Carmel's Cold War

A soft-spoken English immigrant cleaned up and maintained Carmel's Forest Theater a few years until the fall of 1950, when the City Council found out he was registered with the county Elections Department as a Communist. After some debate, Norman Duxbury was terminated from his non-paying city job, then kicked out of the Pacific Grove Gay Nineties Square Dance Club because other members didn't want to do-si-so with him anymore. So at age 67, Duxbury, a retired carpenter, took his Social Security and spent the rest of his years gardening at his Monterey home and writing copious letters to newspaper editors. Duxbury worked for Carmel for no outright compensation other than the right to live in a free shack on the grounds. He was not a member of the Communist Party (they rejected him too) and did not believe in violence. According to a Time Magazine article on the Carmel incident, Duxbury just believed the government "... will collapse from its own rottenness".

Fishy Building in PG

The concrete building at the ocean end of Lighthouse Avenue in Pacific Grove was built by the Navy in 1952 with walls thick and strong enough to withstand a direct bomb attack. It was part of Cold War preparations, then abandoned after a few decades. A federal research group that had been operating out of trailers at the Navy's Fleet Numerical Center in Monterey moved to the oceanfront building in the 1990s, bringing equipment that helps analyze changing conditions in the Pacific and the subsequent effects on fisheries. The work of the Environmental Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center has provided some of the crucial evidence of global warming, or climate change. The scientists recently adorned their squat building next to the Point Pinos Lighthouse with a 400-foot mural that wraps around the outer walls and displays the colorful critters that flourish in Monterey Bay.

(Photo: Environmental Research Division building in PG from
their web site)