A LOOK BACK:Calvin Nagel on the road to the new Ford dealership

If you’ve seen Beach Boulevard near Garfield Avenue lately, you’ll have noticed a lot of construction going on for a car dealership.

I’m wondering when the building is complete and the company moves in if the owners plan on having a parade through town or if 1,500 will attend opening ceremonies for the business?

I can’t imagine stopping traffic for a parade today, but that is just what happened when one of our car dealers held a grand opening.

This piece of Huntington Beach history took place on Aug. 24, 1940, when Theodore Robins opened its doors on that Saturday for his Ford dealership at 225 Fifth St.

The building that Robins had constructed still stands at Fifth Street and Olive Avenue, and it cost Robins $10,000 to build. That sum today wouldn’t even pay for the required city permits.

The Catching Brothers of Huntington Beach were the contractors on the project, and not only would this be a showroom for new Fords, it would also be a Signal Oil and Gas service station outside.

Huntington Beach Mayor Marcus M. McCallen led a parade. The mayor rode along with Police Chief Les Grant and Judge Charles Patton in a 1914 Ford car.

The parade snaked through several downtown streets. Well over 1,500 people had an opportunity to witness that opening event.

Robins hired Oliver Hitterdale as his service manager, Merle Rayne as the Ford specialist, Vern Mohn as sales manager and Calvin Nagel as general manager and salesman.

For this week’s column, we’ll focus on Calvin Nagel.

On the Raccoon River in Iowa lies the small town of Fonda, about 40 miles west of Fort Dodge. Nagel was born there Nov. 13, 1912.

Fonda was an important farming area, and Nagel’s childhood naturally oriented toward agriculture.

After he graduated high school in 1930, he left home and took a job as a truck driver on a road construction project. After about a year of doing that, Nagel left Iowa and headed for North Dakota for a few months.

North Dakota, as anyone who has been there in November knows, is icy cold, so Nagel moved back to Iowa. He stayed in Iowa until 1934, when he moved to Arkansas for a year and a half.

He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in Crossett and Hamburg, Ark., and returned to Iowa in the CCC at Fort Madison, Ames and Boone.

While he was in Company 3724 at Ames, Nagel became a first-aid orderly and drove an Army truck for the Forest Service.

During his stint in the CCC, Nagel got to see much of the West Coast before he returned to Iowa. But work was scarce during the Depression. Like so many people at the time, Nagel looked to sunny California for a better life in May 1937.

When he reached California, he found the rich opportunities the state offered a 21-year-old farm boy. He also met a girl, Evelyn Marriott, and on Jan. 17, 1938 the two married.

It was on June 1, 1940 that Calvin and Evelyn came to Huntington Beach to live and where he became Theodore Robins’ general manager and salesman for the new Ford agency.

It was in the early part of 1941 that Nagel and Evelyn were blessed by the arrival of a baby girl, Jan.

By the end of that year, the nation was at war, and all civilian car production ceased. With no new cars to show, most of Nagel’s time was spent servicing the older cars and trucks of our residents.

When the war ended and the production of new cars began rolling again, a car-starved American public had to wait before these new cars were shipped to dealer lots.

During this time, Nagel and several young men in town organized the Young Business Men’s Assn., and he was elected its first president. This group later became the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce.

By 1948, Robins had sold the car agency to Don Grant and moved out of town.