VALLEY STORIES; REMEMBERING WHAT IT WAS LIKE.

Byline: Compiled by Carol Bidwell

You won't read any of this in a history book.

Stories like these aren't recorded anywhere - except maybe in a faded family album or an overstuffed scrapbook or a tattered diary long ago buried in attic dust.

But when your children - and your children's children - ask what it was like to live in the San Fernando Valley in its first 200 years, these are the stories you'll tell.

Playing hide-and-seek in forbidden tunnels. Breathing in the fragrance of orange blossoms on a warm summer evening. Spying movie stars at the local ice-cream parlor. Teetering across a walkway over a flooded train trestle.

Daily News readers remembered them all, writing in with tales spanning more than four decades.

They shared fond memories that have made the Valley their home, the same stories they'll tell their children - again and again.

``I was the first baby born in 1927 in Granada Hills (the year it was incorporated)... My mother and another lady were pregnant, and the officials of the town said, `The first baby born will be named Granada, after the town.' I was born first, so they named me Granada. They gave my parents property and other gifts.''

- Granada Lietz, Mission Hills

``I was born and raised in '56 in San Fernando. That's when Fox Street ended at Chatsworth Street, and all the streets were dirt roads. I remember spending scary nights at the (San Fernando) Mission (where) there was a tall tale of a ghost woman that roamed the mission looking for her children - and yes, we saw her!

``I remember at 5 or 6 climbing the side of the (Interstate) 5 freeway with my brother to see Gov. Pat Brown cut the tape to open the freeway, which was only a block away from home.''

- Al Landeros, Simi Valley 

``My family owned Dale's Food Marts and Dale's Jrs. I lived across the street from Noble Junior High School (in Northridge). In fact, my sister and I would sell popcorn and lemonade to the men who built that school every day after we got home from our school. Next to the house was a huge house with a moat around it that Ayn Rand had built ... We never saw anybody come or go and ... us kids ... thought the house was haunted.

- David Dale, Reseda

``I grew up in Sherman Oaks from 1949 until 1974 ... My vivid recollections of growing up in the Valley are at a time of complete innocence and wonder, a time when orange groves and empty fields lined the many acres of land instead of clusters of concrete and endless skyscraper buildings. It was a time of sweet-smelling scents of hay and fresh fruit surrounding the aroma of fresh orange blossoms and newly cut lawns.

``When I was ... around 5 or 6, my dad would take me to a kids' amusement park on Ventura Boulevard about three blocks past Whitsett. These days, a Coin Exchange occupies that space. Directly across from this amusement park was ... Curry's Ice Cream Parlor. Such movie stars as Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds ... were often spotted there.''

- Jane P. Newfield, Tarzana

``Crooner Rudy Vallee lived until his death on Pyramid Place ... Mr. Vallee was rather egotistical and petitioned the City Council to change the name of Pyramid Place to Rue d'Vallee ... The city fathers did not want to set a precedent in renaming streets, so someone on the council suggested that Rudy Vallee change his name to - you guessed it - Pyramid Place.''

- Michael P. Kirsch, Sherman Oaks

``Dad worked at Lockheed as an inspector ... Once, one of his buddies ... had a weekend party. Many of the people in the Valley had come from the Southern states to escape the great Dust Bowl ... so it was natural on that afternoon that fiddles, banjos and harmonicas were played in rousing country rhythms. Pretty young mothers in their cotton dresses and snoods danced with tall and lanky men in overalls.

``Our street in Glendale was wide and led into the Verdugos, so it was chosen as a marching route for (World War II) Army trainees. We kids enjoyed them with childish glee, not comprehending that a percentage would not return from combat.''

- Jeannine Jones, Sunland

``In 1948 ... we lived in Hollywood for a while and decided to take a trip over Cahuenga Pass to see the Valley. We fell in love with it ... We used to take a trip up Ventura Boulevard to Woodland Hills, which was called Giroux, to see all the orange groves along the way. Lots were for sale cheap, but didn't have water, so we missed out on a good buy ... The skies were always blue with white clouds, and we didn't know the word `smog.' ''

- Loretta Brauckmann, Sun Valley

``My father had the second grocery store in Glendale and had to drive to Los Angeles to buy his fruits and vegetables ... We hardly ever locked our house upon retiring at night; hardly any crime.

``Brand Boulevard (through Glendale) had railroad tracks that were elevated above the street. Cars had to drive up and over them. The street and railroad tracks ran down Brand to the Los Angeles River bed, where it had to cross over on a trestle. If the river was too high, passengers had to walk across the trestle on a walkway and board a waiting car on the other side for the rest of the trip.

- James H. Smith, Woodland Hills

``In 1959, we lived in Encino on Magnolia Street between Haskell and Hesby streets. Before the freeway opened for traffic, I strolled my 2-year-old twins on a side-by-side stroller on the Ventura Freeway all the way to Balboa and back. I don't know who enjoyed it most, me or the twins.''

- Diolinda Kopecky, Reseda

``In 1932, our house was the fourth home between Ventura Boulevard and Mulholland Drive. Our house was built from Olympic cabins after the Games were over. Reseda Boulevard had very few stores until you reached the very small town of Reseda. One had to go to Van Nuys for any real shopping ... What used to be a veterans' hospital during the war was later turned into what is now Birmingham High.''

- Madeleine Timmerman, Santa Clarita

``I lived here in the West Valley when Shoup was a two-lane, narrow street that ended in a dirt road at Saticoy. Across the street was a large truck garden, where the farmer grew green onions and other vegetables and a rooster woke us up early each morning with a loud `cock-a-doodle-do.' This was often followed by the sound of a flock of sheep being herded down the street by Basque shepherds.

``There were no sewers because it didn't rain in the Valley, or so we were told, but for many years, we had to sandbag our front door, and the fire department placed planks across Shoup so children could cross the 2-foot-deep raging water. I recall a Volkswagen bug floating down the Shoup waterway.''

- Gloria Abramson, Canoga Park

``We moved from Northern California to Encino in June 1942. A huge home with a four-car garage, with two guest rooms and bath attached ... cost about $14,000.

``Best of all was the dam (Sepulveda Basin), a 10-minute walk for us, and it was our `out back.' It was all pasture and truck farms then, acres and acres of nothing. It was great! No roads, no golf courses, no parks, no restrictions! We kids would spend all summer there. You could swim in the river in those days. We'd catch crawdads, frogs and the like.''

- Loyal Bruno, West Hills

``During World War II at Van Nuys High School, where my sister attended, they had a 4-4 plan, which meant the students would go to school for four hours and work for four hours. With the war going on, there were many jobs that were without workers. One of them was to harvest tomatoes in the fields, so my sister and her girlfriends went to work picking tomatoes.

``I remember going with her some of the time. A big open truck would pick up the teens along Victory Boulevard; the street was only two lanes and had huge pepper trees lining it. We lived on Victory near Kester Avenue; the tomato fields were west on Victory past Balboa. I must have been 5 or 6 years old at the time and I remember playing in the irrigation ditch with the water and running through the mud. When we returned home, we were covered with green from the vines and lots of mud.''

- Myrna Coughlan, Woodland Hills

``In spring 1923, my parents had just paid about $150 for a large lot on Riverside Drive in Lankershim (now North Hollywood), and, like most others in this new area, pitched a tent to live in while more permanent accommodations were constructed. My father, Richard Blanchard Sr., a second-generation master craftsman silversmith (who could build or fix anything), would start by building a one-car garage with a dirt floor, which we moved into just weeks after the tent was pitched.

``Our permanent house came next, with the whole family pitching in to pound nails or saw wood or mix plaster or whatever needed to be done. By the way, did I mention that we also had `Simmons'? That was the outhouse, which was moved from hole to hole for the year or so it took to get the inside plumbing going, together with a self-dug cesspool.

``Soon after we moved in, the vast apricot orchards of the whole area began to be cut up to accommodate the thousands of new homes like ours that went up. Then the streets began to get paved. I can still hear the Mexican drivers yelling at their mules, who seemed to understand Spanish much better than I did. Most of the land grading for the entire Valley was done by mule teams, with the driver hanging onto a long steel handle, which he could lift up to smoothly dump his load, much as a typical earth-moving machine does today.

``Every Saturday afternoon, my brother, Rolfe, and I would collect three milk bottles, and, cashing them in for 15 cents, would then walk to the El Portal theater for the matinee. Actually, I did most of the collecting, because my brother would get up on the stage between pictures and perform `Chant of the Jungle' for a free pass for the following week ... My mind is full of the Valley when it was paradise on Earth.''

- Red Blanchard, Sherman Oaks

``In Encino in the early 1930s, you could buy a three-bedroom home with a detached two-car garage, maid's quarters, a sunken lawn and a rose garden surrounded by an acre of walnuts for $10,000.

``Ventura Boulevard was a two-lane road, and it was the main trail west of Santa Barbara. There was never much traffic, and that was good because we rode our horses and bikes on Ventura.

``My father was a songwriter for 20th Century Fox ... On holidays, my dad would take my brother and me to the studio. This was every kid's dream. We could mess around the sets. More often, he would be working with Shirley Temple, and we would have to go play with Miss Temple. Not much fun for boys who mainly wanted to climb on cannons.

``There was also a studio lot at about Louise and Burbank in Encino. I think it was Warner Bros. Three or four of us would ride our bikes to the studio, climb the fence and prowl around. This was a killer because they had several airplanes on the lot. My favorite was a single-engine aluminum beauty that was used in the movie `Lost Horizon.' The cockpit was complete with instruments and controls, and I `flew' many a flight over the Himalayas in that plane. There was a large, overweight guard who inevitably found us, and the ensuing chase and escape was always part of the fun.

``On weekends, when Dad was home, we might go to Eatons Rancho, near where Du-par's is today. They had the best chicken - period. All the fixin's came in covered dishes, which were constantly refilled. All you could eat, and my brother and I could pack it away pretty good.

``I went to Van Nuys High School, which had the distinction of having Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell going there at the same time. Jane was in the class ahead of me, and Marilyn was in the class behind me. Marilyn was definitely a striking-looking young girl, but I thought she wore too much makeup. Jane Russell would loll around on the lawn with the `big guys' ... with usually a crowd of droolers lurking nearby.

``When they started to build the Sepulveda flood control system at the end of my street, they might just as well have put my name on the dam and said, `Come play.' Today, they would have put a high fence around the construction site, but then, it was open territory for a bunch of kids and their bikes. Hide-and-seek inside the dam with tunnels galore was a must.

``My first big adventure was to figure out how to start one of the huge Caterpillar tractors that were left parked helter-skelter on weekends. You actually had to start a small engine, about the size of a Honda 2-liter, and when that was running, you kicked it into gear and this massive diesel would turn over. All went well until I pulled one of the levers that dropped the huge scraper blade, missing everyone - but scaring us witless.''

- Bill Pollack, Sherman Oaks

``In late 1945, early 1946, ... when the San Fernando Valley was but citrus and walnut groves, horse and bovine farms, cantaloupe, lima bean and hay farms ... we found a lot for $1,500 on Catalon Avenue.

``There were no other homes in that area. We built a two-bedroom house ... for $7,500, which was the maximum GI loan given. The Valley's tract house building for GI's had not yet begun. On Serrania Street was a huge orange grove, the street itself lined with massive eucalyptus trees, as was Catalon Avenue for its whole length. Our lot cost $700.

``We had to bring in four or five telephone poles for electricity; we had to use butane for cooking, hot water and heating because the gas lines were not in. For water, we hooked up to the neighbor's line. Our RFD mailbox was the only one on Serrania. Most (people) in Woodland Hills picked up their mail at Greene's drugstore on Ventura Boulevard, where the postal substation was.

``One of the favorite Saturday night places to go was Costa's on Ventura Boulevard, owned by an Italian family in conjunction with their farm on which every kind of veggie was raised, including fresh sweet basil. The menu was Italian spaghetti; there was a dance band composed of locals, and the whole community used to show up on Saturday nights to eat and trip the light fantastic.

``In Tarzana was one restaurant, Hangman's Tree, with a stuffed male figure life-size hanging by a noose in front of the place. Their steaks were A-1, and lots of movie people patronized it - the most notable being John Hodiak, who played lots of lead roles. I met Mary Astor there.

``My fondest memory of my first GI home in Woodland Hills was sitting in the summer evening on our ranch-type front porch and sniffing in the heavy waft of the citrus emanating from thousands and thousands of glossy-leaved orange trees. I used to lift my highball glass to my husband and say, `Smell the orange blossoms. Who lives in a place like this?' ''

- J. Sylvia Gooding-Gross, Tujunga

CAPTION(S):

9 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) The hands of time

Valley residents reminisce about days of old

Myung J. Chun/Daily News

(2) Sheep were among the most bountiful inhabitants of the San Fernando Valley of the 1880s, including this area adjacent to the Los Angeles River near Whitsett Ave.

(3) Van Nuys still contained plenty of wide open spaces in 1921, as depicted in this view of Valerio Street from Sherman Way.

(4--5) Above, Red Blanchard of Sherman Oaks holds a photo of himself and his brother as kids. At left, The Vineland Avenue bridge to the left and a streetcar track to the right were destroyed by a flood in 1938. The bridges crossed the Los Angeles River.

Terri Thuente/Daily News

(6--7) At right, Bill Pollack has a photograph of himself on a horse in the '30s. Above, Pollack's memories of earlier days in Encino include his time behind the wheel of a 1941 Cadillac, circa 1946.

Tina Gerson/Daily News

(8) ``In late 1945, early 1946 ... we found a lot for $1,500 on Catalon Avenue,'' recalls J. Sylvia Gooding-Gross of Tujunga. ``There were no other homes in that area. We built a two-bedroom house ... for $7,500, which was the maximum GI loan given.''

(9) J. Sylvia Gooding-Gross: ``I used to lift my highball glass to my husband and say, `Smell the orange blossoms. Who lives in a place like this?' ''

Phil McCarten/Daily News