Stories from the past
50 years ago
The misadventures in air freight and crop-dusting were related by James K. Vedder, owner of the Valley Insecticide Co. at yesterday’s luncheon meeting of the Brawley Rotary Club.
Vedder and two buddies had embarked in air freight after the war. Their first and last venture involved transporting in expensive eggs from Texas and reselling them for a profit in California.
“Those were some of the filthiest eggs I’ve ever seen,” Vedder recalled, “and we would up buying some 30,000 dozen of them.”
Their misadventures had only begun. The crew found itself slightly lost and had to spend seven days in Tucson without funds. “We traded eggs for hamburgers,” Vedder said. “At night we used to wash the eggs in the administration building, but they made us stop when they found out where the bad smell was coming from.”
By the time they reached California, Vedder commented, a gas mask was needed to enter the plane. Water was ineffective in cleaning up the eggs and the crew had to spend another seven days sandpapering the eggs to make them presentable.
The lot was finally sold to an outfit known as “Yesterday Lain,” although by then the eggs were some 30 days old. The organization had barely broken even.
Vedder hitch-hiked to the Valley in 1950 where he was hired as a crop-duster. He subsequently started his own crop-dusting business and is now president of Imperial Airlines.
40 years ago
In its attempt to cut back in the wake of Proposition 13, the Board of Supervisors Tuesday redlined nine county jobs and then gave the go-ahead to recruit for 11 already vacant positions.
The action is almost symbolic of the board’s recent on-again, off-again approach to dealing with Proposition 13 cutbacks.
Some supervisors also made it clear that since the county is getting bailout money from the state, cutbacks should be made next year instead of now.
The redlined positions apparently will simply not be filled if they ever become vacant, even though the supervisors last week adopted a policy that sets a time limit by which an employee must find another county position or lose his job.
30 years ago
The Southern Section of the California Interscholastic Federation has returned the job of assigning officials to local official associations in five of its 11 areas and one of them is the Imperial Valley.
The section has assigned Chuck Osborne of the Coachella Valley area as its liaison with the associations in this county, in the Indio-Coachella-Palm Springs area and in Palo Verde.
Osborne said Monday he (Osborne) has final approval of assignments for Southern Section schools and will work as a “Clearing house for problems,” between the schools in his area and the section. That area will include the Southern Section schools in the Valley and Coachella Valley, Indio, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Twentynine Palms, Yucca Valley High School and Palo Verde.
But San Diego Section Commissioner Kendall Webb said Monday his office has not yet resolved who will do the assigning for the four San Diego Section schools here in the Valley.
The Southern Section schools here are Central, Brawley and Calexico. The San Diego Section schools are Imperial, Holtville, Calipatria and Vincent Memorial.
George Blek, the principal at McCabe School, might continue as the assigner for the San Diego Section schools in the county. Blek served as the assigner for all the schools in the county for three years. During that time, baseball and softball umpires threatened not to work over a power struggle with Blek. At one point, Blek attempted to form a new umpires association to replace the group opposed to him.