Back When

Thirty Years Ago I love the fair; flora and fauna, livestock and agriculture...and Don Diego himself, wearing more makeup than the Fairest of the Fair. But as I was saying, there are rabbits. There are dozens of the albinos and fox-red rabbits and sable-colored rabbits and rabbits with fur like Siamese cats. There are rabbits with upright ears, and lop-eared rabbits, and small rabbits with hardly any ears at all. -- "STEP RIGHT UP, FOLKS!" Anne Hutchison, July 3, 1975

Twenty-Five Years Ago Rosie returned to see Steve and me outside the van, our bags in hand. "You can't do this to me!" she wailed. I asked Steve if he felt we had done the right thing. "We'll get to Washington before her," he snarled.

"Why's that?" I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"Well," he explained, "before we left, I pulled out all the lighting wires from under the dash. Before that, I cut through half the fan belt. She'll be lucky to make it another hundred miles with no oil. I checked it at the station before Winchester." -- "BOUND FOR BOSTON," R.W. Bell, Jr., July 3, 1980

Twenty Years Ago One day in 1982 Ruby Mae Brown, owner of Kelly's Pet Hotel, was driving south on I-5 near Balboa Avenue when she spotted a dog wandering on an embankment. She pulled off the freeway, approached the dog, an aging pug, and talked to it. The pug had no tags. Brown knew the law required you to transport such animals to the county Animal Control Department, where, unless they are quickly adopted, they will be destroyed. She looked around her -- no one in sight -- then took the pug in her arms and carried it to her car. -- "THE DOG WARS," Stephen Meyer, July 3, 1985

Fifteen Years Ago One ER nurse asked me if the shooter was in custody. I told her I didn't know, that officers at the scene were handling that; I was here for the prognosis part. She flicked his finger and said, "Looks like another dirtbag's gonna bite the dust." I looked at the man's eyes. They were open. I looked at the cardiac monitor. His heart was beating. I wondered if the wounded man heard her call him a "dirtbag." -- City Lights: "A COP'S QUESTIONS," Dennis Johnson, July 5, 1990

Ten Years Ago Mr. Jackson's new double LP, released last Tuesday to eager fans, is an unbalanced narcissist's attempt to portray himself as victim as well as victor. Lyrical refrain from "They Don't Care About Us": "Jew me, sue me, kick me, kike me." M.J. says his song about shyster moneygrubbers is "misunderstood." Funny, the Nation of Islam doesn't "misunderstand," neither does the American Nazi Party. It is only the Simon Wiesenthal Center that "misunderstands."

One would think that M.J., fending off child-molestation charges with a reported $35 million payoff, might back away from strange disclosures, but then you have his wife telling Diane Sawyer that children follow M.J. into the bathroom as a matter of course. -- HELL.A. Adam Parfrey, June 29, 1995

Five Years Ago President Bill Clinton's soft-money fundraising dinner for the Democratic National Committee here last Thursday night was reported to have raked in about $600,000. A big chunk of the cash came from some of California's newest political fat cats: Indian tribes with gambling operations. Ponytailed, business-suited tribal representatives were spotted entering Bertrand at Mister A's, site of the event. According to a transcript later released by the White House, Clinton paid them due homage. "I also would like to thank the leaders of the Barona and Viejas tribes for their support and for the example they're setting." -- CITY LIGHTS: "IT'S THE INDIANS, STUPID," Matt Potter, June 29, 2000