Retired Businessman Shares His Memories of Hawthorne

The yellow barley fields and berry bushes that once grew along what is now Sepulveda Boulevard are long gone. But, if Douglas Robertson has anything to do with it, they won’t be forgotten.

Over the last four years, the 77-year-old retired businessman and former school trustee has made a second career of his memories, selling a self-published book titled “Hawthorne: A Portrait of a Memory,” the proceeds of which go to the polio fund of the Hawthorne Rotary Club.

Robertson was 13 years old in 1923 when he and his parents, who had recently immigrated from Scotland, moved into their first Hawthorne home: a humble shack that lacked indoor plumbing. Today, Robertson splits his time between a home in Fresno and a 240-acre ranch in Montecito, but he still feels the tug of his Hawthorne roots.

“Centinela Valley will always be home, no matter where else I go,” Robertson told a gathering of the Historical Society of Centinela Valley Wednesday night. “Mentally, I’m always here.”

The 25 society members, some of whom have known Robertson more than 50 years, came to hear him talk about his book and to trade anecdotes about the past. Initially written as a family history for his six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, the book is a folksy account of life in a town that didn’t see its first paved road or doctor until 1924, two years after its incorporation as a city.

He has sold more than 1,000 copies of the spiral-bound book at $10 apiece. The book is in its sixth printing.

Although some names and dates are approximated, “Hawthorne” is filled with personal reminiscences of people who made an imprint on Robertson’s life. Among them were Masao Oshiki, a neighborhood boy who taught him how to swear in Japanese, and undertaker Jordan Dunaway, who once, in the middle of a funeral, forgot where he was going and drove the hearse to his own home with a procession of mourners following behind.

The book chronicles what life was like in the mid-1920s when a newspaper delivery boy could earn $10 a week, and major surgery at Hawthorne Hospital cost $25. Those were the days when people rode horses to the Saturday afternoon baseball game near the Pacific Electric Railroad tracks, and a round-trip ticket from Hawthorne to Redondo Beach cost 22 cents on the red car.

After graduating from Inglewood High School, Robertson worked on a farm before joining his brother in a venture to open a bicycle shop in Hawthorne. Eventually, the brothers sold Cushman carts, a profitable business that allowed them to invest money in real estate.

In 1975, after serving 19 years on the board of trustees of the Centinela Valley Union High School District, Robertson and his wife, Juanita, moved to their ranch in Montecito.

Although the couple now spend most of their time in Fresno to be close to their daughter, Robertson flies to Los Angeles once every couple of months to attend meetings of the Hawthorne Rotary Club, where he has been a member for 60 years. He keeps a spare car at a friend’s house to allow him to drive around the old neighborhood before heading back home.

“I have to admit I’m a prisoner of the past,” Robertson said Wednesday, to the nods of several friends in the audience. “I’m a hopeless prisoner. I’d like to be there. The past to me is more real than the present. The present is only one day long, and the future is not here yet. So what do we have except the past to think about?”