Pen in Hand: Cherry Lane
Pen in Hand: Cherry Lane
By: Jon Hammond
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Posted by editor Mon Nov 6, 2006 11:13:37 PST
Viewed 624 times
0 responses 0 comments There are many streets in the Tehachapi area that are named after trees: Elm, Maple, Walnut, Mulberry, Hickory, etc. Nearly all of them were selected randomly for residential housing tracts. There are a few that have a historical connection to their namesake, especially a little road that for more than 80 years has been called Cherry Lane.
This road runs east-west and is located between Highway 202 to the north and Highline Road to the south. It starts in town at Elm Street and travels west to Sage Lane, where it becomes a dirt road as it continues to the Old Towne business district.
Cherry Lane got its name for a simple and obvious reason — it was once a dirt track between cherry and apple orchards west of town. When my family bought their farm on Cherry Lane in 1921, the road was about 15 feet wide and was mostly used by irrigators and orchard workers. There were more sheep hoofprints than tire tracks in the dirt, since my great-uncle grazed a band of sheep out in the area now known as Golden Hills and brought the flock home each evening.
The only house with a Cherry Lane address was the one my family lived in: no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no natural gas or propane — just a woodstove for cooking and heat, a windmill for water and an outhouse for necessary functions. A 5-gallon bucket painted black and placed on the roof heated water for summer showers and in the winter they heated bath water on the woodstove.
Change came slowly to Cherry Lane. Across the lane and west of our place, a moonshiner named Wilbur built a small house with a huge cellar and sold illegal homemade liquor. Wilbur was sleeping with the wife of a Monolith employee, and when the husband came home early a confrontation ensued and Wilbur shot the husband in the tongue with a .22 pistol (presumably the man’s mouth was open while he was shouting).
Wilbur fled into the mountains south of town and the husband recovered, but Wilbur had to sell the property and Hooks and Tootie Anderson ended up with it and built a nice house and homestead — and they are still living there today.
Most of the orchards were eventually taken out for farming potatoes and other row crops. My Uncle Henry got the road paved in the early 1950s by agreeing to an easement and also by providing any water needed by the paving company for the road preparation. It was never a full-width road (parts of it still aren’t today) but the asphalt did keep the dust down.
Paving the road also allowed people to drive faster, and sometimes when cars whiz past the driveway at 60 miles an hour on our little narrow country lane, I wonder if paving the road was the best idea. For the record, I know of at least three traffic fatalities that have occurred on Cherry Lane, so just because it is a small road doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.
I’ve been trying to get the county to put 25 mile-per-hour speed limit signs on the west part of Cherry Lane for years, but to no avail — we are way, way, way down on the county’s list of priorities. We’re just grateful when Monty Greene comes out in the county truck to put asphalt in the potholes.
I wish that the city would insist that new streets and roads be given names with some local significance. There are endless choices that would some cultural or historical ties to the area — like Basque, Railroad, Locomotive, Limestone, Condor, Rodeo, John Deere, Acorn, Sheepherder, Campfire, Horseback, Nüwa Indian words, etc. Instead we end up with whatever lame street names the Los Angeles developers submit.
At least old Cherry Lane came by its name logically and historically.
Have a good week.
I’d like to wish a happy birthday to the little curly-haired girl in the picture, who was born at home on Election Tuesday on Nov. 2, 1926. Happy 80th birthday, Ma! Thanks for everything… .
My Uncles Henry and Lance hoe weeds in the newly emerging sweet corn raised next to the orchards that once bordered Cherry Lane.
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