- [Announcer] "Ken Kramer's About San Diego," made possible in part by Walter Andersen Nursery, with two locations, San Diego and Poway, a local resource offering plants and products for all your gardening and outdoor care needs.

Walter Andersen Nursery, independent and family-owned since 1928.

Caring for a loved one with memory problems can be challenging.

Alzheimer's San Diego can help, offering support, education, resources, and social activities at no cost and without a diagnosis.

Visit alzsd.org to learn more or donate.

And by viewers like you, thank you.

(bright music) - [Ken] How about this?

More than 3,500 acres of naturally beautiful grassland in the Santa Maria Valley of San Diego County.

Call a friend, grab some water and snacks, this is something to experience, one of nature's wonders, you'll see.

(upbeat music) And do you know what this was, just east of 47th and Logan, not all that long ago?

Here's a clue.

(pleasant music) - [Announcer] Of all the faithful servants of mankind down through the ages, none has served us better than Old Bossie, the cow.

- [Ken] We go back to when dairy farms were an essential part of our city, and when home milk delivery came right to your door, and sometimes inside your house, and into the refrigerator while you were sleeping.

(upbeat music) Plus, there are little secrets hidden in a San Diego place that's really very public.

- And look at these teeth, they're terrifying.

- [Ken] Seth Mallios will show us where they are and where to look for them.

And three, two, one, (cannon pops) a salute to the preservation of something historic about San Diego, and we found video of this unknown character, peddling doggerel about a now-gone place in a bygone time in rhyme, and more stories too, all of them true, about San Diego.

(triumphant music) (audience applauding and cheering) (bright music) - [Announcer] "Ken Kramer's About San Diego," the history and people of the area we call home.

Here's Ken Kramer.

- Ah, it is about San Diego time, and welcome to the show.

We are at Snapdragon Stadium this time for reasons that will become evident as we move along here, but first, we're going to do something different.

Because we have something special at the end of the show, we're going to take a segment that normally is at the end of the show.

The part where you send in things or call things to our attention, we're gonna do that right now, so let's check the inbox, see what you've sent in for us all to see about San Diego.

(intriguing music) Every city ought to have a motto, a slogan, like National City has, "In the center of it all."

Poway calls itself "The city in the country," and Oceanside here, little brochure from the chamber of commerce sent to us, I'm guessing from sometime in the early 1950s, "The city of eternal spring."

Of course, later, it was "Tan your hide in Oceanside."

Now it uses the phrase, "California's best secret."

The 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park was a huge international event, with countless world-class exhibits, but do you know what most of the tourist photos from back then seemed to be of?

The pigeons.

Well, they were friendly, and you could feed them, and from Jeff and Martha Banker of Lakeside, a postcard of the pigeons and a treasured photo of Jeff's grandmother, Annie, amongst them.

(intriguing music) From Liz Osburn, Armed Forces Day down Broadway, she was queen of the parade when she was Anson Elizabeth Lewis in 1965.

Christmas Day of 1945, Mark Harris says his dad's troop ship docked at 32nd Street.

His dad had never seen his new daughter, Paula.

One of the ship's officers saw to it that dad was the first Marine off the ship for a memorable homecoming.

(intriguing music) From Anthony Pestilo, these are some remarkable photos taken by his step-great-grandfather, Robert Miller, of a military base in San Diego that is no more.

It was called Camp Callan, and from 1941 to 1945 at its peak, Camp Callan housed as many as 40,000 Army personnel who were in training there.

Where all this once was is now part of the Torrey Pines Golf Course and part of the campus of UCSD.

(intriguing music) Russell Lee's wartime photos in San Diego were commissioned by the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, and some of them are wonderful slices of life.

Here's a May Gray day in Horton Plaza in 1942, houses being built and advertised for Rolando Village, not far from San Diego State, and this from Tommy Lennox, 1955.

This was Aztec Terrace, housing built and set aside for veterans right around where the 8th and the 163 cross today.

She remembers it as self-contained and very supportive as a community.

Rent was $33.50 for a one-bedroom, and out back, behind the houses in the River Valley, became a driving range.

No grass, but no obstacles either.

- [Commentator] Lewis, a left to Max's jaw, a right to his head.

Max shoots a hard right to Lewis.

Lewis with the old one-two.

- Joe Lewis was, for a dozen years, one of the greatest and most influential boxers of the 1930s and '40s, but he also was a really good golfer, who, in 1952, broke the PGA color barrier by competing in the San Diego Open.

Here's a photo Dean Knuth sent us, an historic occasion.

Up to then, people of color were not permitted to participate in professional golf, and Joe Lewis, in that year in San Diego, used his star power to be a part of change.

(children screaming) And, finally, happy century birthday to the Belmont Park rollercoaster, the Giant Dipper, but wait, something's different from this dipper and this one.

It's like they're different dippers.

Yes, definitely dissimilar dippers.

This Giant Dipper, same name, but on the boardwalk at Santa Cruz, was created at about the same time by the exact same designers as our Giant Dipper, which, if you dip into its history, has certainly had its share of peaks and valleys, but still, all these years later, our dipper is still rollercoastering while the other one is rolling up the coast.

(children screaming) Okay, just one more thing quickly to show here, because I do get mail about a movie, a particular movie, shot in San Diego and about San Diego, and I was able to get a copy of it.

(majestic music) Question, what is the biggest movie about San Diego that you've probably never heard of?

In it, the star of the film comes to San Diego and wants to get a hotel room.

- Without reservations in San Diego?

- [Ken] Of course, there've been lots of old movies made in our county.

Here's one of the first, 1898, a Thomas Edison film called "Dogs Playing in the Surf."

Part of "Citizen Kane" was shot in Balboa Park.

Director Orson Welles wanted to show a Hearst Castle kind of place called Xanadu.

- [Announcer] Xanadu is the costliest monument a man has built to himself.

- [Ken] But no, I mean a movie with the name, San Diego, right in the title.

It was shown in theaters all across the country back in 1945, and the leading lady, Louise Allbritton, was having a heck of a time trying to get into that hotel.

- Well, why all the fuss?

What does San Diego think it is, Washington, DC?

- Lady, we pride ourselves on having more confusion per square inch in San Diego than Washington ever heard of.

(upbeat music) - [Ken] He might have had a point there.

Wartime San Diego was a really busy place.

Some weekends saw 40,000 sailors off-duty, defense industry booming, people coming and going probably was confusing, but, back to our movie.

♪ They they ♪ - [Ken] Eventually, our female star gets everything she wants, including the leading man.

- Will you take me to the zoo?

I've always wanted to see Balboa Park.

- [Ken] Today there aren't many copies of the movie around, but 70-plus years ago, it had a name we were proud of.

- Oh, San Diego, I love you.

- That's the title, "San Diego I Love You."

Film historians will say it was no box office blockbuster, and that's true.

It was just a silly, corny, and kind of sweet romantic comedy about San Diego.

(majestic music) (bright music) It is about San Diego.

We are at Snapdragon Stadium.

Now before Snapdragon, there was Qualcomm Stadium, which was also known for a while as Jack Murphy Stadium and just San Diego Stadium.

And the thing about it was, it was a multipurpose stadium.

You could have a football game going on, and then change it to a baseball game by moving some seats around and changing the field a bit.

And sometimes, that had to be done very quickly.

Well, back in 1980, this reporter, just out of the washing machine, wanted to see how that happened and set it all to rhyme.

It is herein revealed as the teams leave the field in a story that we've set to rhyme, how by eight o'clock flat, thousands more could be sat for America's favorite pastime.

Just a minute past one, so much work to be done, there was no time to waste on this day.

So they moved in the troops in big trucks with big scoops and began on the task straightaway.

They were hardy, bold chaps in their hard yellow caps that took on this herculean chore, and a part of the crew made the seats look like new, while beneath, there went up several more.

It is there in that space, in the bowels of the place, 'neath this fortress of concrete and steel, that they hooked up the line, and by 1:49, had the whole section rolling on wheels.

If the truth can be told, it is odd to behold something moving that's built for a crowd, and we might have just tried to finagle a ride, but we figured that wasn't allowed.

While back on the ground, they're preparing the mound over bricks made of unfired clay, and it looks like by dark, they'll have finished this park for the Padres and Dodgers to play.

An unidentified man took a hose in his hand, and he washed out the 20-yard line, while his friend with a rake smoothed the dirt by home plate as the clock flashed at 3:59, oops.

As the afternoon sun set on section 18, which this morning was field section two, the compressors and winches and cables and hooks had done all they were supposed to do.

The seats had been seated, the mound had been mounted, the foul lines had been lined with lime, the lawn had been mowed, and the goalposts were stowed, and they'd finished in plenty of time.

So they picked up their picks, and in pickups they left, taking only six hours in all, from when the referee's gun said the football was done till the umpire called out, "Play ball."

With apologies to poets everywhere, that's a little Ken Kramer from 1980, setting things to rhyme back in that time.

All right, to Snapdragon Stadium today, did you know there are little things hidden around the stadium that, when you see them, you might not know what the story is, and then suddenly, ah, I get it, and to help us with that, San Diego State historian, Seth Mallios, is going to take us through, show us some of these Easter eggs, and the story behind each one of them.

- San Diego State's Snapdragon Stadium was deliberately designed to be chock-full of surprises.

It's much more than just a football stadium.

There are a variety of Easter eggs with little historical secrets sprinkled throughout the stadium.

Let's check it out.

(exciting music) And this is the logo of the original San Diego Stadium built in 1967.

Long before it was known as the Murph, it was this, San Diego Stadium, and this logo shows two things, one, the S for San Diego, but two is the spiral nature of it, with those four spiral staircases that thousands of children ran up and down during countless Aztec, Charger, and Padre games.

(exciting music) Most San Diegans are very familiar with the number 41.

That's for the USS Midway.

Launched in 1945, it was so big, it could not fit through the Panama Canal.

Now, the USS Midway saw action at Vietnam and Desert Storm, but now most folks know it as the museum that thousands of people visit on an annual basis, and it even hosted a San Diego State basketball game.

(exciting music) The consolidated B-24 Liberators were built right here in San Diego.

Military enthusiasts will recognize the fierce teeth and distinctive tail fin.

And look at these teeth, they're terrifying.

There were over 18,000 of these heavy bombers, and they saw extensive action in World War II.

(intriguing music) This one is wild.

It is an Easter egg of San Diego State's first mascot.

Long before we were the Aztecs, the San Diego State students at the old Normal School, they found a cat that had 26 toes, and they fell in love with it, Pete the cat, but they equated those extra toes to extra limbs, and here is the Wampus cat that was our first mascot, a sixth-legged mythical cat creature, here at Snapdragon Stadium.

(bright music) The image over my right shoulder is from an old yearbook, and that's the S on Cowles Mountain.

First painted in 1931, it was the largest collegiate symbol on the planet.

Over 400 feet tall, students would hike up to the top of the mountain, they would brush in the lime, and during homecoming, they would even light it on fire.

So this image here at San Diego State is an homage to the past, that is the S on Cowles Mountain, but it's still here at Snapdragon Stadium.

(playful music) You know the San Diego Chicken?

No, not this one.

(playful music) This, friends, is where the plot chickens.

Sorry, I couldn't resist, but this container is dedicated to the San Diego Chicken.

I know it looks like abstract art, but here's the egg, the star, and the wings of the San Diego Chicken.

Ted Giannoulas, The Chicken, is a San Diego State alum.

Started as the KGB Chicken, and what this crater symbolizes, what this shows us, was the 1979 Grand Hatching of the San Diego Chicken, the world's most famous mascot.

(triumphant music) (audience cheering) This is our tribute, our Easter egg, to the San Diego Chicken.

(exciting music) So the next time you're here at Snapdragon Stadium for a game or a concert, keep your eyes open for all the little Easter eggs here that may tell you a little more about San Diego.

(exciting music) (bright music) (upbeat music) - [Ken] Here's a quiz for you, see if you know this one.

1919, San Diego Union, a great crowd has gathered to see Woodrow Wilson at the Big City Stadium.

Here's a postcard from the 1920s of the stadium, San Diego, California.

Here's Franklin Roosevelt at the stadium, and it wasn't just politicians.

(lively music) 1965, oh, the police were really worried.

Could there be trouble at The Beatles concert at the stadium?

(upbeat music) ♪ Monday morning you sure look fine ♪ ♪ Friday I got travelin' on my mind ♪ - [Ken] 10 years later, 1975, Fleetwood Mac, Loggins and Messina, Lynyrd Skynyrd, $7.50 admission, to see it at the stadium.

♪ I'm picking up good vibrations ♪ - Same year, Beach Boys at the stadium, and it wasn't just concerts.

From 1961 to 1966, the San Diego Chargers played at the stadium, and finally, in the 1970s, amid earthquake concerns, our stadium of that time was torn down, but here's the question.

See if you know what was the name of our civic stadium back then.

Was it Balboa Stadium, Harbor Stadium, or Silvergate Stadium?

(lively music) (whistle tooting) (audience applauding and cheering) Sure, it was Balboa Stadium.

There's a smaller venue there now, next to San Diego High School for track and football events, but in its day, Balboa was our stadium, and if you knew that, you may very well remember it, or maybe you just know a lot about San Diego.

(lively music) (bright music) Here's the Whaley House in Old Town, well-known for being haunted, as you know, but we found something in the Whaley House that could easily be overlooked, and here it is.

Do you know what this is?

It's a cannon.

It's a ceremonial cannon, and it's more than 140 years old.

Now, I wanna take you back.

You might remember a story we did about how San Diego used to celebrate the 4th of July.

We mentioned that one of the things San Diego used to do was fire off a cannon.

(cannon booms) But people complained that their windows, (glass shatters) so that was stopped, and that old 1876 cannon, eventually, it went missing.

Well, Jim Richmond saw that, and he wrote us to say the cannon was found by the Save Our Heritage organization, and with a donation from descendants of the man who gave it to the city in 1876, the The Bandy Blacksmiths Guild in Escondido restored that cannon, which wasn't easy.

I mean it was filled with concrete, but these blacksmiths made it once again what it was back on those 4th of Julys prior to 1900.

Finally, they had to test it, of course.

(cannon pops) Sounding off again as our city's centennial cannon, so congratulations to everybody who restored it and to the Whaley House for keeping it safe.

Should you see it there, you might get a bang out of knowing this story about San Diego.

(cannon booms) If you're old enough, you might remember home milk delivery, fresh milk brought to your door in the overnight or cool early morning hours.

Well, in the interest of nostalgia, can I take you back to when you didn't go to the store to get milk, no, no.

In the neighborhood east of 47th and Logan, if you could rewind the clock to say the 1950s, you know what you would see?

Cows, dairy cows, for milking at the Knox Dairy.

Ray Thompson remembers.

- We produced the milk there, we bottled it there, and we delivered it from there.

We didn't have to truck in milk.

- [Ken] Everybody knew that Knox Dairy, owned by Harley Knox, San Diego mayor in the late '40s, had their offices in a drive-up window at 4810 Logan Avenue, San Diego 13, California, but the thing is, they delivered milk to your door.

Well, all dairies did in those sweeter, simpler times.

The milkman brought it and Ray was a milkman.

- Well, the people were very trustworthy then.

I had numerous keys to people's houses.

- [Ken] He drove one of these trucks, and in the early morning, Ray and his fellow drivers had routes all over the city.

He knew his customers, the families, the kids, and they knew Ray, he was the milkman.

- A lot of homes, they were still asleep when I was in, putting the milk in the refrigerator in the kitchen, you know, and I didn't slam the door when I went out either.

- [Ken] When he gave out a calendar at the holidays, well, there were his own kids in the picture with some good and good for you, healthy Knox milk.

His wife did the bookkeeping, kept track of who got the chocolate or buttermilk, skim milk, cream, even oleomargarine and fresh eggs.

Anything, you just called him at home.

- And then I've had them give me old coins as change to pay the milk bill, and they called my house, and, "Ray, I must have given you my coin, part of my coin collection.

Do you have a such and such year or dime or quarter?"

And I said, "Well, I haven't.

I've still got my change, I'll look and see," and sure enough, why, it was a, I forget if it was a dime or a quarter or what it was that she'd given me, and she hadn't meant to.

- [Ken] A lot of us who remember the neighborhood milkman know what those old Divco trucks looked and sounded like, how dogs up the street would start barking.

They knew those squeaky brakes, and it worked both ways, Ray says.

The milkman knew us too.

"There was a customer one day," he says... - And she always met me at the door, and she didn't meet me that day, and that was on Chamoune Avenue.

Her name was Mrs. Cook.

And so, I come in, and she'd had had a heart attack.

So I called the fire department, police, and they come and everything turned out fine.

- [Ken] Eventually, customers stopped asking for home delivery, costs went up, supermarkets stocked milk, and in San Diego, like everywhere else, an era ended, but you know what?

- I've had people stop me in La Mesa on the street, say, "Ray, you remember me?

You used to be our milkman."

- [Ken] He remembers when it was cows east of 47th and Logan, and a simpler and more trusting time along Ray Thompson's delivery route around and about San Diego.

(bright music) Finally, this time, let's go to a place that is just beautiful.

Southwest of Ramona, west of Highway 67, it's a grassland preserve, and it is an absolute treasure.

(relaxing music) This place is so gentle on the senses, so peaceful, a windswept grassland filled with the sounds and sweet smells that, depending on where you look, could have been cut and pasted from the Great Plains of America.

(relaxing music) Let's take a walk through the Ramona Grasslands County Preserve.

A vast and panoramic view spread out before us under a smiling sky, it somehow just recharges the soul.

(relaxing music) It is really a remarkable thing, 3,521 acres (gentle music) of picture-postcard beauty.

(water rippling) (gentle music) I found myself thinking, "Really, this is in San Diego County."

(gentle music) There are two trails connected by a third for walking, cycling, horses.

- [Rider] He likes to eat out at dawn.

(hooves clacking) (gentle music) - [Ken] So many different moods, depending on the seasons of the year.

There are pools formed by the Santa Maria Creek.

(water gurgling) (bird tweeting) (insect chirping) (gentle music) (water gurgling) (gentle music) A serene place of shrubs, oak trees, and grass that is home to 408 different plant species.

(feet scratching) (gentle music) Out there are 23 different kinds of butterfly, more than a hundred types of birds.

(gentle music) And whatever I encountered seemed to be at peace.

(grass crunching) (gentle music) Spring and summer days can be hot.

You wanna carry water.

Make sure somebody's with you or knows where you are.

(gentle music) And open your senses to this treasure of open space in the Santa Maria Valley off Highland Valley Road.

(moves to bright music) (feet scratching) (bright music) A walk around the trails of the Ramona Grasslands County Preserve, something wonderfully calming, and yet breathtaking, about San Diego.

(bright music) And that's it for this time and this episode of "About San Diego."

If you want more information about the Grassland Preserve or any of the stories you've seen here on the show, or if you wanna see other episodes of "About San Diego," or if you want a link to send us things to show on the show, or if you want a cup or a T-shirt, just go to my website.

That's KenKramerTV.com, KenKramerTV.com, and we will see you next time.

Until then, and as always, I am Ken Kramer.

Thank you for watching and for caring about San Diego.

Bye-bye.

(bright music) (moves to gentle music) - [Announcer] Support for this program comes from the KPBS Explore Local Content Fund, supporting new ideas and programs for San Diego.

"Ken Kramer's About San Diego," made possible in part by Walter Andersen Nursery, with two locations, San Diego and Poway, a local resource offering plants and products for all your gardening and outdoor care needs.

Walter Andersen Nursery, independent and family-owned since 1928.

Caring for a loved one with memory problems can be challenging.

Alzheimer's San Diego can help, offering support, education, resources, and social activities at no cost and without a diagnosis.

Visit alzsd.org to learn more or donate.

And by viewers like you, thank you.

(bright music)