Southern California Model Railroad Group

You mean the one running from Oregon that you don't have claim to either?

If the split is socially between the sane and insane parts of the state, then I'm talking about the southern, insane half as in primarily south of Humboldt County.

What happened to Long's in Moreno Valley?

"Rick Jones" wrote

Long story, pun intended.

Many years ago the store's then-manager (a model railroader himself) decided to put in a hobby shop since the store wasn't doing as well financially as he thought it should. (Not enough customers.)

So he installed a very complete railroad-oriented hobby shop, eventually using up circa 25% of the store's total floor space (!), and the place did indeed make more money for quite a while. Wasn't unusual to see modelers drive all the way from San Diego, Palm Springs, or west L.A. to shop. The place was *huge* and the prices were good. (They'd even dicker with you sometimes if they thought something had been in stock too long.)

Then the housing developments finally caught up with the Long's location, and the now larger population of non-railroading customers began asking why they couldn't buy some of the things they could usually find at a Long's Drugstore.

Management was unhappy, and they decided to cut down on the floor-space devoted to trains and go back to selling more of their traditional items.

This shrinkage of both their over-the-counter and mail-order business continued for years after the original train-loving manager left, with less and less competent people being put in charge, and less and less hobby items being stocked or sold, and the management eventually -and predictably- said "This stuff is losing us money!" and closed up the small remaining hobby portion of the business one night with very little warning.

It was sure nice while it lasted.

Pete

Give it back to the Hoopa, fine by me.

"Jon Miller" wrote

He did indeed.

Yclept "Train quest", it went under at very nearly the same time as Long's, but for different reasons.

Pete

"Steve Caple" wrote

Hmmm. Reminds me of a friend (?) of Hispanic heritage who recently told me that the "Americans" should all go away and return California to the Mexicans they stole it from.

When I sweetly asked him whether the Hispanics were then in turn going to return it to the Native Americans *they'd* stolen it from beforehand he declaimed "That's different!".

As Rodney King said, post-beating and riots; "Can't we all just get along?"

The Californian and Mexican Hispanics _are_ the Native Americans of that area. They were converted to Spanish speaking Christians by the conquistadors.

If you are speaking of CA I'm sure there are lots of native americans who would disagree with you. And in fact as I write this now I'm within a

Isn't that sad - the native people of your country and you have them corralled on the crappiest land in existance!

On 10/29/2007 8:24 PM Greg Procter spake thus:

I understand the same situation exists in Australia (not where you live, I know). What about the Maori where you are? How're they treated? Not so great from what I read.

"Christopher A.Lee" wrote

Sorry, but you're thinking of Mexico, where most of the population is indeed of mixed European and Amerind blood; but we're speaking of California where, between them, the Spanish civil authorities and the Church simply killed off or enslaved the greater part of the Native Californians within their reach, and did not intermarry to anywhere near the extent that prevailed in the south. And in any case, Mexican-Americans such as my "friend" have no Californian Indian blood in their veins anyway, and as such have no more historical claim to the west coast of the US than the current European-American occupants do.

The current fad -current in Mexico, that is- for stating that we should give the American southwest back to the Mexicans is based on two things and two things only: (1.) greed, and (2.) the psychotic dream that all of the southwest's potential would still have come true if it had remained part of Mexico.

The truth is that it would instead be just like the rest of Mexico is today: a corrupt, poverty-stricken mess; full to overflowing with starving people who will willingly risk their lives crossing our borders to find work.

Pete

"Greg Procter" wrote

Yes, alone with only their 99 year leases on most of the land in Palm Springs, their casinos, and all those billions of dollars of gambling income to keep them warm. (This ain't the 1950s any more, Greg. A large number of California's Native American tribes are doing quite well, thank you.)

Matter of fact, they're doing so well that they've learned to behave just like well-off European-Americans, I.E., many of the casino-owning tribes are currently purging their tribal roles of members they don't care for; cutting them off from the tribal income and throwing them back onto welfare while at the same time accidentally (whoops!) turning themselves from mere multi-millionaires into multi-multi-multi-millionaires.

Ah, the noble savage...

Pete

The Australians appear so far not to have recognised their Aboriginies as human.

They've had equal rights as individuals since NZ was founded in 1840. What wasn't recognised until around 1970 was their culture - they were expected to fit in with our European culture. Since about 1970 that's been reversed.

Greg.P.

I'm reasonably well aware of the situation. Billions of dollars income from gambling isn't necessarily a good thing.

They live in enclaves in a country noted for it's corruption - it's not surprising that some of them have learned European-yank ways.

That's not true. For it to be true, all indian reservations would have to be within California.

Groom Lake would be high on the list.

Cheers, John