Best Reader stories from 1984

Blueback submarine, Hedgecock transcripts, climbing the Devil's Peak, aliens in canyons, the last vaquero, dirtbags in desert, dinosaurs, skateboarders, Randy Cunningham, NEL

Author

By Jeannette DeWyze, Neal Matthews (RIP), Steve Sorensen, Gordon Smith

Publish Date

Dec. 1, 2019

Granville Martin. "I could tell time by the sun, and my belly told me when it was time to eat." (Robert Burroughs)

Tight-lipped submariners aboard the Blueback open up
Of course, all submariners are interested in naval history, and remain closer than even infantrymen to their dramatic and bloody heritage, and the Blueback crew seems to sense the significance of this event. They’re the caretakers of one of only five remaining diesel boats in the U.S. fleet, a boat that in many ways was the link between the technology of World War II and the nuclear navy of today.
By Neal Matthews, Nov. 29, 1984

Dennis Fargo, attack center (Robert Burroughs)

Roger Hedgecock - "When Roger and Cindy were moving ahead with their remodeling plans, Roger one day mentioned to me casually, “I think I am going to see if Nancy Hoover can help me with my remodeling.” At that point, I remember asking him, “Is this a smart thing to do?'"

Transcripts from Grand Jury investigation into Roger Hedgecock's campaign finances
He is one of Hedgecock's closest friends and advisors, he is a veteran of local politics, and he was the principal strategist for Hedgecock's 1983 mayoral campaign. Among the eighty-two witnesses who appeared for questioning, McDade revealed the keenest insight into contemporary San Diego politics; the transcription of his testimony is an engrossing document.
Nov. 1, 1984

The Devil's Peak
In the summer of 1967, when I first heard about El Picacho del Diablo, I was still young enough to think I was indestructible. I was a smart-assed college student at the time, with more daring than good sense, attempting my first wilderness adventures in the mountains of Utah and on the granite walls of Yosemite Valley. I was convinced that injury and pain were experiences only other people had to suffer, and that death was just one more thing the older generation had lied about.
By Steve Sorensen, Aug. 2, 1984

El Picacho del Diablo (Robert Hartman)

Fear, sweat, and profit
The canyons and hillsides throughout the North County conceal a sprawling network of hidden colonies in which undocumented farmworkers live under worse conditions than do the vast majority of Tijuana residents, hanging their perishable food supplies from tree branches, sleeping under cardboard, defecating on rotting piles of human waste.
By Jeannette DeWyze, July 12, 1984

Farmworker in custody. “Those guys there are pure Oaxacans. The reason the [farm] foremen like ’em is that, Jesus, they’re hard workers." (Pablo Mason)

The last vaquero
Papa worked different ranches and things, and he didn’t settle down till he started homesteadin’ in 1898 or '99 up at Boulder Crick, about twelve miles southwest of Julian. A hundred and sixty acres there, I still have the deed signed by ol’ Teddy Roosevelt.
By Neal Matthews, May 17, 1984

Where demons thrive
Like city cops, the BLM rangers spend most of their time observing the human race at its worst. You might think the desert would be a place where you could get away from people like that, the rangers say, and maybe it was, once; but not anymore.
By Steve Sorensen, May 3, 1984

Bill Vernon: “We hear a lot of things like, ‘I came out here to get away from pigs like you.'”

Gastil and I pass south of Rancho Bernardo, crossing again the dried-up delta of the river that flowed here 50 million years ago. That river flowed for ten million years.

San Diego primeval
Ancient volcanoes lie buried beneath the beaches of San Diego. Mountain ranges that once rose across the county have disappeared. A river that flowed here from Sonora, Mexico dried up long ago, when tapirs the size of terriers wandered the county and crocodiles wallowed in marshy lagoons. The history that Gastil studies is a history beyond people, a history of primitive planetary energies and great, unfathomable time.
By Gordon Smith, April 5, 1984

The deadly circle
Randy Cunningham taxied the F-4 Phantom onto the catapult aboard the USS Constellation, and both he and Bill Driscoll, the radar intercept officer in the back seat, turned to look at the spinning fingers of the catapult officer. It was January 19, 1972, and the carrier was cruising into the wind off North Vietnam. Above them circled the RA-5 photo reconnaissance plane and the A-7 and A-6 attack bombers that were accompanying it on the recon mission over the North Vietnamese airfield at Quan Lang near the Laotian border.
By Neal Matthews, March 29, 1984

Cunningham. I asked him the same question that had stunned him that night on the Constellation. His face drained, and he sat back down, elbows on his knees. "The first kill I had was against the MiG-21, and I could see the guy in the airplane when I went over him, as he died."

Rumors would arise of an empty private swimming pool somewhere, and the skaters would show up with brooms and plastic bags to make the place ridable. (Grant Brittain)

Shred till you're dead
“Yes, the whole place has kind of gone to hell now,“ the caretaker says, crawling out from under his truck and wiping his greasy hands on his pants. His trailer is parked in front of the dead skateboard park — now a fish-for-fee pool—next to the Carlsbad Raceway. “It was famous once. In Reader's Digest. The first one like it in the world. I built it myself. . . . You could skate in there for a month and never do the same thing twice.”
By Steve Sorensen, Feb. 23, 1984

Inventions, inventors, patents, and military secrets atop Point Loma
It had been a long day, and dusk was settling on the white gravestones and the khaki government buildings atop Point Loma. But for Carroll White it was a dawn, and he was filled with the elation he'd been withholding from himself for months. On this evening in 1968, as he was leaving his office in the Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC), Carroll White was about to admit openly that he and a colleague, Russell Harter, had made a major discovery: they had found a way to test eyesight objectively.
By Neal Matthews, Feb. 2, 1984