Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally ran on Dec. 31, 2020, in CVN Vol. 27, No. 15. This week’s Throwback Thursday is run in honor of the author’s brother, Arthur, who passed away at the age of 75 in Sacramento, California, on Aug. 24, 2025.
In 1953, my parents, Sal and Delia Campos, moved to W. Ninth Street. This was the street where my father’s mom lived, and where he grew up. We had previously been living in an Eden, in a setting of produce fields and orchards on the Erno Bonebakker Ranch (across from Girls Inc. on Foothill Road, what is now the Brand Ranch) where my dad tended to the ranch’s needs. The large avocado trees were wonderful as playhouses and for climbing. The leaves served as a protective canopy from the sun. While the fig trees were an unpleasant memory because I did not like the texture of a fig in my mouth and the lemon trees were prickly (though I did love eating lemons cut in half and sprinkled with salt) there wasn’t much not to like about living on the green acres of the ranch.
We moved from the paradise of the Bonebakker Ranch to one of the poorest neighborhoods in Carpinteria! W. Ninth Street was a dead-end slum-like barrio, either derisively or lovingly called Hollywood. The Santa Barbara bus company that made its daily stops on Ninth Street adjacent to Ninth Street and Reynolds Avenue had one driver that would call out “Hollywood and Vine!” But, W. Ninth Street had its plus side, too…