Nostalgia & History > ATSF F-7 37C leads a San Diegan at Mission Tower (4-71)

With just a week to go before Amtrak, a westbound (TT North) San Diegan is a minute away from LAUPT...Those were the days when the air was clean and sex was dirty...-:) Steve

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the_expediter Wrote:
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Those were the days when the air was clean
> and sex was dirty...-:) Steve

I didn't get to southern CA until a few years after that photo was taken, but my understanding was that Southern California air was very dirty then and continued to be throughout the 1970s.

Dave

Lets not get to serious Rule G

the_expediter Wrote:
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> With just a week to go before Amtrak, a westbound
> (TT North) San Diegan is a minute away from
> LAUPT...Those were the days when the air was clean
> and sex was dirty...-:) Steve

The air was actually much dirtier back then and sex was cleaner (you couldn't catch anything that penicillin couldn't cure). Nice shot. Bob

The worst smog was in the late 50's. Considering how few people were out here then it's pretty amazing we have not only kept up with it but made really good progress on getting it cleaned up.

Remember these? (From the collection at USC, apparently the new of the day was the banning of backyard incinerators)

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Oh my! Backyard incinerators! Bringing back memories of childhood in Southern California. Anyone have photos of "orchard heaters"?--we used to call them "smudge pots". I lived in Monrovia, and I could always tell when the night had been really c-c-c-cold because the morning sky in the east would be darkened by the smoke from "orchard heaters" in eastern LA County and western San Bernardino County. One of the stories about Pacific Electric was the "fuel train" that would pick up tank cars with low-grade oil at the refinery in El Segundo and run it out to the storage tanks in places like Upland and Cucamonga. If the tanks were getting low, the "Smudge Pot Special" would have rights over anything else on the line.

n6nvr Wrote:
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> The worst smog was in the late 50's. Considering
> how few people were out here then it's pretty
> amazing we have not only kept up with it but made
> really good progress on getting it cleaned up.
>
> Remember these? (From the collection at USC,
> apparently the new of the day was the banning of
> backyard incinerators)

That's got to be the most often posted picture on TO. I chuckle every time I see it, and admire your tenacity for keeping on topic and getting it into another post. I believe you are accurate, that it ran in an LA paper on the day they were banned. Accounts for the glum looks, no doubt.

Thanks for the laugh of the day.