The City of Sacramento constructed the Memorial Auditorium in 1926. This Sacramento cultural icon opened to much hoopla in 1927. Over time it became a center piece for entertainment in Sacramento.
My recollections of the auditorium date back to the 1950s.
My dad enjoyed professional boxing, and often took my brother Terry and me to the fights.
By the 1960s, however, the Memorial Auditorium took on new importance for me.
In addition to boxing matches, wrestling matches, circuses and theatrical productions, the auditorium began hosting rock and roll concerts.
Bands, such as the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and Temptations performed routinely at the old hall.
We had to be there.
Our dad, a Sacramento policeman, often worked off-duty at these events to earn extra money, so we begged him to take us to the shows, and he did. We walked in the front door with him, then disappeared into the general admission seating.
The shows were great.
The Beach Boys brought the house down, with girls running up onto the stage to try to kiss Mike Love.
In 1965, Mick Jagger walked out to perform, picked up the mike, and was knocked unconscious by an electrical charge.
The show ended immediately.
Jagger was unhurt, but incident made quite a splash in the Sacramento Bee.
When James Brown brought his show to the auditorium, including a full band, dancers and backup singers, we were there, thanks to Dad.
Sometimes though, Dad had conflicts and could not work at events of great interest to us.
Then we had to use our guile to get into the shows.
We had one of the Janey Way parents drop us off downtown at the back of the auditorium.
We knocked at the back door.
Eventually, a police officer opened the door and said, “What do you boys want.”
We asked for my father’s friend and partner Herb Kunz. Herb eventually came to the door and let us in.
“Stay out of trouble,” Herb would say as we went through the double-doors, turned right and headed upstairs to the general admission seating.
We attended many Memorial Auditorium concerts this way.
I remember seeing groups like the Temptations and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
My friends thought I must have been some sort of celebrity, getting them into concerts this way. It always seemed to work and we had a great time at the shows.
Eventually, however, we grew up and moved onto other things like college, girls and adulthood.
I will never forget the good times we had attending the shows at the Memorial Auditorium though. Sadly, now it’s just another rock and rolling Janey Way memory.
marty@valcomnews.com

As the last remnant of the defunct Camellia Festival, which was held every March from 1955 to 1993, the Camellia Show – which is the largest camellia show in the world – continues to build upon its tradition of showcasing the city’s official flower.

But contrary to what many locals believe, the Camellia Show, as is indicative by the aforementioned fact that it is in its 87th year, actually predates the Camellia Festival.

The Camellia Show, which features judged camellia competitions, camellia displays, a camellia plant sale, a camellia photography contest and other camellia-related attractions, was first held at David Lubin School at 3700 K Street in 1924.

The Tuesday Club, a local women’s organization, sponsored the first three years of the show, followed by the Sacramento Garden Club and then the Camellia Society of Sacramento, which was formed through the efforts of the garden club’s Planting Committee in 1943.

Dedicated to keeping the tradition of Sacramento’s Camellia Show alive, Don and Joan participate in this local show and seven other Northern California camellias shows every year, attend society meetings and encourage others to participate in the capital city’s camellia show.

As a man who cares for about 225 camellia plants in the backyard of his Carmichael home, Don chuckles when thinking back on his days when he first fell in love with camellias.

Don, who has resided in Carmichael with Joan since 1965, explained that prior to becoming one of the Sacramento area’s premier residential camellia growers, he never looked at himself as the type of man who would ever develop any kind of deep interest in flowers.

“I worked in an office with a guy – his name was Neely Downing – and he had been growing camellias for years and he would show camellias at the Sacramento show,” Don said. “He would talk about it and I would think, ‘What the heck kind of hobby is this?’ I played baseball and deer hunted and I did the macho things. I thought, ‘Flowers? That’s not my style.’

But little did Don know that he would eventually become one the area’s most enthusiastic local camellia growers.

This change in direction in Don’s feelings about camellias was developed through an unusual experience.

Don explained that this experience occurred due to his previous lack of knowledge about camellias.

“We had some (camellias) in the backyard and they had these knobs on them and I thought they were sick or something,” Don said. “They had been like that for months, so I dug them up, threw them out on the lawn and a neighbor (Lou Chaney) came and asked, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m getting rid of these plants, because they’re sick or something. They’ve got these knobs on them.’ He said, ‘Can I have them? I said, ‘Yeah,’ and a few months later, he had them on his front porch and they were in bloom. I said, ‘Oh, those are nice. Where did you get those?’ He said, ‘Well, those are the ones you threw away.’ I didn’t know that camellias have buds in the summer and it takes them until this time of year to start blooming.”

Intrigued by the experience, Don purchased a few camellia plants from local nurseries.

And at Neely’s insistence, Don brought several of his camellia blooms to Sacramento’s Camellia Show and had one of them reach the head judging table.

As a man who enjoys fishing, Don said that having his flower reach the head table and eventually winning a blue ribbon at the same show was like having himself reeled in – not to a boat or shore, but to the Camellia Show.

Don began purchasing more camellia plants, attending various camellia shows in other cities and becoming a student of the flower.

One of his earliest endeavors was to study a nomenclature book with information regarding about 3,000 camellias.

As Don became a regular at Sacramento’s Camellia Show and other Northern California camellia shows, Joan was continuously by his side assisting him at each show.

Don and Joan are far from strangers at camellia shows today, as the Lesmeister’s flowers win Best of Show prizes on a regular basis.

In addition to winning his first Best of Show trophy at the Sacramento show 39 years ago, Don, who is a former Camellia Society of Sacramento president, has carried home about 50 Best of Show trophies.

While winning at least one Best of Show trophy per year, Don has also won more than 1,000 trophies.

Despite generally shying away from speaking about his accomplishments, Don admits that he and Joan have become the “best ‘show-ers’ around.”

In 2009, the Lesmeisters’ camellias won Best of Show in seven of the eight shows they competed in and last year, the couple’s flowers won 76 trophies.

Joan said that Don’s accomplishments with camellias are a testament to his dedication to growing and maintaining high quality camellias.

“Don is out there (in his backyard) working on his camellias almost every single day, year-in and year-out,” Joan said. “If he’s not outside, he’s thinking about it or working on the computer or looking stuff up or he’s got all these notes. When he first started, he read every single journal I think there was, everything on camellias that he could get his hands on. So, he’s bound to learn something.”

In agreeing with his wife, Don added, “You get out, what you put into it.”

Don added, however, that although he still wants to have the best flowers, he feels somewhat guilty about winning so many trophies, noting that he would like to see many other locals win in order to help increase the membership of the Camellia Society of Sacramento, which is the state’s largest camellia society.

With his love for Sacramento’s Camellia Show, Don said that he hopes to see many familiar and new faces at this year’s Camellia Show.

The Camellia Show will be open to the public at the Memorial Auditorium on March 5 from 3 to 6 p.m. and on March 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

For additional information about this event, call (916) 967-8420 or visit the Web site www.camelliasocietyofsacramento.org.

 

lance@valcomnews.com

Because it was primarily an exhibition, not real wrestling as seen in international Olympic competition, Big Time Wrestling featured good guys and bad guys. When a good guy like Red Bastien won, he stepped gracefully out of the ring for an interview with gentlemen announcer Hank Renner. Renner, clad in a grey suit, white shirt and tie, then congratulated Red on his victory and asked questions about his upcoming match at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. The conversation was always polite and enthusiastic.

When bad guy Ray Stevens won, he paraded around the ring taunting the audience first, then leaped down to the floor and rushed over to Mr. Renner to spend some time berating his upcoming opponent. He would say things like: “I am going to whip that pencil-neck Red Bastien into submission this week; after I am through with him, he will never wrestle again.”

Of course, Red Bastien was hardly a pencil-neck. Since he was a body-builder like most of the wrestlers, he hardly had any neck at all. That didn’t matter; Ray was working up the TV audience for the Wednesday night match at Memorial Auditorium.

Naturally, we immediately fell in love with Big Time Wrestling. We rooted wildly for our heroes Red Bastien and Pepper Gomez and booed the bad guys Ray Stevens and Mitsu Awakawa.

We tried to emulate their techniques in our back yard gym. Using the big tree in the middle of the yard and the metal post on the side of the yard as ring posts, we staged tag-team wrestling matches. We circled the ring in classic Greco-Roman wrestling style. We tossed each other around, fell to the ground, and then crawled over to tag our fellow tag-team member who rushed into the ring to continue the fight.

Eventually, someone pinned an opponent and the fight ended. We were not quite as mobile, agile or hostile as the Big Time Wrestlers, but we made up for it with our enthusiasm.

On Wednesday night, we persuaded Dad to take us down to Memorial Auditorium on J Street to watch the great match between Red Bastien and Ray Stevens. We sat in the upper level in the cheap seats and watched as the two fighters tussled in the ring below. They had a great fight, but in the end Ray Stevens won, as I recall. No matter, we knew that a rematch was in the works and went home with a smile on our faces.

As children do, we soon lost interest in Big Time Wrestling. Sacramento Bee writer Charles Conlin penned an article saying that it was all a big fraud. I think we already knew that. We just loved the theatre of it all. For whatever reason, we went on to more important things like high school sports, girls and our education.

These days when I drive by the Memorial Auditorium, it seems quite different than it was in the 1960s when we went to the wrestling matches. I see none of the fight placards announcing upcoming events, only posters for future concerts. The World Wrestling Federation broadcasts professional wrestling events these days on television.

Sadly, Big Time Wrestling is now just another bone-crunching Janey Way Memory.

marty@valcomnews.com

They played weekly on a local UHF television station. The four man teams, two blockers and two jammers, thundered around a short, elevated, banked, wood track. The goal of the competition involved getting the smaller jammers past the big and brutish blockers which resulted in points scored.

Competitors sometimes flew right off the elevated track into the fans. We marveled at the athleticism of the skaters and the violence of the head-knocking competition.

So, naturally, we had to have our own roller derby matches.

We held our roller derby events in the smooth cement halls of Phoebe Hearst elementary school. Our track started in the covered hallway running down the center of the school, then turned right into the open pathway running in front of the classrooms, rounded the side of the building then up the pathway along the back of the classrooms, only to return the covered center hallway.

We played four man teams just like the real roller derby: using the big boys as blockers and the smaller boys as jammers. Games lasted four quarters and the team with the most points in the end, won the competition.

Because the front and rear classroom hallways were so narrow, virtually all the passing took place on the wide, covered, center hallway. This made for some bone-bruising spills, but no serious injuries ever occurred. However, we often suffered scrapes, bruises and cuts in these enthusiastic competitions. I recall bouncing right off the walls of the building into oncoming skaters which led to bodies flying all over the halls of the school.

By the end of a hard-fought match, we were fully ready for a trip over to Bossie’s Drive-in or to the A&W root beer stand for a tall soda pop where we reviewed the events of the day and argued over which team actually won or lost the match – no champagne for the winners of the roller derby.

Eventually, like all things in the world, roller derby left the Sacramento airwaves and we lost interest in playing the sport. This probably spared us from suffering some sort of serious injury.

But the passage of time has not blurred the memories I have of these competitions – another bone-bruising Janey Way memory.

The Riverside-Pocket area undoubtedly has much history, but it is certainly not everyone who knows that the area has a direct connection to some of the capital city’s most renowned architectural structures.

Buildings such as the Memorial Auditorium, the Elks Building at 11th and J streets, the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, a portion of the state Capitol and various structures in Old Sacramento, for instance, have a commonality that link them together for an obvious local trivia question.

These local landmarks were all constructed with bricks that were made at the Sacramento Brick Co., which opened on Riverside Road (today’s Riverside Boulevard) in 1881.

Additionally, the company, which was originally owned by Thomas Dwyer, also supplied bricks for reconstructing part of San Francisco following the great 1906 earthquake and fire.

By this time in the company’s history, the brickyard was already quite notable, as is evident by a reference in the 1890 History of Sacramento County, which reads: “(The brickyard has) in operation four Quaker brick machines with a capacity of (manufacturing) 140,000 (bricks) daily.”

During summer months, the brick-making plant utilized clay-like soil for its production that was dug from the “clay pit” in the area of today’s Lake Greenhaven, near John F. Kennedy High School.

The bricks were created according to an on-demand contract basis, yet the demand was high enough to provide enough employment that such a large amount of clay – as it will be referred to for the remainder of this article – was eventually dug from the area that the “clay pit” reached the level of the water table, thus forming the beginnings of today’s Lake Greenhaven.

 

Brick by brick

The preliminary process of creating the bricks began in the winter, as the clay was dredged and placed on the south bank of the pit for the purpose of having it dry until summer.

Once dry, the clay was loaded into the plant’s ore car-sized locomotives and delivered to the brickyard, which was located about a half-mile away, across Riverside Road. The plant, which was situated on about 250 acres, extended southward from the levee area to near modern-day Gloria Drive.

Overall, about eight cars were used for this process in a rotating sequence along the tracks, which were moved according to the locations of each dredging project.

Once at the brickyard, the clay was loaded onto a large conveyer belt and transported to a hopper before being transferred into what was known as the “pug mill.”

It was at this mill that the clay was mixed with a precise amount of water, so that the bricks would not be too soft or too dry.

Following this process, the clay was molded into the form of bricks through machinery, which included moving belts and metal cutting wires, which cut the clay into the required size of the bricks.

After being stacked on pallets for the curing process, the bricks were then transferred to kilns for the firing process.

During the plant’s earlier years, 20-foot-wide by 40-foot-long, outdoor kilns, which were made of brick, utilized coal – a heating source that was later replaced by crude oil and for a period of time, gas.

Originally, bricks created at the brickyard were transported by horse-drawn wagons to local construction sites.

 

Building blocks

Pocket historian Dolores (Silva) Greenslate said that she recalls seeing a brick delivery wagon with a team of horses led by brickyard worker, Joe Prady pass by her childhood home on Riverside Road on various occasions during the late 1920s.

Eventually, the brick delivery wagons were altogether replaced by brick delivery trucks.

In addition to seeing the brick delivery wagons, Greenslate, as well as other children residing in the area at the time, was continuously entertained by the sight of the brickyard’s locomotives crossing Riverside Road.

“It looked as though it was a toy train, which we longed to ride,” Greenslate recalled.

Being that the area was a Portuguese settlement, Greenslate said that the brickyard provided a lot of employment for the local Portuguese people.

Among the Portuguese men who were employed at the brickyard were the locomotive and dragline operator John Azevedo, Joe Lewis, Manuel Enos, Jesse Alves, and Tony, Eddy and William Neves.

Greenslate added that Antone Perry, the son of her great-grandfather, 1850s Pocket pioneer Antonio Pereira Rodrigues, worked at the brickyard for many years.

Antone Perry, whose sons, Alfred and Bill Perry, also worked at the plant, was employed as a brick setter and was known among his co-workers as “Squirrel,” due to his ability to work in small, narrow tunnels, where he stacked bricks to be fired.

Although the Perrys resided within a close vicinity of the brickyard, many others lived in houses located on the brickyard’s grounds.

Four-room, two-story, wood-frame houses, which included upstairs living quarters and kitchen and eating areas, were rented on the grounds for $7 per month.

These homes were not the only houses located on the property, as the site also included the large house of the brickyard’s supervisor, a boarding house for single men and about 20 single-room cabin-like structures.

 

“Thing of the past”

Although the brickyard is certainly a thing of the past, having been closed on Jan. 3, 1971 due to development in the area, its history remains strong through a variety of elements such as many structures built with Sacramento Brick Co.-manufactured bricks, Lake Greenhaven and even Brickyard Drive, a Riverside-Pocket area street named in tribute to this famous, local landmark.

 

E-mail Lance Armstrong at lance@valcomnews.com.