Exploring Small Towns: 1. Southern California

[Pasadena CA]: The Ward Ritchie Press. Very Good+. (c.1973). Unstated edition. Softcover. [light edgewear to covers, several crease lines in rear cover]. Trade PB (pen and ink drawings, maps) Vintage guidebooks have a charm all their own, both as windows into what their subject area was like "back when" and as challenges to modern-day tourists or explorers to seek out whatever traces might remain today. And when a book like this one -- which was conceived largely as a nostalgic exercise to begin with -- has aged yet another 45 years, the nostalgia factor sort of doubles down on itself, and the natural impulse (mine, anyway) is to wonder how many of these small-town landmarks, already considered throwbacks in 1973, might still survive even today? For instance, is it possible one could find even a trace of Ma Dixon's Restaurant, a soul-food oasis in Val Verde, California -- itself a remnant of a time when the town was known as "the black Palm Springs" -- which according to the book had already closed in 1973 (although there's a beautiful full-page drawing of the place, described as "a topsy-like complex of buildings centered around two old street cars")? And what of the "water-tower houses" in Dinuba? The Hotel Jacumba, in Jacumba? The Agricultural College in Heber? Fire up your GPS and go exploring! .