Historic Lilly House

HISTORIC LILLY HOUSE 'Wilshire Square' Santa Ana, California

Our festively dressed neighbors, Luis Echeveste and Derek Henriquez, stopped by at Historic Lilly House spreading holiday cheer. Thank you for the lovely bottle of wine, fellas!

Season's Greetings! Historic Lilly House - Wilshire Square Santa Ana, California

We have already cast our votes by mail. November 5th is just 24 days away.....

A very curious experience happened to me 20 years ago back in the fall of 1999. On my way home from work, I saw an estate sale that was just about four blocks f...rom my house. I parked on the street and stepped into the modest little home to find the usual brick-a-brac, kitchen items and furniture. After walking through the house and only having a 1950's 'Sunbeam' fryer/cooker in my arms, I set it down and went out and looked through the garage and back yard. Nothing caught my eye and rather than just buy the cooker and leave, I thought I should snoop through the house again. So that's what I did and without finding anything I couldn't live without, I looked out the back door into the yard and at the the garage and for some reason felt that I should look through the house yet one more time. I once again scoured the bedrooms and came back into the living room without anything in my hands. Looking down on the floor, there were several boxes that were filled with books with the binding facing up to easily read the titles. I never look through old books at estate sales but for some reason, I got down on my knees and did just that. Since there were so many of them, I focused in on just those that had old styled binding and lettering fonts. I pulled out several just to see the covers but put them back into the boxes. Then I noticed an old cookbook that also had the word, 'Toilet' in the title.....weird, I thought. So I pulled it out of the box and began to thumb through it. I first looked for the date when it was published, which was 1902 and then thumbed backwards at an old recipe written in pencil. When I turned back one more page, I saw more handwriting with an address and 'Watertown, Wis.' below it. The two gals at the checkout table in the living room were having a conversation and I turned to them and said that the old cookbook belonged to someone from my hometown. They politely smiled and nodded and then went back to their conversation. I looked back down to the page to read the rest of the address when suddenly the hair on my neck stood up and at the same time a jolt of adrenaline went through me. I slowly turned to the two woman again with my eyes wide open and my jaw completely dropped and proclaimed that the very cookbook I was holding in my hands belonged to my GREAT GRANDMOTHER!!! Mrs. William (Bernadine) F. Reichardt 109 N. 5th St. Watertown, Wis. They once again smiled and unconvincingly acted somewhat surprised at my discovery. When I asked the ladies how they acquired the book, they told me that the house where the estate sale was as well as the house next to it belonged to their parents who were avid collectors. The other house wasn't even lived in but only used for storage of their collections. They had no idea where their parents found the book. I have a theory..... Back in 1970, my great grandmothers son, Hilary and his wife Bernadette (my grandparents), were living in the Werner/Reichardt family homestead at 109 North Fifth Street in Watertown, Wisconsin. The house was sold as were two other properties on the block and slated for demolition. The home was over 100 years old and was stuffed to the rafters with items from day one. In fact, the upstairs had been closed off by a trap door and unused for years. I remember that summer before my grandparents moved out, a large pile of things were tossed out of the upstairs balcony onto the yard below destined for the trash. Even then at the age of 9, I couldn't understand how antiquities that I thought were so interesting were being tossed out. Looking back all of those years ago, I realize that my grandfather lived in that house since he was born and for him and my grandmother, all of those things were just old accumulated junk. I recall rescuing some things from the ever growing pile when nobody was looking. My belief is that the cookbook was one of those items found and taken from the heap by someone passing by back then and it eventually made its way 2500 miles west to four blocks from where I was living thirty years later. I truly believe there was some sort of intervention from my great grandmother or somebody else from the Werner/Reichardt home who had passed away. They were probably amused about the whole thing too. It really is a fantastic story to tell and I still can't believe that it really happened.