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All aboard the time machine for the musical ride of your life
By Dennis McCarthy, columnist
Updated: 06/04/2008 11:41:40 PM PDT

"The first time I walked in the place, I thought, `My God, this is what's going on at 10:30 in the morning.' Unbelievable."

— Suzanne Bank

Yeah, it is a little unbelievable. For a few magical hours every Tuesday morning, something beautiful is happening inside a Mexican restaurant in Northridge.

Local seniors are finding the fountain of youth - the "ultimate time machine," says retired LAPD Officer Jim Trax, a regular.

All the aches, pains and worries of the day melt away. The good times are back.

It's 1948 again, not 2008. Gas isn't four bucks a gallon, it's two bits. Nice homes are going for $15,000 in the Valley, not half a million.

And nobody's walking around wondering where the country's headed because they already know. For them, it's headed back 60 years to a big, swinging party.

"Look at them - it's like they're kids again," Johnny Vana says, watching the main room at Las Hadas Mexican Restaurant fill with more than 100 people by 10:30 a.m.

Every booth is full, every seat taken. Two dozen couples are out on the dance floor with their arms around each other, itching to get started - like it's their high school sock hop.

Vana takes a seat behind his drums, lifts his left arm in the air to let some of the best musicians in the country know it's time to go to work, and the magic begins.

"Look around," says 77-year-old retired Air Force Maj. George Carter. "You see anybody
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old out there on the dance floor? I don't."

Behind Vana and singer Bonnie Bowden are 16 musicians with r sum s that read like a Who's Who of the big-band era.

They've played the biggest venues in the world with the best bands of the era - Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, Benny Goodman, Les Brown, Stan Kenton, Horace Heidt, Tex Beneke, Harry James and the Dorsey brothers.

And now they're playing every Tuesday morning to mainly seniors who show up at the restaurant for a ride in the ultimate time machine for a $6 cover charge.

"You can have your aches and pains walking in, but the minute you hear that music, they're gone," says Jean Miller, who's been following Vana's band to different Valley locations for more than 10 years with her husband, Don.

The band started at Leon's Steakhouse in North Hollywood, then spent time at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, the dining room at Woodley Golf Course and Beverly Garland's Holiday Inn before returning to Las Hadas for the second time.

After each move, word quickly spread through the senior circuit that Johnny Vana and his boys were playing again.

The party was back on. Crank up the time machine.

"No doubt about it," Suzanne Bank said Tuesday, switching 88-year-old partners. "People are staying younger longer here."

During the summer, they start getting a lot of younger people coming in, Vana says, taking a break after losing a couple of pounds banging out "Sing, Sing, Sing."

"They tell me they want to hear this new music we're playing," he says, laughing.

Vana tells them to step out on the dance floor and give it a try, but be careful.

All those white-haired kids dancing out there can be dangerous if you get in their way.

L.A. Times Raves

Las Hadas Restaurant & Joe Vento

Johnny Vanna’s Big Band Alumni

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