Posted by Chas. Seims The next day, Saturday, I an a couple of friends (not sure excactly who) took the green bus from Pasadena into LA. We spent some time at Sixth and Main Station where I tried out my new camera photographing blimps and Watts cars on the viaduct. I was interested in the recently abandoned PE subway, so we walked over to Fourth and Hill. Being a holiday weekend, the city was a ghost town, and the Subway Terminal building was all locked up. We took a bus over to Glendale and Beverly Blvds and walked around the perimeter of the Toluca Yard area. The tracks were gone, but there was a shedlike building still standing in the yard property. There was an ancient truck with a PE logo on the side backed up to the substation--this is where the PE stored some of their engineering records after pulling them out of the underground storage area at Fourth and Hill that had been constructed for the Fourth Street Subway. I took a number of photographs, and if I can find them I will post. The end result was that looking at the abandoned facilities made me FURIOUS. How could these adults be so damn stupid as to abandon an rapid transit subway? I was cursing Jesse Haugh (we called him Jesse Hee-haw) and wanted to vent right now. Walking back to Sixth and Main (few busses were running) I found the elevator working and took it to the floor where Jesse had his office. He wasn't there, but his son Richard was working that Saturday. I marched past a secretary and into his office, confronting him about how his miserable little bus company could do such an evil thing. His reply consisted of five words, and he tapped his finger on the desk for emphasis--"It didn't make any money." As I took the bus back to Pasadena I pondered why so few people (besides me, of course) realized or cared what a disaster this was for Southern California.
on 9/30/2004, 11:28 am
67.164.111.22
I have a vivid memory of a day in 1958, when I was 14 years old. Christmas that year was on a Friday. Under the tree was a Kodak "Pony 135" 35mm. camera that I had asked for so I could photograph railroad stuff.
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