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Twenty-Five Years Ago HEY YOU OUT THERE, let's in memory of John Lennon give peace a chance.

BEATLE FANS. Did anybody out there do any home videotaping during December 9 through the 14th? If so, see Wanted section, duplicate, etc.

IN MEMORY of John Lennon (1940-1980). You will be missed. I love you.

FAREWELL JOHN LENNON. We of Sphaera remember. Your message will not be silenced.

JOHN LENNON died for your sins, don't let it be in vain, ban all guns. Jim Noel. -- CLASSIFIEDS, January 8, 1981

Twenty Years Ago Ray is a predator, a night stalker with hot blood and a smooth delivery. I've seen him work his magic on 16-year-old girls and 40-year-old women.... Of course, Ray left a trail of broken hearts and hurt, angry women behind him. A lot of the things he did I didn't like. He lied constantly, coldly. More than once we'd be back at Ray's house with a couple of women after a night on the town and one of them would say to me, "Gee, I think it's terrible what Ray said happened to you guys in Vietnam" (neither of us was there), or "Are you guys really football players at USC?" Most of the time I played along; my own blood is not much cooler than Ray's at times. -- "WITH A FRIEND LIKE RAY," Glen Wallace, January 9, 1986

Fifteen Years Ago During his three-year marriage to Esther, my father and I rarely saw each other. In an attempt to "turn over a new leaf," as he so often put it, he summarily jettisoned from his life those people and things that bound him to the past: my mother's jewelry -- she'd made no provision for it in her will -- was pawned; the house was repainted a pale chartreuse with chocolate trim (Mrs. King would have been appalled); and as for me, his 35-year-old baby, I was, so to speak, tossed out with the bath water. -- "THE WIND DID IT," Bernard Cooper, January 10, 1991

Ten Years Ago I trace my passion for the orange grove to a northern childhood of Tang and frozen concentrate, tract houses where trees were too young to stand without green tape and crutches. Once a year, when the electric heaters dried our skin and ticked like pressure cookers in the rooms, the cold, sweet oranges would arrive by parcel post. They came around Christmas, when my Phoenix grandparents would send a white cardboard box of Valencias to Utah. For this annual occasion, we owned an electric juicer. But my husband, Tom, was born in Orange County, California, in 1947, when oranges were as common as sun. In his black-and-white childhood photographs, citrus leaves are dark and eye-shaped, like leaves in a fable. -- "DIARY OF AN ORANGE GROVE," Laura McNeal, January 4, 1996

Five Years Ago What's a guy like me doing in a place like this? Well, hic, uh, heck, it started with an ad I saw. Free hors d'oeuvres with a $6.00 martini every Thursday night. Hors d'oeuvres! We all know how the rich snack. Big! I'm thinking ooh la la. La Valencia. La Jolla. This could be a nice expensive-looking birthday treat for Carla. So, test run. Number 30 drops me off at Torrey Pines and Exchange on the edge of town. Few blocks to walk. It's dark, of course. I pass Gucci boutiques and boutique hotels. Then, the high Spanish dome, the low red-tile walkway, the garden café. Like an alley cat I'm in under the canopy past the valets. I turn right and right again into a dark bar. People huddle over triangular glasses with cherries or olives in them. Those code words pop out. "Dividends." "Options." And then long alpha-male laughs. This is the Whaling Bar. -- TIN FORK: "CASTLES ON A BUN," Ed Bedford, January 4, 2001