By Miriam Raftery

October 28, 2009 (La Mesa) – At last night’s La Mesa City Council meeting, it came as a surprise to many in the audience to learn that alcohol consumption has been prohibited in City parks since 1991. Last night Council voted 5-0 to extend that ban to all public places including City streets, curbs, and sidewalks—drawing praise from some and criticism from others.
 

by Craig S. Maxwell

The memorial service for my grandfather, Vernon Wahrenbrock, was sparsely attended; the inevitable consequence, I suppose, of his having lived nearly a century. All his friends and much of his family were gone. We, his survivors, were there of course. And so were a few of the folks he'd come to know at the rest home. But the only other person to pay his respects that day was Chuck Valverde. It was February 18th, 2008 and already he was pale and thin. Still, I had no way of knowing that within six months I and hundreds of others would be attending a memorial service for Chuck himself.

The link between these very dissimilar but remarkable men was, of course, Wahrenbrock's Book House – the shop my grandfather founded in 1935 and that Chuck had operated (and later owned) since 1967.