STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
Saturday night, the home court advantage meant nothing to the Imperial Valley College basketball team.
Although the Arabs took on College of the Canyons in the spacious IVC gym, Coach Jim Walker and company must have felt they were back at Newhall, the site of the first encounter between the two.
In that meeting, the defending Desert Conference champions picked up 24 fouls against seven for the Cougars but managed to pull out a 91-79 win that left them alone at the top of the league standings.
Saturday night, the Arabs receipted for 28 fouls and Canyons was called for 17 infractions, but the final result was almost identical as IVC wound up with a 91-78 victory.
This time, however, they are not alone at the top. The Mira Costa Spartans, supposedly eliminated in the first half of the DC season, continue to keep pace as the campaign moves into its final stages.
Both clubs are 8-3 in the league with three games to go and both take to the road this weekend, but the Spartans have the easier task, facing Mt. San Jacinto and Canyons. Following the Victory Valley game, the Arabs move on to Barstow.
Barstow also had been tied for the lead going into last weekend’s activity but fell victim to the conference road jinx, losing to Saddleback, in overtime, and Mira Costa. On the year, the home team has won 36 of the last 40 DC contests. No visiting team has won since Jan. 17, when IVC and Mira-Costa turned the trick, against Canyons and Barstow, respectively.
When the Cougars hosted the Arabs during the first half of the schedule, Gary Ray of Canyons took game scoring honors with 32 points and Kurt Stenderup tossed in 26.
40 years ago
BLAST IT! The blunting heat of the 26th day in June 1925 was not, despite the popular rumor of the day, a result of a devastating volcano which had reportedly erupted a mere 60 miles south of Mexicali.
No! The summers are always that hot in Imperial Valley. But Imperial Valley residents were fielding phone calls all afternoon from concerned relatives and friends who had read in Southern California newspaper that Mexicali was buried in lava and Imperial Valley people were killed by the intense heat of the eruption.
The hot story apparently emanated from Mexicali from the tequila-crazed minds of local pranksters, who phoned in the story to a Spanish-language newspaper in San Diego.
The newspaper in Los Angeles picked the story up and further elaborated on the catastrophic turn of events south of the border. By the time the rest of the world got the news, most of northeastern Baja California was gone and Imperial Valley was threatened by approaching lava.
“From Los Angeles, the story made its way back to the Imperial Valley,” according to the Imperial Valley Press, “causing people here to wonder why the dickens they did not know something about a volcano that was spouting death and destruction at their very doors.”
The Imperial Valley Press office was inundated with phone calls from news agencies throughout the world looking for gruesome details.
They wanted to know about the Americans who had dropped near the border, frizzled by the intense heat the said volcano emitted. They wanted to know if correspondents should be sent.
Finally, the switchboard operator was told to answer, “Imperial Valley Press, There’s been no volcano.”
According to the press accounts that did appear in print, the volcano erupted, from the Sierra Pintas Mountain, located about 60 miles south of the international boundary near La Bomba on the Gulf of Mexico.
“Several local residents, who have relatives in other parts of the state, were annoyed by receiving telephone calls from the latter, asking how many people had been killed here and if their friends were saved” according to an Imperial Valley Press account of the hoax.
30 years ago
Arctic winds that ripped through Imperial Valley earlier this week left behind temperatures as low as 24 degrees this morning, driving the homeless indoors and sending growers scurrying to protect their crops.
It was 24 degrees in Imperial this morning, while Brawley recorded a low of 25 and Calexico and El Centro reported in at 26, said Jim Christopherson of the National Weather Service.
Christopherson said a harder freeze is expected tonight, with freezing temperatures for more than six hours. The cold will continue through the weekend, with highs in the upper 60s and the lows in the 30s, he said. Below normal temperatures are expected throughout the month.
On Wednesday, the homeless in Imperial Valley only had one shelter to go — the Salvation Army Hospitality House in E Centro.
“I don’t turn anybody away,” said Gary Schombert of the Hospitality House.
Schombert said he went out into the streets Wednesday night to usher in the homeless, and 52 people, including five children, were housed in the shelter last night. The shelter has room for nearly double that number.