STORIES FROM THE PAST

50 years ago

The public jammed the Calexico City Council chamber Tuesday night in the hopes of witnessing a showdown between the councilmen and the city attorney, but the battle never took place.

City Attorney Robert Fox did not offer his resignation and the city council did not bring up the matter.

It was reported that the council had been hoping that Fox would resign quietly and without a public fuss. A reliable source said that the council wanted to get rid of him because he allegedly sided with his clients when they were involved in issues with the city, and it was also alleged that Fox had given the council bad legal advice on some occasions.

At last night’s council meeting, the councilmen and Fox were reserved but polite in communicating with one another on matters on the agenda.

Following the meeting, some councilmen, who asked not to be named, said that they would demand Fox’s resignation at the next council meeting if he did not resign by then.

40 years ago

Mike positions himself at the base of the 6-foot concrete pipe. The strong current of irrigation water rushing through can sweep him into the tube, so he moves about carefully.

Finally, he hitches his boxer shorts and crews up enough courage to dive into the churing wall of water. Mike is shot through the 50-foot-long tunnel in about six seconds.

The water that knocks him about during his tube travel is suddenly calm and Mike knows he can rise to the surface again.

Mike (not his real name) began his daring feat from ahead gate in the Highline Canal, located east of Holtville along the desert’s edge. The water carried him under two dirt roads and into the Pear Main canal.

Shooting the tubes, though illegal and perhaps dangerous, has been a favorite past-time for Valley high school students at least 10 years. In fact, the tubes have contributed to a local counter-culture natives have dubbed the “Highlinean Culture.”

Included in the Highlinean cult is the Highline Canal rapids about 8 miles north of the tubes; Los Bones National Park; and the Bee Monument.

The tubes are perhaps the mainstay of the culture, however. Its popularity has never diminished, though tubists are constantly scattered by Imperial Irrigation District officials and an occasional sheriff’s deputy.

One Holtville tubist, now a responsible member of the community, said he remembers shooting the tubes as a junior high school student.

“It was just something to do,” he said recently, especially in the spring when school was almost out and it started getting hot.