I am forever wealthy for the memories I’ve built in this Santa Clarita, from being a skinny and lost kid here in the 1950s, living in the old hotel above Newhall Pharmacy to today, marching toward — ahem — middle age.  My dear sibling-like substance, Hondo, likes to add, “Since when is being halfway toward 150 middle age?” Well. I’m hopeful. It is when you get there, I suppose.  Eons ago, I was breakfasting at The Way Station with a fellow member of The Worthless Sons of the Wealthy Landowners, Curtis Stone. We were complaining about the uncountable yuppies and condo monkeys who had invaded our boyhood homes, causing traffic lights to blossom every 48 feet across the valley. Of course, we failed to mention that you could buy blueberries, organic or regular, 365 days of the year now and every building, even barns, had blessed air conditioning.  Curtie and I didn’t notice the little old lady, sitting within earshot, at the counter. After breakfast, she marched to our table and wagged a playful finger at us.  “You know,” she said, “I’ve been eavesdropping on you two boys and I want to tell you something. It’s people like you who came here in the 1950s that started to bring this place down and ruin it.”  The woman confessed she had been here since the 19-teens, back when the place needed no improvement.  The other night, I watched that old 1954 movie, “Suddenly.” It’s a crappy old black-&-white film noir with Frank Sinatra sharing top billing with Sterling Hayden and was shot entirely here. Sinatra was on the career skids and made this low-budget “B” movie the same year he made “From Here to Eternity.”  Remember “The Godfather?” The character Johnny Fontaine was the crooner photocopied after Sinatra. In the movie, Don Corleone pulls a few strings and gets his godson a part in a big war movie that makes him, again, a star. In real life, Sinatra made “Suddenly” for beer money, then earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in “Eternity.”  Ol’ Blue Eyes certainly wasn’t Oscar material in “Suddenly.” In fact, he played a cliché Why-I-Oughta villain, here in Newhall to assassinate the president of the United States. I’ve seen that film several dozen times now. It still makes me smile. Not for the subject matter, but seeing what my valley looked like some 70 years ago.  Spruce Street — Main, today — was a wide ribbon, two lanes in each direction, because the original avenue had the extra girth so folks could pull a “U” turning a four-horse team wagon around. There’s not a business in the flick that’s still here today and the film makers had fun twisting my neck around.  The underrated Sterling Hayden plays the town sheriff. In real life? Hayden didn’t really care for acting and preferred sailing the high seas. Early on, he’s right in front of the American Theater (the American Legion Hall today, behind Newhall Library). Three steps later, Sterling’s walking into the old market, on the same side of the street.  Effortlessly moving time and space. That’s the beauty of movie making. I still frequently yell out, “Whoa!” when a cast member walks into a house on a hill in Downtown Newhall, only to glance out the kitchen window to look down from a non-existent hill above the Saugus Train Station, back when it was right across the street from the Saugus Café.   Around that time, a couple miles south, sat the Bamboo Café. Not too many people remember this, but identical twins who were Navy cooks during World War II worked at the two diners — one at the Bamboo, one at the Saugus Café. Locals finally pieced things together that the identical twin chefs at the two eateries had the same — exact — menus.  Frequently I was kicked out of the old Snak Shak, where the grumpy owner, Margaret Hamilton, didn’t like catering to kids or women. The kids? They didn’t spend enough. The women dawdled.  I remember so clearly, being a kid, skinny, all ankles and elbows, walking in Downtown Newhall with the inescapable dread that there’s absolutely nothing to do here and clocks ticked with slow thuds. I’d stroll into the Frew blacksmith shop, just to say “hi” to Tom and watch sparks fly, back when they still made horseshoes.  I came to Newhall the first time, a fairly short stint, a few years after Sinatra left town. Hart Park was weeks old. “Suddenly,” for me, is such an assault on the senses. I’m suddenly young again. In the film and my nostalgic mind, cars are round and huge, with acres of chrome. You sort of aimed instead of drove them. People were polite (they still are today) but the pace was glacial. When summer arrived, people strolled Newhall’s main drag in the heat, tears flowing. Onion harvesting time at Newhall Land & Farming. If you ordered a soda at a restaurant, you had to pace yourself. No free refills. Odd thing? Back then, when the movie was made? There were fewer trees here by 10,000-to-1.  Wouldn’t it be something, if they had a trailer at the American Theater in 1954, just for me? The documentary would show my upcoming life, of relationships counted in algebraic equations, not a single digit, that asked if I should be a cop instead of journalist and buy a sensible pickup instead of dubious Italian race cars.  I wonder. The advances we’re making in science and space travel — do you think I could take a trip back to the 1950s, to old Downtown Newhall? Maybe sit at the pharmacy lunch counter on Market, order a tuna on toasted whole wheat, fries and a vanilla Coke that actually tasted sweet? Read a Superman comic book where the Man of Steel was completely good and wore a suit not black, but red, white and blue?  John Boston has earned more than 100 major journalism awards and has penned more than 11,000 columns, most on the SCV. Visit his eclectic commentary, humor and online store at johnlovesamerica.com. The post John Boston | ‘Suddenly,’ It Somehow Isn’t 1954 in Newhall appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.