On March 28, 2017 at 10:49 PM, the regular late night sound of TC exhausts echoing off the walls of buildings along Honolulu Ave. in Montrose, California came to an end.
Beginning in April 1958, TC Motoring Guild began meeting in the basement community room of Glendale Federal Savings and Loan. Before this we were meeting in members’ homes, a couple of businesses and occasionally at a restaurant. One of those eateries was Blarney Castle on Western Blvd. But with a growing membership, a more convenient location was needed. Then members Larry and Margaret Alcox found the room in Montrose and it was decided to begin meeting there regularly, in no small part due to the cost of the room which at the time was free.
We continued to meet in the same basement room for the next 59 years! Four different banks occupied the building during this time, but TC Motoring Guild remained a constant. In 1959, new member Joe Douglass was tasked with picking up the key each month, and he did so without fail for the next 54 years when he finally got tired of it and passed the job to someone else. Occasionally some new kid would appear at the counter and try to tell Joe how to sign for the key. You can imagine how that went.
The last bank to hang a sign on our meeting place was Citibank, who found billing for the room more trouble than it was worth. They decided to allow us to stay for free, so we soldiered on, climbing and descending the same flight of concrete steps for another three years, until they too moved on. Unfortunately the new owners of the building had no interest in banking or community rooms, so in March 2017, 59 years to the month, we held our last meeting in Montrose. This incredible run of meetings in the same place, for a period of time spanning seven decades, is to our knowledge unprecedented among British car clubs in North America.
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