Mirrors - Cows - Bananas Pt1

One of my father's (Orval Liddell) first jobs, after he became Mr. Philip Knight Wrigley's (He was the son of the chewing gum mogul, William Wrigley, Jr., and he liked to be called "P. K." - remember the "P.K. Gum"?) Chief Engineer in 1945,

was to open up the "Airport-In-The-Sky". Although the airport was being constructed in 1940, the outbreak of W. W. II caused all work to cease. In fact, machinery and wood was placed on the runway to purposely make it inaccessible by planes. Rumor had it that the Japanese Air Force, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, were planning to fly to Catalina, take over the Island, and use it as a military base to stage bombings on the oil refineries in Long Beach, San Pedro, Wilmington, and Richmond, California. For this reason, the United State Department Of War took over the Island and concentrated on making it impossible for the Japanese to use Catalina and do any damage to the oil refineries on the mainland (the oil refineries were being used to supply fuel to the Allied Air Force and, of course, any depletion in the oil availability to the residence of California would have brought the West Coast to a disastrous halt!!!). As soon as the airport was made available, "United Airlines" flew DC-3s

to Catalina from 1946-54.

Cattle were being raised on the Island at the time and pretty much had run of the entire Island. Their presence didn't cause any hardships, except by those bovine who liked to walk the "Stage Coach" road, which was the only road linking the Avalon to "Two Harbors". The road was built in the late 1890's by the Banning Brothers, who owned the Island prior to the Wrigleys and, by the name, it was obviously used by two six-horse stage coaches. Motorized vehicles, especially tour buses, took over from the horses when the Wrigley family took over the Island in 1919. As there were so fewer cars then, the buses were the primarily users of the road.

So that there wouldn't be any "head on" collisions on the narrow road, with the "hairpin" turns, rectangular glass mirrors, with wooden frames, were places at strategic locations so that the vehicles could spot oncoming traffic, before it was TOO LATE!

The cattle, walking this road, would see the mirrors and think that they were greeting other cows. Being in a "friendly" mood, the cows would lick their reflections, assuming they were "fellow" cows, and leave "cow slobber", which made it impossible for the buses, and other vehicles, to check out their fellow travels, coming around the corner.
Realizing the potential for "disaster", Pete Peterson, the head bus driver, would drive up 30 minutes before the first tour to clean off all of the mirrors. After a while, he got tired of this, and decided to invent a thick metal grid, like chicken wire, enclosure over the mirror, with only the sides open. The mesh was large enough for vehicles to see the oncoming images, but too small for a cow to stick its tongue through. This clever solution worked for a couple of months when, suddenly one morning, all of the mirrors were found to have been "licked". Frustratingly, no damage had been done to the steel grid contraption! Pete simply couldn't understand "HOW" a cow could look straight ahead into the mirrors, spy his "friend", and then maneuver his tongue around the side behind the mesh to lick the mirrors! Now, again, he had to make the earlier trip throughout the tour path and put his cleaning material behind the grid barricades and clean every mirror.

This was driving him CRAZY!

When he retired, he nearly left the Island in a straitjacket!

(More to follow in Part 2)