Back When

Thirty Years Ago Roger Hedgecock, the youngest San Diego county supervisor ever elected, sometimes has an excited vision of Idi "Big Daddy" Amin circling in a C-130 Transport 15,000 feet above the ocean off the San Onofre nuclear power plant. "Big Daddy" holds the United States at bay with a cruise missile, a birthday present from Leonid Brezhnev. ("What are we going to do," mutters Hedgecock, "nuke Uganda?") -- "BOMBS, BABIES, AND BLIND SPOTS," Richard Louv and Paul Krueger, August 25, 1977

Twenty-Five Years Ago Nils Molinas is a hunk. He stands over six feet tall, with eyes as blue as a Leadbelly ballad and a smile like a scythe. "I love the way I look," he said on a sparkling Mission Beach afternoon, while posing for a bikinied Polaroid One-Step enthusiast at water's edge. "I know that physically, I'm what Dylan Thomas might call a corker, so why should I lie about it?" -- "LOOK AT ME," Bill Owens, August 26, 1982

Twenty Years Ago I hate to look around and think someone is saying to themselves about me that Mama's mother is my grandmother. When most people think "grandmother," they wouldn't for the life of them think Mama's mother. They picture maybe somebody prim. They hear in their minds a pigeon coo and words that pipe out like frosting words on birthday cake. Not me. How could anybody this fat and loud-mannered have brought out of her big stomach my mama, who has, surely, a bad temper but also a beautiful face and a body no bigger, they say, than a minute, a waist the size of an hourglass? How? -- "HER LITTLE GIRL," Judith Moore, August 27, 1987

Fifteen Years Ago

"I'm arranging for you to interview President Bush, one-on-one, tomorrow," he tells me. "Is that all right?" "Yeah, sure."

"No, really," he says. "It's about 90 percent sure right now, and they'll confirm it this evening. So do you want to do it?"

Yes and no, truth be told -- the old approach/avoidance conflict. On the one hand, it's an opportunity to take the mound against the world's heaviest hitter. On the other, it's a chance to get shelled and sent to the showers -- if not waived out of the league -- by coming off as, say, an airhead, a smartass, or an overawed suck-up. -- CITY LIGHTS: "PARTY FAVORS," Gene Cubbison, August 27, 1992

Ten Years Ago I used to ride the Amtrak San Diegan a lot. For the three years I went to school in L.A., I rode the train south to visit my parents or see friends. When I moved back to San Diego, I rode the train north on weekends to visit my boyfriend Steve. I stopped riding the train after Steve killed himself in February of 1990. He'd asked me to marry him a few weeks before, and I'd accepted. Although Steve seemed happy when he was around me, he had undiagnosed clinical depression. -- KID STUFF: "I WONDERED IF I'D FEEL SAD WHEN WE GOT TO UNION STATION," Anne Albright, August 21, 1997

Five Years Ago More of what Horton Plaza shoppers think about the effect of the Beatles on their lives. Linda Brzycki, who's in her 40s, can't think of the words to her favorite song. She starts humming "da das" for a few seconds. I say a few lines, and she tells me I have it. We can't think of the name, until we come to the chorus, "And I Love Her."

"We danced to their music in the school cafeteria at lunchtime. We had a jukebox and always played the Beatles' music. My girlfriends and I were hooked on Paul." Linda says she doesn't care much for today's music and occasionally listens to country. -- "HEAVY BEATLES DOSE," Josh Board, August 22, 2002