Childhood memories of Fresno lead to historical scavenger hunt

My journey

I moved away from my hometown, Fresno, twice. The first was in 1972, when I was just 9 years old, and when I moved back six years later, a lot had changed. A burger joint called Lesterburger, which to my young eyes seemed as timeless as the pyramids of Egypt, had gone out of business. So had White Front, the shopping destination of its day.

The second time I left was in 2011, when I moved to the Central Coast. I love it here. But shortly after I arrived, I started having the urge to revisit Fresno — not the Fresno of today, but the Fresno of my youth. I wanted to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong, prove that you can go home again.

I did so by writing a book called “Fresno Growing Up: A City Comes of Age 1945-1985,” a look at the city during its growth spurt following World War II.

You can, too.

With the advent of the Internet, it’s possible for you to dig into the depths of your hometown as never before. Social media can connect you with others who can jog your memory and offer memories of their own. Historical resources are often a keyword or two away, and online archives provide more opportunities than you might have thought possible.

I wrote “Fresno Growing Up” without a single visit to a newspaper archive or a historical society. Both can be great resources. (I did contact more than one historical society for information on my next book, a history of U.S. Highway 99 in California.) But being a few hours away from Fresno, it helped to be able to do so much research at a distance.

Scavenger hunt

The process was like a scavenger hunt. I started by looking online for people with similar interests and found there’s more than one Facebook group dedicated to the history of Fresno. The same is true with San Luis Obispo, Cambria and many other communities.

My advice? Start conversations and pay attention as others share their memories. They’ll offer leads that will take you to places you may never have known existed.

Do you know the names of local celebrities from your community’s past? Look them up on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. That’s how I found Dean Opperman, a top-rated Fresno DJ from the 1980s (who, incidentally, attended Cal Poly). Not only did he grant me an interview and provide some photos for the book, he also ended up writing the foreword.

A number of online databases are available; some are free to access, while others charge a fee. I used Newspapers.com, which charges $79.95 a year for unlimited access to digital archives to more than 3,600 newspapers dating to the 1700s.

If your newspaper isn’t among them, there are other options.

History columnists post invaluable material online for various media outlets. Local examples include Dan Krieger’s Times Past and David Middlecamp’s Photos from the Vault columns, which run in The Tribune.

Paula Lloyd’s Ask Me column for The Fresno Bee is a great resource for that area; for Southern California, try kcet.org/socal/history.

I also consulted history books on the area, readily available at the library or from booksellers, and racked up quite a collection that included some out-of-print volumes I found on eBay and at used bookstores.

Going to the sources

As I nailed down the basics, I made a list of people to contact for interviews, either by phone or email. Most of them were gracious, and many, as luck would have it, lived here on the Central Coast — a popular retirement destination for Fresnans.

When I couldn’t find enough archival information about an ostrich race (yes, an ostrich race!) at the Fresno Fairgrounds, I contacted former Fresno media personality Dick Carr, who had retired to Pismo Beach. He filled me in on all the hilarious details. Sadly, he passed away a few months later.

I was grateful I had the chance to speak with Carr, just as I was happy I snapped a picture of an iconic burger stand named Angelo’s just weeks before it was torn down to make way for the high-speed rail project.

The photo on the cover of “Fresno Growing Up” depicts a drive-in theater called the Sunnyside, which, unlike the Sunset Drive-In in San Luis Obispo, is gone now.

But the Sunnyside still exists in the memories of many who grew up in Fresno, and now, in the pages of my book. Yes, you can go home again. Sometimes, it just takes a little scavenger hunt to get you there.

This story was originally published January 24, 2016 at 4:44 PM with the headline "Childhood memories of Fresno lead to historical scavenger hunt."