Went to Lathrop on south Main, way before it was a closed campus. It reminded me of the movie 'American Grafeiti'. We could go across the street to the malt shop and to the record shop and listen to 45's for the lunch hour. Then down to Al's drive in for a burger. For me jr. high was almost better then high school. I have kept in contact with several of the gals that I went through school with. And my husband and I actually went to Tenn. and stayed for three weeks in that area with one, Sharon Shaw. Anyone remember her out there. We graduated from Valley in 1962, the second graduating class. Boy have things changed!! As for Disneyland, my father worked there when they were building it, right from the start. He use to see Mr. Disney on the property watching things being built, and sometimes changing the plans to somethingelse. I lived in the south end of town and in those days you could walk downtown to the 'West Coast' theater for a movie for 50 cents. So much to remember and such changes now.

The second is from Lynda...

I've been reading the comments from SAVHS alumni on this site and only found one person who graduated with me in 1962. We were the first class to attend all three years at Valley. The class of '61 only attended their Junior and Senior years. We '62 grads started as Sophomores the first year Valley opened, when it was just us and the Juniors, NO SENIORS! If my memory serves me right, I believe our football team of Sophomores and Juniors were also in the CIF Championships that first year coached by the best, Coach Dick Hill, who passed away last October.

I attended Edison Elementary and Lathrop Jr. High before entering Valley High. Half of my 9th grade classmates leaving Lathrop entered their Sophomore year at Valley High and the other half entered Santa Ana High as Sophomores. The Santa Ana Valley High School Class of 1962 is celebrating our 45th Reunion in August and many friends from the classes of '61 and '63 are also joining us this year. The first three graduating classes were very close, many classmates have kept in touch through the years, including those who went to Santa Ana High. I don't remember any of the negative things I've read here, our memories are great, it was a good time and place to grow up.

Lynda from the Class of 1962!

Any others out there that graduated from Santa Ana Valley High School in the early 1960's?

Also, check out another article we published about Santa Ana Valley, which has already received over a hundred comments...

http://www.octhen.com/2006/01/santa-ana-valley-high-school.htm

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Knott's Miniature Doll Museum and a Santa Ana Grocery Store

Caydea, an OCThen reader, submitted a couple of questions for other readers. One involved the name of the grocery store located on 17th Street, just past Santa Clara St.

The other question was concerns the Miniature Doll Museum at Knott's Berry Farm. There was a wooden chain hanging from the ceiling made from a single piece of wood. She wanted to know what happened to that chain.

You can read her full post for the details...

I lived from 1953 to 1969 in Santa Ana. Graduated from Santa Ann High School in 1969. I went to Willard Junior High and Hoover Elementary School. Growing up I lived in three houses in Santa Ana. Two on Avalon St. off Santiago and then my folks third and last house was on Poinsettia about 4 blocks away, off Edgewood. From 1969-1974 I lived all over OC. Until I took off for good. In the mid 90's I had my folks join me where I landed, Charlotte NC. My last trip 2 years ago was to the other California to visit my step-son, he lives in SF. I have remained in Charlotte with my husband and our daughter and my Mother. We love Charlotte but Orange County holds such a warm place in my heart. We will be coming back that way next Spring. Does any one remember the Orange County Academic Decathlon?

I discovered this blog while trying to find the name of a grocery store in Santa Ana. My brother was no help! He didn't even seem interested. Since my Father's death my Mom and I spend many hours reminiscing. Our favorite ethnic restaurants Koo's Chinese Food on Main, La Fonda Mexican on Main too? Kono Hawaii the first time I was introduce to Yam noodles and Tofu in Sukiyaki. Back to my reason -the grocery store was on 17th Street on the right side of the street. It was just past Santa Clara Street. Many of the High School fellows worked at the grocery store when I was growing up. I think it might have closed in 70's and then it became a Discount Toy store. I remember my Mom had an account and she was billed for her groceries. You just went in and signed your name. Well if you can remember that would be great!

Reading the blog I have a question for those Knott's folks. In the 80's I brought my husband to see Knott's Berry Farm. We had Chicken, rhubarb, bread and butter pickles, and the best boysenberry jam, pie and syrup. My Dad loved that restaurant. Did I mention Biscuit oh my! While we are talkin food my first and last waitress job was Marie Calendars on Tustin 1969-1971. Back to my question there was an exhibit in the Miniature Doll Museum (that was amazing) from the ceiling they had strung chain links all carved from one piece of wood. We did have a picture and I will look it up. It was something to see and my husband does some amazing things in wood and he was very impressed. I wonder what happened to the chain.

I will prompt my Mom and see if she can add to any of the memories. They were well connected in OC. My Father was Principle of two schools, in Santa Ana Lincoln and Logan at the same time! That was back in the 50's.

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BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse

Did you know that the popular pizza chain, BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse started in Santa Ana?

I remember going there with my family when I was a kid.

It was located on 17th street, just a block east from the corner with Bristol St. It opened up in 1978.

According to BJ's website, it was called, "BJ's Chicago Pizzeria", but my family always called it "Chicago Pizza". It had sawdust all over the floor, and they indeed made some great chicago-style pizza. The lighting was always dark inside, and my parents would always get a pitcher of beer. I want to say that they used to have red and white checkered tabled cloths.

In 1996, BJ's began offering their own line of beers, and then switched their name to "BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse". I remember in the late 1990's seeing BJ's springing up everywhere, but it never dawned on me this was the same "chicago pizzeria" that my family went to in the late 70's.

Our family would pack up inside my dad's Chevy van, with some friends of ours, and we'd have a great time there.

Interestingly, BJ's no longer operates a restaurant in Santa Ana.

I sent an e-mail to the people at BJ's and asked if they had a photograph of the original Santa Ana restaurant, and I got a reply from Rob DeLiema, the President, that they did not. If any of you happen to have one, contact me, and I'll put it online.

Otherwise, click on "Post a Comment" if you remember going to the original BJ's.

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Avocado and Orange Groves of old Villa Park

Here are some recollections from a fourth-generation Orange County native about living the rural life in Villa Park as the tract homes starting coming in...

I was born in Anaheim in 1961 and was taken home to our tiny 3 bedroom tract house on Clinton Ave. in Orange. My big sister and I are fourth generation OC, and a lot of our family's lemon, orange, and avocado orchards uliimately became groves of homes. Santiago Middle School was built on one of my grandmother's last citrus holdings. My grandfather's last 13 acres of oranges in Villa Park, which were woefully damaged in one of the many canyon fires of the 1950's and 1960's, was sold and subdivided in 1975. Both sets of grandparents lived in rural Villa Park, "across" the street from each other on Mesa Drive. My mother used to ride her horse down from the Villa Park ranch to our elementary school, Handy, for an annual show and tell.

We were quite the popular kids as we lived a city life, yet we had a lot of country living still available to us. When I was three we moved, using our little blue wagon as packing box and furniture transport, up the street to the stately old ranch house next door to Handy Elementary School. The tract houses in the Handy Elem area were once part of the ranch that Big House, as we called it, oversaw.

We kept dozens of rabbits on our one acre of suburbia, as well as an angus calf that we raised from a bottle. The kids next door at school thought the calf was a big dog. We gave tours of our "dog" to many a neighbor kid. We also went door to door selling avocados, from original trees from the ranch, for 5 cents apiece. Last time I went past Big House I noticed at least one of the ancient avocado trees were still alive and producing. It must be nearing 100 years old.

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Tinkerbell, Buster Brown Shoes, and Santa Ana Winds

Cary Stolpestad submitted some nice memories of growing up in Orange County, including Disneyland, Tinkerbell, roller skating, television, and x-ray machines at the Buster Brown store...

Since Big House was two stories, towering over the one story tract homes, we had a perfect view of Disneyland's fireworks everynight out of the upstairs windows. My dad, an Orange County fire captain, once went on a call to unstick Tinkerbell, whose cable tangled midway between the castle and the Matterhorn. He broke our Disney bubbles when he announced at dinner that Tinkerbell was really a man.

On payday my mom went to the main firestation to get Dad's paycheck. I've heard the station became a youth center and later burned, but in the 1960's it was a child's dream come true as it had a brass firepole that would quickly trasport you from the upstairs dorm to the firetrucks parked below. Neither Knott's nor Disneyland had a better ride.

Life was grand in the old days. When the Santa Anas blew we'd put on rain slickers and roller skates. On the sidewalk we'd open up our rain slickers like giant outstreatched wings, and then -zoom! - the wind would propell us down the street at frightening speeds. Often our metal wheeled skates would catch a little rock, and we'd experience the worst scabbed knees and palms imaginable.

My dear neighborhood pal, Carol, was named after Christmas Carols as her parents were listening to them on the hi-fi when they received a call that a baby was available for them to adopt if they could come down and pick her up now - Christmas Eve. They did, but I'm not sure her mom ever adjusted to children as every stick of upolstered furniture was covered with plastic and there were plastic runners throughout the house for us to walk upon. Her mom always had the best kid snacks, such as Moon Pies and Otter Pops, but Carol's mom dolled them out through the kitchen door so we could receice and eat them in the garage. They moved out of Clinton Ave. tract house to the first developments going in at Knoll Ranch.

After dinner car trips to the Carnation Ice Cream Parlor on Tustin Ave., Sunday dinners st Knott's, experiencing "lung burn" from swimming during smoggy afternoons, watching Hobo Kelly and hoping she'd put on her magic glasses and say, "I see a present under Cary's bed!"... yet she never did. To this day I still sometimes get the "Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal" commercial stuck in my head, and I still wonder if Cal ever had a real dog in his backyard or if his kids had to play with bears and alligators and monkeys.

My sister and I also wonder if we will die an early death as we always were taken to the Buster Brown shoe store, just off The Circle, for our shoes. They had an x-ray machine that you put your foot into to check to see if the new shoes fit properly. As Mom paid for our shoes we'd stick our newly shod feet in and out of that x-ray machine over and over and over again. Radiation maximus.

We moved from OC in 1967. Our one acre of paradise, surrounded by oceans of tracts, wasn't the OC life my parents remembered, nor the smog choked life they wanted us to lead. They bought a plum and peach ranch in the San Joaquin Valley, and moved us, two dogs, four cats, and 47 rabbits (who traveled in cages systematically stacked inside our ski boat) to start farming anew.

Visiting OC in the 1970's and 1980's always seemed a little too busy, smoggy, crowded. Visiting Villa Park stilled seemed low key and country, yet in the 1980's the old dump road, that ran up the canyon behind one grandparents' house, became a road leading to million dollar houses, not a road leading to the dump. Go figure.

Cary Stolpestad
(part of the Thomson, Popplewell, Workman, Smith, and Bennett clans)

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Anaheim in the 1960's and 70's

An anonymous OCThen reader living in Australia sent us some memories of his growing up in Anaheim during the 1960's and 70's...

I was born in "The Valley" in '56 but my parents moved to Anaheim in '57. Our neighborhood was one of the new housing tracts built on a former orange grove bordered by Ball, Western, Orange and Knott.

I was a "charter student" at Twila Reid Elementary; Kindergarten the first year it opened to the 6th grade. The current site of Twila Reid Park was strawberry fields and we were chased by the owner on a Honda 50 when we'd trespass to pick berries.

Our brand spanking new neigborhood had no grass nor trees. I remember playing in numerous vacant fields and also remember Anaheim General Hospital and Cypress College being built. Ball Road had few sidewalks and Cypress had many cows.

On the way back from Huntington, in our gas-guzzling, seatbeltless Plymouth Suburban wagon full of sunscreenless kids, my mother would stop at the drive-thru Reliance Dairy on Beach Blvd to buy half gallon glass containers of milk and bright red fruit punch.

As a young teenager, I took guitar lessons at Kay Kaylie Music in Buena Park Mall from Frank Krajerbrink guitarist from early '70s OC band "Utopia". Anybody remember "Wigouts"? (I still play by the way).

I have lived in Sydney, Australia for 30 years now and have fond memories of my childhood in an emerging modern Orange County. Sydney has many of the good aspects of Southern California that has made it easy for me to settle here.

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Fullerton in the 1950's and 60's

An OCThen reader named "Tol Bert" submitted his memories of growing in Fullerton during the 1950's and 60's...

I moved to Fullerton with my parents in 1955 and still live in Orange County.

I remember going to Disneyland the first summer it was open on perhaps the hottest day of the year. The only place to escape the heat was in the movie theater on Main St. which I have forgotten the name of. I still have some of those 85 cent "E" tickets.

In the 60's cruising up and down Harbor Blvd was popular - from Hillside Drive in ( now a parking lot) to Taco Villa and back. Gas was 30 cents a gallon. You'd pass under the Welcome to Fullerton bridge where Berkeley street now intersects Harbor. I'd like to find a photo of that bridge. Sunny Hills High School would open soon.

Drag racing was popular both on and off the streets in the 60's . Lions Drag strip in Long Beach was great for Saturday night and then Pomona on Sunday. The eastern edge of the 91 freeway ended and began at Lemon street in Fullerton so it was a good place to start a short street race with no traffic behind you. I don't recall any accidents that occur ed from street racing. Perhaps that was because then everyone had to take drivers education in high school.

The Model Market was on the western side of Harbor Blvd off Valencia Mesa in Fullerton. It was an old wood floor place with hitching posts outside. Before Bastanchury road was built connecting Harbor and Euclid there were horse trails through the orange groves.

Going east on Yorba Linda Blvd you were out in the country by the time you got to the old Nixon House. Driving west on Artesia past Buena Park would take you through Dairy Valley and its aromatic cow pastures. To get to Newport Beach you had to snake along Newport Blvd and right by the old blimp hangars at the Tustin Marine base. Jamboree Road near the Santa Ana freeway could be a little slow at times when farmers were taking their sheep across the road.

Orange County was a nice semi-rural area then. Great to grow up in, but you knew it would change. Nothing that nice could avoid the inevitable urban growth.

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Disneyland Hotel Blueprints Wanted

Don Ballard, the author of a book entitled, "Disneyland Hotel: The Early Years 1954-1988", would like to ask our readers if anyone can help him locate original blueprints of the Disneyland Hotel...

I am the author of the book Disneyland Hotel: The Early Years 1954-1988, please see www.magicalhotel.com. I wanted to post a request to try and locate the original blueprints for the Disneyland Hotel. I have checked with the architects (Pereira and Luckman, both deceased) present facilities with no luck. I was wondering if there may be a copy somewhere in the archives of Orange County or Anaheim. I checked with Chris Jepson and he is not aware of their location either.

Maybe if we put out a request for these, somebody would come forward with some information. I also have some great shots I would like to post on your site. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you and best regards,

Don Ballard

If you have information that can help Don, please click on "Post a Comment" below and post something. You can also contact him through his website: http://www.magicalhotel.com.

In fact, check out his website and see lots of old photos of the Disneyland Hotel, and buy a copy of his book online.

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Glow-in-the-Dark Statues at Knott's Berry Farm

Jill, another OCThen reader submitted a comment on our Knott's Berry Farm page about a strange little store at Knott's that sold glow-in-the-dark statues...

Does anyone remember a small building that was located over in the area where the chapel was where you could go inside and they would turn off all the lights and all sorts of statues would glow in the dark? I did not read anything about this particular venue and I don't remember the name of it at all.

My sister and I used to adore buying our favorite souvenir there which was a darling glow-worm. We treasured these long after our visits. I am 60 yrs. old and lived in Hacienda Heights in the late 50's. Knotts was a favorite inexpensive outting and we had many picnics in the stage coaches especially during the summer.

Loved watching the horse that could do math! Riding the burro's was a highlight too. My sister and I agree, we were so lucky to have grown up when we did and our memories have endured when for us the "real" Knotts Berry Farm has vanished.

Anyone who can add to this conversation, please click on "Post a Comment" below!

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