IN THE 1940s and '50s, before TV kept people busy at night, Los Gatos merchants sponsored "Night Ball" games that were played behind Los Gatos High School on New York Avenue, where a parking lot is now located. Now John Boitano is calling anyone who played in those games to a reunion Sept. 22 at Villa Felice. Contact Boitano, 354-0154, Mike Furla, 356-3767, or Gene Tobar, 356-1578, for details and reservations.
Boitano recalls that, besides the Flying A's Boitanos, other teams included Davenport Electric, Eddie Behler's Los Gatos Sports Store, Saratoga Merchants, Western Gravel, Los Gatos Ford, Eddie Briggs' Groceries, Sorenson's Plumbing, San Jose Water Works, and, he adds, "other teams that have been forgotten."
Boitano requests that players of that time get in touch with others to tell them about the reunion.
CALVARY Church on Los Gatos Boulevard was the scene of a benefit concert Aug. 23 for CityTeam Ministries to raise funds for children's shelters. Headliner singing groups Manhattan Transfer, Huey Lewis and the News and the Doobie Brothers were on the program. Afterward, the performers were entertained at the Los Gatos Bar and Grill, 15 1/2 N. Santa Cruz Ave. "Huey wasn't there, but his band was," said Stacy Sporleder, who arranged the post-concert dinner.
A FUN and fashion day at Macy's Valley Fair store Oct. 30 will benefit area service organizations, including the Los Gatos Teen Counseling Center. Tickets at $10 will be good for Macy's discounts, according to Pat Lake, director of LGTCC, located in the Neighborhood Center, 208 E. Main St. Cindy Mulloy is president of the LGTCC's board of directors for the second year.
THE WEATHER cooperated for a pleasant late-summer weekend Aug. 24-25 as people flocked to two entertaining events--the Kiwanis Club-sponsored Fiesta de Artes and the Lions Club Town Picnic. Lucky raffle winner of a new car from Moore Buick was Nancy Musselman of Los Gatos.
LOS GATOS High School history teacher Allen Rudolph represented California as one of 54 James Madison Fellows in an intensive Summer Institute on the Constitution and Bill of Rights at the American University in Washington, D. C. Named in honor of the fourth president of the United States and the "father of the Constitution," the graduate course on the history, principles and framing of the great document gave Rudolph six credits toward a master's degree.
FRIENDS of Meg Basinski, who retired as case manager for the Family Service Association at the Neighborhood Center, gave a private dinner party for her on Labor Day. Basinski is a Saratoga resident.
SENIORS can mark Oct. 7 on their calendars for the annual Octoberfest Luncheon at 11 a.m. at the Neighborhood Center, 208 E. Main St. The event is presented by the Family Service Association in conjunction with the Live Oak Nutrition Center. Food, songs and entertainment will have a German flavor.
FAMILY Service invites seniors to get flu shots Oct. 13 from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Neighborhood Center. Cost of the shots, administered by the Santa Clara County Health Department, is $5.
ON SEPT.10, at 11 a.m., a free lecture on Senior Fitness will be delivered at the Neighborhood Center by Hartmut Broring, who has an Master's in exercise physiology. He'll explain his philosophy on health and exercise.
SPEAKING at the Los Gatos Kiwanis Club, Susan Shillinglaw, director of the 27-year-old Steinbeck Center at San Jose State University, described John Steinbeck's life and career, with emphasis on his creative years when, with his first wife, Carol Henning Steinbeck, he lived and wrote in a little house on Greenwood Lane in what became Monte Sereno.
Steinbeck, who wrote Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath on Greenwood Lane in the late 1930s, wasn't always riding high with the higher-browed critics, but after publication of The Grapes of Wrath, popular and critical acclaim was heaped upon him.
But, as related in a new book by Roy Simmonds, John Steinbeck: The War Years, 1939-1945, when The Wayward Bus came out in February 1947, it was described by some critics as "trite, meaningless" and even "tedious and insignificant." Orville Prescott wrote in The New York Times that Steinbeck was "a one-book author whose reputation has been so inflated that it has intimidated critics and readers alike into respectful admiration which the books do not deserve." Today Steinbeck's books remain enormously popular.
Simmonds, a London-born scholar and retired British civil servant, includes unpublished letters of Steinbeck's in his book (Bucknell University Press, $49.50.) It can be ordered from Associated University Presses, RR3 Box 440, Cranbury, N.J., 08512.
HISTORY buffs who admired Ken Burns' Civil War series can tune in Monday evenings to Burns' eight-part series titled The West, chronicling America's pioneer past. The first episode airs on San Jose public television station KTEH-54 Sept. 16 at 8 p.m.
FORBES Mill Museum needs more specific information and/or artifacts relating to the old Lexington School for an exhibit on early-day Los Gatos schools. Contact curator Mary Foster at the museum, 395-7375, or at home, 353-2043, if you can help.
THERE'S a nip in the air these early mornings, and football is already on the tube, so autumn must be coming. As a devoted No. 1 Nebraska football fan, I'm happy to see that Scott Frost, formerly on the Stanford team, succeeds hotshot quarterback Tommie Frazier. Sadly, NU quarterback Brook Berringer, who filled in for Frazier, died in a plane crash last spring.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, September 4, 1996.
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