Julian Hernandez, 7, wanted to meet Upland Mayor Ray Musser, so he wrote a letter with the help of his godmother and was invited to see him at City Hall.
“Julian told him he wants to be a mayor when he grows up,” grandfather James Rodriguez told me via email. When Musser asked why, Julian said, “So I can tell people what to do!”
I was at Monday’s momentous Upland City Council meeting, at which an interim city manager began work, the fired city manager got a hefty payout and the mayor announced he’s not going to seek re-election. I round up the news and comment on it in Wednesday’s column.
Turning to the political scene in Upland, council members there created more upheaval last week when they fired their city manager of two years. Sunday’s column shares details, speculates, prods and mocks.
A story kind of fell in my lap as I walked out of Upland City Hall to see work being done to the Veterans Monument to deter skaters. That seemed newsworthy and became the top part of Friday’s column, followed by a Cinema Corner and other items. (Several other items prepared for the column are bumped to next week, or never. That’s the way the items crumble, folks.)
John Svenson, a sculptor who lived in San Antonio Heights and often bedeviled the Upland City Council, died in April. A memorial service Sunday at Upland’s Cooper Museum was the scene of laughter and stories. I was there, knew Svenson and pay tribute in Wednesday’s column.
A man with ALS longed for lasagna from a long-closed Upland restaurant, DiCenso’s — and got it. I tell the story in my Wednesday column.
Gary Olson, 97, a World War II Navy Veteran from Reno, Nevada, gets a close look of a DC3 from the 1940’s, as it’s parked on the airstrip of the Cable Airport, reminiscing the times when he would fly out of this airport in the 1950’s, during a visit of the Cable Airport in Upland, CA., Tuesday, April 19, 2016. Gary Olson has been flying most of his life and had a commercial pilots license up to his 95th birthday, he also knew Dewey Cable, the founder of the Cable Airport. (Photo by James Carbone for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin)
A former pilot, now 97, returned to Upland’s Cable Airport, where he used to teach students to fly in the ’50s and ’60s, and which he hadn’t seen in decades. He met with the Cable family, who were kind of in awe of him, and who took him up in a plane. The story is in my Friday column.
Sunday’s column wraps up (one hopes) the story of New China, the Upland restaurant that was subject of a blog post here in mid-March. I came up with some history of the restaurant and its predecessor, the Sage Hen. Also: two Culture Corner items and one on my film series at the Ontario library.
Above and below, photos by Matthew Landes from the Growing Up in Upland Facebook page of New China’s interior, shot a year ago.
New China, a longtime Chinese restaurant in Upland (2008 W. Foothill Blvd. at Benson Central) closed earlier in 2016, several readers informed me sadly. I went by the other day to take photos. There’s no note of explanation, unless the for-sale sign counts.
I don’t know much about the place; I ate there once, pre-blog, and recall the interior being dim, with lots of dark wood paneling. My guess is that it’s been New China since the ’90s. But over the years people have told me the location was previously the Sagehen Cafe, and that the neon bird art outside (see below) is a holdover from those days.
I’ll have to rely on you folks to tell me more in the comments section.
How’s that for a headline? That’s the first of five Upland items in my Friday column. Then come three Culture Corner briefs, including one about the cartoonist of “La Cucaracha,” and an interesting fact about the L.A. County Fair: It’s getting shorter.