Lon Allan

Although students at Atascadero High School know it as Building B, for many in the community it is the last of the original Margarita Black Union High School built on a bluff overlooking the downtown civic center.

About 20 years ago, I complained editorially that a stepchild of mine who I think was in the fourth grade was getting presents for doing her schoolwork. In reality, I think the teacher had a box of treats or toys in one corner of the room and when you turned in your work, you got to reach into the box and pull out a surprise. It was a tiny trinket and admittedly didn’t cost much.

Two weeks ago, I was stuck in traffic on Highway 101 near Buellton and soon ordered by a CHP officer to turn around and head back to Santa Barbara. Up ahead I saw black smoke.

Back in 1928, the Atascadero Development Syndicate, headed by Oscar Willett of Seattle, ripped out a large oak and razed the Lone Star Garage at the corner of the State Highway and La Plaza Lane. Today, the location is El Camino Real and Traffic Way.

I first met Steve Martin when he walked into my high school advanced speech class. Steve, along with a dozen other students, wrote, recorded and produced a 15-minute radio show that was broadcast over KPRL on Wednesday nights.

Walmart’s parking lot in Paso Robles lies in the path of a seasonal creek that gushes from a gully during major storms. Shoppers seldom notice it. It flows through a huge culvert beneath the parking lot. The culvert was built with $1.6 million granted in 1993 by the Paso Robles Redevelopment Agency.

Stakes in the ground at the front entrance to the Historical Society’s Colony House delineate where pathways will meander and then line up with a pedestrian bridge joining Colony Square with historic Sunken Gardens. Those walking paths would have passed through a small plaza consisting of landscaping, benches and maybe even a bronze statue of Atascadero’s founder, E.G. Lewis.

I mentioned to a friend of mine that the Christmas holidays were not particularly kind to me; I usually find myself depressed and unhappy. He suggested I think about times that were especially good ones to get me through my holiday funk.

I’ve heard the question asked recently about whether it is worth it to get a college education. Pundits in print and on TV have offered that there are many successful men and women who never went to college, or at least who didn’t get a degree.

Recently I had the chance to peek at some photos of the interior of Atascadero’s City Administration Building, which is being repaired to the tune of about $42 million. Slightly half of that total will be paid for by the federal government while the city is paying the rest. The Federal Emergency Management Agency only will pay for what the 2003 San Simeon Earthquake damaged. But the city wants to do a complete restoration of the inside of the building, which Atascadero founder E.G. Lewis never got around to doing.