5-4-3-2… just one more day to go until the state’s liquor licensing laws roll back to their pre-war state. Yep, it’s nearly 6 months after the end of hostilities, and despite several vain attempts by legislators to retain the time restrictions, from midnight tomorrow, bars and package stores may sell joy juice between 6 a.m. and 2 a.m., a welcome change from the 10 a.m. to midnight hours of wartime. So let’s have a toast!
Two Pasadena men died tonight when the truck in which they were driving skidded sixty feet, crashed through a guard rail, and plunged 300 feet down the Devil’s Gate Dam bridge near the Rose Bowl.
Driver Ernest Jimenez, 28, of 1993 Linda Rosa Ave. and George Talbot, 32, of 1143 Mentone St. were both dead by the time Ambulance Surgeon Charles A. Wagner and Driver Jack Bradley climbed down to attend them. Firemen cut the victims from the truck cab with torches, and the bodies were lifted to the road in wire baskets.
With the death of motorcyclist David Paul Benjamin, 23, of 1513 N. Western Ave., injured April 6 in a collision with a car at Barham Blvd. and Blair Dr., L.A. County’s traffic fatality count stands at 394 for the year.
-Kenneth Grant, O.T.O.
Rocketry! Space craft! Unspeakable rites unleashing Neosatanic magickal Gnostic deities! Ah, Devil’s Gate, the import of your name is lost on no-one.
(Taken from the historic, abandoned Flint Canyon Bridge.)
Jack “Belarion†Parsons and pals experimented with rocketry here, in the very spot-unbeknownst to them-Goddard had. (Now JPL, aka Jack Parson’s Lab, stands a stone’s throw to the north.) Parsons lived nearby on Orange Grove-where the cops were often called to break up parties where nude pregnant women danced in fire (and L. Ron Hubbard was shtupping everyone’s girlfriends).
The Gate is also known for multiple unsolved child disappearances. That, and the dangers of motoring near it when the blast from a solid-fuel booster (or tentacle of Cthulhu) can knock you into the Arroyo.
Distraught over her pending separation from fiance Billy Allen, 19-year-old Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, Pearl L. Reid, 16, drank poison today at her home at 2653 Loosmore Street. She died. When Billy saw what she had done he too quaffed the deadly draught, and lies in serious condition in Long Beach’s Naval Hospital. His doctors are optimistic for his survival, at least from the immediate threat.
Judy Janis, 26 year old singer discovered by bandleader Phil Harris, pled with Superior Court Judge Caryl M. Sheldon today to recognize the extent of the damages suffered when a clerk at a Horton & Converse drugstore she was patronizing at 6313 Hollywood Boulevard dropped a gallon jug of acid, splashing her famous gams. The vocalist, known in her radio days as “93 pounds of heaven,†seeks $35,000 compensation.
Sardi’s was one sexy restaurant once all right, with an attached pharmacy (note the neon that reads “prescriptions” in the window) should you need to pick up some antacid after a particularly heavy lunch. Not that antacid works to combat butterfingered acid-toting stock clerks.
Of course now, should you venture into the distrubingly named Cave, you risk being splashed with far worse.
If you thought the blockades were over, think again. Tonight, 250 of the city’s finest converged on Hollywood in a night-long rampage to break the back of vice. The results: 23 night clubs raided, six intersections gummed up by roadblocks, forty persons taken into custody, including 14 arrests for robbery, two for burglary, a possible bookie, a forger, a man who hit a policeman with a pop bottle, three drunk drivers, six gamblers, six walking drunks, two traffic violators, and a two year old babe in a bar with its parents.
Funny how the Times didn’t run the names and addresses of the nightclubs and their owners like they did when they busted up the Central Avenue clubs...
M. Cohen- Samuel Miller.. Sol Rosenblatt- Willie Spector- Samuel Tureck- Max Turetsky- Solomon Turk- Sol Turbin- Sol Turkein- Sam Weiss- Sam Wise.
Consider Sol Turkin, 39, produce merchant and groom-to-be, slain two nights ago in his apartment at 638 S. Cloverdale, after dancing all night with his fiancé, schoolteacher Sylvia Schermer of 837 N. Martel. Like Cinderella, the lady needed to be home before midnight-it was bad luck for them to see each other on their wedding day before the appointed time. Turkin dropped her off around 12:20am (oh- that’s bad) and was home in minutes. Around 12:45, a neighbor heard the sounds of a struggle, then four shots-one of which came through the wall.
Police found Turkin dead of a bullet to the groin, his face bloodied, signs of a struggle in the apartment and the dead man’s watch face smashed. On his person, $630, including five c-notes. Must have been an acquaintance, or Turkin would have called out. Maybe lurking in the dark, surprise attack. Anyway, no wedding for Miss Schermer.
Or for Turkin, some of whose aliases scroll above. The bride knew nothing of his police record dating back to 1924, including convictions for grand larceny and fraud, the three years in Leavenworth for impersonating an officer, the bad check that landed him in a New Jersey prison. Det. Capt. Bert Jones of Wilshire Division says it was “the man’s past catching up with him.â€
Or his present. Cops picked up Russell Waterman, 36, Montebello grocer who was holding three guns as security on a $300 loan to Turkin, and two of the three guns. Waterman said he sold the third.
And on Martel, a lady weeps.
Check out those rounded corner windows. I’m guessing 1938-40 on this one. I know I should go down and pull records, but while ars longa, you know, vita brevis.
Slight eaves with dentils–and those full-height pilasters–give this a Classical touch, but the sort of faux corner tower and arched dormer makes me itch with French Eclectic. Bet Solly boy died on hardwood floors near a nicely tiled bathroom. Now I’m itching to get in a take a look-see.
Poor Sol. As is often said, any friend who would shoot you in the crotch is no friend at all.
Bernie Shaw of 1224 W. 123rd Street was first on the scene today when a burning car ran off the road while traveling south on Budlong below 123rd, starting a grass fire in a field. Nearby was Dennis Yates, 64, of 602 West 79th Street, his clothes ablaze. Shaw extinguished the man and pulled off his charred clothing, but Yates later died at Harbor General Hospital, Torrance.
Police speculate that sparks from Yates’ pipe may have ignited a fire in his automobile and caused his death.
