I was reminded of this by some responses I got to a past column in which I listed several features of life in Saratoga that I especially missed.

My communicators listed as things they missed: Clarence Neale's Barn on Saratoga­Sunnyvale Road, Ralph Van Arsdale's Fixit Shop on Third Street and the bicycle shop on Big Basin Way. This reminded me of another long-gone enterprise—Norvell Thompson's Ye Olde Junke Shoppe, also on Big Basin Way.

Two of these were in now-demolished historic structures. The Barn, situated just above the south bank of Saratoga Creek, had been a blacksmith shop. In its latter incarnation, it was a second-hand and antique shop with a seemingly limitless stock. As an example, in 1950 I bought a small, hand-operated printing press there that I used for years, setting the type by hand. When Saratoga­Sunnyvale Road was made a divided highway at that point, The Barn became history.

Ralph Van Arsdale had his Fixit Shop in a still-standing barn structure on the stub end of Third Street, near the upper entrance to the Inn at Saratoga. "Van," as he was known to his many friends, was a multi-talented man who literally could fix anything. His amateur radio setup, in which he used a key rather than voice, is on exhibit at the Saratoga Historical Museum.

Norvell Thompson, whose wife, Louise, was the daughter of Saratoga's beloved Dr. Louis Mendelsohn, was an interesting person with a theatrical background and a knack for acquiring choice articles of furniture. I have a handsome walnut dining room table, complete with expansion leaves, that I bought at Ye Olde Junke Shoppe for all of $40. Needless to say, that was awhile back. Still, it was a bargain price even for the time.

Thompson's shop—or shoppe—was in a former livery stable that subsequently was torn down. The lumber was used to build the Plumed Horse restaurant, which the couple operated for a time. Louise was a famous gourmet cook.

The bicycle shop was a latter-day operation near the corner of Third Street, and my email was from a man who regretted the loss in terms of the significance of bicycle travel as an alternative to fuel-consuming cars. Good point.

Anytime the subject of the Blossom Festival comes up, which it did in a recent column, it's likely to set me off on another search through my files for additional lore. This time the search yielded a copy of the April 6, 1919, San Jose Mercury Herald (that was still the paper's name when I went to work there 30 years after that date) with a full account of the event.

"Ten thousand people attend Saratoga's 20th Blossom Festival" read the top headline over a trio of pictures. The subhead below one of the pictures was also intriguing: "Phelan warns people that aliens are occupying the land." Phelan, of course, was James D. Phelan, then serving a term in the U.S. Senate, remembered today as the patron of the arts who gave the world Montalvo.

He was principal speaker at the Blossom Festival, and he used the occasion to expound his views on Asian immigrants. One of his biographers, Dr. Dorothy Kaucher, summarized them as follows: "There is no possible assimilation of diverse peoples. Today, with our Asian population a strong and vital part of society as a whole, such sentiments simply wouldn't fly. Back then, they weren't all that uncommon, and Phelan might be said to have been preaching to the choir."

From the space in the paper, his speech appeared to have been reported fully. "The land is the foundation of all things, the basis of all operation," he said in part. "We must protect our soil with a jealous hand against the silent invasion which is going on within our very gates. I speak of the alien occupation, insidious and stealthy; low wages which make competition well nigh useless, and an uncanny theft which permits of such low wages. It is this which we must combat and overcome ..."