Seven Random City Fun Facts: Colton

COLTON - Motoring rapidly along Interstate 10 perhaps on the way to Palm Springs for some sunshine and retro decor, or maybe you are driving all the way to the I-10's eastern terminus in Jacksonville, Florida, one of the many cities you come across is Colton. A fast glance at Colton shows no more than a typical Southern California suburb that is part of the puzzle piece making up the megalopolis that is the Los Angeles Basin.


The intersection of what is now Valley Boulevard and La Cadena Drive before the "development bomb" of the 1960s. Used under a Creative Commons license.

As is the case with many places across Southern California there is more to Colton than meets the eye. In fact, would you believe that Colton is connected to Mount Wilson, "MacArthur Park" and the Chicano movement. Sadly, as it also the case with many cities across Southern California, much of that has been erased in the name of progress.

The city, once called The Hub City, which is wedged between the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, has an interesting background, and here are seven random fun facts about Colton.

1 - The writer of perhaps one of the most perplexing pop songs, "MacArthur Park," made famous twice, first by Richard Harris and later as a disco hit by Donna Summer, lived in the Colton area for a time once upon a time, and his name is Jimmy Webb. Mr. Webb also wrote "Up, Up and Away" as performed by The Fifth Dimension, along with many other songs. Mr. Webb even wrote a song about Colton, "820 Latham Street," perform by The Fifth Dimension and The Brooklyn Bridge, which is apparently the Colton address where the girl of his dreams (and muse of many songs) lived. Turns out the girl of Mr. Webb's dream from Colton soon moved to L.A. and worked near MacArthur Park, which is where Mr. Webb and the girl from "820 Latham Street" in Colton spent many afternoons together.


"820 Latham Street" as performed by The Fifth Dimension and written by Jimmy Webb.

2 - Once upon a time the community of Agua Mansa, now in modern day Colton and the name of a historic cemetery, was the largest town between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, and was a very important place in the Californio era. One Benjamin Davis Wilson, or Don Benito Wilson as he was known to the Native Americans, and who would go on to become mayor of L.A. and whom Mount Wilson is named after, had his life saved here by Lorenzo Trujillo after Mr. Wilson was involved violent battle with a Native American named Joaquin.

3 - Jimmy Webb was not the only musically famous person to come out of Colton. Jim Messina of Loggins and Messina and The Buffalo Springfield is also from Colton.

4 - Virgil Earp, brother of Wyatt Earp, was Colton's first Marshall. The Earp house still stands at 528 West “H” Street in Colton. Please do not disturb the current residents.

5 - Colton was created by promoters of the Southern Pacific Railroad (known in fiction as, The Octopus, by author Frank Norris), and the name Colton comes from, David Douty Colton, who was the vice president of Southern Pacific Railroad. Southern Pacific intended to make Colton the railroad center of Southern California. Mr. Colton probably made a couple trips to the city named after him, but he lived in San Francisco.

6 - The Chicano movement was, and still is, very strong in Colton. In fact, in clashes with police in 1943 there was even, sadly, a "Colton Zoot Suit Riot." This soon lead to a larger Chicano movement in Colton with protests against the police and demands for better services from the city. The protests were heard, and in the early 1950s a Chicano councilman was elected. By 1979 Colton elected a Chicano mayor and two Chicanos on the City Council, as well as a Chicano school board member. Colton was one of the first cities in Southern California to have such a strong representation of Chicanos in government.

7 - If you have driven through Colton in recent years, or really, for the past 20 years, you may notice it looks nothing like the photograph above. So what happened to Colton's downtown as shown in the photograph above? Well, the short answer is Colton made the decision (or mistake) many cities around the country made, and that was redevelopment. It is way too easy to say today that they should never have bulldozed their downtown, but remember when malls came in vogue that resulted in shoppers and businesses leaving city centers and downtown areas en mass for these new shiny, modern malls. The shoppers and businesses took their dollars with them to these new malls, and many cities, like Colton and even nearby San Bernardino, took the redevelopment route and basically wiped out their old downtown for what was suppose to be a new, modern shopping area that was going to bring business back. In Colton, and San Bernardino, it never quite worked and many long time residents regret the decisions their city leaders made. Some locals and former locals call it, "the development bomb."

Now For Something Different: 1980s T-V-O-D Theme Songs

FROM THE TRANSMITTERS OF MOUNT WILSON -  Growing up in Southern California there is one thing that has seemingly bonded us whether we live in Anaheim, Compton, La Puente, East Los Angeles, Covina or Cudahy, and that is what has been broadcast in the airwaves from the transmitters of Mount Wilson to thousands of homes in Southern California. Local Southern California television is highly unique and very memorable for many of us, but this blurb is not about local television (that will, and MUST, have its own posting soon), but rather national network television of the 1980s.



Like ignoring much of a changing, and sometimes troubling, America in the 1980s network television hardly represented what was happening in diverse places like Southern California.

Television in 1970s America seem to reach a certain level social awareness, most notable with Norman Lear at the helm behind hits like "All in the Family," "Good Times," and "Sanford and Son," among others. The decade had its share of over-the-top, utterly inane programs as television should be an escape from the perhaps nerve-racking way of life, but it seem television in the decade that gave us the resignation of President Richard Nixon and election of Jimmy Carter had something to say. Come the new decade of the 1980s a seemingly cultural shift takes place, Ronald Reagan is elected president ushering in a new era of social conservatism, and this change is strongly reflected on television where programming moves from social awareness and gives way to absurd over-the-top escapism programs like a Texas oilman who is an international spy on the side. Despite their over-the-top appeal more times than not the shows, unlike many of the previous decade, were very decadent and non-offensive. 

All that said, this story is not really meant to be a social-culture study on 1980s television, and, despite that setup above, what follows is really a tongue-and-cheek post about one thing that really mattered in 1980s television, the theme song.

For all their blandness, the 1980s televisions show theme songs left a major impression on American pop culture, and frankly the theme songs were much better than the program itself.

In no particular order here is an assortment are some of the best and worst theme songs from the long gone era known as the 1980s.

Last Season of Happy Days
Okay, we know what you are probably thinking, Happy Days is considered to be more of a 1970s show, despite lasting until the summer of 1984, and surely Happy Days' best days were in the mid-70s, and so it is easy to understand why it is often associated being a "70s show." Come the dawn of the new decade seismic shifts in the Cunningham's world took place when Richie left to join the Army followed by his pal Ralph Mouth. Replacing Richie was some kind of distant family member played unexplainable by a modern 1980s bleached-blond hair Ted McGinley, and the always talked about but never seen Jenny Piccolo finally showed up. From that moment it was tantamount to that moment in your life where something changes and you know things will never be the same again. Indeed things were never the same again, but by their final season when the shark The Fonz jumped over had long died and sank to the bottom of the ocean the show truly reached its nadir by altering its beloved opening theme song.


If there ever was a television show that is the ethos of being a shell of its former self it is Happy Days. Come the final season there was no effort to at least give the show a proper sendoff and maybe try to go back to the program's roots, or at the very least develop a plot explaining why the style and feel of the show changed, and give what few viewers were left some closure.

Diff'rent Strokes
No need to make any improper Gary Coleman jokes, or such jokes concerning to travesties that would befall the cast of Diff'rent Strokes, all there is to say is, how can you not want to sing along with this song.



Like Happy Days the series' last season theme song in 1985-86 changed a bit with added synthesizers along with cast changes, and moved to ABC from NBC, but, unlike Happy Days, the show stayed the course without any major upsets to the series.

Days of our Lives
If you were a kid in this decade of the 1980s home sick, or pretending to be sick, you knew your free rein of watching the morning fare of network game shows and old cartoons on maybe KTLA or KTTV was over when you heard this creepy theme, and suddenly you were not so sick as going outside now seems like a better option. Yes, for you young kids today it is hard to imagine when parents demanded the television your only option until you could get the TV back was playing outside, playing with toys that you have played with several times before, or maybe, listening to records alone in your room.


This opening was used from 1972 until 1993 when McDonald Carey died as Mr. McDonald's family requested the show no longer use his likeness. Did you care to know, the sand falling into the hourglass was just a string.

Hunter and Magnum P.I.
If fast cars, guns drawn, explosions, steamy romances and morally rogue within the law cops sounds like several programs from the 1980s, you would be right. Two of the more successful shows of this genre were Hunter and Magnum P.I., which followed unconventional, but really conventional, cops and their sidekicks around to catch the evil bad guy. (Okay, Magnum P.I. was some kind of private eye and quasi-cop.) Each show followed the trail of the bad guy that always led to explosions, car chases, sometimes preventing a time-bomb from destroying the city, catching "urban" drug dealers, dealing with a steamy romantic interest, who sometimes becomes a hostage, which sometimes caused a dramatic plot twist by revealing she once had a relationship with the bad guy, and all accompanied by humorous jabs towards the partner. Rinse, wash and repeat. The complexity of thwarting some criminal mastermind always took just a hour every week with officers of the law who would never think of colluding with the enemy like Officer Vic Mackey.


The moral goodness of LAPD officer Richard Hunter is a long way from the boys at The Shield.


Oh Tom Selleck, in the 1980s women wanted to be with you and you made men grow mustaches to assert their masculinity.

Silver Spoons
So the premise of Silver Spoons was Ricky Stratton, who's mother threw him into a military boarding school after she remarried thinking her son would interfere with her new life, somehow manages to track down his father he never met, and as luck would have it his dad is not only super wealthy, but basically the CEO of his own toy company. It gets better, the father's home, aside from being an sprawling mansion, is filled with toys. With all that there is one question, or plot hole, many have wondered, where in the hell did that train go to when it left the house?


It could be argued Silver Spoons was a good refection of the Reagan era showing excessive wealth and creating a desire for audiences to dream and just maybe obtain such wealth.

Punky Brewster
In many "remember these theme song" stories Punky Brewster often seems to be left out, much like Punky's mother did to her and her dog Brandon. It is true, in the plot for some reason Punky's mother just utterly abandoned her and Brandon at a supermarket one day and this old unmarried man named Henry who she never met, who also happens to owns a photography shop, picks her up and they live together. Yes, read the plot synopsis again, because it does sound a bit creepy and something that would be in one of those Lifetime channel movie reenactments.


It is a very endearing theme song accompanied by Punky dressed in very bright, totally gnarly clothes. It would seem Henry did not mind so much shopping inside the woman's section at Chess King for his adoptive daughter.

It's Garry Shandling's Show
Finally, there was one show that broke through the absurdity of the era with witty comedy, but more times than not the show itself is often overlooked for the show's very catchy theme song, and it is easy to understand.


Just like the show the theme to It's Garry Shandling's Show was ridiculous, but cleaver. The show truly pointed out the absurdity of television comedies during this era.

While we look back at plenty of television shows from the 1980s with campy eyes one must remember that was pretty much want you had to choose from. Yes, there was bit of a broad brush painted here as there were a handful of interesting shows in this era, and if you were lucky you had HBO or some other cable channel, like the Z Channel, showing unique fare uncommon for its time, but there were a lot of places in Southern California that well into 1990s were still not wired for cable. Whatever thought-provoking, compelling unique television did exist in this time most shows were often, if not quickly, met with a cancellation notice. There were no internet forms or YouTube to find the series and create a new fanbase in hopes of having the show reinstated, or at the very least have a web revival. This was the era of "the big three" and those suits in New York who decided what America was going to watch.

Today, despite the nonstop glut of so-called reality shows there is much better television than in the 1980s. Hard to believe? Well, just compare some of the best scripted shows on television today to that of the 1980s. Of course the trade off is we no longer have many of the catchy themes today as we did back then, and we have to wade through more moronic television to find the good stuff, and that is too bad.

The past is always fun to visit, but trust us when we say you never want to live there.

Quick Take: Six Odd and Fun Facts About San Bernardino County

COLTON - If you are a regular driver between Southern California and Las Vegas you probably think San Bernardino County is a very large county. Of course you would be right, because that county in the Inland Empire is the largest county within the lower 48 states. Its record was beat with the admission of Alaska as a state, which has a much larger county. Perhaps you knew that already, but here are six odd and fun facts you may not have known about San Bernardino County.

1. The Rolling Stones played their first U.S. concert at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino with The Everly Brothers as the opening act.

2. Near where current day Colton is there was once a town called Aqua Mansa, which was, for a time, the largest town between Los Angeles and New Mexico. It is a very significant place with its roots going back to Californio days. Its residents included the Wilson family and family member Don Benito Wilson. That Mr. Wilson is better known as Benjamin David Wilson who would go on to be the second elected Mayor of L.A., and whom Mount Wilson is named after.

3. Future Vice-President and President Lyndon B. Johnson once worked as an elevator operator at a San Bernardino building in 1925. During a 1964 reelection campaign stop in San Bernardino LBJ returned to that building, known as the Platt Building, to operate the elevator once more in front of a few cameras. 

Platt Building in San Bernardino. Date and photograph author unknown. No copyright infringement intended; shown for educational and historic purposes only. 

4. The oldest Jewish cemetery in Southern California is in San Bernardino.

5. The last two magnitude 7-plus earthquakes in California were in San Bernardino County. Those quakes are, the 1992 Landers Earthquake and the 1999 Hector Mine Earthquake. 

6. The San Bernardino Sun has been for many decades, and continues to be, the dominate newspaper in the San Bernardino area. Back in the 1960s the Los Angeles Times' then parent company Times-Mirror made an attempt to buy The Sun, but federal government antitrust officials were not too keen on the idea and thus no sale. Today The Sun is apart of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, which includes, the L.A. Daily News, and Daily Bulletin, Pasadena Star-News, among other Southern California newspapers.