Today's photo shows Coach Lloyd H. Hamren (1886-1975) and the Huntington Beach High School Golf Team on May 2, 1951. Coach Hamren looks like he must have been quite a character. The municipal golf course -- which was adjacent to the High School -- is all condos now. But what isn't?.
Ken at OutsideTheBerm just posted a nice piece on Forrest Morrow and his "Woodimals," which once resided on Knott's Berry Farm's Jungle Island.
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The recent mild Santa Ana wind conditions have stirred the pot again on the perennial argument over spelling and pronunciation: "Santa Ana winds" (like the city) or "santana winds" (possibly a reference to the devil). The Register ran an article about this last year, which generated quite a few comments on their website. (Who knows why they closed down the comments on this article.)
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Jim Sleeper gives about the best accounting of "Santa Ana wind" history I've seen, in pages 71-79 of his first Orange County Almanac:
"...'Devil Wind,' a label inspired no doubt, by the hellish nature of these zephyrs. To support this, the Indian word zanta (possibly Swahili) was dredged up and translated 'devil.' As explained in the Santa Ana Register, 'Santana, of course, was merely a corruption of that well known Indian word,' a theory that holds up about as well as would a snowball in the subject under discussion...Jim also cites Fr. St. John O'Sullivan's interview with Dona Magdalena Murillo (who was born on the Rancho Las Bolsas in 1848), in which she explains that the wind got its name because it "came down the Santa Ana Canyon."
"However, on the authority of John P. Harrington, a research assistant of the Smithsonian Institute, there is a grain of support for the old Devil theory, if not the name that goes with it.
"'Years ago [wrote Harrington], I had a unique experience. I drove with an old Indian from Olive up the Santa Ana River Canyon. Pretty soon after leaving Olive we seem to have been on the north side of the Santa Ana River. We went through a big kind of low place. The Indian said that that was the devil's house, that the devil lived there in the form of a whirlwind, and that a whirlwind is often seen there...'"
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Also, Jim points out that the first instance of the term "Santa Ana winds" in print, was in the April 12, 1873 Anaheim Gazette.
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So I'm voting for "Santa Ana winds," even if the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce doesn't like it much.
