I have now spent half of my life in Manteca.

I turned 70 on Tuesday, which happens to now be known as California Farmworkers Day.

It’s funny, when I moved here 35 years most people who knew me assumed I’d be back in Lincoln before I knew it.

Not me.

For whatever reason, Manteca felt right.

Yet, all I knew it by before 35 years ago was late night TV commercials for “Man-teee-kaaa!” Trailer, catchy radio spots about Manteca Waterslides, and a distinctive aroma in the air when I passed through on Highway 99 on my annual trips to Death Valley.

Three years later, I was married and we had bought a home that Ed Pine built in 1951 for Bill Peters, owner of the El Rey Theatre.

Our home was two blocks upwind from Spreckels Sugar.

You could see the top of the five 15-story sugar silos from the large picture window of our dining room. Every holiday season for the next three years we looked forward to seeing the “Christmas tree” created from colored lights atop the silos when we looked out into the darkened December sky.

As for the smell, the wind shifted perhaps once every two months or so meaning the smell from the sugar beet pulp—  and that part of it reconstituted in a different form after it was  recycled as feed at the cattle lot next door — rarely came our way.

That said, there is a reason a large swath of the rural area just southeast of Spreckels Sugar — the main factory was located where the Target store is today — didn’t have a single house for decades.

Our house was built in 1951 kitty-corner from  Dr. Robert Winter’s former house where Steve Winter, the future Manteca High principal, grew up.

It’s the same Steve Winter that I give a bad time whenever I can during Thursday’s Manteca Rotary’s meeting.

I had no intention of continuing in Rotary when I moved to Manteca.

But somehow Arie Groenveld — an immigrant from Holland and a Manteca insurance agent — heard from another Rotarian in Sacramento that I didn’t even know that I was moving to Manteca. He dropped by the Bulletin office my first week in Manteca and invited me to the club meeting the next Thursday at Isadore’s.

Manteca had 48,000 residents back then, almost exactly half of what it does today.

Bass Pro Shops is on land where Cowboy Wayne Cummings staged the Manteca Rodeo every year.

It’s the same Cowboy Cummings who earned a spot in Manteca lore several years prior to 1991 by saddling up his horse and riding into town from his Airport Way home in the country and riding it downtown and then into the 133 Club.

That stunt, of course was chronicled by Pat O’Leary who for years penned a man about town column for the Bulletin.

It’s the same O’Leary that Chris Teicheria of Deaf Puppy Comedy Club fame set out a few years back to emulate on the same pages  the wit and somewhat edgy style in the telling of stories about Manteca residents and events.

O’Leary was a character.

He organized the first Pumpkin Fair that lasted about a half a day at Library Park with the main entertainment being a belly dancer he knew.

O’Leary could be rough around the edges but he also had a heart of gold. He helped immigrants learn English and even went to bat helping them find places to rent.

As outgoing as he was, people who knew him after his passing were surprised that he had a sister that was a nun and a number of children from previous marriages.

In quick secession I met the three most enduring gatekeepers of Manteca history in my first three months here — Marion Elliott, Ken Hafer, and Evelyn Prouty.

Marion was principal of Lincoln School at the time and was heavily involved in everything from Babe Ruth Baseball, and the Manteca Planning Commission, to St. Anthony’s Catholic Church.

Yet he still found time each week to patiently go through back files of the Bulletin saved on microfilm to turn out a local history column and a sports yesteryear column.

Ken was on a mission to secure a permanent home for the Manteca museum and eventually would provide me copies of photos and news stories that many where originally part of the Bulletin archives. His mission was to school me in Manteca history and I admit to being an eager student.

Evelyn was a former Bulletin reporter who researched Manteca history for a weekly column that ran for years. Her columns were combined for a Manteca history book that the historical society published.

The reason I bring Marion, Evelyn, and Ken up is they were the go to people to get an understanding of the past.

The reason that is important was best shared by a transplant from Santa Clara I ran into in the mid-1990s on a Sunday in the museum. He said he brought his family by to peruse the collection to get a better sense of Manteca. His reason for doing so: If you’re going to be a part of town and not just someone who is a resident, you need to get a sense of the past and how things evolved.

Perhaps the most bizarre moment involving Ken and Evelyn who would sometimes get into spirited discussions about whether some particular take on Manteca history was correct was when they were debating who was right about some past tidbit of history and both turned to me and asked which one was correct.

I responded that what I basically knew about Manteca history came from both of them to which Ken replied, “but which one of us is right?”

Both were strong-willed and committed to the community.

That said, Evelyn may have had a slight edge in how far she’d go to keep Manteca traditions going when she and other volunteers stepped up to run the pioneer East Union Cemetery when it was first going through licensing problems with the state.

I was doing a story on volunteers digging graves when the backhoe operator ran into a problem.

Evelyn grabbed a shovel, climbed down into the hole and started moving dirt. She was in her early 60s at the time.

Yes, Manteca has issues.

But at the time, there are a lot of community minded people here whether they’ve been residents for a few months after pulling up stakes and heading east over the Altamont Pass from San Jose as Antone Raymus did in 1920.

And many who have moved here — or are generational residents — have and are strengthening Manteca’s community fabric.

It doesn't matter whether they were one of the first births at Doctors Hospital of Manteca such as Councilman Dave Breitenbucher or spent the first five years of their lives being raised in a mud hut on a farm in India as Mayor Gary Singh did.

There’s a lot to love about the place you’ve made your home.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com