Thirty Years Ago ONLY TWO FREE classifieds per week, please. Some of you are cheating on this and other important rules. See last page for rules which help us handle a large volume of classifieds. Thank you.

TO THE CUTE curly headed construction worker who eats sausage sandwiches and drinks Budweiser at Filippi's. Are you single? Your waitress. — CLASSIFIEDS, March 31,1977

Twenty-Five Years Ago To those who know him, there is no great mystery to Sol Price. He's down-to-earth, he's brilliant and clearheaded, he's honest, energetic, and outspoken. It comes as a surprise to some who think of him as a modest man that his latest merchandising bonanza, the Price Club, takes its name from his name. — "MEAN BUSINESS: SOL PRICE AND THE FEDMART STORY," Bob Dorn, April 1, 1982

Twenty Years Ago Trying to find someplace in San Diego County where Jerry Schad hasn't been is like trying to find a parking place downtown: if you like adventure and wildlife and don't mind walking for three days, you might find one sooner or later. Though Schad is about a hundred years too late to say he's been places where no one has ever been, I would venture to say he's been to more out-of-the-way places in San Diego County than anyone ever has. I don't know if there's a term to describe someone like Schad, but there should be. Something like "weekend transient" or "compulsive pedestrian." — "LIFE ON THE CREST," Steve Sorensen, April 2, 1987

Fifteen Years Ago The group has almost nothing in common, but once crammed into the Transportes del Norte bus -- a chrome-laden juggernaut done up in company colors, red-and-black stripes -- a kind of orchestrated bonhomie based on the prospect of some indescribable communal suffering ahead takes hold. And before the bus has even moved, even the two transvestites, their heads discreetly covered with scarves, are chiming in with their girlish sarcasms. "We hate it in the country," one of them says to the pink foreigner deliberately placed (and with heavy irony) right next to them by the ticket officer. "So near to God, so far from the United States!" — "DESTINATION TIJUANA," Lawrence Osborne, April 2, 1992

Ten Years Ago When I thought of God, it was in an apologetic way: I'm sorry, I know You don't like this, but I'm going to do it anyway -- which, coincidentally, was pretty much what I was telling my husband. But the real fear was that if I listened to God, He would talk me back into the marriage, just as He'd talked me into breaking up with that non-Christian boyfriend, and I knew I didn't want that. Let God get His foot in the door and there was no telling what might happen. Before I knew it, I'd find myself wearing Laura Ashley clothes and writing Christian novels and denying my sexuality, my shadow, and my very self. — "A CHANGE OF HEART," Bo Caldwell, March 27, 1997

Five Years Ago Every time I read about Andrea Yates, I shudder. She's just like me. High school valedictorian, good grades in college, pursued a profession, stopped working outside the home when she had her first child, deeply religious, super mom, five kids. Except Andrea Yates's five kids are dead. Drowned one by one, methodically, on a sunny morning after her husband went to work. She laid them out so neatly on her bed. Side by side under a clean white sheet. All except the last. He was so big, seven years old, as old as my Angela. He fought hard. She probably didn't have the strength left to carry his lifeless, waterlogged body from the bathroom down the hall to her bedroom. -- KID STUFF: "THAT HELP SHE NEEDED," Anne Albright, March 28, 2002