Old Town

In contrast to Monday's dreary nonstop rain and gloodm, today was such a beautiful, warm and sunny day to be outdoors. I took a day off to chaperone TC's first grade field trip to Old Town . The school bus was packed with three classrooms full of kids (some unruly!), 3 teachers and about 20 or so parents. Although we had visited Old Town as a family before, this was different because it was an "educational" field trip and not an opportunity for me to get my ring cleaned at the jeweler's in Old Town, which was our main reason to visit.
This following link has more about many of the places we visited. Below is the Church of the Immaculate Conception; one of my cousins was married there three summers ago.

The original building for the San Diego Union Newspaper:

I wish we had taken this tour instead!

The first stop was the Seely Stable where a costumed docent had the children dress up in various period accessories. For example, TC and a few other girls wore lace mantillas on their heads while some of the others girls had shawls. The boys were either American cowboys with bandanas around their necks or were vaqueros with sashes tied around their waists.

Our very knowledgable tour guide:

Inside the Seeley Stables, there is a ticket booth. This lady was a sourpuss. Behind her was a small theater where the children learned about the "Old Days" from an elderly couple in period costume who taught them songs and showed them toys from long ago. No electronic shit here! Anyways, this lady was upset because she felt the room was too packed and wanted everyone standing along the side aisles to sit down because it was a "fire hazard". Apparently she had been nicked before on this.

This photo is kind of dark, but you can kind of see the elderly couple on the stage. They played the harmonica and piano and basically told stories about the old days, when people actually interacted with EACH OTHER to pass the time (talking to each other, playing games, singing songs, playing instruments) instead of being all into ipods, video games, and computers. All the kids seemed to enjoy singing "Yankee Doodle", "Oh Susanna" and "The Alphabet Song". Uh, excuse me, but could you please play"Super Freak" by Rick James?

If you look behind the trees, you can see part of the freeway, I-5. A train was passing by when I took this photo. This is behind the stables near the blacksmith's area.

A covered wagon commemorating the Mormon Battalion.

I couldn't resist taking this shot:

This was the skit that the children saw earlier with the elderly couple:

Another docent brought out a donkey; it's name was Don Quixote (get it? Don-key?). She was showing the kids that some mean assholes cut off part of it's tail hair several years ago. The docent said that the tail hair was probably used to make a belt or woven hatband and that since most donkeys are docile, it's easy to get really close to them.

Some shots of a new restaurant, the Cosmopolitan, which used to be the old Casa de Bandini. Read about the changes here . When Old Town was bought out by an Eastern Company in 2005, they changed the look of several places, making it quite different than before. Quite controversial it was.

A vine covered wall behind the Cosmopolitan:

The children visited the blacksmith shop after the donkey show (not that kind!):

Below are a "Tyre Stretcher" and a "Tyre Shrinker": The blacksmith demonstrating the use of a bellows:

This other dude was stoking the fire:

Now he's hammering a piece of metal which he shaped into a crook. He dipped it into a vat of cold water to cool it down and had the kids touch the metal afterwards.

Next stop, the Mason Street Schoolhouse:

It was made of recycled lumber, so no two pieces are the same length.

The interior of the schoolhouse. It is lined with numerous flags that once flew over California such as Spain, Mexico, and various incarnations of the the American flag. The one pictured below had only 31 stars. If you look closely, there is a dunce cap right behind the teacher's left elbow:

This was an actual list of "Punishments" for various transgressions. It's hard to see, but "playing cards at school" and "misbehaving to girls" got you 10 lashes!

The Machado house pictured below was made of adobe:

To the right, you can see their kitchen implements hanging on two shelves, which were suspended from the ceiling. It didn't touch the floor so that rats or other vermin wouldn't climb on it. The docent mentioned that up to seventeen people once lived in that house at one time. There were no dividing walls. There was also no bathroom, but a chamber pot instead. So, there was definitely no privacy there!

One of the beds:

The docent also mentioned that this plant (the way she pronounced it sounded like 'chorizo' but I know that's not it) was used to make a type of thatched roof cover on the adobe houses.

You could see the dried canes of that plant underneath the tiled roof.

The outhouse for the Machado house:

There was this huge, old and gnarled cactus behind the house. See the white spots? It's a type of fungus caused by a type of insect. It can kill cactus if left to fester. Women back then would crush these whitish spots between their fingers and it produced a crimson dye called Cochineal which they would use as makeup!

A period garden typical of that era:

I believe this is a poppy?

I liked these dead branches!

I totally forgot what this was about but I believe it was an outdoor oven

The docent was showing where candles would be dipped into cold water before another layer of tallow was added to the wick.

We left Old Town at around 1 pm and got back to the school by 1:30! TC fell asleep on the bus despite the noise! I was hoping we would get a chance to see Whaley House which is considered the "Most Haunted" Haunted House in the U.S. I remember watching specials on this and also reading articles on this house! Pretty scary stuff! I guess they didn't want to scare the kiddies!