Category: San Pedro

The Little Klansman That Couldn’t

August 4, 1927ousterdamage
San Pedro

That Ernest M. Branson just couldn’t leave well enough alone.  He was a member in good standing of San Pedro 51, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and all was fine and hunky-dory, until he started stirring the pot with his talk.  So from under the sheet came a big boot, and out went Ernest; now, Ernest says he was libeled in the written order that banished him from the Kluxers.

What was it ever did Ernest say?  To hell with the flag?  Hooray for Hebrews?  Eucharist is yummy?  Thomas Jefferson got it on with Sally Hemmings?

No, all he did was stir up some internal dissension inside the Klan, which resulted in his ouster (maybe he sided with Madge over DC.)  That’s gotta be the worst libel of all—accused of making mishegas in the klavern!

So now Ernest has filed a $25,000 ($275,749 USD2006) libel suit against none other than Exalted Cyclops Karl K. Keller.  

(Yes, Karl K. Keller.  I bet his real name was Herman Flork.)

Skeet Shoot


Feb. 19, 1907
Los Angeles

A quick trip to the Thomas Bros. will show that Los Angeles County doesn’t look like this, but it’s not for lack of trying. The wealthy men of Los Angeles and Orange counties are furious with one another over an attempt by Assemblyman Phil Stanton to give Los Angeles County a strip of coastal communities as far south as Newport Beach.

The arguments in favor are simple: Los Angeles County money built those communities and Orange County is, at least as far as the Angelenos are concerned, poorly run.

The Orange County faction accuses its northern neighbors of a land grab and notes the distance people would have to travel to serve on juries, for example. The Orange County businessmen say wealthy Los Angeles members of the Bolsa Chica Gun Club are seeking revenge after losing a lawsuit in Santa Ana against local peat farmers who were hunting ducks in the area.

Bonus fact: The Times says that Los Angeles has abandoned its efforts to annex San Pedro. (For now, anyway).

The rising city: Brentwood.

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Our Harbors: Built on the Body of Graecus

August 2, 1907
San Pedro

longwharfThe great wharfs and piers of Los Angeles are by and large but a thing of memory.  Who cannot tilt a head in wonder as one motors up PCH past the State Historic Landmark signage for the Port of Los Angeles Long Wharf, designating it “site of” the longest wooden pier in the world?
pedrowharf
It was dismantled after San Pedro became our official harbor in 1897. 

Ten years later, on this day, while the wharf was under construction, stout men were busy pulling bodies from the briny Pedro deep.

Seems that trainmen ran heavily-loaded cars onto the trackless uncompleted portion, causing 365 feet of trestle work to collapse, crushing Bakko Kovavich and drowning three others—Melia Bolich and Miko Kovavich.  Where Native Americans famously built our skyscrapers, it would appear that Greeks built our piers.

Remember these men when next you enjoy the fruits of our port system.

Landlord Beware

July 11, 1907
San Pedro

When poolhall manager G.M. Woodward’s rented house on 17th Street burned on June 29, landlord Mrs. M. Sweetman was grateful no one was killed. But after discovering the fire was intentionally set by Woodward, who had hopes of claiming $1100 insurance on his furnishings, she is fuming herself. Woodward is in County Jail, unable to make his bail.

Meanwhile, passengers on the North German Lloyd liner Kronprinz Wilhelm arrived in Hoboken with a terrifying tale of their ship having struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on July 8. Authoress Gertrude Atherton and statesman Baron Speck Von Sternberg were among the shaken travellers.

One Less Sailor in Pedro

May 6, 1907
San Pedro

The British bark Falls of Gary arrived in San Pedro tonight, 144 days from Antwerp, journeying around the Horn to bring a load of cement to Los Angeles. An uneventful journey, except that they arrived one man short. James Milligan, cook and steward, had been drinking heavily before the vessel set off. At one day out he was put to bed by shipmates and when sought again, had vanished. The disappearance is being considered a suicide.

Not a shocking story in and of itself–but one must wonder: cement? Had Los Angeles not evolved to the point of discovering the wonders of water mixed with gypsum? Granted, I love Hassids and Quentin Metsys and Belgian chocolate, but what makes Flemish cement so precious that it must be imported here on three-masted vessels flying the flag of Edward VII?