Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Letters

The best local memories recall town in 1950s

Goodbye Los Gatos. Forty-plus years I've seen you grow and prosper, attracting the svelte and successful. More power to you. Good luck.

It's time for me to move on down the line. On down to "Flar-da" where my sweet wife is already waiting in the home we are buying just 30 miles south of Gainesville and 10 stone-throws away from Orange Lake. Yes, there are alligators and bowfin and gar and snapping turtles the size of a washtub!

Those of you who know me as Major Deadwood Tree Service, thank you for letting me into your yards and lives. Thank you for enabling me to survive and grow as a naturalist tree service for the past 20 years.

Friends and neighbors, goodbye. It has been special. Oh, I almost forgot. I'm a certified arborist now, so when I say the tall Coast Redwood at the west entrance of the Town Library with the forking top is a "hazard tree," you should check it out. Sooner or later, one of those forks will tear off. I'd stake my reputation on it. They're pushing each other apart as they grow in girth. Now I've said it, and I feel better.

As I prepare to leave, here are some very special memories I take with me of Los Gatos in the 1950s:

Walking from Massol Avenue to Daves Avenue School by way of San Benito Avenue and cutting through two yards, one on Mariposa and the other on Bruce Avenue, and feeling gratitude at not having to walk all the way down N. Santa Cruz Avenue. Looking back from the junction of Creffield Heights and San Benito and seeing water flowing over the spillway at Lexington Dam for the first time.

Catching sharp-tailed snakes in the hillside lot near Andrews and San Benito. Walking the "pipeline" toward Lexington and scooting across on my butt where it crossed the Los Gatos Creek some 50 feet below. Fishing the creek and staring in awe as a two-pound bass that was chasing its prey ended up on the bank at my feet and flipped around for a few seconds before flopping back in the outlet pool at the base of the dam. Reaching through the root structure of a sycamore and feeling the backs of fish lurking there under the bank sanctuary. The building of the freeway and the new cement channel to contain the creek.

The first time they drained the reservoir and the hundreds of fish left stranded in the inch-deep water of the new channel. We saw them from the bridge at University Avenue School. After school, some of us went to investigate. We discovered the pool at the end of the channel below the Saratoga Avenue Bridge was teeming with fish. It was a great summer for fishing.

Rao's Supermarket, Eddie's Northside Market, Clanton's Auction, Crider's Service Station, the Meadow Gold Creamery, Purity Market, Crall's Stationery, Molly's Motel.

So much for the past.

With fish ladders at Camden Avenue and at Vasona Dam, we would have our own steelhead run again as in the days of the Ohlone Indians. They probably had a city where the river came out of the hills. And they probably gave thanks to the Great Spirit of Nature for the bountiful harvest that had been bestowed upon them.

Goodbye, Los Gatos. Goodbye, my friends. Take care of each other.

Phil Buskirk
Los Gatos

Go after the real villains instead of tilting at windmills

While we should all be grateful for the press keeping a watchful eye on our elected officials for improper behavior, it would seem that the article about campaign costs in the Sept. 18 issue may have been overzealous and unjustly has cast aspersions of improper behavior on both donors to the campaign funds of Town Council members and the recipients of same.

The amount of the donations seems to be modest and appropriate for the offices involved. Moreover, knowing some of the donors and recipients quite well, I would feel certain that these donors would not abuse any access gained by such donation, nor would the recipients be swayed to change their votes from what they felt was right and fair.

May I suggest that instead of "tilting at this windmill" that your excellent paper address a very real villain in our midst whose money indeed talks, and who abuses such advantage brutally to the disadvantage of almost all citizens.

That villain is the trial lawyers whose abuse of political donations is detailed in a Sept. 23 Newsweek article by Bob Eaton, chief executive officer of Chrysler Corp. He reports that American trial lawyers gave more money to local candidates in three states (Alabama, Texas, California) than local candidates in all 50 states received from either the Democratic or Republican National Committee. These monies are primarily intended to prevent tort reform, a system that Eaton reports costs all of us between $150 billion and $300 billion per year.

I recently spoke with the author of a no-fault automobile insurance bill which passed the California Legislature but was killed in the U.S. Senate, apparently mostly because of the influence of the trial lawyers on that latter body. Must we continue to be subject to the selfish dictates of this group that Eaton says has been called "America's third political party"? I hope not.

Don McCleve, M.D.
Monte Sereno

Correction

A story in the Sept. 25 issue of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times incorrectly stated that Steve Boersma had been appointed to the General Plan Committee "as a representative of Calvary Church." In fact, Boersma was appointed to fill one of two seats that were recently established for members of the business community.