Let's Get This Straight

Thirty Years Ago
Three weeks ago The Unhappy Gays — the 12th book written by Reverend Tim LaHaye, president of Christian Heritage College in El Cajon — was released in religious bookstores across the country.

LaHaye, who is pastor of the 2200-member Scott Memorial Baptist Church in El Cajon, besides being a longtime critic of Farrell’s church, is firmly aligned in favor of the Briggs Initiative, which is slated for the November ballot. If it passes, the Briggs Initiative will allow school boards to fire teachers who are homosexuals.
— CITY LIGHTS: “LET’S GET THIS STRAIGHT,” Neal Matthews, August 10, 1978

Twenty-Five Years Ago
Shapiro and his fellow councilmembers have reason to worry that their coastal haven is being overrun. Before I-5 was built in 1967, 30,000 cars traveled through town daily on Camino Del Mar. The freeway soon absorbed all but 5000 of these vehicles, but the traffic has now surged back up to 27,000 trips per day.
— CITY LIGHTS: “THE CAMINO THEORY,” Paul Krueger, August 11, 1983

Twenty Years Ago
Dear Matthew Alice:
My best friend’s girlfriend tries to make herself an object of deference by pretending to know more than everyone else. On a recent drive to Mexico, she stated that my putting on sunscreen was unnecessary because ultraviolet light could not penetrate the car’s window. I say she’s full of Tijuana sewage.

Sorry. Glass absorbs ultraviolet rays in the UV-B range (roughly 280 to 320 nanometers). I do hate to say it in print, but this time the know-it-all is correct.
— STRAIGHT FROM THE HIP, Matthew Alice, August 11, 1988

Fifteen Years Ago
The Secret Garden, a warm-up of the Frances Hodgson Burnett chestnut, is a good children’s movie. A good movie for children and also a movie good for children. A good movie, I mean, that additionally and incidentally happens to be a good one for young ones. (Well, I know what I mean.) Good for them in the sense that it is a good introduction to concepts of the inner world and the outer world, living and dying, growth and stuntedness, courage and surrender — besides a good introduction to the artistic presentation and development of these concepts: why shouldn’t children’s movies be as good artistically as anyone else’s?
— MOVIES: “BACK TO KINDERGARTEN,” Duncan Shepherd, August 12, 1993

Ten Years Ago
Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago when McGwire was forecasted to hit 74 home runs this year?

McGwire never said he’d break the record. He has sense enough to know he can’t answer the questions everyone wants to ask, to wit: “Will you break the record?” followed by, “How many home runs will you hit?”

No one born of woman can answer those questions, but no matter, and who cares about McGwire anyway? We just want a new record. We said he’d break the record, and if he doesn’t, well, Mr. McGwire will have to be dealt with. After all, the gutless fraud may only hit 64 boomers, and if his strikeout total keeps rising and his walks mount, why, why, that cretin may well fail to hit 61 home runs!
— SPORTING BOX: “THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST,” Patrick Daugherty, August 13, 1998

Five Years Ago
If you’re heading south toward Tijuana, the next stop is City College (also San Diego High), and you are about to be bothered indeed, especially on a Friday, by aimlessly milling throngs, seething feral packs of the dermatologically unfortunate, cacophonous choruses of unmodulated voices all pushing decibel meters into the red. In short, gabbling, galloping hordes of noxious youth. They will be your traveling companions most of the way to Chula Vista.
— T.G.I.F.: John Brizzolara, August 7, 2003