05 Bring Back Diner -- 1

Len Klempnauer, Capitola, Calif., son of the Cross Roads founders, and former carhops Roxy (Payton) Newland, Watsonville, Calif., Class of '57; Jackie (Vera) McDow, Aptos, Calif., Class of '58 (in car); Nancy (Cummings) Jellison, Santa Cruz, Class of '54 (holding tray), and Daisy (Stehlick) Gandolfi, Santa Cruz, Class of '51.

-- Photo courtesy of Sentinel Photographer Dan Coyro

Bringing back the Diner -- Group Wants to Save
Former Drive-In Restaurant from the Wrecking Ball

by Dan White, Sentinel Staff Writer
Santa Cruz — In this spot, carhops brought burgers and shakes to kids in Chevrolets. Now a man behind the counter sells bottles of Thunderbird for $4.
Lighthouse Liquors on Washington Street is not a place most people associate with innocent teen nostalgia. To most people, it's a mess of bricks and wood with vandalized murals and a "No Loitering" sign.
But about 50 senior citizens — all Santa Cruz High School grads -- want the city to save and restore what was once the Cross Roads Bar-B-Q, the hottest teen hangout on the Westside.
Some visualize a museum. Others want the burger joint reopened.
The city plans to demolish the building to make way for an expanded natural history museum, part of a planned new city park on the old train depot site. News of the planned demolition led to dozens of letters to city officials.
Bob Sherbourne of Brookings, Ore., wrote that he once "sat in a foxhole in Korea eating a C-ration can of lima beans, trying to imagine I was at the Cross Roads having a Coke, fries and a hamburger."
Until last year, few people paid much attention to the city-owned building, which is near the West Cliff trestle. The building went up in 1951. When it closed as a drive-in in 1962, it was known as "Danny’s Drive In."
In its heyday, teens would hang out there before or after "cruising the drag" on Pacific Avenue.
Diners could sit inside or wait in their cars. Most teens chose the car option, and waitresses hooked food trays up to rolled-down windows.
These were the days when movies like Kon Tiki were playing, when Live Oak was the sticks and no one locked their bikes or cars.
The building has been a liquor store for decades now.
Another local joint, Spivey’s Five Spot at Ocean and Water streets, is also long gone, and most of the old crowd has moved away.
Some that remain roll their eyes at the "hippies and liberals" who took their place.
One former Cross Roads waitress considers the opening of UC Santa Cruz 35 years ago "a cataclysm" on par with an earthquake.
A Cross Roads demolition date has yet to be set, but Lighthouse Liquors owner George Cherukara, who leases the building from the city, must shut down next month so a branch of the nonprofit Homeless Garden Project can move in. It's unclear how much time is left.
The building does not have historic protection, said local historian Ross Eric Gibson.
Most of the seniors found out about the demolition plan because a classmate, Len Klempnauer, son of Cross Roads founder Leonard Klempnauer Sr., e-mailed them.
Councilman Keith Sugar said he understands the Cross Roads nostalgia but believes a natural history museum benefits the public "more than Mel's Diner."
Mayor Christopher Krohn said he is open to preserving the Cross Roads if supporters fund an endowment to maintain it.
The natural history museum staff say they urgently need to move to the new spot. They have been in a converted library in Seabright since the early 1960s.
"We outgrew this building a long time ago," museum director Greg Moyce said. The new building would quadruple their space.
Most Cross Roads preservationists don't want to stop the natural history museum, just want it built elsewhere in the 6-acre depot site.
A former diner customer, Ruth Yoder, 64, said a 1950s' museum would remind people of "the era of the poodle skirt, when everybody went to their football game."
Times are different now, she said, recounting when someone tried to sell her drugs on Pacific Avenue, in front of her husband.
"I just had to laugh," she said.
Daisy Stehlick Gandolfi, 68, said the Cross Roads reminds her of a time when pop songs were intelligible, and when you could tell a boy that "I’m not that kind of girl," and he’d respect that.
"He'd drive you home," she said. "Then he'd go looking for 'that' kind of girl. And he knew where to find them."
You can read the above article at The Sentinel's web site. Go to: Bringing back the Diner

Note
o Reporter White was told the Five-Spot and Cross Roads weren't "joints," which is one level above "dives." I didn't try to explain that "the drag" WAS Pacific Avenue; therefore, referring to "cruising the drag on Pacific Avenue" was redundant.
o The liquor store vacated the building. The building is now housing a flower shop for the Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project.

Letters Responding to City's Comments

Dear Editor:
I read your Jan. 16 on-line article, Bringing back the Diner, with much interest because my wife and I are both 1954 graduates of Santa Cruz High and close friends of Len Klempnauer, whose parents owned the Cross Roads. Len and I were best friends in high school (we lived across the street from each other on King Street), double-dated while in high school, and were college roommates, both at Hartnell Junior College in Salinas and at San Jose State.
I'd like to tell you some anecdotes about the '50s in Santa Cruz but first I'd like to inform Councilman Keith Sugar that the Cross Roads was not a Mel's Drive-In. I know that as fact because there was a Mel's in Salinas, which was popular with teens and JC students in that city. But Mel's was part of a chain and the Cross Roads was family owned. With Santa Cruz's anti-chain store bias, the comment could only be meant to polarize readers.
That's unfair!
As the many previous letter-writers have probably told you, Santa Cruz was a unique place to grow up in during '50s. Unlike most small towns that had only one drive-in, we had two -- the Cross Roads and the 5-Spot, equally popular among teens of that decade. After formal dances in those days, we all headed to one or the other; after we spent a half-hour or so at the first, we'd cruise the drag to the other. The objective after formal dances was not to show off our cars but for our dates to display their formal gowns.
The dances were held in somewhat dimly lighted facilities (but not too dim). In order for the girls to really show off their beautiful gown for everyone to see, we would go to the drive-ins. To get to the bathrooms, which were inside the drive-ins, the girls would have walk out in front of all the cars and into the bright lights of the buildings.
More unnecessary trips to the restrooms were probably made after the girl-ask-boy Snow Follies Formal in December, the Hi Tow Tong Valentine's Formal in February, the Junior Prom in April and the Senior Ball in May than were made all other Saturday nights combined the rest of the school year.
In those days boys never wore tuxes. We wore a sport coat and one of the two pairs of slacks that comprised our entire formal wardrobe. There were no limos, either. Most of us had never seen a limo except in the movies. What we were allowed to drive on those very special occasions were our parents' cars, and that was a treat. Most of the cars teens owned then predated World War II. Here's another little anecdote that has absolutely nothing to do with the drive-ins but tells a lot about the times.
The City of Santa Cruz had an 11 p.m. curfew on weekdays in the mid-1950s for anyone under the age of 18. (On weekends it was midnight or 1 a.m.) One school night in the spring of 1954, Len and I, both 17, went to the Del Mar Theater and we parked on Soquel Avenue between Pacific and Front. There was a cigar store on that short stretch that had some pinball machines, one of which I had learned to beat consistently.
After the movie was over, we popped into the cigar store to play pinball. At 11:10, police officer Tor Spindler sauntered in, informed us we were breaking curfew and took us in his squad car to the police station. He called our parents and informed them we were at the police station after being picked up on "skid row." That's the truth, he actually said "skid row."
My father wanted to know exactly where "skid row" was in Santa Cruz because he didn't know there was one. (Apparently what made that one block skid row was the fact there was a tavern across the street from the cigar store.) Len's dad asked what he was supposed to do. When the officer said he wanted our parents to come get us, Len's dad replied, "You picked them up, you bring them home."
Officer Spindler eventually drove us back to my car, after sternly warning us to not stay out after curfew, and we drove home.
Officer Spindler was well known in Santa Cruz and was the first 300-pound man any of us had ever seen. We also knew that his bark was much worse than his bite.
In closing, I'd like to add that my wife, the former Ada Bushnell, also endorses preserving the Cross Roads, restoring it and turning it into a 1950s' museum.
-- Bob Branstetter, Class of 1954, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Dear Editor:
As mid-1950s' graduates of Santa Cruz High School, we want to comment on the remarks by Santa Cruz Councilman Keith Sugar against the proposal to preserve the Cross Roads Drive-in as a 1950s' museum in Depot Park.
In the Jan. 16, 2002, page 1 Sentinel article titled, Bringing back the Diner, Mr. Sugar states that he "understands the Cross Roads nostalgia but believes a natural history museum benefits the public 'more than a Mel's'."
That's analogous to saying he "understands the Bookshop Santa Cruz nostalgia but believes a natural history museum benefits the public 'more than a Borders'."
Like Borders, Mel's Drive-in was a chain. Like Bookshop Santa Cruz, the Cross Roads was a locally owned and operated business. And also like Bookshop Santa Cruz, the Cross Roads in its day served as a popular gathering place for young people.
The city doesn't have to make it an either-or situation, that is, a natural history museum will benefit the people more than a 1950s' museum. Here's a rare opportunity for the city to have it both ways. Keep the Cross Roads AND build a new natural history museum. There's room for both in Depot Park.
Incidentally, our dictionary defines "nostalgia" as "a bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past." The '50s weren't "bittersweet" by any means. We remember them with fondness and joy. Sweetness, yes; but bitterness, no.
We wish the youth of today could have experienced a teen society in which there was virtually no polarization and when almost everyone liked everyone else. We doubt if anyone could really "understand" that period of time unless they lived it -- and we did.
-- Art and Dee (Cochrane) Weybright, Bonny Doon, Calif., Classes of 1954 and 1956 respectively

Dear Editor:
I was one of the former Cross Roads carhops pictured in your page 1 feature article on Jan. 16 who want to save the drive-in building from the city's wrecking ball. (The 1948 Cadillac in the photo is mine.)
I think Councilman Keith Sugar was way off base when he compared the Cross Roads to a Mel's Diner. The Cross Roads was owned and operated by the Klempnauer family while Mel's, made famous in the movie American Graffiti, was a chain. Spivey's 5-Spot, the other drive-in popular with 1950s' teens in Santa Cruz, also was a chain.
I can think of no other building in Santa Cruz that is so definitely '50s looking and can be identified as strictly '50s. Therefore, it's not just unusual. It's unique!
I'm also not sure if Mr. Sugar can understand the Cross Roads nostalgia as he declared in the article. Is he aware of the popularity of the classic car shows that are held locally? I displayed my Caddie for the first time in last October's show and attached my drive-in tray with its simulated food items to the window. It was one of the big hits of the show.
The '50s were a wonderful time to grow up in Santa Cruz. Maybe Santa Cruz was unique in that respect, too. Most of the kids of that day were very close, perhaps because there was only one high school and we all got to know each other, from Aptos and Soquel and Capitola to Felton and Scotts Valley. (High school lasted only three years then because our freshman year was spent at one of the two Santa Cruz junior highs -- Branciforte and Mission Hill.)
If Mr. Sugar needs further evidence of just how much we enjoyed growing up in Santa Cruz, I suggest he check the April 28 edition of the Sentinel's report on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the "new" Branciforte Jr. High. Principal Dave Bilardello expected maybe five or six members of the 1951 graduating class to show up but 23 came from all parts of California and even one from Oregon. Two were in wheelchairs as we re-enacted a walk we made from the "old" junior high, which is now Branciforte Elementary, to the current school ... Go to: Buzzing with the Bees at B-40 Jr. High
The entire student body greeted us as we walked onto the campus and cheered each one of us as we were introduced individually at an assembly. If Mr. Sugar has any doubts about the youth of today being interested in the decade of the 1950s, he should take a look at the photos of the anniversary event on the Branciforte web site. Go to: B-40's 50th Birthday
Mr. Editor, this letter is probably much longer than allowed under your editorial policy but I don't think the message is getting across: The Fifties were unique and will never be repeated. All of the local soda fountains (such as the Pep Creamery and Coast Creamery), the diners and the drive-ins of that era are gone, and today we have nothing but fast food chains.
The Cross Roads building deserves to be preserved for future generations. If the city tears it down, it's gone forever.
-- Nancy (Cummings) Jellison, Santa Cruz, Class of '54

"Diner" responses continue on page 6

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