This is later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast more what you Hear
weekday afternoons on the Drive. So I'm going to have Chris Epping on again.
Last time we had him on it was for his volume Happened right here.
His newest study is where he stretches across thirty four cities that compromised the
oc lost landmarks of Orange County. Let's start, Chris. Where is Orange
County? Hey, thanks for having me. Good to hear your voice again.
Orange County is just south of La County. In fact, in eighteen
eighty nine they decided to call themselves Orange County to kind of get out from
the shadow of La County, which even at that point was sort of looming
over pretty heavily and getting a lot of credit for things. And I always
felt that Orange County on its own, being just south of LA had a
lot of things culturally that were super interesting that people were unaware of, whether
you grew up here or live here or not, you know, involving some
of the biggest things on the planet. So I figured I would write this
book to kind of set the record straight. You're a big fan of some
of this antique pop culture stuff. You've written several books about it already,
including it happened right here in Roadside Baseball. I have I love identifying precise
locations of where pop culture history happened. In this case, there are literally
hundreds of them around Orange County. And the good thing was as well,
I got to speak to people that helped shape those landmarks, people like Steve
Martin told me an amazing story about a little club where his stand up career
started, called the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, and so to unpack that
place through his eyes was really a thrill. Yeah, that's kind of what
inspired him, that whole Magic Mountain entertainment stand up comedy scene there. Well,
he's from Orange County. He worked at Knottsbury Farm, he worked at
Disneyland. He really is. You know, people don't realize Steve Martin,
Will Ferrell, some very funny people came out of Orange County and he you
know, he in particular in the early nine eighteen seventies, he told me
that he had a revelation, this particular the Golden Bear, where he literally
took all three hundred people, marched them up and out of the club,
took them across the street, had them all bend down behind a row of
hedges in front of a restaurant, and the next couple that stepped out of
the restaurant, he commanded everyone to stand up, scream, scare the couple,
and then he marched them back into the club. And he said to
me, that night he realized you could break rules, you could break the
wall, you could do things that were unexpected. So he really kind of,
you know, looked at Orange County as a place where his career took
a whole different shape. He also added that the shocked looked on the owner's
faces when he marched people back into this he had marched out three hundred live
checks that hadn't been paid yet lost Landmarks of Orange County. Chris Epting is
with us. Chris Epting is the author of forty five books about to pop
culture. Now, what was it about Orange County? Is it the weather?
Is that what kind of spawned a lot of these attractions? I think
it's weather, and I think there was a lot of open space. The
book also deals with places like Lion Country, Safari, the California Alligator Farm,
the Japanese Deer Park, wide roaming places where animals could roam free.
Look a lot of it is inspired by Disneyland and Knots Buried Farm, Walter
Not and Walt Disney both really I think gave people the idea that an Orange
County essentially anything was possible to try, at least once, and so it
gave way to kind of a lot of crazy tourist attractions wax museums, plane
museums, car museums, and things that Los Angeles didn't have and still doesn't
have. So Orange County became a tourist mechod going all the way back to
the nineteen forties. I am old enough to have gone through Lion Country.
If you don't know what it was. If you don't know what it is,
oh my god, you were allowed to drive down into this area in
your car where there were lions and elephants and zebras, and yes, sometimes
they jump up on the hood of your car. And yes, people were
rolling down their windows to take pictures and getting mauled. What could go wrong?
Listen? I remember I went there in nineteen seventy four, visiting California.
My father turned my mother and said, there are no rules here.
All the animals co mingled together. It was crazy, but somehow it worked
and that's on the cover of the book. Line. So far, the
most famous animal there was Fraser, nicknamed the Sensuous Lion because he sired thirty
five cubs. Wow. And as I learned, he is still there.
There's a housing development on the site today, but Fraser rests peacefully under a
California live oak tree on the property. He never left, so he's still
there today. It's called Lost Landmarks of Orange County and Chris Epting is the
author. Did it also have a little to do with the expanding use of
the freedom the automobile was giving us at about this time, this late fifties
early sixties. Yeah, once, once the trains were being phased out,
a lot more people, you know, Route sixty six was becoming popular.
That brought people to say California. So yeah, there were a lot of
reasons. As car culture expanded, Orange County was sort of the wild West.
It was easy to go to Los Angeles, Hollywood and all that,
but Orange County, just an hour away back then, was this sort of
uncharted territory that had all these great gifts along with the most beautiful beaches,
mountain ranges, things that again you just couldn't find in LA that at least
were uncrowded down in Orange County back then. I was about to say,
because you could as a family vacation, it was if you drove. It
was fairly inexpensive at the time, and you could get some beach time in
absolutely and you could go to Disneyland one day, you could go to the
Alligator from another day. There were so many things to do, and none
of the owners were really in competition because they knew that people would build in
an extra day or two. It's sort of like a rising tide, all
ships rise. They realized that everybody benefited from opening these places because people just
made more time to spend in Orange County honey back then, and they still
do. Lost Landmarks of Orange County. Chris Epting is the author. He's
put it together along with other pop culture books like Roadside Baseball It Happened right
here as well. Has it backed off in recent years? Have there been
other attractions that have kind of stolen maybe some of the some of the fun
away from Orange County? Yeah, I mean things like Universal City and Yeah,
obviously, and as the county has become developed you don't have a lot
of the open space opportunities you used to have. There's still plenty to do
in Orange County. There's still a lot of wild, unexplored territory, but
you know, it's also become a lot more populated. There are more than
three million people in Orange County now. So obviously time marches on. And
that's why I wrote this book because again, so many of the places are
every place in that book is gone, and it's not wasn't just all theme
parks and such. I learned about a German pow camp in World War Two
in a little town called Garden Grove, where the German soldiers in World War
Two would be forced to pick oranges all day. That was their work detail.
And after the war, one hundred of those soldiers moved back to Orange
County because they loved so much and brought their families back here to raise them.
So again, there were a lot of surprises in this book well as
well, to speak to whether you grew up here or not, just speak
to American cultural things that were taking force back then lost landmarks of Orange County.
Chris Epting, you mentioned Root sixty six, which is something we and
Oklahoma are very proud of and are trying to save the culture of which as
much as we can, not only save and preserve the old attractions, but
come up with even new attractions, and we're working to do that as we
can. So I would wonder what you would do with a journey down Root
sixty six. It's been done by a lot of people, but I think
your thoroughness would lend a different view. I love it, and I listen.
Your town obviously has done a lot and continues to do a lot.
I recently spent a night at the Wigwam Hotel, which is out in San
Bernardino, California, part of the Roots experience, been there since nineteen forty
nine. There are still gems out there to be discovered. They are not
lost, thank goodness. And you know, again, you just have to
look. I've written a lot about it. There are some other fine writers
and photographers who continue to detail and describe roadside Americana and it's again, it's
out there if you want to find it. Maybe not as much as it
used to be, but you know what, it makes it that much more
special when you do spend a night in a wigwa Oh, it does and
as far as Route sixty six is concerned, there's this peculiar sub industry going
on where many German tourists fly into Chicago. Rent Harley Davidson are some other
motorcycle and ride Route sixty six on the motorcycle. So you stop at these
attractions and quite often you hear people speaking in Bavarian German. It's like the
mother Road will never get tired. You know. It's so evocative and it
speaks to that moment in time where cars were freeing up, you know,
the ability to actually travel, get your family on the road, and stop
at all these great little kitchen roadside attractions and things. And I think that
there's always going to be a charm associated with that, especially the farther away
we get from it, you know, we miss it, or if you
never experienced it, it seems exotic today. What used to be commonplace is
today very exotic and almost dream like to a lot of people. I think
because most of the time we're flying over it. But lost landmarks of Orange
County will make you want to go and see these attractions, restaurants, theaters,
music venues, theme parks. Chris Epting, I thank you for bringing
us yet another great book of things that we need to go look at.
Lee, I appreciate the time. Good to talk to you again. Thank
you, Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven
and iHeartMedia presentation