Re: O'Connor Autos

03/18/09 - posted by Candis Smyk Hurlbut

Sometimes, after I read the latest, I click on some of the older items below, and this reappeared. I didn't answer this one a while back; sorry, but I was trying to remember where O'Connor's was and also forgot about where I forgot O'Connor's was! (The dreaded C-Nile Virus again! I'm still both making people laugh over the virus, and suggesting they check out this site.) There were service stations on the southeast corner of Ninth for many years. (I was, previously mentioned, surprised to see both what was--and wasn't--still there when I visited back home after many years last summer '08.) O'Connnor's may have been on the other corner, or it may have been a bit further up Ninth, definitely somewhere close to Ninth and Lincoln, but I still can't remember exactly where. It absolutely not on Tenth. After Ninth, there was Little Shamrock, then the Toulouse French Laundry (when did that disappear?), then a Mowhawk service station on the southeast corner (also gone), and an apartment house on the southwest corner of Tenth. The apartments appeared large and rather elegant to me when we moved to the middle of Tenth Avenue. Now, with huge apartment complexes, the building appeared so tiny and vintage as I drove past last year. There was also an artist's studio on the west side of the 1200 block of Ninth, Lewis Sinclair (really!), a take out tomales place, and a photography studio (maybe even a movie studio at one time) further up that side of the block. By the way, Frank Capra of movie fame, wandered into a movie studio looking for a job, and the rest was history. That building in which the movies were made was at the beginning of the Panhandle, at the same area as the S.P. Hospital, and the Motor Vehicles office where many of us applied for driver's licenses. I believe it was a full service garage or auto body shop in the early 60s. As we are able to create our own movies in confined spots, perhaps the ghosts of Frank Capra and others are amazed at how our tiny video recorders can do so much more than their huge pieces of equipment. Is it too bad they picked up and moved to LA? Not if you read the recent report on the almost western freeway. LA used to be a quiet little place...before "improvements" changed it long ago. As I thought about it last summer, I was thankful Progress was slower in destroying my favorite city than most others. Thank God!