STANTON : Seems Like Old Times at Cultural Center

Want to travel back in time momentarily?

Then head to the city’s cultural arts center and check out the mural that Laurel Dahlen, 45, and Yolly Haglund, 41, have labored over for the past month. Inside, on one of the curved walls, you’ll see a rendering of what old Stanton used to look like in the early 1940s.

There’s the old train depot and the conductor, who looks at his pocket watch and stands in the doorway of the old red car that used to travel through town on track.

There’s the old Stanton Feed Co., still doing business today on Chestnut Street, and old Bauman’s Market on Beach Boulevard, now a grocery store at the same site.

And in the shade of a jacaranda tree, two men--one dressed in overalls, the other in suit and suspenders--contemplate their next move on a red-and-black checkerboard, oblivious to the busy market around them.

“You think you know something until you try to paint it,” said Dahlen, as she put the finishing touches on the mural, Haglund working diligently at her side. “But then once you start painting, you realize how little you know.”

It was Cecy MacLatchie, an interior designer working with the city on the project, who told the pair of artists what she would like the mural to convey. But it took a few senior citizens wandering in and out from their bingo games to point out a few minor details that only time could overlook.

“They remembered what it was like back then, and they’d tell us about the things we weren’t sure of,” Haglund said. “One of them told us the tires in the Chevy were low, so we filled them up with a little bit of paint.”

The mural is expected to be finished by the end of next week, and Haglund, Dahlen, MacLatchie and the senior citizens are glad they were all part of what will soon become a permanent fixture to the city.