STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
The Planters Hotel, a central Brawley landmark, is to be converted into an apartment house.
Ben Glithero, the hotel’s manager-copartner, announced this morning that the Planters will gradually be converted to apartments and single rooms for permanent guests. He added that until that time, single rooms would still be rented out to transient guests as long as rooms are available.
Glithero explained that the new apartments will be constructed according to the wishes of the new tenants. They will be given rooms with refrigerators until the conversion of other space into one- or two-bedroom flats with bath and kitchenettes are completed. The conversion should take an average of two or three days, according to Glithero, and each new apartment will be redecorated and furnished to suit the tenant.
Rents for the apartments, according to Glithero, will be “considerably” under those charged for similar space in other Brawley apartment buildings.
40 years ago
Depending on the urgency of need, communicating with folks out of the Valley was, for the most part, a slow process until 1920.
News and gossip were dispatched and received at irregular intervals through mail and wire.
Among Valleyites, however, nothing beat the telephone to spread that local gossip. The heat of the summer made the telephone a handy device for the avoidance of blistering a loose tongue in the afternoon sun while talking over the fence.
As he was with so many other important Valley affairs, early-comer W.F. Holt was the telephone pioneer of the area. He opened the first telephone system by stringing wire between the Niland area and Imperial.
The single wire connected Holt’s office in Imperial with the terminal point of the Southern Pacific Railroad around 1902. At that early date, no telegraph system had established itself in the Valley.
Holt was approached, especially by those moving supplies into the area by wagon from the railroad. In 1903, he established the first telephone exchange in the Valley, organizing the Imperial Valley Telephone Co., and originally serving 26 customers.
30 years ago
Dennis Vanoni, director of county juvenile facilities, tells the story of a functionally illiterate teen-ager who was arrested and sentenced to a term in juvenile hall.
Like all youngsters in custody, he was tested prior to enrollment in a court-sponsored school program. The tests revealed that the boy couldn’t see the paper in front of him, much less the print.
After being fitted with glasses, the youth improved his reading skills from pre-school to the third-grade level while serving a one-month sentence at juvenile hall.
“When he was released, the first thing he did was throw those glasses out the window,” Vanoni said. “A couple of weeks later, he was back in juvenile hall. Back at his same reading level.”
This story illustrates the successes and frustrations of teachers, probation officers and everyone else involved with the court-operated schools at the juvenile facility and California Youth Authority.
While the young people are in custody, school officials have a great deal of control over the students and can almost require them to learn. But once the juveniles leave the facility, they are back on the street, cutting school and getting into trouble again, said Gene Garcia principal of the Imperial County court schools program.
20 years ago
CALEXICO — Two law enforcement officers lifted a pickup off a 5-year-old pinned under it after it collided with the car in which the boy was riding on Saturday.
The boy, Octuro Huereque, was in serious condition in Children’s Hospital in San Diego this morning, according to a spokeswoman there.
The driver of the car, Anselmo Lizaola, 48, of Calexico, also was transporting his 12-year-old daughter, Xayeli Castillo of Calexico. She was taken to El Centro Regional Medical Center for treatment of a 7-inch laceration to her forehead and later released.
Lizaola later went to El Centro with minor injuries. He was treated and released. The driver of the second vehicle, 68-year-old Joe Casillas of National City, was not injured in the accident.
California Highway Patrol Officer Steve Will said Lizaola was westbound on Highway 98 at 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Wills said he was about three-tenths of a mile behind Lizaola and saw the accident as it occurred.
Casillas was eastbound on 98. Wills reported Lizaola turned his car into the path of Casillas. When Wills arrived, he saw Octuro, who had been thrown from the car in which he was traveling, was pinned under the cab of Casillas’ truck, which was on its right side. Wills said the child was not breathing.