Sorry I've Written Lately
Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton
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"I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people
who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done
anything worth remembering."
--- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish writer and
poet
I've been thinking about my home town. Or maybe, more accurately, the concept of my home town.
I'm not by nature a very nostalgic guy. For someone with my history of poor judgment, revisiting the past is a risky proposition for my self-esteem, which depends greatly on ignoring reality. I'm inclined to adopt the attitude of Wilbur Grey (played by comic genius Lou Costello in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein) who, when asked if he had looked in a mirror recently, replied "Why should I hurt my own feelings?"
But whether or not one's inclined to think about one's roots, the matter still comes up. When you register for a website that's going to provide you with sensitive information (like how many Abbott and Costello videos you purchased from their site), they'll usually want you to supply the answers to one or two "security questions", and one of those is invariably "In what city were you born?" And when you meet new people, and they want to get to know you better (I'm told this happens), usually one of the questions is "Where are you from?"
The answers to those two questions might be different, and still might not indicate what you would consider your "home town." I guess it depends on how much consideration you devote to these kinds of questions, which in turn depends on how much time you have to waste, how easily your mind wanders, and.... other stuff, I guess. I'm sorry, where was I?
My impression is that people don't always consider their place of birth as the place where they're "from". A lot of times, they'll consider themselves as "from" a place where they spent most of their formative years, which, for any generation after baby boomers like me, is probably the place where they logged in the most hours watching Sesame Street. That might not be necessarily the place of their birth.
But in many cases (like mine), it is; and you think that would un-complicate the matter for me. But I'm a guy who thinks the directions on the back of a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup should be dumbed down, so it's inevitable that I still have trouble answering the question "Where are you from?" Or even "Where were you born?" (Today's date and the names of my kids also give me trouble, but those are answers I can jot down and pin to my shirt).
When I was 5, when someone asked me where I was born, I thought it was the height of wit to reply, "In the hospital!" I didn't really know why that was a punch-line, but I knew it wasn't really the answer an adult expected, and that was good enough for me. As I got older, using that answer when filling out loan applications or background-check questionnaires didn't score me any extra points for cleverness, so I started putting down Riverside, California.
Technically, that's true. I entered the world in a hospital located in Riverside... but my first ride home was to a house in Rubidoux, California, where I lived till I was 9. So I've considered designating Rubidoux as my point of origin... with all the fact-checking that's currently in vogue, I'd hate to end up being tagged at snopes.com.
But I've heard Rubidoux called "West Riverside", and I wasn't sure if that meant it was a separate entity trying to ride on the coattails of its bigger brother (like West Virginia), or if it was just a name given to an area of the overall city (like Hell's Kitchen). After almost 59 years, my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to research the matter thoroughly. So I hit the books at my local library.
Ha ha ha. Just kidding. I went to Wikipedia, which may not be reliable, but still sounds authoritative. There I learned that Rubidoux (pronounced "roo-be-dough") was probably an "exurb" of Riverside, was a "census-designated" place and an "unincorporated community"; and that prior to 1950, the census referred to it as "West Riverside". All of that is in the past-tense, because in 2011, Rubidoux and some other surrounding exurbs became the incorporated city of Jurupa Valley. The citizens of Rubidoux agreed to be absorbed into the newly-designated community only after being assured that the "J" in Jurupa was as silent as the "X" in Rubidoux.
There's unconfirmed rumors about why Rubidoux would become Jurupa Valley. Some say Rubidoux was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and had to join a witness-protection program while waiting to testify against a powerful family community back east. Others say that it was a preemptive move by the city fathers after hearing that I was planning on writing about it.
So Wikipedia was more confusing then helpful. I sure don't want to tell people I was born in an exurb. I'm not even sure what an exurb is... it sounds like something you'd do after a heavy meal. I could say I hail from West Riverside, but apparently they had thrown away those "welcome to" signs back in 1950, three years before I hit the scene. There's now a place called Jurupa Valley on the map, so I guess I could point to that, but it feels like a cheat... I was long gone from the area before Rubidoux decided to join a gang.
So I had to make a call. Unfortunately, Mom wasn't home, so I let a coin-toss settle it: I'm from Rubidoux, if you're asking.
Let me share a few things I remember about the town, so you'll know that I'm making things up about a real place.
Rubidoux is named for Louis Robidoux, who set up shop in the area in 1843, after discovering that other communities looked down on fur-trappers who refused to acknowledge concluding consonants. For a while he dabbled unsuccessfully with a winery, producing Robidoux Reserve, a greenish-orange vintage that only went well with Spam, which unfortunately hadn't been invented yet. Once his descendants unloaded all the bottles, they changed the family name to Rubidoux, thinking that no one would make the connection. I think it worked, because you're not going to hear the wine story anywhere else.
It's been a few months since I've revisited Rubidoux, but when I did, it didn't seem to have changed that much. It's still a town that sits mostly on either side of arrow-straight Mission Blvd., and it still looks like a section of Riverside where they decided to put all the vacant lots, auto body shops, and any used car dealership with less than 20 cars in their inventory. And there are lots of old houses in old neighborhoods like the one I lived in for nine years.
When I lived there, the town had stores like the Mayfair supermarket; the TG&Y variety store; and the Western Auto; names that keep turning up at archaeological digs throughout the state. The main landmarks I remember are Mt. Rubidoux, the Rubidoux Drive-In Theater, and Flabob Airport. I don't have enough time here to give the amazing Rubidoux Drive-In Theater the space which it deserves (I'll get to it sometime, though), but there's space enough for Mt. Rubidoux and Flabob.
Mt. Rubidoux sounds more majestic than it is. It's really more like a hill, and it serves as an informal marker separating downtown Riverside from Rubidoux. Although it's 559 feet tall, its designer incorporated several forced-perspective tricks to give the impression that it's not as tall as the Matterhorn at Disneyland. There's a park up at the top, with a big cross dedicated to Father Junipero Serra, another pioneer in silent consonants. I'm told by my sources (Wikipedia) that Mt. Rubidoux is home to the oldest outdoor sunrise Easter service in the U.S. It's an inter-denominational service, but nothing brings people together like a pre-dawn, 45-minute, all-uphill hike. I've never attended one of these services, but I can pretty safely say that, if I did, I'd be inclined to reflect on my eternal fate, especially after the second round of CPR.
Mt. Rubidoux is also ground -zero for the city's annual 4th of July fireworks display. It also hosts an annual get-together of the community's firefighters, coincidentally also on every 4th of July.
You can enter Rubidoux from Riverside via Mission Inn Blvd. (which I'll always think of as 7th St.). It passes under this bridge...
... Mt. Rubidoux is on the left... and turns into Mission Blvd. as it goes over the Santa Ana River bed and enters Rubidoux. On this side of the bridge, there's a lot of old but ritzy homes to the right, and there are even some places at the foot of Mt. Rubidoux's southeast face to the left. When we were kids, our dad would take us cruising this neighborhood, telling us to count our blessings that we didn't have a golf course for a front lawn, with all the maintenance that entailed.
Once you pass under the bridge, the scenery (and home values) change. Here's a view of the same road once you round the bend and approach Rubidoux:
The municipal landscaping contract must have gone to a different outfit than Riverside's... the sprinklers are a bit more sparsely spaced. But they did a good job of keeping the town close to the way I remember it.
Looking back over your shoulder (I suggest you pull the car over--- don't worry, you'll find parking), you can see the Rubidoux side of Mt. Rubidoux:
I remember vaguely that my older brother's Cub Scout troop hiked up this side of Mt. Rubidoux sometime before I was school age. I came along because my mom was a den mother and I was a kid that no one wanted to babysit. I think we got to the top, but we weren't allowed to go down the other side, so members of the group either rolled back down the way we came, or were airlifted out by helicopters from nearby Flabob Airport.
Speaking of Flabob Airport... it's a small civic airport that's been in existence since 1925; its website says it's the 7th oldest surviving airport in California. In 1943 it was purchased by Flavio Madariaga and Bob Bogen who, sensing the community's affinity for funny names, decided to call their latest acquisition Flabob (hey, it was either that or "Madbog"). From what I can gather, it serves some of the private air traffic in the community, and it's home to some old airplane enthusiasts. Here's an aerial photo of both the airport and an old airplane enthusiast:
The reason this place sticks in my memory is because it sat at the very end of the street we lived on, so as a kid, I could take a short walk and peer through a fence at old airplanes with fierce-looking faces painted on them. Sometimes I'd luck out and they'd start one up while I was there, whipping up gravel that my mom tweezered out of my face later.
The Flabob website says they have a cafe there that serves some mean biscuits and gravy, so I'm going to try to have breakfast there the next time I come to town. Even if the food's no good, it will probably be worth the visit just to watch the planes taxi up to the drive-through window.
Anyway, bottom line is, when people ask where I'm from, I guess I'll stick to "Rubidoux" as the answer. If I'm still getting a blank stare after my response, I'll try to narrow it down with some stories about the nearby landmarks; or maybe just hand them a copy of this treatise. It won't satisfy their curiosity about my roots, but it will make them regret asking, and as long as I don't have to remember the name "Jurupa Valley", I'm happy.