It happened to me again the other day. Trying to explain where
something was, everything got confusing. “You know, it is over by what used to be
Albertson’s, but is now Sav-Max,” one person said. “There is another by
Lucky, well, it is now Albertson’s, but it used to be Lucky.”
Finally we had to resort to street names! That’s a first. Now
to city folk that might seem the natural way to describe something, but it used to be more
like, “Go to the end of the road. After you hit dirt, you’ll see a post with
arrows on it. Go right after that and our driveway is on the left.”
Follow me through this one. Do you remember when Vons was Safeway or
how about when Safeway was a petting zoo? Okay, I’m going back too far. Let’s
keep it at when Albertson’s was Lucky and Stater Brothers was Albertson’s and
Ralph’s was Hughes? Eric Clark, now Eric Mora, grew up in this valley. He and his
friends gauge the growth of Temecula by the location of Scarcella’s pizza, now
Scarcella’s Italian Grill & Spirits. “It used to be across from where
McDonald’s is now, on Jefferson,” Eric remembered. “Then it was where that
building with the crazy roof is [on the south end of Tower Plaza], then it moved to the
north end of the plaza, by Von’s, and now it is in the middle and is a gourmet
deal.”
Eric remembers things that seem crazy now, like when Rancho
California Road washed out in front of where Target is now located. He said it wasn’t
fixed for a few weeks because no one really drove on it anyway. It used to be named
something else, before Kaiser. Maybe someone can help me on this. It was Long Valley, or
something like that.
Eric’s wife, Jaymie Mora’s, grandparents lived in
Temecula. According to Eric, “Her grandfather’s buddy would sometimes sleep in
the middle of the road on Front Street – that was his way of saying there wasn’t
much traffic.”
Others remembered other things long gone. Like when you only gave
the last four digits of your phone number, unless you were from Murrieta, then you added a
7. That’s because every phone number in Temecula was 676, and Murrieta was 677. Or
when Old Town was a place of business instead of a tourist attraction – and some of
these businesses are still there. You can still get your hair cut, or pick up new
eyeglasses there. You can still get your car fixed, but Rancho Family Medical Group has
moved on. The difference today is, then that was the only place you could find those
things.
Reader Tom Lushbaugh wrote in, “There is a huge gap of
interesting history that is missing. I guess you could call the period 'The Kaiser Years.'
Those were the years that an isolated community of a few hundred people, was developed
into Temecula, after the Vail Ranch was sold. The arrival of I-15, the planning and
development of our roads and infrastructure, and the people who did these
things.”