Dear Editor,
When the city installed the
”
slalom course
”
through downtown Gilroy a few years back I felt, how ridiculous!
After getting used to it, it didn’t seem so bad after all! In fact,
I now realize that it is the greatest traffic control ever devised
and ever installed by man … and it really works!
Dear Editor,
When the city installed the “slalom course” through downtown Gilroy a few years back I felt, how ridiculous! After getting used to it, it didn’t seem so bad after all! In fact, I now realize that it is the greatest traffic control ever devised and ever installed by man … and it really works!
When the construction on Monterey Street stopped and they cleaned up as though to quit, I cheered because I thought that the city would maybe return the street to what it was like in 1925. All it would take would be to remove the tress and patch the sidewalks which give the people an extra three feet of walkway. It would also allow the owners free to have awnings and signs over their shops. Awnings and/or signs do not compete with trees.
In 1925 I was 14 years old with $200 or $300 in the bank burning a hole in my pocket so … I went to Byers Brothers Garage (they were about where the Gilroy Bowling Alley Restaurant is now) and purchased a new Model T flatbed truck with no cab or doors since we were going to use it in the orchard. So we bought it stripped down. I built a seat with a cushion on top of the gas tank! A fresh air taxi if there ever was one!
In the course of several years, that truck made innumerable trips through downtown Gilroy, serving 50 acres of prunes on the Day Road, 75 acres of grapes, nuts, peaches and prunes on the Bodfish Mill Road (Hecker Pass) and the home ranch, peaches and prunes.
In the course of these trips I became quite familiar with Main Street Gilroy, the different colored awnings and the signs small or large showed up nicely. Johnson’s Drugs had the tallest sign and Floro’s Cafe the brightest.
Monterey Street was alive, from Tenth to the northern end of town. Almost every trip that I made through town would show something added or something new … a new dentist or a doctor’s sign in an upstairs window or a new window display, or maybe the time on the town clock wouldn’t be the same as the electric clock on the Western Auto Supply building. Always interesting, never dull.
Sandoe Hanna, Gilroy
The Golden Quill is awarded occasionally for a well-written letter.
