Just when I’d gotten interested in giving Fontana more coverage early in 2020, everything shut down. So much for that. But I was back in the city this week for the opening of a sports park on the edge of downtown. Remarks by a mayor, balloons, a ribbon cutting — it was nice to be at a civic event again. I write about that, with a couple of other items, in Friday’s column.

I was back in the Fontana Council Chambers this week for a meeting at which a city manager, the first new one since 1999, was hired. His name is Mark Denny and he’s from Dana Point. I write about him and a few fun moments from the meeting in Friday’s column.

Btw, in our interview after the meeting ended, he got in the first question: “Are you going to update your food blog?” My mouth probably fell open. He grinned. The man does his research.

He says he’s a fan of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” prefers family-owned restaurants to chains and had already eaten at El Gallo Giro, one of only a handful of restaurants in the city about which I’ve blogged, and which he called “fantastic.”

I’ll have to hit some more restaurants in Fontana, if only to ensure the city’s top executive doesn’t go hungry. Before the meeting, I pulled into a taqueria for a future Restaurant of the Week.

Wait, Fontana is the subject of two straight Sunday columns? Well, why not? I went to Tuesday’s City Council meeting and watched the retirement ceremony for a 30-year employee, and it was very sweet. That includes the story of how her future husband showed up to work to propose to her in unusual fashion. I wish Debbie Brazill well in Sunday’s column.

Ken Hunt’s abrupt departure as Fontana city manager last summer raised eyebrows. I’d been wanting to look into this and finally did, learning that although it was described blandly as a retirement, Hunt had to sign an agreement not to defame the city, and for his silence gets a full year of pay and benefits. I write about all this in Sunday’s column.

Grapes are being harvested in north Fontana off the 210 Freeway by workers for Galleano Winery. At 220 acres, it’s the largest vineyard in the Inland Valley. The grapes are great, Galleano ways, but the property’s long-term future is in doubt. I write about this age-old tradition in Wednesday’s column. Above, passerby Carly Palomar takes photos of a gondola full of grapes.

The actor dropped into the city’s In-N-Out for a meal, and was nice enough to thrill everyone with selfies and free food. I write about that in Friday’s column, as well as about consuming my last Fresh & Easy product, Ontario’s new Nativity creches and my book’s appearance in the LA Times.

As reported the other day, the mayor of Fontana was seated next to President Trump at an infrastructure summit. How did that come about? Did they interact? I quizzed Acquanetta Warren on her close encounter and she did not disappoint. That makes up Friday’s column — along with an item of historical interest from Rancho Cucamonga.

Above, Trump holds up a cap that Warren gave him as Florida Gov. Rick Scott looks on. Below, Warren’s quick shot of the nameplates, soon-to-be-infamous notepad in the center. (The column explains why.)

A woman named Davida Lawson of Fontana brought a keepsake into our office to show me: an autograph book in which she had signatures of 13 players or staffers with the 1977 Los Angeles Rams. Among them: Joe Namath (above) and Pat Haden (below). She also got Rusty Jackson, Rod Perry, John Williams, Willie Miller and more.

She and her fiance were living in Fullerton as he studied and worked in the cafeteria at Cal State Fullerton, where the Rams had their training camp that year. Players and staffers ate in the cafeteria and signatures were obtained.

“Pat Haden was so good-looking back then,” Lawson said. And she was charmed by Namath, who was in his first season with the Rams, at the tail-end of his career; by the season’s fourth game, he was done.

The Rams are headed back to L.A. — as you may have heard.

In Friday’s column, we get an update on the plans announced in 2013 to name a street in Fontana after native son Sammy Hagar — which is that the development still isn’t built. After that: three Culture Corner items and a Valley Vignette about, of all people, a presidential candidate’s wife with a local tie.

Wednesday’s column marks the 70th anniversary of a sad tale, a hate crime memorialized time and again in the press and yet evidently still unknown to most, if those quoted in Cassie MacDuff’s Press Enterprise column last week are to be believed. Here’s my version of the story. Above, O’Day Short; below, Helen Short and the couple’s two children, Carol Ann and Barry.