The latest was the word "tank." How, I asked myself, could I work "tank" into a column about Saratoga?

My first thought had to do with tank-houses, once fairly common structures in the orchards hereabout. Your basic tank-house was an enclosed, tower-like structure, perhaps 50 or 60 feet high, surmounted by a large, wooden water tank with a windmill attached. The windmill pumped water from a well into the tank, where it was stored for irrigation and domestic use. Today such an installation probably would be called a water tower, but you never heard that term applied to a true tank-house.

I think such a structure would be an appropriate part of the Heritage Orchard. It is going to be necessary to drill a well for irrigation of the orchard, and why not have an authentic windmill and tank-house as part of the operation? It could become the kind of municipal symbol that Campbell has made of its old cannery water tank, which, I'll have to admit, is a water tower.

Still on this theme, swimming tanks come to mind. I remember that term from my childhood. Back then, in and around Saratoga, there were very few of what today are called swimming pools. One swimming tank was at a resort called the Lodge at Saratoga, which was on Congress Springs Road. The attractions, according to the brochure, included "a 22,000-gallon glass-enclosed concrete swimming tank with private dressing rooms, showers, etc." Today if you called a swimming pool around here a tank you'd be a prime candidate for instantaneous, unceremonious immersion in same.

Which brings us to the big tank and little tank at the old Santa Clara County Jail, thereby inspiring the question: How in the name of common sense can a connection be made between Saratoga and the old county jail? Admittedly it's pretty remote, but it's there if you connect enough dots.

The jail in question was in San Jose, behind the old courthouse on N. First Street, across from St. James Park. It was a three-story structure built in 1870 of stone and brick with a definitely medieval look. It had two components, the first of which was the big tank, a large room where more than 200 prisoners could be—and often were—accommodated on double bunks spaced no more than two feet apart.

The little tank was a room with four brick-walled cells in the center. The cells were supposed to hold only one man, but often had more. It's at this point that I bring up the Saratoga angle, in the person of the late Richard S. Cox.

Dick, who died of cancer at age 78 this past Oct. 17, was born in Saratoga, the great-great grandson of William and Dicey Cox, who settled in this area in 1852. Dick grew up in San Jose, served in the army in World War II and graduated from San José State University in 1949. In that year he went to work for the San Jose Mercury Herald, now the Mercury News, a couple of months before I did. Dick covered the San Jose police beat, while I was assigned to the West Valley beat—at that time singularly unproductive in the way of hard news.

In his job, Dick picked up a lot of information that never made it into official reports. That was the situation in 1953, when a particularly sordid series of events involving teenagers took place in the little tank. Through his contacts, Dick developed an account that included extended torture and forced oral sex involving a 16-year-old victim, who had been transferred from the juvenile hall because he had been determined to be "unmanageable."

Dick's story, which ran on Page 1, was an immediate catalyst in activating the community to—quoting the battle cry—"do something about the old county jail." The county grand jury had been complaining of jail conditions for several years, but nobody did anything about it. Now they did. The end result was a new jail on Hedding Street, dedicated in May 1958. That jail was supplanted by a much larger one 30 years later.

Dick, meanwhile, had left the Mercury (the name Herald was dropped in 1950) in the mid-1960s to pursue a career in teaching and public relations. So, we're back to the local angle, which is this: If William and Dicey Cox had settled elsewhere in 1852, would we still be using the 1870 county jail? Go ahead, connect the dots.

OK, OK, I'm being facetious. Just kidding. Dick would have appreciated that, however; he had a good sense of humor. You had to if you were covering the police beat.

Speaking of history, in my last column, as it concerned Sen. James Phelan, I quoted one of his biographers, Dr. Dorothy Kaucher, as saying that his view was: There is no possible assimilation of diverse peoples. Period. In the copy editing process, however, quotation marks were placed so that statement was included with the following two sentences, which were mine.