The Good Old Days

By Lawrence Targalino

I was born in Santa Cruz at the Sister’s Hospital; now the site of a parking lot. We lived in Carmel for a while. I attended Sunset Elementary School; now Sunset Community Center. Back in Santa Cruz, I attended Laurel School; now Louden Nelson Center. I lived in a house on Center Street; now an apartment building.

I kissed a girl for the first time at a house party on Mission Street; now the site of an office building. A monument to mark the places and events, or a plaque at least would have been nice, but no such luck. As you can see, there are very few mementos of my youth remaining in Santa Cruz.

I ran into some old friends from Laurel School the other day, and we talked about the good old days in Santa Cruz. We always talk about the good old days. Every time I am stuck in traffic on Highway 1 or at the intersection of Mission and King Streets, I think about old Santa Cruz.

Old Santa Cruz, circa 1956, population was about 20,000. The downtown streets rolled up at 9:00 PM. The major employers in the area were Wrigley’s on Mission Street, the cement plant in Davenport, the Levi’s assembly plant on Front Street, Woolworth’s, J.C. Penney’s, and the Dollar Store, all on Pacific Avenue.

There were a few major restaurants in the area: Garbini’s out near 41st Avenue, Facelli’s, out near Natural Bridges, The Santa Cruz Hotel, now Planet Fresh Burritos, and Adolph’s, now Sake Japanese Steak House. Later came Castagnola’s on River Street Extension.

The Castagnola Family took Santa Cruz by Storm. They introduced frozen salad forks and complimentary after dinner cordials in their restaurant! Santa Cruz had hit the big time.

I remember growing up near Laurel School. On Sunday afternoons, the local fishermen would dry and repair their nets in the schoolyard. They would lay them out on the asphalt, slowly working from one end of the nets to the other, mending, straightening, and clearing debris.

We always felt quite put upon, since we were not allowed to use that portion of the yard as a playground. Sometimes, however, when the fishermen were not looking, we would race our bikes across the drying nets, only to be yelled at in Italian and chased away.

Another thing we did for fun was to go to the hill separating the baseball fields from the area that now includes the swimming pool at Santa Cruz High School. The hill was home to many pine trees, thus, fallen pine needles.

If you flattened out a large cardboard box, it made a great downhill sled over the pine needles. We felt as if we were careening at break neck speed. It was great fun till someone couldn’t turn fast enough and went head on with a pine tree. That sport didn’t last too long.

There was the Del Mar Theater on Saturday afternoons, then later, on Friday nights. My mother would give me 25 cents for all day Saturday. Twenty cents for the movie, and 5 cents for a candy bar. We watched John Wayne bravely defend America from the Axis Powers or from the Native American Indians! What a guy!

Later, there were Friday nights at the movies … that was in Junior High School. There were 2 Junior Highs in Santa Cruz: Mission Hill and Branciforte. All Mission Hill students sat on the left side of the theatre, and the right side was known as the Branciforte side. Never should you invade the other’s territory.

Now it cost 50 cents to go to the movies. But a new dimension was introduced. If you were lucky, you might sit next to a girl and steal a kiss or two, or at least hold perspiration-soaked hands for a while.

Then, in high school, there was the Skyview Drive in Theatre on Soquel Drive. In the beginning, they charged admission according to the number of passengers in the car.

Soon, the brilliant teen-aged mind went to work, and it was discovered that if you hid people in the trunk of the car, they could get in for free. Some even tried that on double dates, but, as you can imagine, it did not work our very well.

The good old days in Santa Cruz!

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For more info: L_Tartaglino@hotmail.com