Wednesday April 4, 2001
Once Upon A More
Enlightened Time
Today's Tower District Has Forgotten Its Own!
By Thomas Hobbs, Executive Editor
TOWER
-- What is the Tower District? My friend William Saroyan defined
it. He invented it. And now people who cannot answer the first
question, ask this,"Who was William Saroyan?"
He wrote stories and sketches about
Fresno drawn from his experiences in and around this part of
town. People from all over the world read him.
Today, there is probably only one place
where his books are not read, his plays not performed, his movies
not shown.
Ironically, today there are precious
few in the Tower who know or even care that it was Saroyan's
subtle influence that made the Tower District a beacon for the
arts.
Fewer still know of his importance
in making the Tower District a place worthy of listing on the
Register of Historic Places.
In his later years he spent a lot of
time hanging-out here. He was the only world famous writer who
spent his formative years in the Tower District. He brought
honor to us and a Pulitzer Prize for his trouble.
He could have saved the Tower District
Marketing Committee and Tower residents a lot of trouble
and wasted expense. If those who say they are so concerned with
the future of the Tower had ever read his books and plays or
seen his movies they might have avoided the dilemma now facing
down this community.
We all might have been saved from ourselves
if we were more aware of Saroyan. Now we are faced with an inescapable
truth and its consequence.
Lest we forget our past entirely, several
of Saroyan's works were based upon his personal experiences
in University Village, as it was known in the 1930's.
He found his strongest themes in the spirit of the neighborhood,
he praised the freedom here, and declared its kindness and brotherly
love as human ideals for the entire world.
The Tower District could still attract
writers and playwrights from all over the world. However, the merchant
committee leadership has been reluctant to change its mass
marketing activities.
Tower resident Mike Starry told the
Tower News, "If the neighborhood is not safe, businesses
lose. Please spread the word - Do not ever again sponsor anything
youth oriented like the Mardi Gras debacle. I do not
want my son anywhere near violence...Stick to safe adult programs
& events or the Tower will die!"
Saroyan, perhaps anticipated the demeaning
of the Tower when he depicted himself, in 1958, as the dispassionate
observer who is, "... everybody's best friend and … neither
walks with the multitude nor cheers with them." This is the
ethic that made Tower the way it was and what could remake
it that way again.
The public record shows Saroyan was
born in Fresno as the son of an Armenian father trained to be
a minister in the Presbyterian Seminary. However, after
arriving in New Jersey the family moved to Southern California
where his father was forced to take on manual farm-labor work
to feed his family.
His father died in 1911. William Saroyan
was put in an orphanage in Alameda with his brothers. Six years
later the family reunited in Fresno. At the age of fifteen,
his mother showed him some of his father's diaries and sermons.
After reading them the younger Saroyan decided to become a writer,
himself.
Saroyan continued his education by
reading books he obtained from the Carnegie Library in Fresno
and found a means of earning money by writing stories from his
own experiences in Fresno.
He hawked late editions of a
local newspaper as a newsboy on the Republican Corner
at Van Ness and Fresno streets. He was later hired as a journalist
by the newspaper. He soon found he was capable of making a living
on income from sales of his writing.
It was 14 years later that he found
a publisher for his manuscript of "The Daring Young Man On
The Flying Trapeze," a story of an impoverished young Armenian
writer during the economic depression of the 1930's in Fresno.
Saroyan was a playwright whose work
was drawn from deeply personal sources. The context of his knowledge
was the human interaction near Fulton and Van Ness
streets.
What he learned in University Village
was that the commnity was in transition. He was right. The
Village would soon give rise to the Tower District. It became
the essence of an upscale hang-out for an eclectic mix of college
crowd and local residents of a vital neighborhood on the
move.
People began to buy land and houses
north of University Ave. The movement to suburbia gained
its zenith with the construction of the Tower Theatre
in 1939. The Tower was suddenly sophisticated and it had arrived.
One of Saroyan's best-known plays was
published that year. The Time of Your Life! (1939) won
a Pulitzer Prize. Closely following on this was sale
of movie rights to his short story My Name is Aram in
1940. He then sold the film script of The Human Comedy,
to MGM.
His movies were once shown in the Tower
Theatre. He was once acclaimed in Tower coffee shops as a model
for writers at Fresno State College just a few blocks away.
Later, Saroyan would publish essays
and memoirs on themes and people he had encountered in the Tower
District and while traveling in Europe. In the late 1960s and
again in the 1970s he produced works that earned him substantial
income and increased worldwide acclaim.
Among the newer works were autobiographical
sketchbooks. In his later years he moved back to Fresno acquiring
a modest bungalow not far from his beloved Tower District of
the old days.
He had used his old Schwinn Bicycle
for transportation to the Carnation Ice Cream Fountain
on Olive. When he arrived he discovered the shop had closed
and was for sale.
He was not pleased to see what was
beginning to happen to the community spirit of the area. He
was secretly gratified that no one recognized him as he slowly
rode the Schwinn quietly away.
He had peddled that Schwinn all the way down
West Ave. to Shaw where Swenson's Ice Cream Parlor welcomed
him. He parked his Schwinn outside and walked in. He spoke a
greeting to me and asked how I'd been. He ordered an ice cream.
He smiled as he told me, "The Carnation is up for sale!
Its a damn shame too. There goes the Tower District!"
That was the last time I saw him. Saroyan
died on May 18, 1981 at home.
[Editor's Note: Saroyan's personal memoirs
express his life vision as shaped by his own experiences in
University Village and The Tower District. His
later books are The Bicycle Rider (1952), Here Comes,
There Goes, You Know Who (1961), Not Dying (1963),
and Obituaries (1980), was nominated
for the American Book Award. His final work of reminiscence,
Births (1983), was published posthumously.]
Letter
to the Editor
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