Sunday, February 03, 2008

El Toro, Carl's old fries and Irvine Ranch

Today's photo shows the 5 Freeway near the El Toro Rd. exit, sometime around the 1960s. I remember when most of South Orange County looked like this - Grassy hills and valleys, punctuated with cows and the occasional plowed field. Oh, for the good old days.
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JunkFoodBlog -- building on a post at OCThen -- is unraveling the mystery of Carl's Jr's old crinkle-shaped french fries. Now that we know what they were and how they were made, where can we still buy some? Those were great!
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The Katie Wheeler Branch of the Orange County Public Library will be dedicated Feb. 23, 10:30 am, at 13109 Old Myford Road in Irvine. The library is built on the same spot where the Irvine ranch home stood until it burned in 1965. The new building is designed to look just like the old house. The whole area surrounding the old Irvine Ranch Headquarters (PDF link) is being turned into a County historic park, including barns, ranch operations buildings, farm equipment, various residential buildings, etc.

4 comments:

Chris Merritt said...

Aaaaaagh! I miss those fries too! And what about those super greasy chili dogs they used to make - with a friggin' jalepeno pepper on the side. Man - I miss that even more...

Anonymous said...

We could start a petition to bring back the extruded fries. Those things were a staple of my childhood diet (back when I could metabolize that stuff) Get enough signatures, I will run it next door. Bloggers changing the world, one cholesterol test ata time.

Chris Jepsen said...

ColonyRabble: So, will there still be family living in Casa de Carlo, now that the patriarch is gone?

Merritt: Maybe we could order bulk quantities of various products currently unavailable at retail. We could defray the costs by splitting the bulk quanities between us. Think of it,... Frispos, Quisp, and so forth!

Anonymous said...

I moved to El Toro 1965 into the new Republic homes division on McCoy Rd. Sure do miss those days. Last time I was there I got lost. does anyone remember the Old El Toro store ran by Mr. McCoy? It was up at the railroad tracks and El Toro Road. Does anyone have photos or know where I can view photos of this area and era?