News of the Arroyo
Title: | Fine-Featered Farm Team |
Subtitle: | Local author Rick Thomas is for the birds and beyond |
Date: | 2008-01-17 |
Summary: | January 17, 2008 - It's a book-signing next Tuesday at the South Pasadena Public Library for Rick Thomas who is set to release two new books on the Raymond Hotel and the Arroyo Seco. |
Author: | Susan Compo |
Publication: | Pasadena Weekly |
Content: | ![](\"https://www.arroyoseco.org/images/cawstons.jpg\") Those South Pasadenans. They’re long-legged, well-dressed, and their eyelashes bat better than Barry Bonds. But unless you count the seven-foot Steiff toy in the Plexiglas case, there probably won’t be a single ostrich in attendance on Tuesday evening at the South Pasadena Library when local writer and historian Rick Thomas signs and discusses his popular books from Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series. Thomas is the author of “South Pasadena” and “South Pasadena’s Ostrich Farm,” as well as forthcoming books on the Raymond Hotel and the Arroyo Seco. The passionate, aw-shucks-modest, almost accidental author is likely to talk about all four projects, sign copies of the first two and answer questions at the free event. “I live two long blocks from the Ostrich Farm,” Thomas says, adding that he’s a fan of the loft development’s ostrich statue. “It’s modern looking but it pays homage to the history. It got me thinking … that Walking Man [statue adjacent to the Mission Gold Line Station] should have been an ostrich.” You have to like Thomas, who by day supervises trainers who in turn train customer-relations specialists at American Honda in Torrance. “Sidney Torrance created Torrance but he lived in South Pasadena,” says Thomas, for whom all roads lead back to the little city. “I grew up in Diamond Bar but when I came to South Pasadena I knew this was the place I was going to die. I’m staying here ’til the bitter end.” His passion for local history began as a hobby, staying up late and writing about it, getting very little sleep. It all goes back to his childhood, Thomas thinks, and “taking one big long summer trip across America. My dad was a teacher so we had three months to pack up the trailer and go across country. We hit every historical site, roadside attraction … I just loved it. Plus at that time I was bored with the California missions. Even to this day I can’t stand [them].” Such affability and honesty suggest someone who’s more a kooky- than cookie-cutter author, and his books are all the better for it. They’re also painstakingly researched, lovingly put together, and written with his whole being. “‘The Ostrich Farm’ was a real story,” he says, “[as] opposed to something like ‘South Pasadena’ where you had to have pictures of the library, the high school and so on. At first I had so many images of people on the backs of ostriches, and then I realized you can only do that five or six times. But as I started working, I realized it was so much more: It was a huge mail-order business, all direct to the consumer. It’d be an Internet business today.” Edwin Cawston began the Cawston Ostrich Farm in the early 20th century, raising the large, flightless birds for their feathers — and never their meat, as is often erroneously suggested. The burgeoning film industry was a big customer but more surprisingly, Cawston’s South Pasadena farm soon became a tourist attraction, as people came to gawk at the exotic creatures, with the more adveturous human types riding the birds. The photos in Thomas’ book, many of which come from the South Pasadena Public Library’s archives, are a delight, especially the racy image of screen siren Gloria Swanson, not to mention the cover’s Sunkist Beauties drenched in feathers onstage at the Rialto Theater in 1927. Arcadia Publishing’s local history series began in New England and expanded to the point where it now encompasses 3,500 books. The South Pasadena Library, in association with the city’s Rotary Club, seeks to amass all the California books in a project called the Golden State Collection. Photo-driven, short (usually 127 pages and five to 10 chapters), and accessible for grade-schoolers and great-grandparents alike, the books have struck a chord with their communities. “They found the formula, like Starbucks,” Thomas laughs. Author Night presents Rick Thomas at the South Pasadena Public Library’s Community Room, 115 El Centro St., 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. Admission free; refreshments served. “South Pasadena’s Ostrich Farm,” $19.99, Arcadia Publishing. Available at area bookstores, independent retailers, online bookstores, or through Arcadia Publishing at www.arcadiapublishing.com or (888) 313-2665. 01-17-08 |
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