Mesa Musings:

I had lunch the other day with Mike Parks, a good buddy of mine from Costa Mesa High School, class of 1962.

Mike and I spent the hour reminiscing about the old days in our hometown during the 1950s and ’60s.

We remembered the Mesa Theater, situated for several decades at Newport Boulevard and 19th Street. The Mesa was the fourth theater built in Newport-Mesa, after the Lido and Balboa theaters on the Peninsula, and the Port on Pacific Coast Highway in Corona del Mar. The Lido was the theater of the bourgeoisie; the Mesa appealed to the masses.

The elegant 622-seat Lido, which opened in 1938, had a balcony. The unadorned Mesa, which opened in the early 1950s, was a single-floor structure. Its capacity must have approached a thousand.

My brother and I rode our bikes to the Mesa almost every Saturday to attend matinees. Admission was a quarter. It was there that I saw the 1956 film “Forbidden Planet,” and the 1957 classic, “The Black Scorpion.” When I was older, I took dates to the Lido because it was classier. I saw “Lawrence of Arabia” there in 1962.

We also took dates to the Paulo Drive-in (at Newport and Paularino Street). It opened in 1949 and accommodated 800 cars. It closed in 1976. The Harbor Boulevard Drive-in in Santa Ana was another favorite destination. During my senior year, my steady and I went there often. At Harbor and McFadden Avenue, it opened in 1960 and had a capacity of 1,500 cars.

Once in the late ’50s, my brother and I went to a matinee at the Mesa Theater and brought with us a glass jar filled with moths. Our intention was to release the moths during the movie and hope that one would land on the projector lens and cast a huge, menacing silhouette on the screen. That didn’t happen. But, during the movie you could see tiny moths flying in front of the screen — much like E.T. on his bicycle in front of the moon.

Orange Coast College’s pool opened in 1953 and, during the ’50s, was available for recreational swimming weekday afternoons in the summer.

There were virtually no residential pools in town at the time, so it became a huge magnet for bike-riding junior high kids.

The Harbor Area Boys Club on Center Street and Anaheim Avenue was a great place to play basketball and hang out. Mr. Hartwigson helped me craft army rifles in the wood shop for our neighborhood “wars.”

Hundreds of boys played in the summer baseball program.

On Newport Boulevard, long before McDonald’s made its appearance in Orange County, Russ’ Burgers, a drive-in joint, served 17-cent hamburgers. Its malts were to die for! By the time I was a high school senior, inflation had bumped sticker prices to 19 cents a burger.

Bob’s Big Boy on 17th Street was a hangout in the ’60s for OCC and high school students. I was a drama student at Coast, and we stopped at Bob’s almost every night after rehearsal. The Snack Shop, at 17th and Irvine Avenue, was another great hangout, and served excellent fare.

Van’s Bowling Alley, on Superior Avenue, near 17th and Newport, was popular in the 1950s and into the early ’60s. Van’s had about 25 lanes, and I learned to bowl there. The Harbor Roller Rink was just across the street and appealed to a loyal contingent of local skaters. Van’s was relegated to second-class status when the high-tech 40-lane Kona Lanes opened in 1958 at 2699 Harbor Blvd.

As an OCC student, I was a regular at Luigi’s Pizza Parlor at Newport and 17th. We drama students often went there after performances. It closed in 1964.

Other places of distinction included: the Food Giant at Harbor Shopping Center, the largest supermarket in town for years; Pink’s Drugs, with a beautiful marble-topped soda fountain, which operated at 1820 Newport from 1933 to ’79; and the House of Harmony music store on Newport in downtown Costa Mesa. I bought my first Elvis 45 rpm there in 1956: “Don’t be Cruel” and “Hound Dog.” I also rented an instrument from the store for my fifth-grade trumpet lessons.

For Mike, myself and countless others, Costa Mesa was a great place to grow up!

JIM CARNETT lives in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays.