Local coach creates aid for power hitters of all ages
‘SwingingAider’ teaches boys and girls to hit for the fences Doug Curlee
Editor at Large
O
ver a lifetime of pitching baseballs, Jon Barnhill had a firsthand look at what sepa-
rates true hitters from those who swing hard but wildly. No doubt he saw a great many baseballs he’d thrown come screaming back at him in the form of line drives hit with the kind of quick, comSee HITTERS page 13
John Barnhill and players wearing his SwingingAider.
Last chance for a new water bond? One month left to get it done Doug
Curlee
Editor at Large
C Tom Kelly of Allied Gardens recently turned 100 years old. (Photo by Jeremy Ogul)
Jeremy
Ogul
Conributing Editor
W
Kelly said. Interstate 8 did not exist, and Mission Valley was still a quiet agricultural area covered with orchards, barns and two-lane dirt roads. Dairy cows roamed on the land near the intersection of what is now Mission Gorge Road and Zion Avenue. There were no shopping centers nearby, but you didn’t have to travel far down Mission Gorge Road to find a vegetable stand, said Kelly’s nephew, Joe. Kelly bought his house on Delfern Street, off Zion Avenue, for something like $15,000. His mortgage was around $80 a month. As houses sprouted up on the open land, encounters between wildlife and the new human residents were common. Being just a few steps away from the edge of the Navajo Canyon, Kelly recalls that the neighbors used to get together for rattlesnake
hen Tom Kelly bought his house brand new in 1955, he never imagined he would live to see his 100th birthday there, but come Aug. 25, Kelly’s family and friends will gather to induct him into the highly exclusive “100 club.” “I’m still here!” Kelly says with a grin. As far as anyone can tell, Kelly is the oldest original homeowner in Allied Gardens, a place that looked vastly different when the homes first started going up in the mid-1950s. Kelly, his wife Ann and son Tom Jr. had lived in Middletown and East San Diego before they decided to head east. “We thought it was in the sticks back then,” See 99 YEARS page 23
alifornia legislators return to work August 4th after a break for the month of July. There are several things awaiting their attention, but few if any are more important to all Californians than their last chance to get a revised water bond on the November ballot. There is a bond measure currently qualified for the ballot, but even legislators who backed its creation back in 2009 now regret it, and agree that the measure is too full of earmarks — or “pork” — to win at the ballot. It’s also hideously expensive, at almost $12 billion. But those close to the ongoing debate point to the legislators’ inability to pull that measure from the ballot and leave nothing in its place in the midst of perhaps the second worst drought in California history. To do so would very likely end more than a few legislative careers.
See WATER page 16
Mission Trails Park fire knocked down quickly Jay
Wilson
for the Mission Times Courier
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n Sunday, July 13, a brush fire broke out in Mission Trails Regional Park. Thanks to a quick call to 911 from a park visitor, the response was very quick from a number of agencies in the county. Because of the terrain, the fire quickly climbed up Kwaay Paay as it spread out over the hillside and then over the top and began working its way east. Under the direction of Battalion Chief Dan See FIRE page 21