People and Events

It’s been 114 years since Col. Jabez Banbury, one of the founders of Pasadena, made a deal he probably would regret were he alive today. Banbury gave $150 and five acres of land to a Rev. William C. Mosher for a grand piano the reverend had shipped here from Boston.

Banbury, who subsequently served as Pasadena city treasurer and in the Legislature, wanted his twin daughters, Jennie and Jessie, to learn how to play. It is not known how well either of them did, but their musical education was not cheap.

The five acres were at the corner of Colorado Boulevard and Marengo Avenue, currently the site of a bank building and the Plaza Pasadena shopping mall.

“The folklore,” says Bradley Williams, director of the Pasadena Historical Society, “is that it is ‘the million-dollar piano,’ but it would be a hell of a lot more by now.”

The colonel initially offered only the five acres, but the reverend didn’t think that was enough, so the $150 was thrown in to sweeten the deal.

The Emerson grand was turned over to the society in 1928 by the Banbury twins and has resided for years with other Pasadena memorabilia at the organization’s headquarters in the old Fenyes Mansion at North Orange Grove Boulevard and Walnut Street.

Among other Pasadena artifacts:

Landlord John Wilson gave Sal Casola and Chipper Pastron a life-size plastic cow when they opened their new Market City Cafe on South Fair Oaks Avenue several weeks ago. The restaurateurs put it out on the front sidewalk as an attention getter.

The attention it got was that of a cop.

It wasn’t five minutes, Pastron says, before the officer “stuck a ticket right on the cow’s forehead.” It cited the cow for violating city law by obstructing a public right-of-way with an illegal sign. The next violation would cost $25, it warned.

They dragged the cow inside the doorway so that its head protruded--still with an eye to drawing patrons. The officer came back almost immediately and “was very irate about it,” Pastron says. The cow was still in people’s way.

So Pastron and Casola pulled the cow all the way inside. Now it is “grazing on our antipasto bar.” It’s still visible through the picture window but hasn’t been cited again.

Nearly a year and a half ago, posters in parts of the Azusa area pleaded for the return of a lost dog.

Now there are new ones--seeking the dog’s owners.

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals volunteer Geri Wilson and SPCA education director Jane Evans say they do not know the name of the family who lost the dog a year ago last November. But they’d like to.

The female black and white terrier mix apparently was found about that time in an Azusa shopping center by some Alhambra folks who decided to keep it. A neighbor of the finders told Wilson that they ignored the posters. Now, the neighbor tells Wilson, they are moving and no longer can care for the dog.

Evans says it “is a very special little animal” and is being kept for a week or so at the SPCA’s Jefferson Boulevard shelter. If the original owners are not found, she says, it will be put up for adoption in the agency’s Pets for People program, which caters to senior citizens.

Supt. Leonard Britton gave principals of 600 Los Angeles Unified School District schools permission to skip the outdoor portions of Wednesday’s statewide “Response ‘88” drill preparing students for an 8.3 magnitude earthquake.

Inclement weather.

Los Angeles Police Officers Donald Dendy and Richard Duran didn’t spend a lot of time Wednesday admiring the awards they got from the California Highway Patrol and the Automobile Club of Southern California for nabbing car thieves.

Dendy, 38, and Duran, 36, found 98 stolen cars and arrested their drivers on downtown streets during 1987. Sgt. Paul Shoals said it was probably a record for recoveries by a team of officers.

And that, Shoals said, did not even include stolen cars they found parked.

How do they do it?

They were not available to talk about it Wednesday afternoon. They were out there staring at license plates again.