Los Gatos Jubilee: Town Memories—A Potpourri

Editor's Note: We asked and you answered ... more than a dozen stories or poems about Los Gatos have been shared with us on our Los Gatos Jubilee Facebook page, or at the end of posts on this site for publication beginning today in honor of the town's quasquicentennial celebration. This is the first submission, written by longtime town resident Peter S. Carter, paying homage to the town we all love so much on We're joining the Museums of Los Gatos StoryShare project and sharing with them your contributions here.

• First ride to San Jose down the recently opened Highway 17 in the late 1950s with a car load of fellow Bellarmine students
• Fishing in Lake Vasona before any park existed around it St. Mary’s Youth Club Sunday breakfasts at the Hotel Lyndon and parties at Jimmy Farwell’s grand Victorian at 55 Broadway Ave.
• Delivering newspapers throughout The Almond Grove and on Broadway Stopping in to chat with dishwasher Dennis Varni at the old Shorepost Café – now Dolce Spazio
• Going into for the first time after Chris Benson and Johnny Hannegan converted the old Cranberry House into a great saloon
• Enjoying chili cheeseburgers at Foster Freeze across from Los Gatos High School
• Attending the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Day football game between
  Los Gatos and Campbell
• Doing yard work for $1.25 an hour at old Mr. Silva’s run down home at 60 Ellenwood – now Barbara and Mark Beck’s elegant mansion
• Washing down the sidewalk, waxing the floors and delivering prescriptions on my Vespa for Mr. Nolan, the pharmacist/owner of Northgate Drug Store – where the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce was until recently
• Being in The Burger Pit on a fateful night in the summer of 1962 when we learned that David White and Mark Nicholson had just been in a fatal car accident in Arizona
• Getting booted out of The Cats with Michael Kilkenny in the late 1960s for all sorts of very good reasons
• Smoking a bit of illegal cannabis on a Saturday afternoon in the '70s and subsequently consuming the largest Royal Hot Fudge Double Banana Anna Split at Bumbleberry – now Forbes Steakhouse
• Getting my first moving violation in 1959 for making an illegal U-turn on my Vespa in front of Crall’s Stationary Store – now Andale’s
• Being able to ride on a Vespa all the way from up Overlook Road into Saratoga on the old fire trails, now long blocked off
• Swimming every possible summer day in the Olympic-sized pool on the
  old Bacigalupi estate – now the beautifully restored residence of Kelly and Jason Farwell
• Stopping to watch the falling leaves blow across the front of the old University Avenue School—now —as it sat deserted in the late
  '50s
• Wondering when someone was going to tear down the old Fanning’s
  Trailer Park—now Walgreen’s