Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Thousand Oaks #2


Scan12727, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 3/30/2010 05:37:00 AM

2 comments:

Roger Smith said...

This was taken in a series by Frank Ferneres of Hollywood. Photographed were Laura Roth, and Louis himself, whose laydown this is. I can't figure why he isn't in this one. On the backs of these, in an extraordinarily disciplined hand, Mr. Ferneres has written, "Louis Roth with Lions. Taken at Goebel's Lion Farm, Ventura Blvd., Camarillo, California. June 25, 1934."

For clarity, old-timers remember highways connecting towns, rather than by-passing them. Ventura Boulevard ran from Los Angeles, all the way out through the San Fernando Valley, as it still does, and on to Ventura. Now it is a major street, but then it was the road North, with rural stretches long consumed by urban demand. When Ike built our Interstates, the Ventura Freeway (also US 101), skirted Thousand Oaks to the West, and the actual street became Thousand Oaks Blvd. From his own wells, Goebel donated all the water the road work required for this section of the Freeway.

The Lion Farm was never in Camarillo. Kathleen Goebel explained that Thousand Oaks had RFD (who remembers what that is?) but still did not have a post office. Daily runs were made to their PO Box in Camarillo, until Goebel and many concerned townsfolk successfully petitioned for their post office, which was stationed in a corner of the Oakdale Market.

This Red Forbes-made arena is off the Barnes show, and known as the Tiger Arena, remained the one in which Mabel Stark worked until the end. Roth insisted on cage specs which gave him his Good Luck size. So it was that he set 19 sections, 12' high X 6' wide, to meet his demand of a 36' cage. Note the elephant door section. Outside, standing on end, we see the barrel used by Mabel for decades, and worked in my day by her lead cat Goldie until her last performance, in 1967.

In the frenzied days before court-ordered ID tags fluttered from everything we had for the auction in '69, trucks roamed the Compound at night with their lights off, as staffers helped themselves and the management to anything movable. Mabel's props were taken, and this arena was among three which vanised before federal tagging. I still do not know where this one is, but did locate one Dick McGraw and I used on the road. Not long ago, one of Mabel's seats fetched a rumored $200. It is possible her remaining props could be found.

One photo brings back a thousand memories.

31 March, 2010 01:06
Roger Smith said...

CORRECTION: Under magnified inspection of faded ink, the photographer's name is spelled Fernekes. I'll have to be forgiven, I'm nearly 50 years of age.

31 March, 2010 18:14

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