Fresh but Polluted
In the broad scheme of things, the Fern Dell water hole isn’t very important. But people who knew about it and went there to fill their jugs with cool, fresh spring water are disquieted since the Health Department declared it unfit to drink because of pollution.
The spring represented to people a renewed contact with nature and, symbolically perhaps, purity in a poisoned and synthetic world. Also, as one man commented, “It was the last thing around here that was free.”
The word from the Recreation and Parks Department is that the Health Department is working on the job but the contamination is difficult to trace. It’s not a simple matter of replacing the old, possibly rusted outlet pipe. First, the source of the spring, somewhat high in the hills, must be traced. Then the possibility of seepage into it from a sewer must be checked.
(News item) Mrs. Carol Carpenter, 19, was arraigned in Los Angeles Municipal Court yesterday on felony child-desertion charges . . . 
Above, Sam’s Lunch Room in 1938 and below, Avenue 19 via Google maps street view.
Note: This is an encore post from 2008.
Fifty years ago today, sports fans in general and baseball fans in particular woke up to read the startling news that Hall of Famer Mel Ott was dead after surgery for a kidney injury suffered in an automobile accident in New Orleans. He was just 49.
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