The Quotable Mr. Sleeper
[Click here for a biography of the late Orange County Historian Jim Sleeper]
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Because I always wanted to write, I spent six years in college majoring in classical literature. After I got out and began writing, I discovered (like most English majors) that I could say something nicely, but had nothing to say. So I went back to college and soaked up history for three years. When I got out this time, I discovered (like most history majors) that I had something to say, but couldn’t say it very well.
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I encourage every parent to enroll his offspring in at least one historical society as not much harm can come of it.
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Doing historical research is like eating peanuts – once you start, you don’t know when to stop.
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Anyone who writes history must own up to the fact that it boils down to a judicious combination of banditry, lard and well-turned transitional phrases.
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One of the whimsies of local history books is that when one first comes out you can’t give it away; five years later you can’t buy it for love nor money.
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In retrospect, the author is inclined to view his annotation as a bit heavy handed. Possibly that was over-reaction on my part, for I have always been sensitive about my magazine articles. Those unfamiliar with Orange County’s whimsical history are inclined to huff: “Sleeper never lets the facts get in the way of a good yarn.” Good yarns I trust they are, but they are also woven from facts. The plethora of references in this book is designed to refute what no undocumented magazine story can ever do – that is, to substantiate that local history doesn’t have to be believable to the true!
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If my treatment seems a bit jocular, the facts are no less true. One of the curses of our culture is that one is not taken seriously unless one writes seriously.
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To those nit-picking nastards who complained that our “too frisky prose” was unbecoming of history, we humbly apologize and offer the observation that if ever history were described as glumly as it really was, we would all blow out our brains for fear of creating more. A nastard, by the way, is a particularly nasty bastard.
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There never has been a history written yet that a better one could not be written the next day – particularly by the person who just wrote the last one.
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It takes two people to write a book: one to do the job, the other to stop him when he’s finished.
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They say I spell bird, b-u-r-d. If b-u-r-d doesn’t spell bird, what in hell does it spell?
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Praise may not inspire perfection, but it frequently inspires better effort.
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Currently there is a tendency in this land to integrate everything. The effect on historical reference books is to reduce all things to the mean, the medial, the moderate and the middle. Men are rounded off like ball bearings so there won’t be any rub. After sampling several of these fountains of forgetfulness, I concluded that it was better to save one’s breath to blow hot soup. To hell with the Golden Mean (except as a point of contrast).
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We’re still too close to make sound judgments, but because the county has become so populous, I suspect the people history of our times, which started roughly in ’45, will boil down largely to the “composite man” – that is to day, the typical, statistical man. And God help us, his statistical attitudes. In short, averaged our summations based on surveys, opinion polls, and demographic studies – all of which make the ordinary man sound even more ordinary than he already is. Personally, I hate the common man. He makes for such damn dull reading!
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Much modern academic history seems bent on destroying the man as well as the myth.
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It is not history’s purpose to make histories, but to record the full man, warts, accomplishments and all.
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Assessing historic subjects in terms of modern political correctness does not only a disservice to the subject, but to the purpose of history itself, which is to record the past in terms of the past.
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Failing to bring new primary source material to light, or passing judgment on historic personages, deeds and ideas, in the context of contemporary hindsight, morals or values, is merely hash spiked with propaganda. In brief, it is simply “making points” for the prosecution.
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Like all “serious” historians (even though some may write funny), Terry Stephenson learned that from old-timers one gets the color and flavor of a story; from documentary sources one gets the facts and figures. Both are important. The former is necessary in spinning a good yarn; the latter is essential in weaving good history. But it is the combination of the two that counts.
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Old-timers frequently tend to “round off” a story, their recollections being long on action and short on detail. The quirks of memory being what they are, such omissions are understandable. So it is that much of what passes for oral history is really historical folklore. That is no insult to the old-timer or his recorder – unless the latter has delusions of being thought of as a “serious” historian.
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I must say that tape recorders are my one concession to modern technology. That, and pop top beer cans.
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The “New Information Age” is largely misinformation, but transmitted much faster.
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File Cabinet: A place where papers get lost alphabetically.
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It’s a dull day when I don’t learn something old.
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Even the worst among us can serve as bad examples
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Every historian shoots himself in the foot once in a while. I should have been born a centipede.
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Some idiot once suggested that “No one is too old to learn.” He should have added, “Maybe that is why all of us keep putting it off.”
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The really curious thing about Orange County is that there isn’t anything curious about it at all – except in the eyes of outsiders. To be sure, the county is more vocal, richer and smaller than most, which seemingly makes it easier to summarize. But for all its vocality, its wealth, its diminutiveness, Orange County is American history revisited.
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Periodically, Orange County suffers the indignity of having its insides examined by the outside. Skinning southern California’s fat cat most often are writers from the eastern slicks, who blow into the county one day and blow off in print the next with another inside exposé of “this colony of nuts, Utts, Knotts and Schmitzes.”
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Not infrequently writers have called Orange County, for all its peculiarities and provincialism, “a microcosm of these United States.” That observation is usually made by visitors. Natives are more inclined to say that “These United States are a macrocosm of Orange County.”
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Orange County is an exception to almost every rule.
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All history is local history somewhere.
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Town rivalry in Orange County was keen in the 19th century. Indeed, it was so up to the mid-point of this one, before development consumed the land and melted one community into the next. In those early times, each town was defined, its flavor unique, its personality preserved, its boundaries set off from its neighbors’ by two, three or ten miles of groves, barley fields or untilled plains. Today, the individual flavor is gone, the rural buffers have disappeared and what small rivalry remains in confined to piratical annexation attempts on the little that is left.
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When it comes to local pride, I’m not just provincial, I’m downright bigoted.
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When I was a kid in Santa Ana, on Saturday nights you’d see all the farmers from Tustin driving their pick-up trucks into town with a broom stuck in one corner of the bed that was used to sweep it out before they came into town. The El Toro folks drove in, too – but they did without the broom!
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Seventy years ago, editors were less apprehensive as to what other people thought about what they published.
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A few venerable souls, whose memories stretch back to the golden days of Orange County’s agricultural period, may also recall that years ago local newspapers actually printed local news. Needless to say, the practice has long since been discontinued.
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In California’s rancho period, when the flag of the eagle and the snake still flew over the land, a man was not dressed until he was on his horse.
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Beginning about the time our 1901 courthouse opened until 1963, when Rankin’s Dry Goods store folded, among the most prestigious jobs for women who went to work in Santa Ana was either to become a Rankin’s lady or a courthouse lady.
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Country roads with their three ruts were Orange County’s first freeways. (The rut in the middle, naturally, belonged to the horse.)
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Place names we were against. Greenville to Griset Park. Starr Ranch to Caspers Regional Park. Orange County Airport to John Wayne. They should have named the county administration building after him because it looks like a Big John.
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What Dan Baker knew about farming could fit handily on the head of a pin with room left over for a few Bible verses.
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The good old days frequently seem better and lovelier in retrospect. The truth is, however, that much of the beauty of Orange County was imported. Our central plain – this Santa Ana Valley we are sitting in at this moment – prior to European settlement, was rather bleak. It ran largely to swamp, or to plains of sagebrush, cactus and a few scrubby-looking plants.
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In terms of foreign settlement, Orange County is a veritable U.N. – even if its citizens wouldn’t vote for it.
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In southern California, natural phenomena never have to be too phenomenal to attract attention.
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But then you know those L.A. people. When they lost Orange County in ’89 they lost everything but shame. They never did have any shame.
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Orange County has always been conservative, but the roots of its conservatism were planted on both sides of the fence. Here it was the cut of a man’s jib that won elections, not the color of his ticket. There were good men in both parties and people wanted to vote for whomever they damn well pleased.
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Nor is the so-called old-time Orange County conservative the sourpuss he is cracked up to be. For good conversation, give me an old-timers every time over any of these nouveau riche county-come-latelies who fancy themselves as real custodians of local thought. They are mirthless!
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Despite all its peculiarities, perhaps because of them, O.C. is still the last great bastion of individualism. We’ve always put a high premium on the right to be different.
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About the only thing most Orange Countians would agree upon is that they don’t want to be forced to agree with anyone else.
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Orange County’s famous conservatism actually is, and always has been, fiscal conservatism. That’s what makes the county bankruptcy so out of character.
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Speaking of ourselves, we would like to correct two misconceptions. The first is that the author is just a little younger than God. The second is that he stands as the last bulwark against progress in this county. Not so; we have plenty of competition on both scores. While it is true that we date back to penny postcards and still ask the band to play Dardenella, we eschew those county mossbacks who’ve seen a good many changes – and been against every one of them!
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Democrats, Republicans, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of difference then. The county was so small everyone knew them personally. These politicians were answerable to people they actually knew. Now their constituents are sort of a mass of vague faces, and I think that makes a big difference.
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The communists are making political capital out of capitalism’s political socialism.
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I don’t mind living in a welfare state, I’m just sorry I’m not poor enough to enjoy it!
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Like most important men, he had more critics than friends. Most people who knew James Irvine knew him only in a business sense. With some he left the impression of the brusque, humorless, hard-headed landowner. Some came away thinking he was “tighter than bark on a gum tree.” All will tell you that he drove a hard bargain, but once a bargain was struck he never reneged.
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Few enterprises in Orange County history have provoked greater excitement or produced less profit than have its myriad tales of buried treasure and misplaced mineral wealth.
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Speaking of minerals, there is this to be said for the Santa Ana Mountains. They look as though there ought to be something in them. . . . Looks can certainly be deceiving.
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The myths that have turned up regarding Silverado’s first mine would fill a book, though preferably not this one.
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James T. Smith had numerous nicknames, the most prevalent being “Lyin’” Smith, “Greasy Jim,” and “Cussin’ Jim.” It is doubtful that anyone ever called him “Holy Jim,” at least to his face.
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In a day and age when salty language was nothing unique, Smith must have been outstanding in his class for he earned the title of “Cussin’ Jim.”
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You know, two-thirds of Orange County’s population has never seen two-thirds of Orange County’s natural beauty and wildlife.
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Today our county is a house divided. Alternately we are ecologized by Jolly Green Giants or bulldozed by Gypsy Land Developers. One would return us to caves; the other would condemn us to condominiums. Like the label on a pair of Levi’s, with two horses pulling opposite pant legs, most of us are caught in the crotch.
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The trouble with most open minds is that they are usually open at both ends.
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All generalizations are false – including this one.
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Ecology boils down largely to whether someone is going to build a house blocking your view.
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Justice is when your side wins.
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Jointly projected with Anaheim artist Diann Marsh is a tribute to this county’s past architectural triumphs which we plan to dedicate to Redevelopment Agencies everywhere and call The Historic Parking Lots of Orange County.
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Orange County’s redevelopment agencies are removing local history faster than I can write it.
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I suppose I’m not a true “preservationist” in that I don’t think that every old building should be saved. As a historian, I do most of my preserving on paper. Moreover, there are a good many old buildings in Orange County that were dog-ugly the day they were built, with no redeeming architectural or historical significance, that entirely deserve to disappear.
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The first and last of anything is always of interest to a historian.
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One development, you can refer to them as a certain hilly development in Anaheim, they contacted me and said they were planning to knock down Robber’s Roost and then asked if there was any history to it. They wanted a “clean historical bill of health.” I told them to go to hell.
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I’ve been called the Herodotus of Holy Jim. Not often, of course. Half of the people wouldn’t know Herodotus from Adam’s off-ox. The other half couldn’t find Holy Jim with a posse.
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When it comes to local history, the last vote is never in. It is one of its chief charms and greatest challenges.
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Just because I’d rather look at an oak tree than at somebody’s rear bumper, the papers call me “Orange County’s last rustic.”
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In the city, according to my wife, I couldn’t find an elephant on a basketball court. However, after forty years of stomping around the Santa Anas, I can usually find my way out of the forest.
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One of the charms of the past is that it is past, but at least it wasn’t master-planned.
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I think the greatest charm of the past is the fact that it’s past. You’ve got the perspective of looking back on it and enjoying it and profiting from it without any discomfort.
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Historical research is like eating quail; you wade through so much to wind up with so little. The problem is to run down those many sources thought to exist, then digest those few that really do.
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There’s a lot more history being written than researched these days.
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When it comes to local history, some guys wouldn’t spend 10 cents to see Father Serra wrestle a bear in Angel Stadium.
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Over 1,075,000 county residents are gainfully employed. The rest are historians.
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Admittedly I resist change. I resist it for the same reason I resist death; it’s the untested novelty of it that bothers me.
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It’s not so much the good ol’ days we miss, it’s youth. But it was a kinder, gentler life in the old days.
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People in the middle age are too busy making a living to do much reading. The old are nostalgic, the young are looking for roots. You don’t find roots looking on the freeway and the young are interested in how we got to be the way we are and what it was like here in the old days.
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At best life is a drawing and as one grows older the shorter straws begin to pop up more often.
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Currently we have a whole new generation of pioneers in Orange County – people who have seen this county change from what it was two or three years ago to what it is today.
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I have long clung to the delusion that O.C. was entirely populated by fine folks. The truth is that there are quite a few rascals here, too. The sooner they leave the better it will be for the 30 or 40 of us who are left.
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One of the unique characteristics of an Orange Countian is that anyone who’s been here six months talks as though he’s the first white man in the territory.
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They say the good die young. I’m counting on that.
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Civilization is closing in on the hills, but in ten years I’ll still be there. I’ll be the grey-haired old fart standing tiptoe on Santiago Peak – potted orange tree in one hand, sack of lima beans in the other – surrounded by one bobcat, one mountain lion, one fox, one coyote, a bluejay and a badger. After that I don’t know where we’ll go.
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Know that every time you see the sun rising over Saddleback, we are both still smiling on you!