11 Historical Or Just Old?

Above is a scanned copy of the only document I have about the Cross Roads Drive-In. It is a letter from the Office of Temporary Controls, Office of Price Administration (OPA), San Francisco Sugar Branch Office, 1355 Market Street, San Francisco 3, Calif., dated April 15, 1947. The OPA allowed the Cross Roads to purchase 180 pounds of sugar for its first 30 days of operation. Yes, sugar rationing still was in effect almost two years after the end of World War II.

San Jose Mercury Column

The following was published May 8, 2002, written by Columnist Leigh Weimers. Go to: Weimers Column

Drive-in Historically Significant, or Just Old?

by Leigh Weimers, Mercury News
What began as a strictly local attempt to save an old Santa Cruz drive-in eatery has gone international. That's because the National Trust for Historic Preservation is spotlighting the campaign as its story of the week online
(see www.nationaltrust.org/ magazine/story/ index.htm).
At a Crossroads -- A California City Longs for Its Small-town Past headlines the trust's story, detailing efforts to save the Cross Roads Bar-B-Q Drive-In, a popular Santa Cruz hangout at the foot of West Cliff Drive in the '50s.
Granted, the building no longer looks exactly like its former self. When the drive-in craze faded in the '60s, the Cross Roads was sold and spent its later years as a liquor store. It's currently owned by the city, which plans to demolish the building for a planned park and national history museum. But fans of the drive-in's American Graffiti days, led by Len Klempnauer of Capitola, the son of the drive-in's founders, think it deserves better.
"We'd like to see the building preserved," Klempnauer says, "its facade restored and the building be made part of the museum complex as a symbol of the never-to-be-repeated 1950s' teenage cruisin'-the-drag drive-in culture." The city, on the other hand, contends that the building no longer has enough going for it architecturally to warrant preservation and is better off removed.
No final decision has been made. But at least the web exposure is letting observers from around the nation -- and beyond -- chime in on what the National Trust calls "a debate that addresses the fine line between whether a building is historically significant or just old."


Retired SCHS History Teacher Backs Preservation

(The following letter was sent during the week of June 2-8 to the editor of the Sentinel, the publisher of the Sentinel and the city council by Sharmon Nash, a U.S. History teacher at Santa Cruz High School from 1951 to 1985.)

Dear Editor:
Although a couple of years past teenager in the 1950s, I fully empathize with the Santa Cruz High students of that decade who have written to the Santa Cruz City Council and the Sentinel asking that the former Cross Roads Drive-In in the Depot Park development be preserved. Truly symbolic of mid-20th Century teenage culture and verifiably typical of drive-in restaurant architecture of that era, the Cross Roads ought to be designated as a local historical landmark.
The council's announced decision to demolish the Cross Roads reminds one, on a much smaller scale of course, of the Taliban's destruction of the 1500-year-old stone Buddha statues in Afghanistan last year. Whether one ascribes it to fanatical religious fervor or obdurate political dogma, neither decision makes sense from a historical perspective.
Santa Cruzans genuinely interested in maintaining vestiges of ALL definable cultures and eras of our local heritage for future generations to experience and enjoy should want this singular remnant of the '50s preserved. Too often one culture's icon becomes the next culture's rubble.
Even though our local daily newspaper has not seen fit to print the dozens of letters from 1950s' SCHS students from throughout the U.S. who want the drive-in saved and made part of Depot Park's new museum project, the issue has received wider recognition. For example, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C., made the plight of the Cross Roads its "Story of the Week" in the May 3 on-line edition of Preservation Magazine, headlined, At A Crossroads: A California City Longs For Its Small-Town Past.
I was a frequent customer of the Cross Roads, whose owners displayed an uncanny knack for hiring personable and efficient young employees -- some of whom were my students at Santa Cruz High School, where I taught U.S. History from 1951 to 1985.
Yours truly,
-- Sharmon Nash, Santa Cruz, Calif.

The 'Teenager' Was Born in the Fifties

In the 1950s, "teenagers" emerged as their own cultural and social category. They had their own music, their own fashion, and their own social arrangements.
Consumerism helped define a "teenager:" the advent of mass advertising helped create new markets. The prosperity of the 1950s gave young people spending money they had never had. Courtship mores had been shaken by the war, and the sexually charged phenomenon of "going steady" evoked much concern and discussion among adults.
There was a new concern in general with youth, partly as a result of the growing medicalization of the country, which couched everything in psychoanalytic terms. Juvenile delinquency, while not statistically more prominent than in other eras, became a national crisis. Teens flouting authority, even if it was as ultimately harmless as wearing the startling combination of pink and black, was deeply disturbing in an era when everything seemed to be changing too fast.
Teenagers themselves grappled with changing norms. Girls in particular had to negotiate new sexual boundaries and new criteria for being popular, as well as maintaining one's "reputation."
Adults distrusted these youngsters who had it so easy in the prosperous postwar years, but teenagers were aware of living in the shadow of the bomb, alert to the contestability of values and norms, and more self-aware than any previous generation. They would grow up to participate in some of the most radical social upheaval of the 1960s.
-- by Jeassmyn Newhaus
Ph.D. in U.S. History, M.A. in History/American Studies.
Go to: Teenagers

City Planner Challenges Consultant's Ruling

The City of Santa Cruz planner who "discovered" that Lighthouse Liquors was birthed as the Cross Roads is contesting the findings of a consultant hired by the city to determine the historical significance of the former drive-in. Read it on page 12.

History of the Drive-In in America

Check this link to find a brief history of the drive-in industry, from its origin to the deaths of so many. Go to: Drive-in History

Old-Time Radio (OTR)

The links on this page will take you to some OTR shows...the real stuff. You can get a comprehensive rundown on the stations at OTR List or try out Radio Juke Box.

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