Old-Style Park’s Perfect Setting for Summer Fun

There is a proper time and place for a big family reunion, according to Terri Pugsley of Orange.

You arrange it for a summer Sunday at an old-fashioned park, because somehow you feel that’s appropriate. You need no other explanation. There probably is no other explanation.

So on Sunday at Hart Park in Orange--which is as old-fashioned as the ‘30s, when it was built--Pugsley and others of her family arrived at 6:10 a.m. to begin setting up for the crowd. It was going to take all that time. More than 125 had attended the previous year.

She arrived even earlier than Albert Camacho did. Camacho, who works for the city Parks Department, is not used to seeing much activity at the park when he arrives around 7 to help drag and line the baseball and softball infields.

He is more used to seeing the park begin to fill late in the morning, with families whose children climb the trees and whose grown-ups lie in their shade, and with ballplayers in uniform who unlimber and stretch and jog in anticipation, and with the old men who just hang out and sleep.

They would arrive later. In the early hours, the only activity was preparation.

At the other side of the park, Frank Ruiz was brushing the sides of the huge municipal pool, which would open at noon to a crowd of eager children.

At the clubhouse, Herman Standard, who lives only four doors from the park, was getting ready for the horseshoe pitching tournament named in his honor. Men would arrive with their own horseshoes in customized cases, like pool sharks arriving with their own cues.

Evangeline Gawronski, born and raised in Santa Ana, was trying to keep the long paper tablecloths taped to the rows of picnic tables that have for decades hosted countless church and company picnics. Her former classmates from Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana were due at noon as part of the Class of ‘61’s 25-year reunion.

“A lot of us grew up in this park,” she said. “We used to come to the plunge. They called them plunges then, not pools. Even then it was a big, old-fashioned park with big trees.”

The park, now about 39 acres, was started in 1934, when cities were of a different scale. Then a park built anywhere in town was within walking distance of everyone.

It was Orange’s first park, and because it was thought that the city probably would never need another, it was dedicated Orange City Park in 1940. (Orange now has 13 parks.)

It was built by men hired by the Works Progress Administration, a Depression-era federal agency that hired the Depression’s unemployed and put them to work on hundreds of public projects.

The abundance of labor is evident in parks such as this one, said Paul Lobato, the city’s park supervisor.

To duplicate the park nowadays, “well, you just couldn’t do it,” Lobato said. “It would cost you a fortune, just in the rock work. If you see the pool building and the way they decorated the stucco, I can’t imagine what it would cost. It would be unbelievable. Just the roofs; they are real Spanish tile, not fiberglass.”

The city has tried to preserve the park’s old-fashioned aura, even in the newer areas, Lobato said. Although newer buildings have less decorative roofs, there are plans to add tile roofs when the money is available, he said.

A section of the park has been planted as a small orange grove to give some idea of how the land once appeared.

The small-town park feeling is there for the reading. A six-foot obelisk commemorating the dedication of the park in 1940 includes a plaque acknowledging that the exotic stones inlaid in the marker were presented by F. B. Dale, Orange city building inspector.

Near a tree, another plaque installed by the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars requests that:

Anyone who stops

Beneath this tree

Breathe a silent prayer

For peace to be.

And a little farther down the path is a brand new sign, expressing hope that, like the park, its people will not change very much either. “This park is dedicated to the preservation of the concept of home and family,” it states.

More important for the moment--at least to the only spectator in the baseball bleachers--was whether David Galina, then at bat, was going to advance the runner.

Galina, who lives in Orange and plays for the Dodgers of Orange Baseball Assn., had a man on first with no outs in the top of the fifth inning with a 2-2 tie.

He walked, which cheered his friend in the stands, Nancy. (“Just ‘Nancy,’ ” she said, grinning.) She was delighted when a double brought Galina home to score.

A double-header was scheduled for the park’s baseball field on this Sunday, making a long day for umpires Steve Hardy and Al Harrington. Still, a sunny Sunday must be more pleasant than, say, a Thursday night.

“On this field, yes,” Harrington said. “The night lights here are horrible.”

Back at the picnic tables, the family reunion was picking up steam.

Tony and Vera Vega, ages 73 and 67, the patriarch and matriarch of the affair, stepped aside with their daughter, Terri Pugsley, to give an account of the family. The couple now live in Perris, but they raised their family in Orange, and Hart Park is home territory.

They have eight children, “four sons and four daughters,” said Vera.

Then they have 23 grandchildren, she said.

No, they have 24, Tony said. And there’s one on the way.

No, said Vera, it’s 23. The one on the way is a great-grandchild.

“We made a count,” said Pugsley, in an aside. “It was in the mid-20s.”

And there are two great-grandchildren, “and a third in October,” Vera said.

For six years the Vega family and some of its friends have been gathering for a reunion, Pugsley said. This year, the feasting began with menudo for breakfast. After several rounds of Bingo, huge quantities of chili con carne, rice, beans, salads and tortillas would be consumed for lunch.

Then the traditional park games would begin--the three-legged races, egg tosses, wheelbarrow races and the like. The gifts would be raffled off, the pinata broken open. Ralph Vega, the father of a new baby, would videotape it all with his new camera.

And, as the sun lowered and the park began to empty, Pugsley would begin thinking about next year, she said. It may just look like Sunday in the park, but “it takes a year to plan for one of these.”