STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
Three male juveniles, one armed with a loaded .32 caliber revolver, were arrested at a California Highway Patrol safety check stop in downtown Brawley this morning.
There was no shooting and the three barefoot youths, and a girl companion, were subdued without a struggle by the CHP. The Brawley Police Department was called in to assist in the arrest by the five CHP patrolmen.
A CHP investigating officer said the car youths were in was stolen from Fontana sometime yesterday. Officers are also checking out the possibility the four are connected with an armed robbery of a Laundromat in Coachella at about 7 a.m. today.
Brawley police jailed the suspects and this morning were aiding in interrogation at the Brawley station. They were booked for robbing Coachella Laundromat manager James M. Armstrong of $314, then locking him in a store room.
The check station the CHP established on Main Street periodically is designed to check out safety features of automobiles passing through.
40 years ago
FARMERS SEE RED — Like pages torn from “In Dubious Battle,” the forerunner to John Steinbeck’s Nobel Peace prize winner, Imperial Valley had its own “Red Scare,” perpetuated in part by fact — and in part by reaction.
On Monday night, April 11, 1930, county law enforcement officers swept through the Valley, netting about 100 persons suspected of holding communist ideologies.
In El Centro alone, raids on the eastside netted 60 persons, but most were released when it was found they were merely listening innocently to the speeches of supposed communist organizers. When the night was over, 21 were jailed and thought to be “ringleaders.”
The mass arrests were the result of two months of secret service investigation summoned by the local district attorney’s office following an abortive lettuce strike the previous February. The J.H. Boling Detective Agency was contracted to weed out these “radicals.”
30 years ago
The release of “Return of the Killer Tomatoes” this month is the first time the voice of Brawley’s own Abelardo Chacon “Abbie” Solarez will be heard on the screen in a major motion picture.
The son of Rosa Solarez, a cafeteria worker at Brawley Union High School, and the late Nick Solarez, Abbie has been working behind the scenes in Hollywood movies and television commercials for several years.
“I am not interested in getting rich and famous,” he said of his career, but is happy “doing what I like to do.” He is considered an expert cameraman and his acting reputation is growing.
Return of the Killer Tomatoes” is a sequel to “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” which cost $100,000 to make and grossed $15 million. It was a product of Four Square Productions in National City.
Solarez does a voice over in the sequel, speaking off-camera. His use of a camera can be traced back to his childhood when he “practiced” taking pictures with a movie camera at home.
20 years ago
By a 4-1 vote, and before a full auditorium, the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors approved an agreement to transfer conserved water between IID and the San Diego County Water Authority.
Division 4 Director Don Cox cast the dissenting vote.
The SDCWA is scheduled to vote on the agreement today.
Notwithstanding last minute appeals for further information and answers to questions long-ago asked, each board member gave his reasoning for supporting or not supporting the agreement.
Division 3 Director and board president Lloyd Allen exercised his prerogative to comment last before the vote and spoke of how IID directors had made all of the decisions in the agreement based on the attendance at negotiations with SDCWA.