Ken Kramer: San Diego is a big city full of little surprises, big things built a century ago tied to little bits of history.

Alex Bevil: It's a local landmark.

Ken: Big business in a tourist town today, but go back in time, do you know who was the first one to do it?

A pioneer here.

Yvette Porter Moore: He's someone that we should remember and celebrate.

Ken: And rewind the clock, it was decades ago, but what if I told you that that Padres baseball game you loved listening to on the radio was, well, kind of made up.

Bill Swank: And it sounded pretty real, sounds pretty real.

Ken: And to the Imperial Valley for a big event that's like none other in the world, and more stories too, all of them true about San Diego.

male announcer: "Ken Kramer's About San Diego," the history and people of the area we call home.

Here's Ken Kramer.

Ken: Talk with any tourist who comes here, we do live in a breathtakingly beautiful city.

Hello and welcome to "About San Diego."

We have a couple of stories this time about the tourism industry in our county, but as you know, this show is about the people and history of the area we call home.

So here's a history tidbit.

Behold something that is to a lot of folks rather well liked in North Park.

I mean it, a landmark built way back in 19-- Alex: It was erected '23, completed '24.

Ken: That's right, a water tower, and if you think no, can't be such a favorite thing, well, it is.

Look, in community parades, a water tower costume, residents dressed up like the water tower, symbolic of North Park.

Yes, even tattoos.

Alex: Some person actually has--their back is of the water tower.

Ken: Okay, how can this be?

Historian Alex Bevil is going to help us here.

First thing is to know it was special.

From the time it was built it was-- Alex: The largest, the tallest, ellipsoidal bottom, elevated steel plate water tank in the world.

Ken: See, there's that rounded bottom of the tank.

Technically located within what was then considered University Heights, it held up 1.2 million gallons of water back when a lot of places depended on it.

Alex: Literally from East San Diego, greater Mid City area, University Heights, Hillcrest, Mission Hills, Uptown, Downtown.

Ken: Alex was asked to write the proposal that this tower and the 7-acre area around it be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Included is a baseball field.

Alex: That's where a young Ted Williams learned how to hit his home runs.

Ken: Where there's this park today was once part of the water infrastructure built around that tower.

Alex: That held 17 million gallons of water.

Imagine that.

Ken: That water was pumped as needed up into the tower, and because the water was high up there, gravity created enough water pressure for the thousands of faucets and homes below.

Ken: But today this tank is empty and has been since the 1990s.

It became obsolete and there were questions about earthquake safety.

More than a million gallons of water sloshing back and forth, you can imagine.

Ken: Okay, it wasn't being used anymore, so well then, you'd tear it down, right?

Oh no.

And why not?

Alex: Because the locals would have been up in arms, and they were saying, "No, we don't--no, we don't want that."

Ken: No, over a century, this tower had become a celebrated symbol of the community.

It's used to give directions to visitors: "Look for the tower."

It can be seen for miles around and by planes coming into the airport.

It's like a welcome home and it's, you know, unique.

Alex: They did a survey, an informal survey, asking people, "What does that mean?

What does the tower mean to you?"

And then one person said, "Basically, it gives me a sort of a steampunk vibe and reminds me of the Tin Man."

Dorothy: A man made out of tin!

Alex: "From 'The Wizard of Oz.'"

Ken: Alex Bevil refers to the tower that way now as "Tin Man."

Alex: And then you got its cousin, the North Park Mini-Me Tin Man.

Ken: Just off the 805 at El Cajon Boulevard, that one's not for water at all.

It just hides a cell tower and antennas, but it's keeping with the historic theme.

In 2013, this big tank and the area around it were indeed added to the National Register.

Then two years later, the University Heights elevated water tank, commonly known as the North Park Water Tower was designated a local civil engineering landmark.

To Alex, the more he studied its history, the more he got to know about this now empty tower on Howard Street in North Park, the more he came to feel like a lot of people in North Park do.

Alex: It's a local landmark.

And it represents something.

Ken: Something highly visible and historic and a little bit fun... about San Diego.

♪♪♪ Ken: Okay, gonna tell you a story now that requires you go back in time.

If you've been in San Diego for a while, you might know the Padres used to play in the minor leagues.

They played throughout the western part of the United States, and back in those days, the games were not on television.

They weren't televised.

They were on the radio, and that's where our story begins.

You ever listen to a baseball game?

I mean, on the radio, listen to it.

male: Hi, everybody, it's Philadelphia Phillies baseball guy.

Ken: A good baseball broadcaster on the radio could make you feel like you were right there with them at the stadium.

male: Here's the strike one pitch, a bunt up along third base.

--falls down and the ball's gonna stay there for a bunt single.

Ken: But what if the announcer wasn't at the stadium, didn't travel with the team at all, and everything you were hearing during road games, all the sounds, the crowd, everything, was made up?

Ken: From the 1940s up to 1968 when the team was playing out of town, the Padres couldn't afford to send an engineer and an announcer and all the technology to Seattle or Oakland or Honolulu to broadcast the game in real time.

So what did they do?

Ken: To find out, we paid a visit to Bill Swank, San Diego baseball historian.

Bill: Hello.

Ken: He says it's true.

Years ago he'd listened carefully to the radio announcer during Padres road games, and he began to notice something.

Bill: When I really became aware that, wait a minute, there's something wrong here, and I finally figured it out that it was a recreation and he wasn't actually there.

Ken: That's right, a recreation.

The announcer was back in San Diego in a studio with a microphone and a bunch of sound effects records.

Ken: They had the sound of cheering, booing.

Bill: Concessionaires in the stands, you know, "Hot dogs, get your red hot dogs."

Ken: Okay, you got the sound of the crowd and the microphone.

You're ready to describe the game.

But the game is like 1000 miles away.

How do you know what's going on?

How do you know what to say?

Ken: At every away game, there'd always be somebody at a teletype sending out real-time information for whoever needed it.

Might be a newspaper, whoever.

Bill: They would send little telegrams, just very short.

Ken: I mean really short, like just the batter's name and ball, strike, base hit left field.

Wasn't much, but if your radio station back home had a receiving teletype, and most of them did, a clever announcer could recreate the game happening somewhere way across the country.

Ken: Only thing, let's say the message comes in, "Padres got a base hit to left."

Bill: They had a bat just hanging from a string or a rope from the ceiling.

They had a stick, a wooden stick, and they would hit the bat, and that made the sound of a ball hitting the bat.

Here's the pitch.

And it's a base hit to left field.

What if it's a ball or a strikeout?

You need something that sounds like a ball hitting the catcher's mitt.

Oh, a piece of leather, maybe an old shoe.

Bill: And they would hit it with a stick and it'd sound like a ball being caught.

Ken: Strike three, struck him out.

Bill: And it sounded pretty real.

It sounded pretty real.

Ken: All over the country, baseball announcers were recreating games that the teams couldn't afford to send them to.

Ken: Based on very little information coming into the studio, maybe just a word or two every now and then.

Bill: Ball one.

Ball two.

Base hit, left field.

Ken: Now imagine, the announcer back in San Diego knows that it's been a ball, but he doesn't know was it high?

Was it low?

Was that base hit a line drive?

Was it a fly?

No way of knowing.

So the announcer just makes a lot of things up.

Bill: That's where his creativity came in.

Ken: Oh, it's a beautiful day here in Seattle.

Was it really?

That pitch just caught the inside corner for a strike.

Well, maybe, maybe not.

You see, baseball re-creators, they had so much time to fill, they had to be really good storytellers.

Bill: Every town thinks theirs was the best, but we probably had the best, Ken, and his name was Al Schuss.

Ken: Al Schuss, former announcer with Milwaukee, the Chicago Cubs, and Brooklyn Dodgers, came to San Diego and was so good at recreating out-of-town games, it's too bad that so far as I can tell, there are no existing recordings of him doing them.

Well, they were all live, so we have to imagine him painting pictures right out of his own mind while waiting for the next bit of information on his teletype.

And if the machine broke down.

Well--oh, looks like we're having a rain delay here, folks, but that reminds me of a story.

Bill: It's all out of his mind, his creative mind.

Ken: And most listeners had no idea.

Bill: They'd see him in town.

They'd say, "You're supposed to be in Seattle."

"Well, I had to fly back for business," because he said, "After a while it just got too hard to explain to everybody."

Ken: Gotta say I was listening to baseball on the radio growing up back then, never noticed anything.

Bill: I guarantee you heard a recreated game.

I guarantee it, if you were listening to baseball games and if you were an Angels fan or a Stars fan up in LA, that you were listening to some recreated games, but they were very good.

Ken: Fly ball at deep left field way back, way, way back, and there it goes.

Bill: "And there it goes," and everybody knew what that meant.

Ken: It was Al Schuss's signature Padres home run call.

Bill Swank has written several books about San Diego baseball history, and he says the days of recreated games on the radio were simpler times when a few sound effects and hitting a bat hanging by a string created the outline of a picture in our minds.

And looking back for those of us in San Diego, it was Al Schuss who filled in all the color and all the details.

Bill: And he was very good at it.

Ken: We can only imagine.

Strike three and the Padres win this one on the road 4 to 2.

Good night, everybody.

We'll see you around and "About San Diego."

♪♪♪ Ken: Couple of facts here: Tourists spend about $15 billion a year every year in San Diego, and one out of every 8 of us think of that is in some way connected to that industry.

Now, the people who show us around San Diego, we call them tour guides, of course, but have you ever wondered who was the very first one to do that, to advertise as a tour guide?

Watch this.

Go back well over a century ago.

If you had the time and financial means to travel, I tell you there was one place you wanted to go.

♪ California, here I come.

♪ ♪ Right back where I started from.

♪ Ken: Go way back into the 1890s and 1900, the wandering soul would be off to see sights which might possibly include San Diego, population 17,000.

Well, what would you see when you got here?

A fairly vibrant downtown for the times.

Over on Coronado, the hotel, of course, and to the south of it, a city of tents you could rent for a week or two.

The Theosophical Center with its ornate buildings and Greek theater on Point Loma and not far from that, the lighthouse, okay.

Ken: But supposing you wanted to be more adventurous, see some different spots, and have more of an understanding of the places you were seeing?

You might really like to have a tour guide.

And back then there was one who not only knew his way around San Diego but among tourists and locals became something of a legend, and his name was Reuben.

Yvette: Reuben Williams.

Ken: "Reuben the Guide" they called him, a tour guide.

Nobody had done that before.

Yvette: Yes, as a matter of fact, not only was he San Diego's first tour guide, he was also an international tour guide because he would take his tourists from San Diego downtown across the border to Tijuana and he would tour them around there.

Ken: Yvette Porter Moore is a genealogist and public historian who has studied the remarkable life and work of Reuben Williams.

There he is, yeah.

Yvette: He just seemed very interesting, so through the years, I just started researching him.

Ken: What she discovered was fascinating.

Here was a man who spoke two languages.

He was a writer, storyteller, and his clients, the people he showed around, loved him.

Yvette: He was just an individual that always had a smile on his face, and I don't know how he had a smile on his face since he suffered from rheumatism.

Ken: And Yvette says in turn-of-that-century San Diego, he also had to deal with racism.

Yvette: And Reuben was able to rise above all that with his personality and with his humor.

Ken: He'd meet tourists at the San Diego and Otay Railroad Depot right by where PETCO Park is today, and from there the journey began, past the international boundary marker, you could go back home and tell people you'd been there and seen that with your own eyes.

But mostly to what was back then the very small town of Tijuana, and along the way he'd be so personable with his storytelling and winning friends who in turn would tell their friends, and that was how he built his unique business.

He was the first.

Yvette: And he's a trailblazer, wow, just making everybody's vacation, you know, memorable.

Ken: When Reuben died on January 11th, 1903, there was a real sense of loss.

Many people turned out for his flower-decorated funeral downtown.

He was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, but it wasn't clear where.

And to this day, the grave is unmarked.

Yvette began looking for information.

Yvette: I was able to get that, got the information, and I found him where his resting spot is, but he doesn't have a headstone, which is unfortunate.

Ken: That's right, in a city where tourism is so central to our economy, where guiding international visitors has become an industry, there's nothing to memorialize the one who led the way.

Yvette: I think there needs to be a landmark or something saying, "Reuben was here, and Reuben made a difference," you know.

Ken: It was a long time ago, but we are a city that cares about its history and should honor Reuben Williams for what he did and who he was.

Such a lasting tribute would say a lot about him and about San Diego.

Ken: Reuben Williams was also a writer, and he made notes about his time as a tour guide, and this is what he wrote: "Seriously, I am glad I became a guide, for I am constantly brought into contact with the best people on earth: the tourists.

In their service, life is a pleasure instead of a burden.

I may never become a Vanderbilt," he wrote, "but my daily life is rich in pleasant experiences."

Ken: We are grateful that this show is seen in the Imperial Valley and that you watch us there.

We do thank you for that.

We had the occasion to stop by and see a celebration that was going on in one particular city in the Imperial Valley, and what we saw there, we wanted to share with you because they are justifiably proud of who they are.

Ken: Consider please the carrot.

speaker: Carrots, carrots, carrots.

Ken: Loved by bunnies and humans, popular root vegetable, and nowhere more so than here, 125 miles east of San Diego in Holtville.

Home of the Carrot Festival every year, an all in civic-wide salute to the carrot: firm, crisp, carotene-laden, and in Holtville, a reason to celebrate.

Yvette Rios: This event really is all about honoring the carrot, which really is a symbol of Holtville.

Ken: No wonder then that come February when it's festival time, you see carrots everywhere.

The best classic cars are adorned with bouquets of them.

And the Carrot Parade draws so many people into a joyous celebration of what Holtville is today.

And what Holtville is today goes back to the vision of Mr. William Franklin Holt.

Here he is.

He pretty much built the town and a railroad line to and from it, and at carrot time festival coordinator Yvette Rios says you think about him.

Yvette: We're honoring him, we're honoring, you know, the vision that he has created that has come to life here which we know as Holtville in the Imperial Valley.

Ken: From the crossroads in the center of town, go just a couple of blocks, and there is the historical marker that tells the story of and pays tribute to him, so that's W.F.

Holt.

Now about the carrot, you see it everywhere here: things made of carrots, T-shirts honoring the carrot, farmers and local merchants saying, "Here you go, have a bag of them."

Bunches and boxes of carrots locally grown around Holtville.

Yvette: It's really our symbol.

We have a lot of love for the carrot.

Ken: Going back generations in the 1940s, 11,000 acres of carrots were grown and picked in the Imperial Valley.

Local companies labeled and proudly shipped carrots all over the country.

Well, that was cause for celebration.

And so in 1947 and every year since, Holtville hasn't held back, throwing a carrot festival with a queen and court and a carnival.

And that car show.

And with so many people come to watch, a parade so filled with unabashed joy in orange and green.

Yvette: And the carrot is kind of also a symbol of the prosperity of the town and how, you know, we've grown to be successful.

We love being a small, quiet community but while still thriving.

Ken: Indeed today, 90% of carrots consumed in the United States come from the Imperial Valley.

Each of us on average consumes between 8 and 12 pounds of them a year.

And Holtville, population 7,000, can and does rightly proclaim itself to be The Carrot Capital of the World.

So when you do please consider the carrot, think of Holtville where since 1947 they've celebrated it like no place else on earth.

♪♪♪ Ken: We have a part of the show every week that's just odds and ends, things that you've told us about or pictures that you've sent in for us to take a look at.

We absolutely love that.

So let's open up the file and see what we've got.

Hello to Pickering's Pleasure Pier.

It's 1927 and city leaders--no, just about everybody, seems like, in Pacific Beach was there.

Pretty quickly became a must go to for tourists.

Along with La Jolla Cave, Balboa Park, you had to go see what later came to be called Crystal Pier, right?

You recognize it.

Well, Willis Allen sent these photos of the pier and the famous Sleep Over the Ocean cottages built in 1930 and which his family has owned now for decades.

Here's the cafe on the pier.

Get yourself a milkshake or a malt.

1953, a barge broke free during a storm and crashed into the pier, took out one of the cottages.

No injuries reported.

It's a March night in 1947 with something new in Coronado.

The Village Theater opened for the first time.

Double feature, "Irish Eyes are Smiling," and "The Well-Groomed Bride."

But I wanna show you something.

Fast forward to 2011, the now revamped theater opened again.

David Kamatoy and Joe Ditler staged the exact same scene and took this picture 44 years later.

Thank you for the photo here.

Ron Beckman in the 1950s with his brothers Gilbert and Ken near Lake Cuyamaca.

He remembers there were trout ponds there where for a few could catch a fish.

The edge of the picture, he says, was eaten by their parakeet.

♪ Atlantic keeps your car on the go.

♪ ♪ For business, for pleasure, in any kind of weather.

♪♪ Ken: Go way back, in the East it was Atlantic gasoline you could buy and put in your car almost a century ago.

Out here in the west you could choose Richfield gas.

Daniel Couttolenc's granddad was exclusive representative of Richfield Oil in San Diego and Ensenada in 1929.

By the way, eventually Atlantic, A, merged with Richfield, R, to form ARCO.

From the archives of the San Diego city clerk, picture here of what was back then called the People's Bridge.

First Avenue between Nutmeg and Palm built in 1911, then a replacement was put together in a Midwest factory, taken apart and reassembled here.

And then in 2010 renovated and earthquake retrofitted to where today this is what the First Avenue bridge now looks like.

But at either end is preserved its history on a plaque dating back to its early days when the people of Banker's Hill and surrounding areas lobbied for it.

One more from the clerk's office from 1958, the Cubby Hole in Ocean Beach, a local favorite for the best foot-long hot dog, snow cones, and a reserved parking spot for a Woodie seen here in its natural setting.

And sidewalk stamps.

They've become kind of a regular feature here, proving there are advantages to watching where you step.

These are always fun when we find them or you see them and send them in.

The streets of South Park are full of stamps of contractors in streets going back well over a century, and what's interesting is the ones where the street names have changed like Bean Street.

Bean was named for Joshua Bean, first mayor of San Diego in 1850.

His administration was corrupt.

He went to Los Angeles where he bought a saloon and was killed in an argument over a woman.

And perhaps learning that, in 1909 residents decided to change the name of Bean Street to Granada.

Couple more in South Park: Dartmouth Street.

Where's that?

Not around anymore.

It was changed to Beach.

And Harvard Street also gone.

That's Ash today.

Printing your name on the sidewalk is a thing if it's something you want people to remember, and all over San Diego you see preserved what those folks wanted to be marked in the sidewalk forever.

And forever it seems that's been true about San Diego.

Ken: And that's it for this time and this episode of "About San Diego."

Starting to get a little bit chilly toward evening time here.

If you want to see these stories again or if you'd like to get a mug or a t-shirt or maybe one of those doggy bandannas or if you want to communicate by social media or send us in something to show on the show, just go to this website right here.

That's KenKramerTV.com.

We'll look forward to hearing from you.

Until next time and as always, I am Ken Kramer.

Thank you for watching and for caring about San Diego.

Bye-bye.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ bunny: Rising out of the great carrot patch, paradise for any rabbit.

Except me.

announcer: Support for this program comes from the KPBS Explore Local Content Fund, supporting new ideas and programs for San Diego.