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Thirty Years Ago Terry Judkins would seem perfectly at home in Mission Beach, where he remembers "hanging out" as a high school kid. He has dark blond hair and a thin blond beard. He speaks Swedish with no trace of an American accent.... Terry grew up in Clairemont, and was graduated from Clairemont High School in 1965.... When orders to Vietnam arrived during a leave in San Diego, Terry made a lonely, very important decision. He decided to flee to Sweden. -- "HOMES AWAY FROM HOME: FROM SAN DIEGO TO STOCKHOLM," James Cravens, May 5, 1977

Twenty-Five Years Ago When Jack Ford, son of the former president, purchased the two-story Victorian office building at 826 Fifth Avenue a year and a half ago, he and partner George Gorton set out to eject the most conspicuous tenant: Pleasureland Adult Arcade. Pleasureland. Ford and Gorton, the latter of whom serves as manager of Mayor Wilson's campaign for U.S. Senate, didn't want to put up with being landlords to such a controversial tenant. -- CITY LIGHTS: "THIS LAND IS PLEASURELAND,"Matt Potter, May 6, 1982

Twenty Years Ago Mama says divorce is better than had they lived a lie for my sake. I'm only chubby. A picky eater. My eating habits are bad. I won't eat meat or poultry. Mama says fact of the matter is, I eat what I please. With her finger stuck in my stomach, she points out that I eat chicken gravy, I slop down Campbell's chicken noodle soup. — "FAMILY TRUTHS," Judith Moore, May 7, 1987

Fifteen Years Ago When National Steel was growing and we didn't have enough room, and Harbor Drive cut down through the middle of the plant, we had to pull back and lose a lot of space. We were making boat parts there at the foot of Seventh and trucking them down to 28th Street, where we had conned Brennan out of a small area to launch the ships there. He gave us a favorable lease. He recognized this could be a good thing for the San Diego Harbor. He was helping to create a good tenant, which National Steel became. He did the same with Convair, Solar, and Rohr. -- "THE LET'S-GET-IT-DONE HARBORMASTER," C. Arnholt Smith, May 7, 1992

Ten Years Ago I have come back to San Diego 25 years later to eat, to discover how the eating life of this big city has changed. In 1972 I was, for a short time, restaurant reviewer for the newspaper now in your hands, the then-infant San Diego Reader. I lived in Del Mar, drove to school, and at the time had never even read a restaurant review, much less written any.

Five years later, when I moved back to New York -- that's what happens when you fall in love with a New Yorker -- I became a restaurant critic, until last year eating (thousands upon thousands of meals) and writing (hundreds and hundreds of columns) weekly for The Village Voice. -- "THE CHEESE NEVER STANDS COMPLETELY ALONE," Jeff Weinstein, May 1, 1997

Five Years Ago Assigned, in exchange for a sum equal to roughly a season's rent, the chore of composing a first-person account of the process of aging (heh heh), "growing old"...of copping in print to being old: an official GEEZER GIG. My reluctance at first was natural. "I'm not there yet," I protested. "But I'll start taking notes, OK?" (Had an editor or two "noticed something" 'fore I did?)

Inevitabilities are a pisser to sidestep. Geezer-hood comes when it comes -- fuggit -- but just as inev' as suddenly, finally being there, now!, on the cusp of fucking dotage, my time/left measured in thimbles not buckets, was that I would be invited -- cajoled -- roped into writing about it. -- "AUTUMN RHYTHM," Richard Meltzer, May 2, 2002