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Best Reader stories from 1973
Witches, SEALS, commune, Japanese in San Diego, built on the Tijuana dump, Pump House Gang, Tom Shaw, encounter groups
Serious witches in San Diego
- Force claimed he had played a role, witch-wise, in the indictment of San Diego's former Mayor Curran and his staff, in the Yellow Cab Scandal. “A friend of mine, Jodi Bohmert, who worked in the Mayor's office, was fired. She said to me, 'boy, I'd like to see them brought up before the Grand Jury'
- By Connie Bruck, Nov. 1, 1973
More House commune funded by real estate inflation
- There was Nate, on his way to hang another set of valances, Nate the valance man in his van bumping along behind me up the dirt roads in the back-hills of Rancho Santa Fe. We pulled into the circular drive of the old Spanish mansion together, me and Nate, and we both took in the Lincoln Continentals, and the butler in black and whites washing down one of the Cadillac convertibles.
- By Connie Bruck, Sept. 6, 1973
Ah Soy!
- At UCSD, for Ogawa to be a Japanese means his speaking humbly and politely to his Japanese professor while interacting on a first-name basis with his white professors. At home, true to Japanese tradition, there is no babysitter or women's lib, yet Mrs. Ogawa has been hired as tutor of Japanese by UCSD.
- By Gale Fox, Aug. 30, 1973
Too Outrageous for La Jolla
- Beach People say old surfers never die. They dry up like some sunbaked seaweed and are blown away by the offshore breeze. Before their end, they may move the knotty knees inland to manufacture surfboards or promote surfing films. Or they may even trade the salt air and freedom for classrooms or bureaucratic jobs. But whatever did happen to the La Jolla surfers immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book, The Pump House Gang?
- By Jane Weisman, July 19, 1973
San Martin used to be the dump for all Tijuana
- We sit in the outer room of the Clinica San Martin, trading words like amulets. Each one, an additive charm, wards off the silence of estrangement, builds bridges of humor at the difficulty of our situation. Niño, child, carro, car. What grand illusion ever made me think I could enter this small suburb of Tijuana where nearly no one speaks any English and find out what these people are like, what is their life?
- By Connie Bruck, Aug. 16, 1973
A right to sing the blues
- National City--Z Street is a dead end street. And at the end of it is Tom Shaw’s house. It is a rambling, mismatched two-story structure, white paint peeling off the bottom half, a layer of pink stucco above that, and two elaborate Doric columns framing the formal entrance. A rickety white picket fence surrounds the dusty front yard, a ’55 gold Cadillac with a black dog asleep on its hood is parked on the dirt out front.
- By Connie Bruck, July 5, 1973
Touchy feely
- I first heard about sensitivity groups when i was a junior in college. A friend of mine who had just returned from a weekend of "encounter" came up to me, grabbed men, stared intently into my eyes and blurted, "Frank! I really like you! You know that, don't you?"
- By Frank Harrison, Feb. 22, 1973
Real Seals
- The war in Vietnam really touched San Diego. It was here in San Diego that the largest number of wives became West Pac widows and POW wives, where the most war-bound ships left from and returned to, and where the largest number of POWs came back to. But it was also here that the going and company of GIs and the eat-drink-and-be-merry, rollicky fatalism from 1964 to 1970 brought to some parts of town the ambience of World War II Mickey Rooney movies.
- By Carlos Bey, April 12, 1973