This article from the January 3, 1924 Arroyo Grande Herald-Recorder records a theft on Bridge Street. Mr. Pruess’s automobile curtains were stolen while he was in a lodge meeting. A little research evealed that the town druggist was a steadfast member of the International Order of Odd Fellows (an organization more popular than the Freemasons in the late 1800s) and so it’s likely that the crime took place here, on Bridge Street, outside the IOOF Hall that is now the South County Historical Society’s home.

Several things about this little story amazed me. Judge Gammons threw the book at the malefactor, a $23 fine (over $400 in 2023 dollars) and 30 days in jail. His victim, Mr. Pruess, was enormously popular. His friends included Ole Gullickson, likewise popular, and the two were among a group of local businessmen who went deer-hunting annually somewhere up north. They always bought lubricant–whiskey– first, purchased on the beach from a local bootlegger. Ole’s son Don remembered this because they always took Ole with them. Nobody would suspect and illegal booze purchase with a six-year-old -boy amid the grown men.

Don, probably in the Top Ten of the nicest people I have ever met, told me this story. He wasn’t 100% sure, but he thinks they bought the whiskey from “some guy named Alex.”

Mr. Pruess’s car was an “Overland,” a brand I’m not familiar with. So I looked it up. The ad above is for a 1923 model. The arrest came about because Mr. Pruess recognized his curtains the very next day. They were inside another Overland. It must’ve been a popular make then, even though it’s not around today.

Unlike Alex’s, almost not around.

Look at the job one man did in restoring this 1924 Overland, at one point in pieces in his garage. It took three years. It’s a beautiful car, I think, even though when you look closely at the front bumper, you realize that folks needed one of those arm-breaking cranks to start the engine.

I had one more little search to do. Who made “Overlands?” It turned out that the man was one John Willys, whose name will be connected forever to a little four-cylinder car that went to war after Pearl Harbor. Here are some of them being made at the Overland-Willys plant in Toledo, Ohio. John Willys was the father of the Jeep.

One more thing: I love photos of Old Arroyo (we do not use the term “The Village” in my house. It’s pretentious.), so here’s one that includes the IOOF Hall, built in 1902.

1. The Olohan Building, home to Klondike Pizza. (I think, but I’m not sure, that the Mosher building is across the street, at the left lower edge of the photo. It’s Posies in the Village today; in the 1920s, it was the Mission Theater, busy showing silents and then talkies.)
2. The IOOF Hall.
3. The Presbyterian Church. Some Lucia Mar offices are there today.
4. The doctor’s office–a beautiful building. It was Dr. Cookson’s office when I was little and today it’s a pediatrician’s office.
5. St. Patrick’s Church, which had to be demolished because of termite damage.
6. Mr. Giacomini’s house. He carved his own tombstone–it’s in the cemetery today, but he didn’t quite yet need it, it so he kept it in his front yard.
7. The Methodist Church, today the Harvest Church.
   
   I’m a little unsure as to the picture’s date. The lettering suggests it’s from the very early 1900s, but I don’t see the very large and imposing grammar school, which stood on the site of today’s Ford agency. Its successor, the Orchard Street School, was a PWA New Deal project, so maybe this photo’s actually from the 1930s.
   
   I hope, by then, that Curtain Thief E.D. Howell had taken up the Straight and Narrow Path in life.