Hanford Insider: Big Restaurant News, A Packed Community Calendar, and Kings County History

On this episode of the Hanford Insider, we get our next look into the Carnegie Museum's Building Kings County exhibit. Rob will give you a look at some of this week's community events, and I'll be back with your sports report. This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, April 13th.

City Council Notes And July 4 Plans

Superior Dairy Remodel And New Restaurants

Community Calendar And How To Submit

Museum Series Setup And Exhibit Preview

Your inside look at the stories, people, and the history that make Hanford one of a kind. From hidden gems to hometown legends, we're bringing you closer to the heart of our community. I'm your host, Rob Bentley, and this is where Hanford comes to life. So let's get started. In community news this week, the Hanford City Council had a long meeting on Tuesday night. You can hear the recap from Mayor Mark Kyrus right here on the show page at HanfordInsider.com. One big item that came up right at the very end was the big Fourth of July fireworks show at the Hanford Softball Complex behind Sierra Pacific High School on Centennial Drive. The event will run from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. with a fireworks show beginning at 9 15. There will be lots of information coming out from the city over the next few months, so stay tuned to their social media channels for more information. The next Hanford City Council meeting is Tuesday, April 21st. Superior Dairy announced that they're officially closing the building for remodeling for an extended period of time. During the closure, they'll operate out of a trailer across the street and will only be selling ice cream. We hope to hear more from the Zonneveld family soon about the plans for the renovated ice cream parlor. I'm sure it's going to be great. On Friday night, social media was buzzing because it appears that Hanford is finally going to get the Olive Garden restaurant that so many have been wanting. The ABC license has been posted on the southeast corner of 12th Avenue and Mall Drive, across from Chili's. There's no official information on timeline, but I would imagine you can get in line for those never-ending pastables sometime in 2027, as ground hasn't even been broken yet. And just down the street, across the tracks from In N Out Burger, the Ono Hawaiian Barbecue construction seems to be well underway. This is the cross the street from the AMPM mini market. What restaurants would you like to see come to town? I'd like to hear about it. Now let's take a look at this week's community calendar. The Hanford FFA Car Show is this Wednesday, April 15th, beginning at 5 30 p.m. at the school farm on Centennial Drive behind Sierra Pacific High School. On Saturday, April 18th, there are two sold-out events, but I thought I'd let you know that the Golden Positivity Gala and the Kings players' murder mystery at the Children's Storybook Garden are happening. Congratulations to these organizers on their huge success. Next Tuesday, April 21st, is the Kings County Excellence in Education event at the Hanford Fox Theater at 6.30 p.m. We'll be hearing more about that event from Superintendent Todd Barrow on next week's show. April 21st is also the date of the King Symphony Gala fundraiser at the Kings Country Club. The Carnegie Museum of Kings County is holding a Japanese tea ceremony in the Museum Courtyard on Saturday, April 25th at 10 a.m. For more information and to RSVP, visit Carnegie Museum of Kingscounty.org. And on Sunday, April 26th, My Fair Lady will be showing at the Hanford Fox Theater. Visit FoxHanford.com for details and tickets. If you have an event coming up, large or small, and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together. Send your information to Hanford Insider at gmail.com. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events. It's the most comprehensive community calendar available. Today is our second installment on the history of Kings County with docent from the Carnegie Museum. At our recent docent training, the curators took time to educate our volunteers on the exhibition. As part of the training, I recorded it, and the stories were so good I knew it would be a great fit for this series of episodes. In this portion, our curators share information about the Hanford Civic Auditorium, local school history, China Alley, and very brief overviews of the Avenel, Kettleman, City, and Lamour displays.

What we have is on this wall is the Mississippi Civic Auditorium. And we're fortunate that we have the time capsule that was opened last year. And all of the artifacts, documents, and whatnot that were in the time capsule were displaying. And we're doing it both this time and summon part two. Brandy Shaw, who is the lead curator for the city, got together with Rob, and so we have a video of the show. But everything you see, every document here is from 1925 or before. The time capsule was buried in the Civic Auditorium. Those who don't know, Eleanor Roosevelt actually came to Hanford, and we have an excerpt from her daily journal describing her trip to Hanford. John Philip Sousa was here, Fanny Goodman was here, a lot of other stars of the day, and those are discussed. So that is the Civic Auditorium. Like I say, we had the 100th anniversary party last year for one day. Now we get to have it over several months.

Women’s Lives And Community Roots

Taoist Temple Meaning And Daily Practice

Arson Fire Loss And Global Restoration

Okay, I'm Ariane Wing, and I have um spent most of my life talking about China Alley. China Alley, well, actually, it was a Chinatown. When the railroads were built, a lot of the railroad workers were Chinese and they came over here, like all immigrants, they got the job done. They came here and after the railroads were built, they stayed here to work as farm laborers or they found work elsewhere. But they built their city within a city. And why I'm so glad that Jack ceded this piece of real estate to this display, because this is a city within a city. And they built everything. There was, there must have been half a dozen herbalists in the heyday. There were um merchandise stores, there were um the gambling rooms, there was, they did not have to go further, other than work for the men to, I mean, they did China, China Alley or Chinatown was where they lived and did it did not have to go into downtown Hanford. And lots of times when I'm doing tours in China Alley, people will say, this is the city within a city. But Chinatown went like the through the back parking lot of the Imperial dynasty, all the way there were houses there. The temple theater was um, that was a Chinese school. So it went, it was not just an alley, but all that remains of the between five and seven hundred families that went through Chinatown in its heyday are these 11 buildings. And in 2011, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated China Alley as one of 11 most endangered historic places in America. We were very honored to get that designation. And it sounds weird, like we want to be endangered, but it brought worldwide recognition. We had we that coverage of Hanford's Chinatown was in, we had people send us things from Paris and all, I mean, just all over the world. And the reason we put these stools in this display is because they lined up the streets and in China Alley. And if you look at uh Michael Siemens's picture of upstairs in the temple, you'll see the the men are sitting on these same stools. And um they people would cart them just like a purse and so, oh hey, I'm gathering of friends, um, impromptu meeting. They ate off of them, and so though the stools were important. Some of you know and some of you don't, but my great-grandfather opened up a noodle house in China Alley in 1883, and some of these stools are from his noodle house. This woman, I wanted to also, um, in this round of Asian display in the Carnegie Museum, I wanted to talk about the women. This woman, her name is Chanxi. She arrived in Hanford in 1914 and she lived in the China Alley area or Chinatown area until she passed in 1962. Most of these women, um, for instance, Chanxi, um, her husband had come earlier to um work in Hanford, California area. And then he went back to China to find a wife, which was probably arranged and happened to be her. Um, so she came here, like all the other women, they were plucked from their homes in China and landed in Hanford. And they had, I mean, it was all strange for them. Um, most of the Chinese that settled in here, they were from nearby neighborhoods, so the dialect was the same. So the women, the women, they created a huge camaraderie. And um, about 10 years ago, I was doing an oral history with one of the original women's daughter, and she had said, you know, that that they it was just like one big family. Uh and why so while the men were building, laying railroad tracks and building a city within a city, it was the women who built the village. And I just wanted to share that because I think that aspect is very important. We've been to a couple of other um, I want to say, Asian um heritage conferences and stuff. And on and recently there were a lot of short featured films, and it was amazing to me how mothers, aunts, grandmas, how important that was in shaping what a lot of people became. So I wanted to at least acknowledge that there were as many women as there were men building the city within a city. This is a kind of an update of our um Taoist Temple. Now, the Taoist Temple was built in in 1882, and it served as it wasn't so much a religious um temple, it served as a meeting room behind those wooden doors. It also served as a schoolroom. Um, it was also it was kind of a multi-purpose room. And the being that there was Taoism, there is no set time, like there's not a mass or a minister. It's kind of a, our culture is so ancestral, uh honor your ancestor kind of, what always say that's our thing. And so a lot of um you will go up there and you will light incense and a candle and bow to, you know, your ancestors, because if they're happy, your life is going to be happy. We had an and um ceremonial incense burner and upstairs, and um you would light the incense, and maybe you would send, there would be gold flecked paper, um, and so you could make sure that they got they were wealthy up in the heavens, um, their clothes. I've been to some temples where there's um the papers molded into uh folded into a like a BMW and things. So you want to make your ancestors happy so your life will be rich and fulfilled. But I have to talk about May 12, 2021, it was other than my parents' death. It was, I think of the saddest day of my life, and that was watching the temple burn. There there was an arseness, and I always want to remind people when you talk about this fire, it was arson. Somebody purposely set us on fire. And because of the deal the deputy made, the den WTA, she's already out. She instead of the maximum, she got less than three years. Trying to set a happy note on that because the first time we were able to do a display about the ars and everything was when you first opened. And I couldn't get through it. It was just so raw and too much grief. But the happy note is that although we lost a tremendous amount of artifacts, that I mean I think fire is a museum's worst nightmare. You cannot replace some items. And um, while we were greatly insured for the building, which is structurally stable, um, we had really happy insurance for our for our artifacts. But the happy ending, I hope, with for this is that we had we hired some cons uh museum level conservators. They went through, sorted out what could be saved, what couldn't, and there was we did extensive cleaning and what minor repairs that could be done in Southern California. And before COVID, we had been in um negotiations with the Hong Kong Museum of Hong Kong Museum History, and we have done on-loan things with them before. And they have picked out all these things they wanted to go over and be displayed in Hong Kong. And of course, a lot of them were lost and damaged in the arson. And um, but they said we still they they loved our story, they love Hamford's Chinese story, and so they said, we can do this, we'll take care of it. We still want this display. They took our our burnt altar, the embroidery that's looks like it's dead. Um and it's they fixed it. It's on display in the museum in Hong Kong to this day. And it's that that exhibit started I think it will be two years because they're everything's coming back home in August. And um our building won't be ready, so my job now is to find a place to put everything. But um anyway, we're also I also like to um make sure that when we talk about the fire, that we express our gratitude to the fire departments. That there was I knew it was bad because when we pulled up, there were six fire trucks out there and um Hanford and Kings County. And um anyway, I guess um, it was just just to see the fire coming out of the windows, and we were this close to losing the whole building because a window broke and oxygen was getting in. But the other the other reason why I think about the very they really worked to get that fire out as quickly as they could. But the fortunate thing is this playmate here, about two months before the fire, um took both depart departments through all the buildings in China Alley. And so they knew what was up there, and so they were very careful with how they were spraying the water, because that again, fire and water are not good for museums. And so kudos to the to the fire firefighters, and um we'll see what happens when all our stuff gets back. We just hope it's it's just we'll be back. We're we are the Phoenix, be real rise.

Schools Exhibit And What Was Saved

A lot of the north display and also in what is normally our audiovisual room deals with the schools. And Helen Jabelli was lead curator on that.

Hanford High Auditorium Controversy

Lemoore Origins And Early Downtown

First of all, yeah, as we go through the pictures, you're gonna see a lot of very early pictures of Kings County schools. In that room, particularly, you're gonna see a lot of pictures of the schools of Kings County of 1893. And the reason why those pictures are still here is because of one person, which is Harold Gibson, Harold Hook Gibson. He was the county superintendent of schools, and he was working after hours at this school office there, and he saw the janitor coming by with boxes of photos that he was just gonna throw out in the garbage. And Harold Gibson stopped him. He says, I'll take him, don't worry about it. And that was the impetus for him to write his book on the history of Kings County School. So if it wasn't for Harold, we would not have seen these pictures. We would see duplicates or copies or whatever. So what we've got here though, these are these two pictures on the left came from Harold Gibson. The one in the middle, I don't know if that came from the Gibson collection or not. The one in the upper left-hand corner was from Gibson. That's a postcard from my collection, the the the old North School, and you'll just see some description as to what's going on regarding each one of these buildings. In the back is a really neat clock. If you read the story, that was the clock that was used by Woodrow Wilson School to synchronize all the clocks, the clocks, and bells within the school. And as this as the original Woodrow Wilson was being torn down, that was gonna just be tossed in the hash heap, and of course, Harold Gibson rescued it. And so there it is now. Hanford High School, the the the school that you that that wonderful auditorium uh was built with an original bond issue of like$325,000. But they ran out of money. And so they tried to get another bond issue passed uh to complete the building, and there were two other attempts to build to pass the bond issues, and they failed. And so the school district had to scrounge the money up to finish that building. And unfortunately, what they spent the money on was the auditorium part, because that there you have the front part with the columns of the classrooms, and then the back was the auditorium. Well, this was under a different level of construction quality than the front part of the building. So as that building aged, the auditorium was separating from the classroom, and that created a big problem for that building. And I remember in 71 there was an earthquake in which many public buildings, including high schools and hospitals, collapsed and fire stations. And so the state of California said, Hey, we need to rethink our building codes. What they basically said was that if your building was built before a certain year, you got to tear it down. There's no other way around it. And so what the state came to the the to the Hanford High School board and said, We're gonna give you three million dollars. Three million dollars to build the administration portion of the building. Now, what you're gonna need to do is you need to figure out another way to build to get the rest of the money to build the brand new auditorium that's gonna go in front of it, but we're gonna give you the money to build the administration building, but you got to tear this building down. We're gonna give you the money. You're not, I mean we don't have to pay it back. And uh by the way, and they and I spoke to two board members at the time or later on, and they said that we were threatened that we would be held personally liable if somebody got injured in that building from any sort of accident because we didn't tear it down. So they had a gun held over the head. They tore it down, you know the controversy about that, and then they built that that building that's there, but you were not supposed to see that because the empty grass corner was to be where they were gonna drop in a brand new auditorium building with the same columns and the same beauty, and was all gonna face the the intersection of Dowdy and Grangeville. It was a beautiful structure, but people were so pissed off that they lost the auditorium that they could never pass a bond issue to build it. And so that's why you see what's there today. It's a sad story. It needs to be documented. Unfortunately, many of the people who are truly angry about it are dead now. The thing is that there's more to that story. So again, the controversy and all the anger and everything that came out of this area, plus at other schools, the state went back and said, maybe we're a little bit too harsh on you. We'll let you rebuild or reinforce the building. So that's why you see Lamore's building got kept because they they didn't, well, they didn't get the opportunity to get$3 million, but they were able to save that building and also the Avenel High School. Look, I always say that the high school was sacrificed to save the rest of the town.

On the left side, we have Kettleman City and Avenel. Interesting little thing, David Kettleman spelled his name K-E-T-T-E-L M-A-N, but it's called Kettleman City L E.

So this one, a lot of our information and history is written up. We've got kind of the timeline of the Moonies specifically in L'More. Number one, the center is the Mooney Museum House with Aaron and Sarah right here on this side. These it's going to be three. Um we've got the copy of the application that was sent to DC in order to get a post office for the incorporation of L'Amour. We're gonna Have the story kind of of how Lemoire got its name perfect right in the middle, along with the photo of Dr. Lee Moore. It does have a very strong connection to what Jack was talking about earlier, about the kind of struggles between the local railway department versus the people that had settled and squatted on the land first and kind of the power dynamics that lent itself so that Lamore was kind of able to be name itself before the railroad came through. Because I know that for places like Corcoran, it was up to the railroad to name the town. But for this one, it was chosen by the people. And so that will have all of that information on there if people want to read, or if you can kind of chat with them about this is a panoramic photo of D Street. So the downtown. This is from, I don't know if you've been to the L'More downtown recently, but right on the corner of I believe it's D and Fox. There's a big white building that used to be one of the first banks of L'Amour. This is from the top of that looking east along D Street. And so that's where that is. It's from about 1905. And you can kind of see one of the it was Jack's great idea to have it up against the window, and you can see the buggies, some of the more old-fashioned automobiles that are there too. And then we have the five frames, but six individuals. Each one connects to a person who's mentioned in our larger history of lamour explanation. And so that will have kind of direct connections to the roadses, which were some of the first people to come to the area, although they were mostly kind of like coming over here, letting their cattle graze near the lake, and then kind of going all the back up north for a little while until they really committed, moved down and create, started developing land that would become Lamore.

I hope you enjoyed listening to these segments from the Carnegie Museum of Kings County. The museum is located at 109 East 8th Street in downtown Hanford and is open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is$5 per person with a$10 family maximum. Now let's check in with Eric for a recap of local sports.

And now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley.

We'll start at softball where a pair of teams got off to a 2-0 league start. The Sierra Pacific softball team had a busy week going 4-1 and 1 in their six games. The action started Monday at the Spring Showdown Tournament in Templeton, with the Golden Bears facing the host Eagles in Game 1, which ended in an 8-8 tie. Monday's second game only needed four innings as Sierra Pacific put up 18 runs in an 18-6 win over Edison. Tuesday, the Golden Bears took down Orcut Academy 7-5, but fell 8-3 in the third place game to Clovis. Later in the week, league play kicked off with a 5-2 win over Exeter, followed by a 19-1 drubbing of CBC. Two more chances for the Golden Bears to keep their league record perfect with games at Washington Union and home versus Reedley this week. The Hanford West softball team is also 2-0 in league play, getting started on Monday with a 14-4 run rule victory over Emmanuel. After falling to Bullard 5-1 in non-league action on Tuesday, the Huskies bounced back with a resilient 8-7 victory over Selma in a game that saw Hanford West trail 7-0 before scarring all eight of their runs in the final three innings. The Huskies will look to remain unbeaten in league play with games at Kerman and home versus Kingsburg this week. And we had no scores reported for Hanford High Softball last week, so out to baseball, where everyone is in the midst of their home and home portion of the schedule, taking on the same opponent during the week once at home and once on the road. Sierra Pacific baseball entered the week with a four and oh league record and improved to five and oh after rallying to take down CVC five to three on Tuesday. The Cavaliers got their get back on Thursday, though, handing the Golden Bears their first league loss of the season 4-1. It's looking like a two-horse race in the Tri-County Kings League between Sierra Pacific and Kingsburg, with both teams at 5-1. So this week's series between the Golden Bears and the Vikings will certainly be the biggest of the season for both teams. Tuesday's game at Kingsburg starts at 6 30, while the Thursday game at Sierra Pacific is slated to start at 4. Hanford West Baseball also went 1-1 in league action last week, falling to Readley in a close one 2-1 on the road Tuesday, before bouncing back with a dominant 7-1 win over the Pirates at home on Thursday. The Huskies' 3-3 league record is good enough for second place currently, and they'll get two chances to improve on that mark later in the week when they take on Exeter. But before that, a crosstown showdowns awaits the Huskies on Monday at Hanford High. Speaking of the Bullpups, the Hanford High Baseball team is in the midst of a tough stretch after falling to league leading Taler Western in both games last week. Those two losses were the first two league losses for the Bullpups, who slide to second place in the WIL with a four and two record. That Monday matchup with Hanford West on deck for the Bullpups this week before a pair of league matchups with Mission Oak. As always, if you have a score report or a team update for any team in any sport at any level, you can let us know by emailing HanfordInsider at gmail.com. I'm Eric Bentley, and this has been your Hanford Insider Sports Report.

And that wraps things up for this week's show. If you enjoyed this podcast and you'd like to show your support, you can go to buymeacoffee.com forward slash Hanford Insider to make a donation, or you can Venmo me. If you'd like to join my Hanford Insider email list, stop by my website at HanfordInsider.com to sign up for updates. You'll also get an exclusive copy of my newsletter in your inbox each week. Also need your help getting the word out about the show by liking and sharing on social media, or like most people, just telling a friend. For more information about the show, you can find this podcast on Facebook, Instagram, ThreadsX, and YouTube at Hanford Insider. If you have a show idea, be sure to email me at HanfordInsider at gmail.com and I'll look into it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Hanford Insider Podcast. Have a great week.