How a Press-Telegram photo ended up on our cover
By Dave Wielenga

Press-Telegram executive editor Rich Archbold absolutely loved our cover for issue No. 3—a famous historic photograph of a beautiful collie staring up longingly at a fire hydrant perched atop a pipe sticking 10 feet out of the ground. Everybody did. But the fact that we didn’t give the Press-Telegram credit for the photo? Archbold didn’t love that quite so absolutely. When we heard through the grapevine that he might be bugged, we called to apologize for any possible error—courteously, yeah, but also kind of disingenuously, since we were pretty sure it was not a Press-Telegram photo.

During the past 50-some years the photo had become kind of ubiquitous, as had the story of its origin—that it was taken as a publicity shot by the Long Beach Department of Oil Properties (DOP) to emphasize the landfill work the city was doing to offset subsidence. The dog, it was said, was the pet of a department employee. That seemed to be confirmed by a 2003 city pamphlet, which has the photo on its back cover and identifies it as “The Famous DOP Dog and Fire Hydrant Picture.” It’s also what the Historical Society of Long Beach said when it sold us the photo.

Meanwhile, however, Archbold was doing some investigation—calling former P-T photographer Leo Hetzel, who referred him to even-more-former P-T photographer Roger Coar—and when he phoned back, it was with these facts: it is a Press-Telegram photo. It was taken by Roger Coar. The dog was Coar’s pet. Its name was King. The totally cool car in the background is Coar’s old Packard. Oh, and Coar, who was always known as much for his deep irascibility as his brilliant photography, still deserves both prongs of his reputation. “When I asked Roger how he got his dog to sit and stare up at that fire hydrant,” Archbold reported, “he kind of scoffed and said, ‘Hey, I had a smart dog.’”