Darryl Manzer

Heading home. Been gone since mid-December, and now I can feel that warm sunshine of Southern California. At least I hope it is warm.

I’m really tired of cold weather. Just plain sick of it. Tonight I’m in New Mexico where, for the first time in a couple of weeks, I’m in a temperature over 32 degrees. Almost time to break out my cargo shorts and T-shirts.

If I had luggage stickers on the RV, they would indicate I’ve been to some exotic places. Paris (Tenn.), Milan (also in Tennessee) and Cadiz (Ky.), just to name a few. Did you think I had been to France, Italy and Spain? Just because the luggage stickers would say those city names doesn’t mean I was there. But I can dream.

Of course, I could also have stickers from other towns and places. (I am NOT making these up. Here goes: Buck Snort, Toad Suck Park, Blue Ball, and Elk.)

Notice that every one of those names, almost everyone can pronounce. Unlike our towns in the SCV. Valencia was a tongue twister for someone taking my address the other day. But we also have Castaic and Saugus and Honby.

Had our L.A. County Supervisor, Michael D. Antonovich, been this way, I might have seen the Michael D. Antonovich Toad Suck Park. And maybe Fort Smith was really supposed to be named Fort Antonovich but at the time, nobody could spell Antonovich. Someday my grandkids are going to ask: “Grandpa, the Michael D. Antonovich guy must have been a war hero or something. What war did he fight in?”

I’d better get back on the subject … now what was that? Oh, traveling West.

I’m going through or near all of these towns that have been part of the lyrics to a song. Oklahoma City. Memphis. Clarksville. Jackson. Amarillo. Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Tomorrow I’ll be near Gallup and Winona, Winslow and Kingman. All of these towns are remembered because those names are in songs. In a couple of days I’ll even go through Barstow.

Heck, if Barstow can make it into a song, why can’t Acton or Newhall or Castaic or Saugus or Valencia or Honby? There should be a song about riding a bike to Acton. I think any serious bike rider in the SCV has peddled up Soledad Canyon Road. Any of you bike riders want to try your hand at some lyrics?

But no song. Not even a poem. There might be a limerick possible, but I’m not going to attempt it. I wrote some for the nights we celebrated being halfway through a Polaris Submarine patrol of 60 or more days underwater. I can’t write them here. This is a family media. Not a one of them used any of our town names. We used Rota (Spain), but alas, not a place in the SCV.

I think we should come up with an SCV song. I can start it: “Roundabout here, Roundabout there. Our voting method might not be fair.” No, that isn’t working. So can any of you come up with lyrics for our SCV song?

We can use another tune that has already been used. It works for our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.” The tune is from an old English drinking song. Maybe we could adapt the SCV song from, say, the Hart High alma mater.

But let’s face it. How can we make a song with names we can’t agree on how to pronounce like Castaic and Honby? There just doesn’t seem to be any rhythm to those words.

So, I’ve got a challenge for both of my readers. Make up one line of a song. We here at SCVNews can put those lines together and maybe have an SCV song. You might also want to recommend some tunes to use.

When we get done writing our SCV song, we can get it recorded by a famous SCV musician and then we can sell it. We can all be rich and afford artwork for the new roundabout in Newhall. Maybe we can get something for the two in Castaic.

It would be most helpful if you wrote your line of lyric on a $10 bill and mailed it to me via SCVTV. Trust me, I’ll use each line submitted. The fuel for this RV is expensive.

I can’t wait to see your lyrics and tune suggestions. Let me know soon. I’m stopping in Las Vegas and might need bus fare home.

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com and his commentaries, published on Tuesdays and Sundays, are archived at DManzer.com. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].