(bright piano music) - [Announcer] Here's a little something, "About San Diego" with Ken Kramer.

(bright piano music) (jaunty music) (lid clattering) - [Ken] You never know.

You just never know.

This old home movie might be a really interesting glimpse into the past.

Or a slide, an old discarded slide that was gonna be thrown out, and there it is.

- 1953, the PB, Pacific Beach.

You know, queen of the parade, you know?

- [Ken] A snapshot of history, an instant in time that would've been lost to time, but he saved it.

It's what he does.

- I pick up large amounts of slides, and photos, and films, and all sorts of media.

(bright music) - [Ken] Here's another, it's a movie taken at a kid's party in El Cajon in 1956.

Might be, it was gonna get tossed.

Nobody cared about it, but he said, "I'll take it."

And so this little event, this backyard competition on film is rescued, and with it a window into what life on just that day at just that moment was like.

(jaunty music) Miles of home movies.

(drums beating) Thousands of old photos and slides collected through the years.

(bright music) (camera whirring) And the thing is, most of the time, when he buys a bunch of them for a few dollars, Mr.

P. Hicks, that's his name, P. Hicks, has no idea what's on them.

- I don't know what it is I'm buying.

I'm just, I'm buying it blind or I'm acquiring it blind.

And I don't know until I get home what it is I've got.

(jaunty music) (camera whirring) This is all slides and photographs.

- [Ken] Hundreds and thousands of images (jaunty music) (camera whirring) and film of just random things, sometimes with sound.

Here's Balboa Park 50 years ago.

(country music) - I got this stuff kind of coming out my ears here.

- [Ken] And where do they all come from?

Well, garage sales, estate sales, and places where people are getting rid of photographs, recording tape, film.

For perhaps a few dollars, P. Hicks will get boxes of them.

What might be in them?

Sure, maybe nothing, or could be something.

You never know.

- It's that discovery, it's that mystery of what it is you're finding, and it's the context of finding it in a place where it's right on the edge of being lost.

You know, if I wasn't there right at that moment, it was gonna go to the dump.

- [Ken] A medieval reenactment on the grass at Balboa Park decades ago.

(props clattering) Someone thought to film it, a San Diego moment.

- It only exists on that one piece of film, or that one slide, or that one photo.

That's what I'm looking for.

- [Ken] Or this, watch as a bridge that used to carry the streetcar over Texas Street is demoed.

And the cleanup after, that is surely local history he's preserving.

But in the end, is he an historian?

No, he uses another term.

- And I like to call what I do urban archeology or suburban archeology.

- [Ken] And it doesn't have to be San Diego.

In fact, he doesn't think of himself as a collector of San Diego history, particularly.

Still, his love for local curiosities is fascinating.

If you've been in our city for a while, (P. Hicks laughing) the Unarius Conclave of 40 years ago learn when the space fleet will arrive, what to do, and how to be good hosts.

Even a bit of history from this show, remember a few years back, we featured a local couple that had a famous talking goose named Cuddles?

- She tells us when she's hungry.

(goose honking) Did you hear hungry?

(goose honking) Did you hear it, audience?

- [Audience] Yeah.

- [Host] Oh, come on!

(audience cheering and applauding) - [Ken] Who knew there was Cuddles swag?

- It's a very uncomfortable shirt.

But look, there's Cuddles.

So that's a bit of San Diego history.

- [Ken] From the old Barrett Junction Cafe, look at those prices, a bottle of beer for pocket change.

Couldn't let that be thrown away.

(P. Hicks laughing) - [P. Hicks] Okay.

- [Ken] But here really is the nerve center.

Here is where the forgotten, discarded bits of image and sound given up for lost find new and unexpected life.

- Videotape machines, audiotape machines, for most of the formats that you could think of and lots of formats that you probably couldn't think of.

Have you ever seen a wire recorder?

- [Ken] Around 1948, there were spools of wire.

Your voice was imprinted on a wire about the size of a human hair.

In this case, a plumber recites part of a poem on the proper installation of a drain vent system.

(button clicking) - [Plumber] The waist comes up from down below.

A TY sits on top, just so.

- [Ken] A whole box of wires.

Dad, the plumber, and mom talking about things like the war.

P. Hicks decided to find the family so he could copy and send it to them.

- [Kid 1] What's the title of that?

- [Kid 2] "The Handyman," that's the best one.

- [Kid 1] You got that on?

- [Kid 2] Yeah, it's on.

- [Ken] And he did.

The kids now in their 70s were just overwhelmed.

- And they had no idea what had happened to these wires or how they ended up out in the world for someone like me to find.

- [Ken] Wires, tapes, slides, bits of film, he'll try to look at every one of them, he says.

And thus, whether worth preserving or not, each will at least be honored with one more moment of human attention.

And that's the point.

- Once these things get thrown in the trash, those are snapshots, those are little time capsules of everyday history that just disappear forever.

- [Ken] An absolutely perfect 1950s front room, because that's exactly what it was.

A professional set decorator couldn't have done it any better.

Pictures that are greeting-card cute (mellow music) and just everyday things, friends, the result of P. Hicks' suburban archeology.

(mellow music) (camera whirring) In these preserved moments, there is so often sweetness, and kindness, and joy made all the more poignant because we don't know who they were.

We're left to imagine the story of when that instant was captured.

A little recording of history, of life.

And as P. Hicks says... - Once it gets destroyed, it's gone forever.

(jaunty music) - [Ken] Seems like everybody's downsizing these days.

It's like we're collectively saying, "I want experiences.

Spare me the burden of old things from the past."

So we throw them away.

And every time we do, the last little spark, the last little memory of a life, of a moment someone thought was important enough to preserve forever, instead disappears for eternity.

But then there's Mr.

P. Hicks to say, "No, no, not so fast.

Let me take one more look because you just never know."

(jaunty music)