The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

As part of my research into the history of Fullerton, I occasionally read books about broader California history, to give appropriate context for what occurred locally. I’m currently reading Carey McWilliams’ excellent 1946 book Southern California: an Island on the Land. McWilliams writes the kind of history that resonates with me, with a particular interest in questioning popular myths, and exposing unpleasant but vital aspects of history. I have previously published a book report on McWilliams’ devastating book Factories in the Field: the History of Migratory Farm Labor in California which sought to expose the oppressive and often racist history of how California’s field workers have been treated. 

In Southern California: an Island on the Land, McWilliams includes a chapter entitled “The Indian in the Closet” which seeks to destroy popular myths and expose the unpleasant truth of how southern California’s indigenous people fared under Spanish, Mexican, and American rule. Granted, the book was published in 1946, and much additional scholarship has been done since then, but his chapter is nonetheless filled with excellent (and often disturbing) historical facts. Therefore, I have decided to write a mini-report on this chapter, which quotes liberally from McWilliams.

The Myth of the “Happy Missions”

How did it come to pass that, for decades, elementary school children and visitors to the 21 California Missions were told a story of a pleasant and benevolent relationship between the native Californians and the Franciscan padres like Father Junipero Serra? 

McWilliams actually includes a separate chapter entitled “The Growth of a Legend” which tells the tale of how, in the late 19th and early 20th century, a Mission myth was created and perpetuated by American writers like Helen Hunt Jackson, John Steven McGroarty, George Wharton James, and Charles Flecther Lummis.

“With a boldness more comic than brazen, the synthetic past has been kept alive by innumerable pageants, fiestas, and outdoor enactments of one kind or another, by the restoration of the Missions; and by the establishment of such curious spectacles as Olvera Street in the Old Plaza section of Los Angeles,” McWilliams writes.

I plan to write more on this, but suffice it to say that this happy story was a myth created not by Indians or Spaniards, but by Americans as “part of a grandiose real-estate ballyhoo” and as a way for Americans living in a place that had undergone rapid social transformation to create a comforting past.

“Before explaining how this legend came into existence it might be well to take a look at the facts,” McWilliams writes.

The Indigenous Peoples of Southern California

Many of the cities of Southern California are actually built upon native village sites. 

“The reason is a simple one,” McWilliams writes, “the Indians chose the most favored spot with a sure knowledge born of long experience in the region. He sought fresh water, a scarce commodity in early days; a smooth shoreline; and abundant vegetation. The Indian village of Yang-na became Los Angeles; Sibag-na is now San Gabriel; while Santa Ana is located on the site of the Indian village of Hutucg-na.

Prior to Spanish colonization of California, it is estimated that there were at least 130,000 Indians in California, although this figure has been placed as high as 700,000. Even at the low estimate, California had about 16% of the indigenous population of the United States by comparison with 5% of its land area, thus making California perhaps the most densely populated area of what became the United States.

The indigenous peoples of Southern California comprised several tribal groups, who from north to south are:

–The Chumash, occupying three of the Santa Barbara or Channel Islands, and the coastal region of Santa Barbara.

–The Serrano located in the San Bernardino Mountains and the lowlands of the San Bernardino Valley.

–The Gabrieleno, which have also been called Tongva, but the tribal members I’ve met prefer the name Kizh, occupied Los Angeles County, half of Orange County (including Fullerton), and two of the Channel Islands (Santa Catalina and San Clemente).

–The Juaneno (although they prefer the name Acjachemen) who live south of what is known as Aliso Creek and north of the Las Pulgas Canyon in what are now the southern areas of Orange County and the northwestern areas of San Diego County.

–The Luiseno who prefer the name Payómkawichum, live in the present-day southern part of Los Angeles County to the northern part of San Diego County, and inland 30 miles.

–The Cahuilla who live in the inland basin between the San Bernardino Mountains and Mt. San Jacinto.

–The Digueno, who prefer the name Kumeyaay live in a territory bounded on the west by the ocean, on the north by the country of the Luiseno and the Cahuilla.

Beginning with San Diego in 1769, Missions were established on all the tribal lands of these peoples.

The Effects of Missionization

Spanish colonization of California began in 1769, with the establishment of Missions, pueblos (towns), and presidios (military forts). This led to an alarming population collapse for the native people of Southern California.

“From a total of 30,000 in 1769, the number of Indians in Southern California declined to approximately 1,250 by 1910,” McWilliams writes, “the survival of Indians was in inverse ratio to their contact with the Missions. So far as the Indian was concerned, contact with the Missions meant death.”

Allow me to include a lengthy quote from McWilliams:

“With the best theological intentions in the world, the Franciscan padres eliminated Indians with the effectiveness of Nazis operating concentration camps. From 1776 to 1834, they baptized 4,404 Indians in the Mission San Juan Capistrano and buried 3,227…In not a single Mission did the number of Indian births equal the number of Indian deaths. During the entire period of Mission rule, from 1769 to 1834, the Franciscans baptized 53,600 adult Indians and buried 37,000. The mortality rates were so high that the Missions were constantly dependent upon new conversions to maintain the neophyte population which never, at any period, exceeded the peak figure of 20,300, reached in 1805. So far as the Indians were concerned, the chain of Missions along the coast might best be described as a series of picturesque charnel houses. For it was the Mission experience, rather than any contact with Spanish culture, that produced this frightful toll of Indian life.”

What led to this calamitous population decline? One result of removing indigenous people from their tribal lifeways and herding them into cramped Mission compounds was a devastating spread of disease for which the people had no natural immunity.

“From 1769 to 1833, 29,100 Indian births were recorded in the Missions of California, and 62,000 deaths, the excess of deaths over births being 33,500,” McWilliams writes. “Of this decline, Dr. Sherburne F. Cook estimates that 15,250 or 45% of of the population decrease was caused by disease. Two epidemics of the measles, one in 1806 and the other in 1828, took a heavy toll of neophyte lives. Within the first decade of Mission rule, syphilis appeared throughout the province. Despite the injunctions of officers and priests, the scrofulous Spanish soldiery spread the disease among both the gentile and neophyte Indian women.”

In the Missions, “the sanitation was wretched and the diet inadequate. From 1776 to 1825, there was only one qualified physician in all Alta California.”

“Once the Indians were assembled in large numbers in the Missions, they had to be strictly regimented and the problem of discipline immediately became a serious one,” McWilliams writes. “From the moment of conversion, the neophyte became a slave; he belonged thereafter to the particular Mission.”

As disease decimated native populations, their treatment in the missions accelerated their physical and cultural decline.

“If the Indian would not work,” writes C.D. Willard, “he was starved and flogged. If he ran away he was pursued and brought back.” 

“If a neophyte deserted from one Mission to another, he was immediately arrested, flogged, and kept in irons until he could be returned to the Mission to which he belonged, where, on arrival, he was again flogged,” writes McWilliams.

Contrary to the popular mission myth of kindly padres, the historical record paints a far more disturbing picture.

“Numerous instances were recorded of floggings of fifty to a hundred lashes. Fetters, shackles, and the stocks were commonly used as disciplinary measures,” McWilliams writes. “Referring to Father Zalvida of the Mission San Gabriel, Hugo Reid wrote that ‘he must assuredly have considered whipping as meat and drink to the Indians, for they had it morning, noon, and night.’”

Because of this mistreatment, many native people tried to escape the Missions. In response, “large-scale military expeditions had to be organized to round up the escaped neophytes.”

Regarding their diet, “the neophytes were kept in a state of chronic undernourishment in order to retard the tendency to fugitism.” According to Cook, “the Indians as a whole lived continuously on the verge of clinical deficiency.” The work-day was from six in the morning until almost sunset.

The native people resisted this devastation through occasional revolt, attempted escapes, and increased rates of abortion and infanticide.

“So prevalent was the practice of abortion,” McWilliams writes, “that miscarriages were punished as criminal offenses. The penalty prescribed by Father Zalvida for the Indian woman who had suffered a miscarriage consisted in ‘shaving the head, flogging for fifteen subsequent days, iron on the feet for three months, and having the appear every Sunday in church, on the steps leading up to the altar, with a hideous painted wooden child in her arms.’”

The Missions also failed in achieving the theoretical goal of “educating” the native peoples.

“The padres,” wrote J.M. Guinn, “were opposed to educating the natives for the same reason that southern slaveholders were opposed to educating the Negro, namely, that an ignorant people were more easily kept in subjection.” 

The effect of the imposition of Catholic Christianity on the native people was a cultural genocide–an alaming decline in indigenous beliefs and practices.

From the Franciscan point of view, as Dr. Cook points out, it was “vitally necessary to extirpate those individual beliefs and tribal customs which in any way whatever conflicted with the Christian religion.” 

Alfred Robinson wrote that “it is not unusual to see numbers of Indians driven along by the alcaldes, and under the whip’s lash forced to the very door of the sanctuary.”

To read more about the dark side of the California Missions, check out my book report on Elias Castillo’s book A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions.

Secularization of the Missions (1834-1843)

Beginning in 1813 and continuing through the 1830s was the process of secularization of the Missions–that is, transferring them from church to civil government rule. This also coincided with the independence of Mexico from Spain. Beginning in 1821, California was no longer a part of Spain, but rather a province of Mexico.

“Under the Spanish scheme of colonization, the Missions were never intended as permanent settlements. As originally planned, each Mission was to be converted into a civil community within a decade after its establishment, by which time, so it was reasoned, the tutelage of the Indians would have been completed,” McWilliams writes. “The Franciscans did not hold title to the Mission lands as grants from the Crown; they merely enjoyed a right of use and occupancy at the pleasure of the government. Theoretically they were trustees for the Indian neophytes, upon whom title to the Mission lands and properties was eventually to devolve.”

Unfortunately the plan to turn Mission lands over to the Native peoples never really materialized.

“By 1834, however, the Missions had become too exceedingly rich, their lands and holdings being valued at $78,000,000,” McWilliams writes. “At the peak of its activities, the Mission San Gabriel, for example, operated 17 extensive ranchos and owned 3,000 Indians, 105,000 head of cattle, 20,000 horses, and 40,000 sheep. The pressure to plunder these estates soon became much stronger than the capacity or willingness of the weak Mexican government to enforce the secularization decrees. As a consequence, the laudable scheme of secularization degenerated into a mad scramble to loot the Missions. Faced with the possibility of war with the United States, Governor Micheltorana ordered the disposal of the remaining Mission properties in 1844, by which time all semblance of adherence to the plan of secularization had been abandoned.”

Thus began the “rancho” period of Southern California history, when the land was no longer controlled by the church, but rather by an elite group of people who were granted large tracts of land which became sprawling ranchos.

“From 1769 to 1822, the Spanish had made only about twenty large land grants in the province, but, in the period from 1833 to 1846, over 500 large grants were handed out,” McWilliams writes. “As the threat of American intervention became increasingly imminent, the provincial governors showered their favorites with princely grants. Many of these large land grants were carved out of properties expropriated from the Missions or from the ranches operated by the Missions. In many cases, they were stocked with horses, sheep, and cattle purchased from the Missions or simply appropriated at the time of secularization.”

Under the Mexican “rancho” system, the native peoples continued to work primarily as a labor force, but in a slightly different way. The labor system of the ranchos was essentially the hacienda system of Mexico.

“Paid a fathom of black, red, and white glass beads for a season’s work, these Indian peons were, as Don Juan Bandini said, ‘the working arms which made it possible to carry out agricultural and other projects and to provide necessities.’”

“During the period of secularization, the Indian population of California declined from 83,000 to 72,000, a decline of about 700 a year by comparison with a decline of about 900 a year during the Mission period,” McWilliams writes.

The American Conquest

From 1846 to 1848, the United States waged an expansionist war against the Republic of Mexico, which resulted in the U.S. acquiring nearly half of Mexico, including California.

“While much of the damage to Indian life had been caused prior to the American conquest, still the relative impact of Anglo settlement was about three times as severe as that of Spanish and Mexican settlement,” McWilliams writes. “At the time of the conquest, there were still about 72,000 Indians in California, including the remnants of the neophyte or Mission Indians. By 1865 the total had been reduced to 23,000, and by 1880 to 15,000.”

“Indian life,” wrote Stephen Powers in a government report of 1877, “burst into air by the suddenness and fierceness of the attack…Never before in history has a people been swept away with such terrible swiftness.”

“American settlers came to California with two centuries of Indian warfare behind them. The Indian had no rights the white man was bound to respect. If the Americans had a policy, it was to extirpate Indian culture, not to transform it,” McWilliams writes.

The American settlers “drove the Indians from their fisheries and acorn groves, destroying the supply of fish by muddying and polluting the rivers and creeks, and, in raids on Indian villages, destroyed food supplies which had been laboriously accumulated,” McWilliams writes.

In addition to gold, the Americans wanted land and would often use physical violence against the native population. “In less than two years after its establishment, the new state of California had incurred an indebtedness of over one million dollars in fighting Indians. It is estimated that, in about a hundred Indian ‘affairs,’ or raids, some 15,000 Indians were killed in the period from 1848 to 1865.”

After California became a U.S. state, laws were enacted which essentially kept the native population at the lowest rung of society. Native people were not allowed to testify in court, they could be declared “vagrants” on the petition of a white person, and a law “established a system of ‘indentured apprentices,’ under which minors, with the ‘consent’ of their parents, might be farmed out as apprentices for a term of years.”

“An Indian could be shot for any minor infraction of the white code, such as speaking out of turn, getting in the way, or demanding payment of wages,” McWilliams writes. “The indentured apprentice law merely rationalized the old Spanish custom of kidnapping Indian children as peons. Between 1852 and 1867, Dr. Cook estimates that 4,000 Indian children were taken from their parents and apprenticed to various employers under this statute.”

To read more about how native Californians fared under American rule, check out my article “The California Native American Genocide.”

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

Fullerton College’s weekly newspaper was called The Torch. The college library has digital archives of the Torch going back to 1923 (the college was founded in 1913). Here are some clippings from 1929:

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

Lulu Launer was a school teacher in Fullerton for many years. Her husband, Albert Launer, served as the city attorney of Fullerton, and had a law practice in town. The Launer Local History Room of the Fullerton Public Library is named after the Launers, as they were very active in the community. According to the Library’s web site, “The Local History Room opened its doors in 1973 thanks to a $3500 donation from Lulu Launer as a tribute to her late husband Albert’s many years of community service.” The Local History Room has been an invaluable resource for my own local history research.

Lulu Launer was interviewed in 1970 by Kathleen B. Heil for the Cal State Fullerton Oral History Program. Below are some interesting things I learned from the interview:

Lulu grew up in Los Angeles around the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. As a young woman, she took a teaching job in La Habra. John G. Launer, Albert’s father, was the clerk of the school board. 

“I had to go to the Launer house to sign my contract,” Lulu remembers. “There was a young man on the porch when I signed my contract. We really didn’t become sweethearts at all until I resigned in La Habra and was teaching in Los Angeles, where Albert was at law school.”

The two were married in 1915. Not long after, they moved to Brea, where they lived for three years before moving to Fullerton. 

They had three children. While her kids were young, Lulu took a break from teaching and didn’t resume until World War II, when there was a teacher shortage. 

During the War, she also served as president of the North Orange County chapter of the Red Cross.

“We had a strong central organization here in Fullerton,” she said. “It was here that we did most of the sewing and the rolling of bandages. We sent millions of bandages out.”

Both Lulu and her husband Albert were very involved in clubs and civic activities in Fullerton and Orange County.

“I’m a real joiner,” Lulu said.

She was a member of the Fullerton Ebell Club, the League of Women Voters, the United Nations, the Methodist Church, the Audubon Society, the Orange County Historical Society, and the YWCA. 

At the time of the interview, Lulu was actively involved in a local chapter of a United Nations organization. She volunteered a lot of time helping raise money for various United Nations programs like UNICEF, The World Health Organization, and the International Labor Organization. At the time of the interview, she was busy planning for events and workshops celebrating the 25th anniversary of the United Nations. The theme of these events was “What can the United Nations do more effectively towards establishing and maintaining peace in the world?”

At this time (1970), the United Nations was viewed with skepticism, fear, and hostility by the conservative media and groups of Orange County. In her interview, Mrs. Launer elaborated on the powerful conservative climate of Orange County, and the difficulties it created for her work for the United Nations. When asked, “How do you feel about the conservatism of Orange County? Is it something that came into the county from the very beginning?” Launer replied:

“Yes, yes, I would think so. They [Fullerton’s first residents] were a rural group who came here and they were very conservative in their thinking. I think the newspapers have probably had a lot of influence on it with the ultraconservative Santa Ana Register (now the Orange County Register)…Where the source of their information is, I just don’t know. They get hold of the wildest rumors and statements about the Communists, in particular. They see an imaginary army marching on them. They think they’re going to lose all their rights, their property and everything else. They don’t check the source of their information.”

Launer continued, “Even this year in Tustin, I think it was the school board that sent word that there was to be no mention or instruction in any way, shape or form about the United Nations in the Tustin schools. Well, now, are they ostriches that are just putting their heads in the sand?”

Some right-wing groups at this time tried to equate the United Nations with communism. In an effort to counter the misinformation that was being circulated, the Orange County Chapter of the United Nations opened a book store in downtown Santa Ana (at 2204 North Main Street) to distribute their literature.

Unfortunately, not everyone was happy with the United Nations book store.

“This summer we had our first real problems,” Launer said. “On six consecutive weekends vandals broke the glass window…they did not break the windows anyplace else around there.”

Launer discusses the Freedom Center at the CSUF library, a special collection of materials on both right wing and left wing political groups both locally and nationally.

“You would be surprised at the organizations that are in this,” Launer said. “There are hate groups. They hate everything it seems, as well as the U.N., of course. That is one of the big ones.”

Despite the obstacles, Launer sounded determined and passionate about educating people and getting them involved in global issues like poverty, education, and social justice. She said, “In Orange County…we feel that every member that we get is a victory for the United Nations because it is only people of character who will stand up and say, ‘I believe in the United Nations, and that is our hope for peace.’ You have to get people with a certain amount of bravery to stand up and be counted and try to help. It is not fashionable in Orange County to be a member, but it is becoming more acceptable than it used to be.”

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

The Local History Room of the Fullerton Public Library has microfilm from the Fullerton Tribune newspaper stretching back to 1893. I am in the process of reading over the microfilm, year by year, to get a sense of what was happening in the town over the years. Below are some news stories from 1907.

In 1907, according to an article entitled “Prosperous Fullerton,” the town had a population of 3,000, two banks, a new high school, four churches, and growers shipped 1,000 cars of oranges, 100 cars of walnuts, 300 cars of cabbages, and 200 cars of other farm products.

In 1907, the Tribune got a new linotype machine.

Racism

A disturbing article called “Japs Still in Town,” describes how a committee sought (apparently unsuccessfully) to run some Japanese people out of town, presumably because they were Japanese.

Here are a couple paragraphs from the article:

Sunday afternoon a number of young men about town decided to go to the house where five or six Japanese reside at a late hour Sunday night with the intention of driving them out of town. Frank Claudina overheard the conversation of two or three of the brave lads and offered to pay the whole bunch $5 a head and also pay their fines if arrested, if they would go to the house and manage to get even one Jap out of the city. They did not take Frank’s offer, but declared that they would make good and hustle the foreigners out of town that very night.

A Tribune reporter decided to go within one hundred yards or so of the field of battle to witness the round-up…The Japs are still in the house and may be there for some time.

Orange County’s First Lynching

A front page feature titled “Early Days in Orange County” tells the story of Orange County’s first (and only) lynching, as told below:

Back in 1892 William McKelvey, a brother of Sid McKelvey of Fullerton and son of Mrs. McKelvey, also of Fullerton, was a foreman on Madame Modjeska’s ranch in this county, and a number of men were at work under him, including one named Torres, an Indian. The road-tax collector informed Madame Modjeska’s husband, that uncless the employees paid their road-tax, he would garnish their wages. Count Bozenta paid the poll-tax of the employee, and requested McKelvey to hold back $2.00 from each of the men when paying them off on Saturday night. Torres refused to pay his poll-tax, knocked Mr. McKelvey down with a pick-handle, and then stabbed him to death. Torres was arrested, being captured in San Diego County while trying to escape, and was placed in the small jail at Santa Ana. About a week after this cold-blooded murder had been committed, a crowd approached the little jail one night at midnight, all wearing masks. They demanded the keys from the night-watchman; he refused to give them up; within a few minutes the outer door, and the door leading to the cell were battered down, and a rope placed around Torres’ neck. He was so badly frightened he could hardly stand; he was pulled from the jail by force, led to the center of the city and the end of the rope was thrown over the first cross-arm of the telegraph pole at the corner of Fourth and Sycamore streets in front of Turner’s shoe store. The murderer was drawn up until his feet were about four feet from the ground, and the body was left there until after day-light next morning.

After first satisfying themselves that Torres was dead, the lynchers disappeared, and it is said many of them are still residing in Orange County today, some being well known businessmen. It is said Torres was unconscious when drawn up by the rope, it having been drawn so tight around his neck that he was strangled before the corner was reached. A doctor and another Santa Ana business man came along the street just at day-light, saw the body swinging just over their heads, and they almost tumbled over with fright. This was Orange County’s first and only lynching.

Click HERE for a more complete version of this story.

Water

In water news, a seven year-long lawsuit upheld the water rights of the two Orange County companies, the Anaheim Union Water Company and the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company against a Riverside rancher named Fuller.

Fullerton rancher Charles Chapman was criticized by the Tribune (and apparently his neighbors) for changing the course of a waterway to protect his crops from flooding, meanwhile causing other ranchers properties to experience flooding during a recent storm.

New Library

Fullerton’s first real library, built with funding by industrialist Andrew Carnegie, was completed at a cost of over $10,000. The Library was on the site where the Fullerton Museum Center is today.

Below is a photo of the Carnegie Library taken a few years later:

Suicides

Fullerton resident L.E. Myers shot himself.

Bertha Luxembourger, brother of William “Big Bill” McFadden (who had died a couple years prior), tried to kill herself by jumping in front of a train, after her husband of four months left her. Amazingly, she survived.

Oil!

Many articles in 1907 were about the gushing oil fields north of Fullerton, including in Coyote Hills. Below are a few examples:

Agriculture

The orange and walnut industries continued to prosper.

Roads

The city trustees put before the voters an $80,000 bond, mostly to be used for road improvements. Tribune editor Edgar Johnson was against the bonds, and as he often did, he wrote front page “articles” that were actually opinion pieces against the bonds. I suppose, in this era of journalism, there wasn’t much separation between news and opinion. I suppose not much has changed.

Ultimately, the bonds were roundly defeated. Fullerton would have to fund its road improvements some other way. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The St. George Hotel

The large St. George Hotel, one of Fullerton’s first buildings, got a new owner. This building (near the northeast corner of Harbor and Commonwealth) has since been torn down.

Culture

Fullerton had its own small orchestra, led by William McEachran.

Sports

Walter Johnson, a future Hall of Famer, had been a pitcher at Fullerton High School. He went on to play for the Washington Senators, and became a source of pride for Fullertonians.

Here is a photo of Walter Johnson, taken by photographer Charles Conlon, circa 1910.

Click HERE to read highlights from previous years.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

There are two shows on Netflix right now called “Selling Sunset” and “Selling the OC” which follow the activities and drama of the Oppenheim Group as they sell upscale SoCal real estate. The two owners of the company are Jason and Brett Oppenheim, who are the great great grandsons of Jacob Stern, who had a unique connection to Fullerton.

Stern opened the Stern & Goodman mercantile company in 1889, one of the first businesses in town, and he became a major landowner in southern California, including Hollywood–at one time owning over 20,000 acres of prime real estate. It was on the Stern property near Hollywood and Vine that the first feature length motion picture was filmed by Cecil B. DeMille for what would become Paramount Studios.

The following bio of Jacob Stern is taken from John McGroarty’s book From the Mountains to the Sea: a History of Los Angeles, the journal Western States Jewish History (Vol XV, No. 4 July 1983, and Vol. XLIV, No. ¾ Spring/Summer 2012,), and the web site Hollywood Heritage.

Jacob Stern was born in Saxony, Germany, September 20, 1859, to Marcus and Rosetta (Goodman) Stern. His father was a dealer in hops and cattle. Until age 20, Stern worked on the family farm.

In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, landing first in New York, and then Cleveland, Ohio. For about five years he worked for the wholesale clothing house of Lehman, Richman & Company at Cleveland. 

In 1889, he came to the newly-formed town of Fullerton, California with his cousin Joseph Goodman, and they opened the Stern & Goodman general store at the southeast corner of Spadra (now Harbor) and Commonwealth Avenue.

They sold clothing, furniture, farm equipment, livestock, wagons, carriages, and more. Eventually the store expanded into a chain of five outlets: Fullerton, Olinda, Yorba Linda, Placentia, and Brea. It was one of California’s first chain stores.

In addition to being a retailer, the store operated sort of like a bank for farmers. According to Western States Jewish History: “Stern and Goodman loaned the Orange County farmers seed and farm supplies each year, settling up their accounts when the crops came in. In times of crop failure, the farmers were carried for another year or longer.”

It was estimated that three-fourths of the hay and grain business of Orange County was handled by Stern.

In 1891 in Los Angeles Stern married Sarah Laventhal, daughter of Elias Laventhal, a pioneer settler in Los Angeles County.

Sarah’s father Elias Laventhal had arrived in Los Angeles in 1854 and “was one of a group of men who organized the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles, the first Jewish group of what was to become the second largest Jewish community in America.” (WSJH)

The Sterns had four children: Harold, Elza, Helen, and Eugene. For a number of years the family lived in Fullerton, but in 1904, they bought the large Colonel Northam home in Hollywood, at the corner of Vine Street and Hollywood Boulevard which McGroarty described as “one of the show places of the beautiful Hollywood District.”

Below are some postcards of the Stern residence in Hollywood, called Casa de Las Palmas, courtesy of Hollywood Heritage:

In 1904 Mr. Stern opened his real estate office in the Pacific Electric Building in Los Angeles.

The Stern Realty Company incorporated in 1911 and specialized in residential, agricultural, and oil lands mostly in Los Angeles and Orange County.

Stern eventually became one of the largest landowners and wealthiest businessmen in southern California, owning more than 20,000 acres of land.

“The great extent of his present interests cannot be confined to any one building or even a single county of California,” McGroarty wrote in 1921. “It is said that Mr. Stern owns land in nearly every county of California.”

Stern & Goodman sold their stock of goods at their Fullerton store in 1918, but still retained ownership of the block.

In 1912, Stern leased two-acres of his property at Vine and Selma, which contained his barn, to the Lasky Feature Play Company, which became Paramount Studios.

According to Western States Jewish History, “It was in the Stern barn that Cecil B. DeMille, Samuel Goldwyn and Jesse Lasky made the first feature-length motion picture, ‘The Sqaw Man.’ The budget for that film, made in 1913, was $15,000…In December, 1956, a California Registered Landmark plaque, No. 554, was placed on the barn, titled ‘Hollywood’s First Major Film Company Studio.’”

In 1925, with southern California growing rapidly, Stern built the Hollywood Plaza Hotel on his property.

According to Hollywood Heritage: “In the early years of Hollywood, the hotel became the home of many stars looking for a place to live while filming or performing on radio at one of the nearby studios. Legendary stars like Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, Jackie Gleason, Betty Davis, and even Frank Sinatra all stayed at or frequented the hotel.”

Stern lived at his home on Hollywood and Vine until 1930, when he moved to the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles.

Jacob Stern died in 1934, just a year after his wife passed.

Many streets and even some monuments still bear his name, such as Stern Avenue in La Mirada, Stern Avenue in Van Nuys, Stern-Goodman Street in Fullerton and Stern’s Park in Los Alamitos.

Perhaps most notably, the barn which Stern leased for the first motion picture has since become the Hollywood Heritage Museum, and is located at 2100 N Highland Ave, Los Angeles, across from the Hollywood Bowl. According to Wikipedia, “The Museum features archival photographs from the silent era of motion pictures, movie props, historic documents and other movie related memorabilia. Also featured are historic photographs and postcards of the streets, buildings and residences of Hollywood during its golden age. Special events entitled ‘Evenings at the Barn’ are open to the public and regularly programmed including speakers, screenings and/or slideshows with a focus toward Hollywood’s early history.”

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

The Local History Room of the Fullerton Public Library has microfilm from the Fullerton Tribune newspaper stretching back to 1893. I am in the process of reading over the microfilm, year by year, to get a sense of what was happening in the town over the years. Here are news stories from 1906.

Click HERE to read highlights from previous years.

Prohibition

In 1904, the year Fullerton incorporated, the town’s residents (who were quite divided over whether to prohibit saloons), voted to allow them. Two years later, in 1906, the town voted to outlaw them.

This was the result of years of organizing by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League.

Local Government & Politics

As mentioned above, 1906 was an election year, and Tribune editor Edgar Johnson clearly had his favorite candidates. Prior to the election, he ran articles/editorials that advocated for what he called “The People’s Ticket,” which included City Trustee candidates E.R. Amerige, R.T. Davies, and L.P. Drake.

This was in contrast to what Johnson called “The One-Man Power Ticket.” That one man was Charles C. Chapman, whom Johnson had taken to calling the town “Czar” and “The Great I Am.”

Unfortunately for “the people,” the Chapman ticket swept the race. Chapman, for some reason, was not up for re-election–perhaps he had a four year seat.

Town co-founder Edward Amerige, who was a part of the “People’s Ticket” wrote a letter to the Tribune after the election condemning dirty political tactics of his opponents. His words show that not much has changed in over a hundred years:

I desire to say a few words in your paper regarding the anonymous letter which was sent through the mails during the recent election. Such a contemptible, sneaking, lying and cowardly act is hardly worth replying to through the medium of newspapers. The proper place to answer such a blackmailing and malicious letter is through the criminal courts and should information be secured as to the authorship of this libelous letter such an action will be commenced. The men and parties who would stoop to such despicable means of trying to influence voters would stoop to anything to carry their ends, and are a dangerous and undesirable element in any community. Several of the parties who are mixed up in this disgraceful attempt to besmirch decent men are supposed to be respectable citizens, but when they resort to such methods and are so cowardly as not to dare sign what they write, they are worse than a coyote that roams in the dark. Fairness is one of the cardinal virtues, and one that every honest man should support and believe in. I know from personal knowledge that a great many voters of the All Citizens’ party condemn this method of securing votes, and are not at all in sympathy with such low methods. Some people attribute to me some of the articles which have appeared in different newspapers regarding Mr. Chapman. I have never written any article in relations to that gentleman; there are other people who do not agree with his political methods than I. The newspapers that publish such are responsible and are willing to stand by what they print or write.

–E.R. Amerige

Interestingly, the town postmaster Vivian Tresslar, who was also the man Chapman hired to edit the Fullerton News, was in hot water for alleged legal violations.

Oil!

Although it’s not very evident today, Fullerton at the turn of the century was a very oil-rich region, and numerous wells were being drilled in the hills north of town.

Among the numerous oil interests active in the Fullerton fields was the Murphy Oil Company, who actually screwed the Bastanchury family out of oil they were entitled to.

The story is told in more detail in an article from the web site Basques in California:

“In 1903, the Murphy Oil Company leased the West Coyote Hills lands from the Bastanchury Ranch to dig for oil. One year of excavations found them hot mineral water at 3,000 feet. As one of the oil workers later confessed, they found an oil well at 3,200 feet but covered it up. In 1905, Murphy bought off from Domingo Bastanchury more than 2,200 acres in the surroundings of La Habra, at $25 an acre. Allegedly, Murphy assured Domingo before the acquisition, that those lands held no oil. Time later, the Los Coyotes Hills area became South California’s largest oil field.”

In the oil industry, as in other industries, the larger companies (like Standard Oil) used their power to try crush local competition (like Puente Oil).

Water

Perhaps the most contentious local water issue of 1906 was the question of whether the city would buy the town’s privately-owned Water Works (a pumping and storage plant) from its owners, the Adams-Philips Co.  This issue created much public debate over the economic and philosophical merits of public vs. private ownership of utilities, a debate that feels relevant today.  Prior to the election, it appeared that the majority of the citizens of Fullerton favored city ownership of the water works.

Ultimately, however, the issue went to a vote and was defeated.  Tribune editor Johnson mused: “with the present plant owned by millionaires and in operation…the longer a city delays in acquiring public utilities, the more expensive becomes the undertaking.”

A group calling itself the Citizens Protective Association organized much of the opposition to the water bond issue.

Electric Power

The Edison Co. built an electric sub-station in Fullerton that made the town the main distributing point for Whittier and Orange County.

Death

Fullerton pioneer rancher Henry Hetebrink died. His son John would later build that big old house (now vacant) on the Fullerton College campus, at the corner of Chapman and Berkeley.

Education

Voters approved the site for a new high school building to be built on Commonwealth Avenue, where Amerige Park is today. The community was outgrowing the first brick high school building on Lawrence Ave. near Lemon.

San Francisco Earthquake

1906 was the year of the great San Francisco earthquake. More than 3,000 people died, and over 80% of the city was destroyed. The event is remembered as the deadliest earthquake in the history of the United States.

Placentia Vegetarians

A Tribune correspondent visited the strange vegetarian colony/commune in Placentia. I plan to write more about them in the near future. In the meantime, check out a brief history HERE.

Brown’s Pile of Stable Manure

A Mr. Brown was ordered to remove his massive pile of manure from the center of town.

Voting by Women

Women could not vote in 1906. The 19th Amendment would not pass until 1920. In the meantime, some editorials appear in the Tribune on the question of women’s suffrage.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

The Local History Room of the Fullerton Public Library has microfilm from the Fullerton Tribune newspaper stretching back to 1893. I am in the process of reading over the microfilm, year by year, to get a sense of what was happening in the town over the years. Here are excerpts from some of the articles from 1905.

Click HERE to read highlights from previous years.

The Fullerton “Snooze”

Tribune editor Edgar Johnson spends considerable space ruthlessly attacking a competing newspaper in town, the Fullerton News, which was evidently funded by mayor/orange grower Charles C. Chapman because he didn’t like the coverage he was getting in the Tribune. The Fullerton News, edited by a man named Vivian Tresslar, was often mocked by Johnson. When Chapman sought to end the city’s contract with the Tribune to publish official notices and give the contract to the News, Johnson called him “Czar Chapman,” an epithet he would use numerous times.

Here are some of the numerous clippings related to Johnson’s mini print war against the Fullerton News:

Prohibition

Although a majority of Fullerton residents had voted in favor of allowing saloons in town, the issue continued to divide the community, with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and Anti-Saloon League still holding regular gatherings.

Death

Tragedy struck the Fullerton community when a four-year-old little girl named Esther Schultz burned to death in a barn fire.

The Pacific Electric

Fullerton leaders and residents wanted the sprawling Pacific Electric passenger rail service to extend to Fullerton.

Carnegie Library

Fullerton would receive funding for a new library courtesy of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who funded numerous libraries around the United States.

Water

As Southern California agriculture grew, securing water became an increasingly urgent issue–some advocated taking water from faraway regions (like the Owens Valley), while others sought to exploit the large (but not well understood) underground aquifers.

Socialist Meeting

Although the minority, socialists were active in Southern California at the turn of the century. Perhaps the most prominent among them was Fullerton’s own Henry Gaylord Wilshire.

Stay tuned for headlines from 1906!

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

Orange County has long had a well-deserved reputation as a bastian of right-wing conservatism. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the John Birch Society had a strong influence in shaping the consensus of the county. In a paper entitled “Turmoil and Change: An Interim Report on the Politics of Orange County, California, 1945-1979, Charles L. Beaman and Michael Jones write: “More militant and doctrinaire conservatives filled the vacuum left by the withdrawal of moderates. They were more vocally patriotic and anti-Communist, and generally affiliated themselves with the John Birch Society. Their activities at times elicited national press coverage, and helped to create the County’s reputation for being a politically “kooky” bastian of ultra-conservatism.”

In the early 1970s however, with the Vietnam War in full force, there emerged a group of returning Vietnam War veterans who sought to challenge the values of their region, and to shine a light on the real-world consequences of America’s policy in Southeast Asia. Speaking of the Orange County Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), Anna Acker, author of Coming Home to Orange County: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (a 2005 CSUF Master’s Thesis), writes, “Their voices and memories challenge the myth of Orange County’s predominant conservative image. Moreover, their stories demonstrate the cracking of the Cold War consensus, and illustrate that the war in Vietnam was based on anti-communist ideology that ultimately proved to be bankrupt.”

In addition to war protests, these OC veterans sought to bring healing to those who suffered from America’s war. They “provided a healing community for veterans, contributed to the research of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (originally called Post-Vietnam disorder), advocated for the rights of minorities, promoted women’s rights and condemned sexism.”

By 1967, approximately 500,000 Americans were stationed in Vietnam, and the average age of the soldier was nineteen. Just like today, many of the troops (about 80 percent) came from economically disadvantaged areas, young men who saw military service as a way to advance their lot in life, and perhaps go to college. In his book Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, Christian Appy quotes a soldier: “Where were the sons of all the big shots who supported the war? Not in my platoon. Our guys’ people were workers…If war was so important, why didn’t our leaders put everyone’s son in there, why only us?”

Others who joined the war were motivated by a sense of patriotism inherited from their fathers, who had fought in WWII. Veteran Ron Kovic, author of Born on the Fourth of July writes, “We had our plastic Mattie Mattel Sub-Machine guns and we played guns in the woods. We tried to emulate our fathers who fought in WWII. We tried to act like the generation before us who had won the victory…We tried to believe we were John Wayne and I think then when we went to Vietnam we had that myth, that John Wayne myth in our minds and it was to be sadly shattered by the reality of our experience there.”

Calixto Cabrera, a Vietnam Veteran who settled in Orange County after his service, was one of those whose reality was shattered by his experiences.  “As far as things that bothered me, there was the attacks on some villages and accidentally killing little old ladies and little old men. That is the kind of stuff that I carried around for a long period of time.”

Mike Beanan was similarly traumatized by the attacks on civilians he was ordered to comply with in Vietnam. “We’re here to collect people and get some information from them. We’re not here to butcher people,” he recalled, “I looked at my bandana and I realized it was all covered with blood, and I puked and I wanted to cry and…I just couldn’t do any of that…and at that time I decided–that this was a bunch of shit.”

Soldiers in Vietnam were not the only ones who became increasingly disgusted with the American policy in Vietnam, with its increased escalation and casualties. Massive protests erupted across college campuses and cities in America. These protests came to a head in 1970, when the National Guard was called in to quell protests at Kent State University in Ohio. There, four unarmed student protestors were shot and killed by employees of their own government. The reaction to this violent attempt to suppress free speech and protest spread across the whole nation, and even reached Orange County.

Acker writes “Orange County student activists united in rage and animosity against the tragedy of Kent State. The eruptions at universities throughout the country were unprecedented in American history as three hundred and fifty schools nationwide went on strike. Orange County’s California State University, Fullerton, “bore striking similarity to events on university campuses across the nation where student radicals and law enforcement clashed.” Navy veteran Dan Kelly (who would join the Orange County VVAW) recalled how the movement began, and the students at CSUF rallied in desperation to stop the war.”

Returning veterans like Dan Kelly, deeply traumatized by their involvement in what they perceived to be an unjust war, were not met with the welcome reception that their WWII fathers received. Acker writes, “Kelly enrolled at Fullerton Junior College…It was hardly a month after moving into the college dorms when he was eating in the cafeteria where four students surrounded him and began screaming that he was a ‘baby killer.’ The students’ harsh insults were more than he could bear. ‘I was hysterical for eight or ten hours.’ Kelly remembered.”

Orange County Vietnam veterans like Calixto Cabrera, Dan Kelly, Bill Unger, and Bill Hager turned their rage and trauma into positive social action, helping to found the Orange County chapter of the VVAW, which organized protests, newsletters, “rap groups,” and services for veterans trying to find their way back into society. Cabrera participated in a “medal throwing” ceremony in Washington, in which veterans threw their medals of (dis)honor back at the White House. He recalls, “It was great politics. Once again focusing the eye of the nation that the veterans are so disenchanted that even these medals that the government holds so high and honorable that they give you for valor, were nothing more than pieces of tin we threw at the White House…We are the guys that went over there and did the job and came back and said what we did was wrong.”

The actions of the VVAW, both nationally and locally, played a significant role in shifting public opinion. These were not “privileged college hippies” but real American veterans who had changed their minds about a war that would ultimately prove morally bankrupt and unwinnable.

The OC VVAW also directed their protests locally, to the “Western White House” (aka Casa Pacifica) of Orange County’s native son, president Richard M. Nixon. Acker writes: “On April 2, 1973, three hundred antiwar protestors marched down Avenida Del Presidente to a tightly secured perimeter of the Western White House in San Clemente, California. Along the outer limits of the property–surrounded by a riot squad of police and their guard dogs–a barricade of concerned FBI agents prepared for any unwarranted activity by the demonstrators. The demonstration, sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, was one of hundreds planned by the organization that the Nixon administration had closely monitored since its formation in 1967.”

Vietnam Veteran Butch Findley, who joined the OC VVAW in 1973, felt that the county’s strong conservative history made the formation of a dissent group all the more important. “Nixon’s reelection committee was right there in Newport Beach,” he recalled, “And that is why it was so important that Orange County have a strong organization.”  

Bill Hager, a Vietnam veteran who returned to San Clemente to attend Saddleback College, ended his career in the military when he was asked to teach riot control classes for the college campuses.  As he met with other OC veterans like Unger, Cabrera, and Kelly, he began to become increasingly involved with the anti-war movement.  In 1972, Hager led hundreds of VVAWers on a 3,000 mile trek across America called “The Last Patrol.”  Their destination was the Republican National Convention in Miami, where they intended to speak out against the war.  Writer Hunter S. Thompson called these veterans “golems, come back to haunt us.”  When Hager and the Last Patrol arrived in Miami, they were met by around a thousand Florida National Guardsmen.  The veterans wanted to be allowed into the convention.  Three were allowed in, including Ron Kovic, who was spat upon and thrown from his wheelchair. 

The OC VVAW also participated in the Long Beach Veteran’s Day Parade, alongside local groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and the John Birch Society.  At first, parade officials said the VVAW could not participate.  They took the issue to court and were granted a permit.  Ultimately, they were forced to march behind the street sweepers at the end of the parade.  Acker writes, “Their appearance behind the street sweepers personified America’s hidden shame.”

In addition to protests, the OC VVAW sought to challenge military recruitment efforts on college campuses: “When military recruiters visited the college campuses, VVAW set up tables next to them to persuade potential enlistees to seek other career options and distributed fliers on the Irvine campus, which advocated for direct student action to terminate the ROTC program.”

After interviewing dozens of Orange County Vietnam Veterans Against the War, local historian Anna Acker wrote: “In the Orange County chapter’s short but influential existence, these antiwar veterans rapped, demonstrated, studied, and sought to influence the political process.  In a community known for its conservative political leanings, the VVAW ‘hit the Nixonettes’ on the college campuses to enlighten students on the immorality of the war.”

“In the middle of that conservative bastion, you had little environmental movements, little women’s movements, the antiwar movement, worker’s rights movements, and student activism,” said Cabrera, “It is good for people to find that things have gone on there, that it is not one color, one blend or one slant on anything.”

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

In the book Kids of the Black Hole: Punk Rock in Postsuburban California, Dewar Macleod writes, “For those whose eyes and ears were open, who were waiting for something to happen in a world where nothing was happening, punk rock offered an alternative, as music, as vision, as culture. From 1977 through the 1980s, punk rock spoke to more and more young people throughout Southern California, embodying their experiences, shaping their identities.  They craved a personal connection to the their music and a music that could express their sense of the world.”

Punk was not born in Los Angeles, however.  It arrived first from New York (from The Ramones) via London (from The Sex Pistols), but it spread quickly in Southern California.  Early LA bands like The Germs, The Weirdos, and The Dickies adopted the styles and attitudes of British and East Coast punks and quickly created their own scene, though the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos, starting their own record labels (like Bomp!), booking their own shows at divey clubs (like The Masque), and spreading the punk gospel through zines (like Slash).

Punk music was, in part, a reaction to the blandness of the music business in the 70s.  In a 1977 issue of Flipside zine, one of The Weirdos said, “There’s so much shit that the industry’s produced. Just listen to the radio and it all sounds pretty much the same. For me and the guys in the band, it’s more a revolt against all this boring shit. Even with all the stuff that’s out, the radio still does the same thing. There’s nothing fresh–nothing new.  All the industry does is take a lot of money and make something real slick–over and over again.” 

According to Greg Shaw, founder of Bomp! records, “The best culture is one that involves everybody, it’s participatory…You are not a passive consumer.”  Punk was created by the people, for the people. It was raw, sometimes angry, and sincere. “Punk was like when you first discover folk art as some wonderful thing,” KK Barrett of the Screamers remembered, “All of a sudden you like the mistakes, the handicraft of it, the personal naiveté.” Sociologist Stephen Duncombe defines DIY as “at once a critique of the dominant mode of passive consumer culture and something far more important: the active creation of an alternative culture.” 

Interestingly, punk was not a strictly urban (LA, NY) phenomenon. In Southern California, it quickly began to infiltrate the suburbs of Orange County with bands like The Adolescents, Social Distortion, and The Middle Class. By the 1970s, suburbs that were once “bedroom communities” serving larger metropolitan areas, began to transform into “post-suburbia”–self-sufficient, mixed-use regions of housing, factories, offices, shops, and services. Macleod writes, “Just as the U.S. census of 1890 declared the western frontier closed, the census of 1970 declared the closing of another frontier: the ‘crabgrass frontier.’”

Eddie of the OC band Eddie and the Subtitles described Orange County in the 1970s as “an unbelievable, mindless, sexless, funless monster that should be permanently shut down.” The “post-suburban” towns of Orange County began to spawn their own unique brand of punks, who were “now fully ‘postmodern youth,’ whose alienation resulted from the corporate-controlled media and consumer environments [which] increasingly supplanted the home, family, school, and workplace as sites for socialization.” 

Macleod explains, “Young people in post-suburbia were now not simply consumers, but…an active participant in the shopping spectacle. For these young people, the shopping mall is not merely an economic space where exchanges take place but a symbolic social space for everyone to come alive in and a pervasive metaphor for life. This condition affected youth throughout society, not merely ‘delinquents’ or members of subcultures. All youth–especially in post-suburbia–were increasingly hailed, identified, and self-identified as isolated, fragmented, individual consumers.”

In his essay “Inside Exopolis: Scenes from Orange County” sociologist Edward W. Soja describes the region’s “creatively erosive postmodern geographies…where everyday life is thematically spin doctored and consciousness itself comes in prepackaged forms.” Macleod explains how “the car, the mall, the office park, and tract home replaced the street as the sites for everyday life.  What was historically new by the 1970s was the destruction of public space, and the accompanying commodification of private space.”  Politics came to be dominated by massive faceless development companies like “the Irvine Company, which held almost complete control over the political, economic, and social development of the region in the post-war period.”

Politically, Orange County was very conservative, spawning such punk-hated politicians as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The Lincoln Club, the “good old boys” Republican bankrollers, were firmly entrenched in Orange County, and helped get Reagan elected. Hand in hand with the conservative politics went mega-churches like Costa Mesa’s Crystal Cathedral and the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Because of the economic and social value of real estate in Orange County, the politics in the OC were “increasingly centered around issues of homeowner self-defense.”

Given such artificial, “creatively erosive”, isolated, conservative, self-centered environments as Orange County cities, is it any wonder that young people would seek to rebel and create their own, creatively vibrant communities?

There is an entire section of the book Kids of the Black Hole devoted to the band The Middle Class, and I will quote it verbatim, because it’s good:

“The Middle Class–three brothers (ages fifteen, seventeen, and twenty-one) and a friend from Santa Ana and Fullerton down in Orange County–had ventured the two-hour drive into the Hollywood scene as early as 1978, when they went to Brendan Mullen hoping for a gig at the Masque and almost got laughed all the way home. “Having been advised to cut their hair and punk-out their dress, they were summarily dismissed to the suburbs, presumably to pass into a well-deserved obscurity,” one zine writer observed. “However, fate intervened in the form of Hector of the Zeros who booked them as opening support for a show featuring The Controllers and The Germs and, after that, for the next six months, they played support to many of the local Holllywood scene bands.’ After their first show at Larchmont Hall in April, where the crowd ‘stood in a semi-circle and nobody moved,’ they gigged regularly as the token ‘suburban’ band.  Slash referred to their first show in a column titled “The ‘Hey, You Mean They Got Punks in Those Places??’ Dept.”  Noting the blasé reaction and blank stares The Middle Class received, Slash commented, ‘sometimes them scene-making punx are worse than the fuckin’ Spanish Inquisition!” and asked the prescient question, ‘Will the next New Wave come from the great Wasteland?’ (This was at a time when the term ‘new wave’ had not yet been rejected by punks.)

The Hollywood scene accepted the Middle Class, at least to some extent.  But even when some of their members moved into the Canterbury (apartments in LA–a sort of punk commune), they did not lose their identity as a ‘suburban’ band, and the insider crowd did not quite know what to do with them. Taking the stage looking ‘like a bunch of rampaging Scientologists,’ they defied all fashion and music conventions even at a moment when conventions were not so rigidly set within punk. By the summer of 1978, they were making converts, as this Slash review attests: ‘These guys looked normal.  Like writing a paper in the library normal. How come they sounded like twisted metal air raids and dynamite fumes? I was shocked. If you look like that, you’re not supposed to sound like that. Yet it was obvious: the mob was pogoing with genuine furor, the aggression meter was in the red zone, this was certified punk fever grade triple-A beware of imitations. I’ve seen fast bands, but these unknowns run with the best.”  The reviewer concluded, “And that curly-haired singer should, according to basic laws of physics, end up with his vocal chords tied in a knot after 5 minutes.”  Another Slash reviewer the following month described their shows as “intense, teeth-gritting affairs that leave the participant dazed, stunned, even irritated.”  The reviewer noted the ‘chaos and confusion’ that resulted from ‘the incitable nature of their strange, assaulting music coupled with the growing number of their unpredictably rabid fans.’ The cumulative effect was ‘not unlike kissing a semi at full speed.’

The Middle Class never brought their own crowd of fans and followers with them to Hollywood, but they never completely left their post-suburban home, either.  Like traditional bohemians, and like other LA punks, they made the trip into the city to enact their art. But they did not reinvent themselves completely in the process. They didn’t change their names, and they didn’t change their dress. The cover of their record ‘Out of Vogue’–a diatribe against mass culture–depicts a mundane Southern California suburban scene: two young girls stand in the middle of a street, surrounded and almost dwarfed by the still life of a housing tract with Big Wheels, a basketball backboard, and a Volkswagen bus in a driveway.  The cover scene depicted not only their roots, but their continuing daily reality as ‘the MIddle Class’ and they returned to these images throughout their career.  As a post suburban band, the Middle Class redefined the aesthetics of punk, both musically and visually.”

Members of The Middle Class started booking shows at The Galaxy in Fullerton, a roller rink turned punk venue. Other Orange County bands followed the lead of these suburban pioneers, formed bands, and started playing a new variety of punk invented by The Middle Class–hardcore. As the name suggests, the music was especially aggressive form of punk, often raging against the cultural and political wasteland that was 1970s and 80s Orange County.

Out of Hermosa Beach came Black Flag, who helped establish The Church (literally an old church building) as a haven for punks to rehearse, play shows, and live. An early bass player from Black Flag described one of their early practices:

“BANG!! the drummer started smashing out a fast trashy straight 4 pattern and the wiry little singer started bellowing  around wildly and Greg’s body lurched forward as he underwent a remarkable transition from Jeckyl to Hyde.  His head shook, eyes flashed and teeth bared maniacally as he began to grind thick chords out of a guitar that in the shadowy light could have been mistaken for a chainsaw.  Within seconds it was over.  Jeckyl calmly stepped out of his Hyde as if stepping out of a routine nightmare.”

In true DIY fashion, Black Flag eschewed the record industry and formed their own label, SST Records.

Macleod writes, “New punk bands emerged in droves, and while many of them merely played the 1-2-3-4 sound of the Ramones as fast as they could, others introduced interesting variations, combining diverse influences and sounds. Over the next couple of years bands from around the South Bay and inland Orange County came to play parties in Huntington Beach–new bands like the Circle Jerks, Red Cross, the Adolescents, Agent Orange, and Social Distortion, in addition to the Middle Class and Black Flag. Eventually a couple of key clubs began to book hardcore shows in post suburbia: the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa and the Fleetwood in Redondo Beach.”

Mike Ness of Social Distortion made his Fullerton apartment into a haven for local punks, which was immortalized by the Adolescents song “Kids of the Black Hole.”  

Out of Hermosa Beach came The Descencents, whose music offered an ironic commentary, like the song “Suburban Home”:

I want to be stereotyped

I want to be classified

I wanna be a clone

I want a suburban home

I wanna be masochistic

I wanna be a statistic

I don’t want no hippie pad

I want a house just like mom and dad

In many ways, the punks succeeded in creating something new and distinct from the cultural norms they had inherited. Through music, zines, and communal spaces, “punks created a dispersed, yet interconnected mass subculture.”

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

Here is part two of a story about an obscenity trial held in Fullerton City Hall in 1967. Part 1 introduces this fascinating episode in local history in which ultra-conservative politicians like John Schmitz (a member of the John Birch Society) called a special senate hearing after a performance of an experimental play called The Beard, by Beat generation poet and playwright Michael McClure. The Beard is a about a fictional encounter in heaven between Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow, which culminates in a simulated act of oral sex (not actual oral sex). At that time, “oral copulation” was a felony in the state of California.

Although the showing of The Beard was a private performance, some members of the local press got word of it, and got in, and ran headlines like “Lewd, Smut-Ridden Play Given at Cal State Fullerton.” This issue caught the attention of conservative local politicians. Historian Lawrence de Graaf writes, “Seizing an opportunity for publicity in an upcoming election year, politicians from Orange County joined the attacks.” A Special Senate Committee on Pornographic Plays was created and they subpoenaed the director Terry Gordon, the actors, his professor Edwin Duerr, CSUF president William Langsdorf, and many others.

The entire transcript of these hearings was recorded and published by the Senate of California. I found a copy of it in a special exhibit on “Banned and Challenged Books” in the CSUF library. Below are continued excerpts from the trial:

[Terry Gordon, the director of The Beard, takes the stand]

Senator Richardson: Mr. Gordon, what were the other plays that you directed?

Mr. Gordon: The Dutchman, and The Madness of Lady Bright.

Senator Richardson: What was that play about?

Mr. Gordon: Basically the plot is concerned with a homosexual who is a very lonely man in his old age, and towards the end of the play…he goes insane because of his problems that he has had in the past with his family, society, acting upon him, problems imposed upon him.

…

[Dr. James Young, head of the Drama Department, takes the stand]

Senator Richardson: There’s another play that I see you are going to be putting on soon that I am rather curious about. It’s called The Knack. May I read from the Titan Times, which is a publication, I believe. It says:

“Seduction is the knack of ‘The Knack,’ an eccentric comedy in three acts by Ann Jellicoe, which comes sliding in on a splendid blaze of nonsense Friday, Saturday, and Sunday…A genuinely comic play of antics and random images, ‘The Knack’ centers on the gentle art of getting girls.” What do they mean exactly by “getting girls”?

Dr. Young: I talked to the student who put this particular article in the paper and asked about even the pictures which were superimposed thereto, and he said, “Oh, come on, Dr. Young, this is the way we advertise. You see it in the paper all the time, don’t you?” And I said, “Well, yes you do, but don’t you think we could have overlooked it at the present time?” And he said “No.”

Chairman: I want to commend Dr. Young for his honesty.

Senator Richardson: May I go on: “…the gentle art of getting girls. In a London rooming house, three dissimilar young bachelors exercise their charm on a bewildered, apparently innocent young girl from the country. Tolen is arrogant, hard, a sexual Fascist. Colin is shy, fumbling, and earnest. Tom is witty, cool, tart, and very humane. Into their lives comes seventeen-year-old Nancy Jones, a young fawn of maddening innocence.”

Dr. Young: It’s a rather old theme.

Senator Schmitz: May I ask what a sexual Fascist is?

…

[Paul Omar Stilwell, a campus custodian who found a ticket to The Beard in the parking lot and attended it, takes the stand]

Chairman: Do you have anything to add to the testimony we have already heard? Would you sit down, please?

Mr. Stilwell: I sure can’t see why anybody would put on a play like that, whether it’s free or be charged for or anything else. Sex is sex, but I don’t think it should be put in those respects. I think it’s a disgrace to the school and to the people that had anything to do with it and also to the City of Fullerton. And anything like that, I can’t see it.

…

[Dr. Stuart Silvers, professor of philosophy, takes the stand]

Senator Schmitz: Dr. Silvers, do you think the hangup on sex, as I believe Dr. Duerr described, the fact that some people are a little, well, shall I put it mildly, squeamish about this type of thing; is that the problem or is the problem the fact that people are getting a little too liberal with sex?

Dr. Silvers: I don’t know whether squeamishness at all is an issue. I would say there are any number of events that take place on all college campuses which are, in my opinion, as provocative , but since this one is sexually provocative, it has generated this type of response.

Senator Schmitz: Well, you see, I also teach philosophy, or used to, before going into the legislature. There are two opinions here: One, of course, is that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. The other thing is the relativist’s opinion who feels that the absolutist is a disease; the absolutist feels that the relativist is the disease. Which is your point of view?

Dr. Silvers: I subscribe to none of those oversimplified remarks, philosophically.

…

[Jane Arthur, a student who played the female lead in The Dutchman, another play directed by Terry Gordon, takes the stand]

Chairman: Do you have anything you wish to convey to the committee in connection with what you learned from having been in [The Dutchman]…I assume there was some educational value?

Ms. Arthur: It was done two years ago; however, I do remember the experience that I received from doing that play, as I am sure does most of the audience, my mother included. It was a very moving play. It has a great deal to say about society, about the viciousness of the conflict between the negroes and the whites, and it was brought out, not with the language intended to titillate, but intended rather to expose the viciousness of this particular person that I play.

…

Senator Richardson: The Supreme Court of the United States discussed a book by John Cleland in the October term, October 1965, and there is a quote in there by Alexander Pope which I think is rather interesting and I would like to have it entered into the record. It’s called “Monster Vice”:

Vice is a monster so frightful mean

As to be hated only to be seen.

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, pity, and then embrace

I thought it was a rather interesting quote and I would like to enter it into the record and also I would like to move that the full text of the play The Beard and also the full text of the other one we discussed, The Dutchman, be entered into the record and the excerpts from the Free Press we discussed.

…

[Dr. Miles McCarthy, Dean of Medicine and Science, takes the stand and makes this statement]:

Dr. McCarthy: My name is Miles D. McCarthy. I am before you today as a representative of the California State College at Fullerton Faculty Council and the Chairman of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Ethics. The committee recommended to the Faculty Council and Council approved the following statement:

We, the faculty of California State College at Fullerton, have a common concern, cause and purpose with the community at large; namely, the operation of an institution to discover, analyze and disseminate knowledge, and to educate our youth. The fundamental method, or tool, used in this process is freedom of intellectual inquiry. While it has been often challenged, such freedom has repeatedly been upheld as a method which is absolutely necessary to the pursuit of knowledge. Therefore, in consideration of our obligation to society, we, the faculty of California State College at Fullerton, reaffirm our determination to encourage the free pursuit of learning, and to seek and state the truth as we see it concerning ideas, art forms, issues and controversies within the framework of law. The responsibility to assure, insofar as possible, peaceful demonstrations and assemblies when ideas clash and contend is also recognized. As responsible scholars, we pledge our energies to the enrichment of society. As a fulfillment of our pledge, academic freedom is the single most important condition we require of society…It must be recognized that seeking the truth is sometimes hazardous but that all avenues of approach are meritorious as are all pieces however small and awkward in completing a puzzle.

Senator Richardson: And this group and organization you are talking about of teachers, professors, et cetera, they should have the final word?

Dr. McCarthy: I believe that in order to maintain the kind of institution that you and I want, they must have.

Senator Richardson: If my understanding of a dictatorship is correct, those who have the final word on all situations, thus comprise that sort of a group; is that not correct?

Dr. McCarthy: Say that again?

Senator Richardson: What I am trying to say is that all the characteristics that I have ever known of a dictatorship is when a few people have the final say so on anything.

Dr. McCarthy: That is exactly what I hope will not occur. In Russia, as you may remember, they were prohibited by law from examining genetics…

Senator Richardson: But this is the point I am trying to make: People of the United States of America and the State of California decide by representative government what should happen. That’s the free system. That’s my understanding.

Dr. McCarthy: Right.

Senator Richardson: What I gathered from your testimony is that you are saying that a small group of people in the state, numerically, and the educators and the professors have a right and should have a right to have the final decision. Now, that isn’t the mass of people in this state, in my opinion. Do you see my point?

Dr. McCarthy: Yes, I see your point, but it seems to me that what I want, and what I hope you want also is that we, as tax-supported institutions, have a very real challenge and also a very real purpose in examining everything from as objective a point of view as we can…

Senator Richardson: But you said that you thought the professors should have the last decision.

Dr. McCarthy: Not just one, but the body…

Senator Richardson: In other words, the oligarchies…

Dr. McCarthy: The oli-who?

Senator Richardson: I do believe the power of this state still rests within the people and to their elected officials.

Dr. McCarthy: That’s correct.

Senator Richardson: And they have a great deal to say about what happens in the state college system. I do not believe that the sole and final decision rests with the instructors only.

Dr. McCarthy: Well, that’s probably not a very fair statement to make. I would say that if this be the case, perhaps maybe the people should run the institutions and not seek professional help.

…

[Dr. David Malone, an English professor, takes the stand]

Chairman: If you would be seated there, your background…perhaps you could tell us.

Dr. Malone: Yes, sir. I am professor of comparative literature and chairman of the English department at the University of Southern California. By way of explaining possible relevance, my being here, I regularly teach courses in European drama. I have been asked by the district attorney’s office in Los Angeles County and Orange County to testify as an expert witness in pornography trials.

Chairman: We have asked the witnesses here to confine their testimony to about five minutes.

Dr. Malone: Yes. All of the issues in this case are at the very center of my own professional life…It seems to me that in yesterday’s questions and answers that three essential issues have been a concern of these hearings: First whether or not the plays, which predictably would offend many people, such as The Dutchess [sic] and The Beard, should be used in college instruction. Second, whether or not responsibility for academic decisions is properly placed and exercised at Cat State Fullerton. And third, whether or not in public institutions the institutions should not act in accordance with the will of the taxpayers who are paying the bills. You’ve all heard a great deal of testimony about The Beard and The Dutchess and whether or not they should be included in the instructional program. I would argue that their inclusion as performances in classes in play directing was justified. There is no way of knowing whether a play is any good or not unless it’s put on. It’s possible to depict all kinds of offensive things tastefully on the stage. Sexual intercourse is depicted in the movies constantly, and frequently with considerable taste.

Senator Richardson: Mr. Malone, what do you think would happen on the Southern California campus if you put on the play The Beard?

Dr. Malone: There would be great public outcry.

Senator Richardson: Do you think you would lose your job?

Dr. Malone: No.

Senator Walsh: Mr. Malone, I would like to ask you as an expert witness…

Senator Richardson: First of all, I would like to bring up…I don’t know if he’s really qualified as an expert witness…

Senator Walsh: These pictures were introduced yesterday, and I’d like to know your opinion as to whether or not, as a pornographic expert, these pictures would be classified as pornography.

Dr. Malone: In my opinion, no.

Senator Walsh: Would you say they were more or less art?

Dr. Malone: I can identify it as the ending of The Beard…

Senator Walsh: What act is assumed in that, answer me that!

Dr. Malone: It assumes an act of cunnilingus.

Senator Richardson: Dr. Malone, would you consider that a pornographic act in that picture?

Dr. Malone: If the act were the actual act, it would obviously be a felony.

Senator Richardson: I’m asking if you believe that is act of pornography if called as a witness on it. It’s my understanding that experts have opinions.

Dr. Malone: This is a picture, not an act. Now, the act itself, I would have to see staged. I do not believe those pictures are pornographic.

Senator Richardson: You do not believe those pictures are pornographic?

Dr. Malone: No.

Senator Walsh: Using the inserts or the excerpts and fact summaries of both plays, The Dutchess and The Beard..

Dr. Malone: Yes, sir.

Senator Walsh: Would you call the terminology used in these plays, in the scripts, would you call this a superior form of education?

Dr. Malone: No, sir, I would not. I might point out that all of those statements are taken out of context.

Senator Walsh: Do you feel that academic responsibility was properly exercised?

Dr. Malone: Yes sir, I most certainly do.

…

[James Clancy, an attorney, is called to the stand]

Senator Richardson: Mr. Clancy, would you give us your background, please?

Mr. Clancy: I am an attorney, licensed to practice in California. I have been interested in the obscenity field for approximately 10 years. I was special prosecutor in a charge of a special section looking into the pornographic situation in Los Angeles County during the year 1964. i have been Assistant City Attorney of Burbank for five years. I have participated in approximately 10 amicus briefs in the United States Supreme Court, 26 of them in this last term, and I have written several documentaries or commentaries on laws of obscenity.

Senator Richardson: You are recognized by William McKesson’s office as an authority in the field of pornography because he has employed you in that line of work?

Mr. Clancy: Yes, I was a special counsel.

Senator Richardson: Would you mind giving your statement on what your opinions are relative to The Beard? Do you believe that it would be considered as tending toward pornography or a proper subject for a state college to present?

Mr. Clancy: Yes, I’ve read The Beard and it is my personal opinion that it is an obscene play, and it’s also my personal opinion that it fits within the California definition of obscenity. I base this upon a recent California case, Landau vs. Fording, involving a similar situation up at California at Berkeley campus. There, Mr. Landau wanted to show a film which was known as Un Chant D’Amor. This was a 26-minute, what they would call an underground film. He was told that if he did show it, he would be prosecuted. Thereupon, he went into the Superior Court in Alameda County, and after a full trial in which many experts testified, Judge Phillips held the matter to be hardcore pornography and enjoined its showing. I, in connection with preparing this documentary filmstrip, the clerk of the court showed me this 26-minute film, and I would strongly recommend that the senators in this investigation take a look at it as it is a matter of record in the superior court in Alameda County. It is nowhere near the offensiveness of The Beard…

…Of course, this goes back to the year 1716, the basis of the obscenity crime and the purpose of it is to exclude from public showing those types of conduct which are regarded as private. This is what our civilization, based on our Judeo-Christian norms, requires, or the majority requires…

…People say you can never drive it back to what it was before, but the same situation existed in the 1700s, and strangely enough, the result of the reaction was to drive society in the other direction toward Puritanism…You’ve got the same situation today, but unfortunately there are very few Alexander Popes to speak out against playwrights who are pushing the line…

…

[Dr. George Forest, assistant professor of drama at Cal State Fullerton, is called to the stand]

Dr. Forest: Throughout the testimony, there has been an assumption that somehow political freedom and the ability of the public to manifest its rights politically has something to do with the educational process in general. I think this is an awfully murky area for many people, but I think we have to face the fact that people are going to be offended no matter what we do in the college system. There are people who last spring came around to me personally, outside the school, who objected to our teaching the theory of evolution. There are people I know who object to the use of live nude models in the art department. There are people who object to teaching of the anthropological proof or disproof of the existence of God, who object to reading Chaucer…

…

[Henry S. Samuels, a resident of Fullerton, president of a group called the Fullerton Improvement Association takes the stand]

Mr. Samuels: I have children, one which is graduating from high school this June, that I expect to go to this college. I have two more within the next three years, and I must state that under terms of types of programs of The Beard and The Dutchman, I would not want any of my children associated with this college…

…

[President Langsdorf is called again to the stand]

President Langsdorf: May I make one statement for the record? I have been a member of the board of the Chamber of Commerce of Fullerton for some several years, and I have never heard of Mr. Samuels or the greater Fullerton Improvement Association.

[Applause from audience]

Chairman: First of all, the audience will confine their applause to something reasonable. Would you rather be excluded, ladies and gentlemen? I have the sergeant and staff here ready to do it. Take your choice.

…

Senator Richardson: Do you believe that a play like this, The Beard, is corrupting to the youth?

President Langsdorf: Is simulated sex any worse than simulated murder? We see that portrayed before young people, before children on television every night, and I assume that this is part of the background and culture of our society that regards sex as somehow evil, whether its normal or abnormal. So, philosophically and logically, it’s hard to understand this, even though my own background revolts at something like this.

…

Senator Walsh: As far as I’m concerned, the fish smells from the head and I can’t seem to find the head around here…

…

President Langsdorf: I think it is the function of higher education to investigate and challenge everything. I think that which is valid would stand up. I think the primary authority of the professor is not the indoctrination of the student, but to educate the student to look and examine and use logical means to determine what is truth, the search for truth…the one thing that the college should insist on is intellectual honesty.

…

[Dr. Duerr is called to the stand again]

Senator Schmitz: I called you up because we had TV time together last night and I wanted some more.

Dr. Duerr: I didn’t see that.

Senator Schmitz: Seriously, Dr. Duerr, how many hours per week do you teach?

Dr. Duerr: I think I teach about 13 to 14.2 or something like that.

…

Senator Schmitz: You indicated there is a difference between an experimental play and one that you put on for public consumption?

Dr. Duerr: Many of the experimental ones are open to the public. All of them could be.

Senator Schmitz: The one you showed last week…what was that production?

Dr. Duerr: The Swamp Dwellers.

Senator Schmitz: Was that an experimental play?

Dr. Duerr: That was put on directly in class.

Senator Schmitz: One thing that struck me, and I say this in all seriousness, have any of these experimental plays ever had a theme other than sex?

Dr. Duerr: Other than sex?

Senator Schmitz: Yes, I mean, all of them that we have talked about here so far have had sex as the theme.

Dr. Duerr: Well, that was your choice, wasn’t it?

Senator Schmitz: I didn’t bring up the title for this discussion.

Senator Schmitz: We asked the director what plays be produced and Senator Richardson said that the only one that didn’t seem to have sex was Shakespeare, and he said that Shakespeare had sex too.

Dr. Duerr: Senator Richardson was in error because the Moliere play was not a sex play.

Senator Schmitz: Excuse me

Dr. Duerr: The Moliere play was not a sex play, so he was wrong.

Senator Richardson: Then I stand corrected.

Dr. Duerr: I am saying that you can call everything sex plays.

Senator Schmitz: Not Walt Disney.

Dr. Duerr: Sometimes it seems to me, after listening for a couple of days, that you are not investigating a state college, but you are investigating drama.

…

Former CSUF history professor Lawrence de Graaf writes:

“At the end of the hearings, the committee issued a public statement calling for the dismissal of Duerr and Young from the Cal State Fullerton faculty. If such action was not taken, the committee would offer legislation requiring the dismissals. The senators introduced 10 legislative proposals in April 1968, ‘aimed at calming campus turbulence and upholding moral standards,’ through internal control of the Board of Trustees and the college president. Senator Schmitz warned budget cuts to higher education could emerge as one means to handle ‘flagrant moral corruption and revolutionary violence planned and carried out behind the cloak of academic freedom.’ The California State College Academic Senate call for for defeat of the proposals, which could ‘lead to a trend toward autocratic, dictatorial control of College Trustees and every student and faculty activity on campus.’ Although several of the bills introduced by [the committee] passed in the senate, all died in the State Assembly.

Dr. Young later reflected on the episode, “Academic freedom is perhaps stronger here for having been tested.”

Here’s a little bio on Senator John G. Schmitz, taken from the Arlington National Cemetery web site. He is buried there.

Schmitz first made the headlines in 1962 while stationed at El Toro as a Marine officer teaching other Marines about the dangers of Communism. Using nothing more than the sheer authority of his voice, he disarmed an assailant who was stabbing a woman by the roadside near the Marine Corps base. Although the woman died, Schmitz’s reputation as a hero–and the roots of his political career–were made.

The next time his picture was on the front page was in 1964 as Orange County’s newest Republican state senator, a position to which he was reelected in 1966. By then, Schmitz had attracted the support of such wealthy conservatives as fast-food magnate Carl Karcher, sporting goods heir Willard Voit and San Juan Capistrano rancher Tom Rogers. So when the county’s longtime conservative Rep. James B. Utt died and local Republicans needed a successor, Schmitz–by then a national director of the ultraconservative John Birch Society — was a natural choice. Using such slogans as “When you’re out of Schmitz, you’re out of gear,” a parody of a well-known Schlitz beer commercial, the Wisconsin native who had grown up scrubbing beer vats won easy election in 1970 and moved his family to Washington.

Schmitz soon established himself as one of the country’s most right-wing and outspoken congressmen and just as quickly enraged his most famous constituent, part-time San Clemente resident President Richard Nixon. Of Nixon’s historic visit to China, Schmitz, whose political hero was Sen. Joseph McCarthy and who considered the visit a sellout, quipped, “I have no objection to President Nixon going to China. I just object to his coming back.” The congressman’s fellow Birchers laughed, but the president was not amused. By election day, neither was Schmitz, who lost his seat to a more moderate candidate. But his political career was far from over. In 1972, after Alabama Gov. George Wallace was seriously wounded when shot by a would-be assassin while campaigning for president, Schmitz was drafted by Wallace’s American Independent Party to run against Nixon. He collected more than a million votes but lost much of his longtime Orange County support.

“He was operating on a higher level of politics than any of us had the guts for,” recalled former Schmitz campaign treasurer Tom Rogers. “His philosophy was unbending, even for his fellow Republicans, and he never doubted his own abilities and was never humble . . . until it was too late.”

In 1978, Schmitz won a second state Senate seat, representing Newport Beach as a Republican. By then, though, caustic remarks about Jews (“Jews are like everybody else, only more so”), Latinos (“I may not be Hispanic, but I’m close. I’m Catholic with a mustache”) and blacks (“Martin Luther King is a notorious liar”) had grown so outrageous that he was beginning to lose the support of even the John Birch Society, which eventually dumped him. He also got into trouble with feminist attorney Gloria Allred after criticizing her support of abortion rights by calling her a “slick, butch lawyeress.” A lawsuit she filed resulted in a $20,000 judgment against him and a public apology. Schmitz drew fire as well by issuing a press release referring to the audience at a series of hearings he chaired on abortion as consisting of “hard, Jewish and (arguably) female faces.”

But the scandal that ultimately brought his downfall was the 1982 revelation that the politician who so loudly espoused family values also had a secret life that included a pregnant mistress and a 15-month-old son. “It was an unimaginable shock,” Santa Ana lobbyist and former Schmitz aide Randy Smith later told The Times. “It was simply unbelievable.”

When Schmitz’s mistress, a 43-year-old German immigrant, was charged with neglecting their son, the former congressman stepped forward to defend her and to identify himself as the father. Although the neglect case was eventually dropped, the damage to Schmitz’s political career was permanent.

Schmitz moved back to Washington, where he purchased a house once owned by McCarthy, and worked part time at Political Americana, a memorabilia store in Union Station. 

But there was to be yet another scandal involving his family. In 1997, Schmitz’s 35-year-old daughter, Mary Kay LeTourneau, a teacher in Washington state at the time, was convicted of carrying on a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student whose child she ultimately bore. LeTourneau, married and the mother of four children when she became pregnant by the boy, served a six-month jail sentence in 1997 after pleading guilty to second-degree child rape. After her release on probation, she became pregnant by the teen a second time, drawing a seven-year prison term.

Among his publications is the book Stranger in the Arena: the Anatomy of an Amoral Decade, 1964 to 1974 (1974).

Two of his children remain involved in politics. His son Joseph E. Schmitz was former inspector general of the US Department of Defense and a former executive with Blackwater, the controversial private military contractor. His son John Patrick Schmitz was former deputy counsel to President George Bush and clerked with former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Schmitz died in 2001.