Oral History: Ann Skram — January 26th, 2015

Summary:

Ann’s family moved to Lafayette in 1946/47. Her parents built a home with a swimming pool on a one acre lot on Redwood Lane in Happy Valley. At that time Happy Valley Road was lined with huge walnut trees all the way into town and was mostly agrarian. Her father was an entrepreneur and her mother, an interior designer, once had a shop on Golden Gate Way. Ann talks about her early life in Lafayette, her neighbors, dances at the old Veterans Hall, and local businesses. She also describes attending Acalanes from which she graduated in 1951.

Oral History:

Ryan McKinley: This is an oral history interview for the Lafayette Historical Society oral history project. The interviewer is Ryan McKinley. Today’s date is January 26th, 2015 and it’s 11:26, and I am interviewing Ms. Ann Skram in her home in Lafayette, California. So what is your full name and could you spell it for the recording?

Ann Skram: You want all of the names or just…

RM: First and last is fine.

AS: Ann, A-N-N, and my middle name is Thankful, T-H-A-N-K-F-U-L, and my current last name, well, probably final last name, is Skram, S-K-R-A-M.

RM: And when were you born?

AS: July 22, 1933.

RM: And what were your parents’ names?

AS: My mother was Doris Marvel Baldridge Pendleton, and my father was Broten Pendleton. P-E-N-D-L-E-T-O-N.

RM: How many siblings do you have?

AS: There are five of us.

RM: Okay, and you are the…

AS: Eldest.

RM: Could you just give me your siblings’ first names?

AS: I’m Ann, and there’s Beth, who is deceased, Jane, Margaret, and Gerton.

RM: When you were born, you had mentioned when we started this that you guys were playing in Walnut Creek or Montclair?

AS: Originally, I was born in Colorado, but that was because my parents were emigrating to California at the time, and my grandparents, my mother was with my grandparents in Astice Park in Colorado, so I was born there.

RM: And then shortly after you were born, they moved to California?

AS: We moved to California originally, Montclair, we lived in Montclair, and then in Oakland, well, Montclair’s in Oakland, but in another part of Oakland over by Onskoy Road which is over the Oaknale Hospital, and then my father found the property in Lafayette, we bought that and then rent the house on that property where I essentially grew up.

RM: And do you remember where that property was?

AS: Yes, it’s on Happy Valley Road, on Redwood Lane on Happy Valley Road.

RM: What do you remember about the house?

AS: The house, or the lot, or the land?

RM: Anything you can remember.

AS: Happy Valley was largely agrigarian at the time, and the house, Redwood Lane, crossed Happy Valley Road into the Cosso’s property, and they probably know about the Cosso’s because Marianne Malley who… one of who’s brothers was my first major boyfriend, has talked a lot about, I’m sure, the people in Happy Valley, ‘cause the Malleys were some of the early settlers on Happy Valley Road, so our property was originally, the main house which was in front of our house when we bought our property was owned by a man whose name was Jerry Durham and he owned a laundry in Oakland, and I think it was a total of about two and a quarter acres, and our property was the back acre and it was originally, allegedly, part of the original Acalanes land grant, and we found all kinds of artifacts that… horseshoes, steel or cast-iron nails, pieces of pottery and things, because we used to have an orchard, it was an orchard, we’d have it plowed every year, and every year when they plowed we found all kinds of stuff, and Redwood lane had a creek that ran down in front of it, so it was a perfect place for a house when the land grants were issued. Now a lot of this is, some of this is hearsay, my daughter, Mary, can check about the land grant someday, but anyway, the property, the back half that my dad bought for $13,000, allegedly it was going to be a thoroughbred breeding barn, so it was a big, U-shaped, I think it was probably about 3,000 square feet building, and so the first time I ever saw the interior structure, it was indeed a beautiful barn with cast iron watering troughs for the horses, cast iron stalls, bars, and of course I wanted to keep it as a barn because I wanted the horse, I wanted to bring my horse with me, so my dad’s best friend, a man whose name was Jad Daley who had gone to college with my father in New London, he’d moved to California and they sort of demolished the barn part, but kept the outside of the house which was clapboard wood and turned it into a home and it had a walk-in freezer that was as big as most people’s bedroom and then Tony Fergundes dug the pool for us, Tony Fergundes by the way was quite a character, and still is known as a character to anybody, he lived in Hunsaker Canyon and he owned trucks and backhoes, and so I think he dug every pool in Happy Valley in those days. He was also a terrible flirt, my mother was very pretty, so he would always come when my mother was going to be home because she continued to have an interior decorating business in Lafayette. My father was an entrepreneur too, and so we lived there, or my parents lived there until the seventies, and they sold it because my mother lost her sight, so it was no longer practical to live in that big house, and it was finally demolished, and there is now a bigger house, a two-story house on that piece of land, but we had a nice orchard, and it was a great place to live, great place to grow up, the Cosso’s on the land in front of us in front of Redwood Lane, up to where the Lafayette Grammar School, I don’t know if they call it the Lafayette Grammar School, but the grammar school that is on that property was Cosso property and the Cosso farm because they raised alternated crops of tomatoes, onions, and zucchini, and those are mostly what… I think they called it a truck farm in those days, they had a big old barn and they just, they had a small orchard of orange trees, basically, and I’m not sure, I think they had apricot trees down further on the property, and Johnny, who is their only son, was drafted and went to Korea and he lost a leg in Korea, so when his parents died, I think that’s when he sold the property to the school and divided the other property. I think the barn is still there, but I don’t know what else is there anymore, so I haven’t been to Happy Valley in quite a while for the simple reason that it’s no longer Happy Valley, it’s now a bunch of gigantic houses.

RM: It’s a development now.

AS: Oh, scary, scary. Scary development. I was thinking about the people I grew up with in Happy Valley. Almost everyone was either a doctor, a lawyer, owned a business, and nobody had a huge house, I mean they were all nice-sized homes, which have been demolished and it’s very different, I don’t like to drive through. We had a school bus, we went, every morning we went to school on the school bus, and I think there ere two, I think my sisters and brother who all went to school in Lafayette, I think our bus came first and then their bus came, I’m not quite sure anymore, it was a long time ago.

RM: So the bus system, you mean there was an Acalanes bus and then there was a Stanley Middle School bus…

AS: I think there was a Stanley and then they built the grammar school at the end of Happy Valley Road before it was the freeway that it is now, and I think my brother went there, nobody went to the one that’s on Cosso property because they were all too old, they were going to Cal by then. I think Jane went someplace else, but anyway.

RM: About what year was it that when you came to Lafayette?

AS: ’46 and ’47. I drew a little map of the houses that… it was Upper Happy Valley, Lower Happy Valley, Bear Creek Road. When I first came to Lafayette with my mom and dad when I was a little girl, the what they called the low-level Broadway Tunnel, the first Caldecott bore, wasn’t there, they were building it, so I probably was five or six, and we used to come through the old low level tunnel which is still there, it’s an old wooden bore, it’s up above the Caldecott, wind around down to the highway, then they built the first Caldecott bore, and then the two bores and then of course the current bore, but this was just a two-lane road all the way to Walnut Creek, and you went through Lafayette, and you ended up on main Street in Walnut Creek, and Mt. Diablo Boulevard, I don’t think it was even called Mt. Diablo Boulevard, or if it was even called anything, but Lafayette, the things that are still there, largely the only building that is still there is the Roundup Room, which is still there, the bar, yeah. That was, I think I remember my Dad called it a biker because there was always motorcycles parked in front of the Roundup Room, and in the parking lot which is still there, and there were actually hitching posts in Lafayette, and when I was in high school I worked for the Sparlings, who owned the pharmacy, Bill Sparling, and I worked in the soda fountain after school and then I ushered at the Park Theater, my father said when I was fifteen, “You will get a job, you must learn to take care of yourself”, so I worked for almost everyone. I worked for the Lafayette Sun, Herman Silverman, I worked for the men’s store, I had the name written down but… and it was a very friendly little town, you knew everybody, except most of the guys who came into the pharmacy, the soda fountain were from St. Mary’s.

RM: Where was that pharmacy?

AS: On the corner of… I’ll show you where it was. This is Upper Happy Valley, and Bear Creek Road, Happy Valley turned, and Bear Creek Road went up the hill, I think they call this Happy Valley Road now but it isn’t Happy Valley Road, it’s called Bear Creek Road, and you can take that road all the way to Orinda, and then they built the reservoir, you could go around the reservoir because I used to ride horseback though there, and it was beautiful, so these are the houses that I remember, and then you ended up on Mount Diablo Boulevard, the gas station was still there then. At the end of Happy Valley there was a supermarket, it wasn’t a Lucky’s or a Raleigh’s or Hagstrom’s or anything, it was just a supermarket, the Connors built their house, Will and Jo Connor built their house, ours was on Redwood Lane, theirs was on Happy Valley next to the Scott’s house and then the Durham’s house, the Durham’s house, the Scott’s house, and then the Connor’s house, and then there was nothing, just hills on that side of the road, until you got to the junction of Bear Creek and Happy Valley, and someone built a house in there, and then the Malleys built their house on Happy Valley Road, and they built a house on the first part of Bear Creek on property they still owned a lot of the hills at that time.

RM: Those are the Malleys? Okay.

AS: I think Grandpa Malley came to Lafayette pretty early on because Marianne was telling me and showed me some pictures of land that they had owned at the time, and the Jacuzzi’s built across from them, but almost all the names were people that you knew from the news or, you know, I think they came out here largely because their kids could go to a good school and things like that, and most of the kids I went to school with or that my sisters and brother went to school with…

RM: So these people were building around the same time your family was building as well, or after that?

AS: The Connors were building at the same time we were building, the Durhams and the Scotts, coming down toward Lafayette was a hill, then the Connor’s house, they were building when we were building, and then the Scott’s house which had been built before, it’s still there, I don’t think that’s been torn down yet, and then the Durham’s house on Redwood Lane, and the Durham’s house was a beautifully built brick house so it was original, and then the McGuire house which is one the other side on Redwood Lane, the Durham house was here, ours was here, the McGuire’s house was a big, old, white clapboard house. Mr. McGuire was a lawyer in San Francisco and he would wait in the morning, every morning when we went down to get the bus, he was standing on Happy Valley Road waiting for his ride to San Francisco, and he lived in that house with his, I think it was his sister, it was his sister or a relative. It was a woman, and she took care of the house, and then across from us, there was this little rental house which was right on the creek, and that was rented by Dave and Ann Penna when I was a kid, they were a young, married couple, and Mr. McGuire’s sister lived next door in a little white house that they only just recently torn down, her name was Ms. Millikan, so I don’t think the woman who lived at his house was his sister, because her name wasn’t Millikan, and he had a boarder whose name was… I can’t remember his name right now, but he loved to catch gophers. His big deal was, “I caught a goof this morning!” What was his name? It’s on my list, I’ll look at it in a minute, but it was just country, just comfortable country, I sometimes got to do one of the kid’s paper routes on horseback on Sunday morning and stuff like that, and I could ride my horse on Happy Valley Road and down Mount Diablo Boulevard. There were a lot of horses, a lot of people had horses, and then we went to school with the Sulzbergers who owned Sulzberger Florists in Oakland, and Babcocks, Owen and Jack-Jack, Babcock’s still alive, I saw him at my sister’s funeral, so his family owned a company called Babco Castings and as my memory serves me, they made the cast iron covers for manholes. I don’t know if that’s entirely… but do remember something about that, that’s one of the things they did. I think, I don’t know what else they did.

RM: I was just curious, so you said a lot of people had come to the area looking for a school for their kids, is that what your parents were coming here for?

AS: Yes, largely. We lived on Sequoia Road, which was again, all during World War Two, it was between the old naval hospital and the San Leandro Naval Hospital, and I went to Frick Junior High School in downtown Oakland and would have matriculated into Castlemont High School, and my father, in those days the bad kids were mostly from Italian families and immigrated to Oakland during World War Two and they were known as the “Pachukes”, you know, with the big chain and the baggy pants and everything, and my father just didn’t want us to go to school, he didn’t particularly want my sister and I who were then, Bethie’s two years younger than I am, I would have gone from Frick to Castlemont and my dad didn’t think that was ideal, and so he was looking for property out on this side of the tunnel, and he knew the area because of my mother’s business in Walnut Creek and so he saw the piece of property in Happy Valley, and he just went and looked at it, and he told the real estate agent he was buying it, and if he hadn’t say it that day, he wouldn’t have gotten the land, because it was a wonderful piece of property for a very reasonable price, because we could sell… we lived in a very nice house on Square Road, it was a big Spanish-style house, so I think it probably sold for al least half of what Happy Valley cost, or maybe more, I don’t know, those things I don’t know, I just remember that my parents paid seventeen hundred dollars for their first house on Merriewood Drive in Montclair—seventeen hundred dollars! It was a little house, it was a cute little house, my dad rebuilt the whole thing, so it was a darling house. I went to see it about five years ago, it’s a little house, and my sister and I were there, and my sister Jean was in the oven when I moved it Happy… no, well, she was born maybe in… I don’t know, we were staying in Half Moon Bay, we had a house with friends on the ocean in Half Moon Bay, we stayed there, I think Mother was pregnant with Gus, I don’t know, too long ago.

RM: And so you said you had orchards and things with your father trying to… what did he do when you came to Lafayette? What was his profession?

AS: He was the general manager for a company called Alamite, and they built portable, they called them portable service stations for the Army and the Navy, there were big trucks that had all kinds of stuff on them, but he had an idea, which my father always had, he had an idea that people were buying cars after the war so people were buying new cars, and they all had plush seats or nice upholstery, so my father designed, and then decided to manufacture a slip cover, a plastic slip cover you could see the seat through the plastic, but would protect the car’s interior, and he manufactured covers for mechanics to put on the car when they were working on the car, and had foam on one side or something rubber on one side, a heavy surface material on the other side so they wouldn’t slip off the side of the cars’ fender, and they would keep the car clean, so he went into business, that’s what he did for as long as I can remember.

RM: And that business was run out of Oakland, or that was run…

AS: That was run out of Lafayette. He actually had, the manufacturing was done, I think it was in San Jose or something like that, and then he had a little warehouse where he packaged and shipped the materials, and he was the salesman, he would… he sold the things and then had them manufactured and shipped all over the country.

RM: Was that, like, out of your house, or… ?

AS: No, he had an office at home, but he also had a warehouse facility, I think it was in Emeryville, I don’t even know, I don’t know if I was even there, I just know that he went there, and that stuff disappeared from there, but my mother’s shop was in Lafayette.

RM: Where was her shop?

AS: Down… do you know where the Nut House is?

RM: Oh, the Nut… oh, like literally he makes the walnuts, near the library, yeah.

AS: Yeah, it’s on the other side, across from the library, in that row of brick buildings.

RM: Oh, okay.

AS: She had a secretary, and another woman that worked with her, she did a lot of famous-name houses here and she also did very interesting things, someone gave her name to the Santa Fe railway, so she decorated railway cars for executives, when they had their own railcars, she did railcars and then she also did quite a few… a baseball player who died of something, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, might have been, I don’t know, but she did his house and then he did, out on Ignacio Valley Boulevard, there were a lot of pretty wealthy farmers who had beautiful homes and she had homes out there, I remember going with her and her office was on Main Street in Walnut Creek and she would take us sometimes during the summer to her office and we would play in Walnut Creek. That was when, next to her office there was a creamery, and the man who owned the creamery whose name I cannot any more remember told us we could fry and egg on Walnut Creek’s hot summer streets, and he actually came out and fried an egg for us. He did, I mean the white did cook, that was when whipped cream was coming in canisters with some kind of gas in the canisters, one blew up in his face and he lost an eye, and so they closed that creamery and he opened in Lafayette, he opened another one just like it in Lafayette, I don’t think it was ever very successful, it was, Lafayette used to be where Safeway is now past the Safeway, that was houses, little houses like the back side of Lafayette is still full of little houses, then there were used car lots, buildings are still there, and I don’t even know what’s in them anymore, and then his creamery, and I think it was just too far out of town to ever really be successful. I remember going there, probably across from… Minuteman’s too far up the street, but that area where Minuteman is on the other side of the street, it was on the opposite side of the street. I dunno, too far, too long ago.

RM: So the car lots, you said were behind where Safeway is now, or…

AS: No, they were on Mount Diablo Boulevard, the buildings are still there. Maybe some of them are because they put those new apartment buildings in there, you know I sort of drive through Lafayette blindly, I usually point to Minuteman because I work for Minuteman. I’m a graphic artist so I work for Minuteman, but the town had… of course the library was across down from the Episcopal Church where I was married, the first time, and then there was the firehouse, and then the library was in there somewhere, but there was a library, and then the new library is where the old veteran’s hall used to be, and that was where we went in high school on Saturdays, once a month on Saturdays, they had the Lafayette assemblies, and everybody at Acalanes, the parents all wanted you to go to the assemblies because that’s where you learned to dance, and the boys stood on one side of the room and the girls stood on the other side and you just had to cross over and dance with whoever was on the other side, the boys all tried to be strategically placed so they could get the girl they wanted. God, I’d forgotten the assemblies.

RM: So you were saying you rode horses a lot. A lot of people had horses when you were young?

AS: There were a lot of horses, yeah. The Malleys had, in fact I met Jack Malley riding horseback in the moonlight, and Jack was sort of forbidden territory because I think he was two or three years older than I was, and my father was not happy that I was dating him but the Malleys were very nice, they were nice people, they were very nice to me. I actually had my first alcoholic beverage with the Malleys at dinner in Lafayette, it was Cutty Sark and I drank it for the rest of my life, but they were nice people, they owned a parrot too, a big parrot that used to go, “Charlie wanna cracker”, and said nasty words, and Mrs. Miller would have to throw a cover over his cage.

RM: I’m curious, somebody else I interviewed talked about a horse show that came through Lafayette, like a horse, it was like a monthly or a thing like that. Do you remember anything like that?

AS: No, I don’t. In fact, I don’t remember anything associated like that with horses, which is kind of unusual because I was really a horse-crazy nut in those years, I had riding since I was twelve, eleven or twelve, and I rode at Mills College and stuff like that because my mother was also a horsewoman, she’d ridden all the life too. Did I remember a horse show coming in? No memory.

RM: So with all the open land out there, was there a lot of people farming around you?

AS: A lot of Portuguese families, one of my neighbors and kids I sent to school with were the Brannon boys, Mr. and Mrs, Brannon and their sons, Keith was one of them and I can’t remember anyone else’s names, and what he did for a living was spray all the orchards, and they used to pull this big barrel thing around on a trailer and spray all the orchards. They all died fairly young because I don’t think that spray was very good for them, but they didn’t wear masks or anything. They also had what they called an English plow, which turned the earth like a normal plow, just big furrows, it sort of did do that, it sort of plowed the earth up but was flatter and more… and it turned everything, all the weeds under, so they became fertilizer, so down Happy Valley Road, down Redwood Lane, and you went down to Happy Valley and it sort of straightened out, it was kinda downhill, not a lot, past the Lafayette school, past the Cosso’s land, on either side of the street were orchards, there are a few houses on the right hand side, past where the school currently is, there are a few houses in there but the left hand side was almost all orchards, after we built, they built a few little houses down the road from Miss Millikan’s, then they opened up the hill past Miss Millikan’s, across from the Lafayette school, and terrace that and put houses in there, there was nothing there, but where Happy Valley kind of straightened out, and on the right hand side were the Roamers and the Bedard’s little houses, that’s where they again went up the hill and built a series of houses, big house, fairly large houses ‘cause one of the people I worked for, one of the companies I worked for was CBS Plywood and the Favors, Jack Favors, who owned CBS Plywood, one of the houses up on that new development, but across the street would have been just orchards, I think they were, this was a pear orchard, I think that those orchards, I think there were apples, pears, and maybe apricots, they were sort of mixed, but before the houses was all orchards. Now there were no orchards on Happy Valley Road going in the other direction which would be going backward, past our house and then going up to Upper Happy Valley Road, and that, there were a few on that left hand side, but on the right hand side, where the Jacuzzi’s house was, across from the Malley’s original house, and down around the bend, I think down around the bend there’d be a few orchards on either side of Happy Valley, but along Happy Valley Road, were walnut trees, just walnut trees, going not on Upper Happy Valley but Lower Happy Valley where the curve where it turned all the way down, almost to where the road was that they built that Jack Favors was on, almost there were walnut trees on both sides of the road, we used to go gather walnuts in the fall, we knew he was a farmer because all the kids whose families grew walnuts had brown hands during walnut husking season, because when you husked a walnut, you got brown hands. We could tell when we were at school who had walnuts and who didn’t. They were free for the taking when I was a kid. I don’t know who planted them for how long they’d been there but they were huge old trees, so they’d been there a while, but it was the Cosso’s, not only did they farm their land but if you went up Redwood Lane, our house was here, then there was the little road that wandered around on the hill, and that belonged to the heir of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, so he didn’t do anything, he had a wife, four or five kids, all who had red hair, and he used to go up there and build things—ponds, little houses, sheds, there was a shed on the side of the hill which was filled with cases of Cutty Sark, which, I don’t know how they just sat up there, everybody knew about them, but the Cossos farmed the land at the end of Redwood Lane, and now there are houses in there but they farmed the land the same way they their own land, and I don’t know whether they owned it or rented it or just used it, ‘cause we could go up and pick anything we wanted, we could harvest onions or we could harvest zucchini or we could harvest tomatoes when they were in season and that was perfectly all right, even at Halloween when the kids would have rotten tomato fights on Happy Valley with Cosso’s rotten tomatoes. I remember one time they hit my father’s car, that didn’t make my father happy, I think it was his new Hudson too, he got a little angry. Country kids’ games.

RM: So you could just go from, like let’s say you wanted some pears or something, you went into the orchard and grabbed some?

AS: Oh yes, it was an acceptable thing to do. I was trying to remember some of the… Bacigalupi I think was one of the names, Lucas was, I know there were a lot of Lucuses, but they owned the grade and they made a lot of the roads out here too, but they lived in Orinda. You know, it wasn’t considered stealing because you didn’t take that many, I mean you just didn’t, you only took the ones you could reach anyway.

RM: And so growing up, what do you remember doing as kids, you said you rode horses…

AS: Swam, we did a lot of swimming. Babysat, I babysat for the Connor’s kids, and then when I first got married I had two kids, I got all the baby stuff from the Connor children, so the Connor children are younger than I. I think Tice is probably my age, Tara and Tice are probably ten years, fifteen years older than I am. What did we do? Worked in the yard, I helped my mom can things and make jam ‘cause we had apricot trees and we had quince, apricot, apple, pear, what else? We had cherry trees, too, Queen Anne cherry trees. What did we do? What did we do in the wintertime? I don’t know, I always had a job. I worked Saturdays at the pharmacy. In the morning I would go at ten, and then I’d walk home at five, except in the winter, when… so it was the Lafayette Pharmacy, it was the Roundup Room, then the street, then the Lafayette Pharmacy, behind the pharmacy were all little houses and a creek and a lot of what we called the poor kids, like single mothers, then there was the Emporium, there was the Lafayette Pharmacy, then the Emporium, the woman who worked in the Emporium was a single mother because her husband had died in the war and she worked at the Emporium and lived behind the Emporium in the little houses, and then there was the five-and-ten-cents store, and then there was, I don’t remember, a couple other stores, and then Moraga Road, and those stores got torn down for the husband and wife who allegedly filled their car with money and drove to California to build their savings and loan company, and I should remember the name because I did ads for them but I can’t remember their name, ‘cause I owned an ad agency. Lighter, I mean this is after…

RM: So the Emporium is… if the Roundup is on Mount Diablo Blvd., the pharmacy and the Emporium were…

AS: The Roundup Room, then the street, I don’t know what street that is, it’s not Brown Avenue, it’s a cross street. On the other side there was the Roundup Room, on the other side there was a hotel, quote-unquote, only it wasn’t really a hotel, allegedly it was a brothel, a two-story white building downstairs was a restaurant which is where I went with the Malleys for dinner and they had a Maya bird, it used to go (whistle) when I walked by and I got mad one day and walked in as a teenager, I walked in and said, “How dare you!” and of course it was the bird, I was very embarrassed. And then up the street was the Lafayette Sun, which was owned by a man named Herman Silverman who started the Sun, and I worked for Herm, too, when I was going to Arts and Crafts, I worked for Herm, and he taught me a lot, he taught me a lot about type and ink, and stuff, and then the Roundup Room was on the other side of Mount Diablo Blvd., then the road, then the pharmacy, then the Emporium, which had everything, and then the five-and-dime, which if the Emporium didn’t have it, the five-and-dime did, bought a lot of Christmas presents at the five-and-dime, and then the building that became the savings and loan, can’t remember the name of the savings and loan for the life of me, and then Lafayette Plaza was across from that, and the Park Theater, Millie’s little restaurant, the first Millie’s, then a bicycle store, and then something else, then nothing on the corner, and that became Dasani’s Delicatessen, and the Dasani’s had originally been on Mt. Diablo Blvd. near the end of Happy Valley Road and they had what was known as the Crab Shack, and it had a big crab pot and in crab season you could get three crabs for a dollar. I went to school with the Dasani’s, I went to school with everybody, if they had kids your age, and most people seemed to have kids my age. So what did we do? I dunno, we played jump rope sometimes oddly enough, learned to drive my father taught me to drive until I hit the cherry tree and then I was on my own. I think the first thing I ever drove was a tractor, not my father’s, but it was a tractor, rode horseback a lot, swam a lot, what else did we do?

RM: Could you tell me a little bit about going to Acalanes when you went there?

AS: Well, I think there were only seven hundred students the first year, and not many more after that, I think there weren’t many more after that when I graduated, and it was a very modern school ‘cause it had the outdoor buildings and the outdoor corridors so you went from the out door corridor to each class, you were outdoors in the winter and in the summer, and so the main office and everything was here, and then there was a big lawn and then there was a driveway here and the gym and the pool were over here, so it was pretty exciting because we had a swimming pool, and we all took swimming, and we had wonderful dances that we decorated for, I remember one of them I made a coach on a… somebody had a sulkie and… which was a little horse drawn carriage and I turned it into a pumpkin for our dance and some boys put it up on the roof of the gym after the dance, nobody could ever figure out how they got it up there, but football was big, and basketball especially, we played against Pittsburg, had a lot of big, black, tall, good basketball players so it was always a very exciting game to have Pittsburg come and play us, and almost everybody went to Acalanes, I mean there was no Campolindo. There was Diablo, which, I think, some Walnut Creek kids went to, was it called Diablo? I think it was, I’m not sure, so all the Orinda kids, everybody, we all went to the same school, and, I don’t know, I was very big in the Art Department ‘cause I was always “an artist”, so I was Social Chairman something one year because I was a designer, so we decorated the gym for all kind of events, my mom, actually… they asked my mother to come and speak at Acalanes one time because she was an employed woman, which was unusual. I was so impressed when my mother started talking about… “Woah, that’s my mother?” She had a Master’s Degree in Dietetics and a Minor in Interior Design, so she always wanted to work, she always loved working, I don’t think she was cut out to be a mother, although she was a very good mother, but I think she liked work. She worked, but there was a discrepancy or disparity at Acalanes, something I didn’t like at all which meant that the farm kids always got kind of shoved to one side, and the Orinda kids who were the rich kids and the Lafayette kids who were the second-rich kids and then the Walnut Creek kids who were the farm kids. It always bothered me that they weren’t included in all the activities that the rich kids got to be included in, so I was always battling with the rich kids, I don’t think I was terribly popular in some events, but it was a nice school, and I think we had very good teachers. One of our instructors who, I had biology with him, I think was the first principal at Campolindo when they opened Campolindo, but sports were very big, swimming was very big, I think they even introduced golf senior year, and tennis, you could take tennis, I think Acalanes now has a new pool, I think it has either two pools or just one big new pool, I’m pretty sure I was there with another grandkid a couple years ago, the baseball team was very important, it was less organized than it is now, I mean every kid didn’t have a uniform with his name on it, you could wear a t-shirt and play baseball.

RM: So you didn’t need uniforms at all, you just wore whatever you wanted?

AS: I think there were uniforms, but there wasn’t the emphasis on uniforms there is now, I know kids didn’t have uniforms with their names on them because they could hand them down, and I know we didn’t have any kind of swimming suits for uniforms because I remember my mother bought me a very expensive Jansen’s swimming suit which was wool and it itched and someone stole it from me. I think I didn’t care, because it itched, but I know that I wore it, I can remember putting it on, so I know I wore it during swim meets and stuff like that, so we didn’t have the emphasis on… we did wear uniforms, we wore pleated, navy blue shorts, and white mitty tops, with ties, and Friday was free day, you could wear any colors you wanted on Friday, but I think the last year at my school they eliminated the uniform. When we first started out at Acalanes we all wore uniforms and wore white buck shoes with fuzzy socks.

RM: What year did you graduate from Acalanes?

AS: ’51, I think.

RM: And then you went to college elsewhere?

AS: I went to Arts and Crafts and I rode the Greyhound bus to Arts and Crafts, and then I went to Berkeley.

RM: You went to Berkeley and you said you got married and had children, then you came back to Lafayette after that?

AS: I got married to a boy I met at Arts and Crafts, and I was going to Berkeley and Arts and Crafts at the same time, so I didn’t graduate from Arts and Crafts. I met an older fellow, his name was Don Malone, I had one child, a daughter, and then we moved to Twenty-Nine Palms in Southern California in the Mojave Desert because his family had homesteaded there so we moved into the homestead which was, he was a teacher. He taught there, and then we moved here, after Kaylee was born, which was a fascinating part of my life, living in the desert. However, my husband had a wandering eye, and he wandered too far one time so I came back to Lafayette, and divorced him, and them I remarried here, I went to work here, not in Lafayette, in Oakland, and I lived in Lafayette on Mt. Diablo Blvd. behind, I call it Gottrock’s Court, it’s not Gottrock’s Court anymore on the Lafayette Creek, it was a little cottage and I lived there and got married and then I had another kid, two more kids, one of them’s married, she was the last experiment, so then I lived, we lived, let’s see, where did we live? Several places we lived in Oakland, and then I got divorced from that husband because had an alcoholic problem, though he was a lovely, brilliant, charming person, and then I moved to Orinda, and lived in Orinda, for a long time and then I lived in the North Bay in Santa Rosa, because my father had retired there, I went to live near him so that… because he lived until he was 92, so I took care of my dad. Well, I really didn’t take care of him, he took care of himself, but I was there. Then, I moved to Walnut Creek, and sold that house to move here, so I’ve sort of been circulating around here, never got too far away, except the desert, but that was a great adventure. Then I bought a bakery, so I’ve had several careers, I owned an ad agency, a bakery, that’s enough, that was enough. Don’t ever buy a bakery.

RM: I’m not that good a baker. Where was your ad agency?

AS: In Berkeley. Yeah, it was in Berkeley on Ashby. No, on Fourth Street. I was there a long time, raising my kids while running a bakery. I raised my children by telephone.

RM: And the bakery was in Berkeley as well?

AS: No, the bakery was on Bayfarm Island in Alameda. That was a wonderful experience. Cost a lot of money, but I had a good time, and I was a good baker, but don’t ever hire bakers ‘cause they drink up all your booze that you use for flavoring things and as soon as they get their paycheck they go to Las Vegas and they sell all your chocolate chips and walnuts and flour out the back door to other guys, and the people who work for you steal from your till. I don’t know where you’re going in life, but I can tell you where not to go.

RM: I’ll stay away from the baking.

AS: Do that, do that. Or the restaurant business, that’s another biggie. Anyway.

RM: So when you were a designer, did you do designs for local businesses in Lafayette?

AS: No, all over the Bay Area. No, I had lots of accounts. It was a very successful little business. It was never huge, but it was successful. I did a lot of startup companies, for some reason I got a reputation for being good at logos and stuff like that, and I had, off and on, two or three employees. I have a pretty nice portfolio and I’m amazed when I look at it, like, “I did that? I could do that? That’s amazing!” And I became a sign painter, and I still do sign paintings for ships all over the country, through… I have an account for whom I work, they send me orders and I still hand-paint signs. My art has served my family well. It’s a hard way to make a living.

RM: You said you had four children. Do they live in Lafayette, in this area or have they moved all over the place?

AS: One of them lives in the Santa Cruz mountains, my son lives in the Santa Cruz mountains, my daughter Suzie lives in Moraga, my daughter Mary and her husband and I live here, my daughter Katie lives in Lafayette so yeah, they haven’t strayed far with the exception of my son who strayed to Santa Cruz more or less. Mostly more, ‘cause they all live down there still. In all of, my sister was the Dean of Admissions at Bolt Hall in Berkeley, she died six months ago, so she stayed in the area, my brother lives in Clovis because he’s married into the Aketa family who are more ranchers in Clovis, so his wife is Japanese, just the most wonderful person on Earth, he’s very lucky. My sister Jane lives in the Santa Cruz mountains, and she’s a teacher and my sister Margaret lives in the North Bay and she’s a vagrant, she does whatever she wants, so mostly, my family stayed around here. Nobody’s gone east, which is interesting, because that’s where my dad came from, he’s from Connecticut, my mother was from Colorado, so… but they liked California and stayed.

RM: So what do you think it is that kept your family here, just the familiarity of Lafayette or this area?

AS: I think it’s a very comfortable place to live, largely, I think it is, well, it’s changed dramatically in the last ten or twelve years, Lafayette is not Lafayette as I know it at all, as Connor used to say, I don’t know where our town went but it sure did disappear. I think that it’s California, it’s a comfortable place to live, the weather is wonderful, I wish it would rain a lot more, I think that it offered a myriad of opportunities and good schools, good colleges, it’s close to the city, close to San Francisco, I think it’s just a wonderful place to live, and I think we are a family family. We like being around one another, I don’t know if that equates, but it’s good reason. But I think, in general, California is a wonderful place to live. Still, in spite, it better start raining pretty soon.

RM: What do you think are the biggest changes you’ve noticed in Lafayette from when you were younger and now?

AS: The crowding, the people, the buildings, the tearing down… there’s a company called main Street Properties which is buying up parts of Lafayette right and left and I think that we have a new group of people who are interested in tearing down Old Lafayette and building it into something, a destination, I mean, every restaurant, my daughter and son-in-law are friends with a lot of the people who own the Cooperage and a couple of other restaurants in Lafayette, their kids are the same age as the twins, and their idea is to get everybody to come to Lafayette, like Walnut Creek, a destination town now, unfortunately, you can’t park in Lafayette anymore, you can’t just walk down the street anymore, you certainly couldn’t ride your horse down the street, or any other number of things. I think that, I mean, it’s bound to happen, but I feel, in my lifetime, it’s something of a tragedy, that it’s just overwhelming what it was to become something that it wasn’t, and too many people, but again, that’s why we moved here, we were too many people for the people who were here before, too, at some point in time, but that would be my greatest disappointment in what’s happening to Lafayette, but they keep tearing down, which is happening all over the country and all over the world all the lovely old things for new things, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but everything in my house is something old—the horse, the record cabinet, the waterless cooker, I mean the round table isn’t but almost everything was something else before it was furniture for me, but I regret that we have so little interest in preserving what was here. So what? My grandkids won’t know, unless they’ve been to Grammy’s house.

RM: Well, that’s the end of my questions, is there anything you wanted to show me on these?

AS: Well, I was… I don’t know if this would interest you, but my mother was Doris, my father was Broten, and I have the name of the Happy Valley neighbors that were our immediate neighbors… when I was thinking about this, I was thinking of May Lours, who lived across the street from Wilma and Joe on the property next to the Connors’ property, I mean next to the Cosso’s property, was an executive at HC Capwell’s, Joe Connor, his wife Wilma was my best friend, even though she was… she died last year, she’s about twelve years older than I was, but we remained friends forever, went to her house and visited constantly. Joe owned an advertising agency, Lee and Gene Scott who lived next door, he was in manufacturing, he manufactured tchotchkes for, like, coffee mugs with people’s names on them and pens and stuff like that, Jerry Durham, who was the property in front of ours, he owned a laundry he committed suicide in his garage in his car, I think, no one really know, but I think he found out he had cancer or something, and then his wife Claudia married one of his employees whose name was Joe Fraetis, and they continued to live in that house. Dave and Anne Pena lived across from us in Happy Valley, our house in a little rental that was owned by Mr. McGuire, and then the Freemans who lived up behind the Cosso property, he was president of Bell and Howell which made cameras, the Cossos were farmers, the Bridges who lived on the property at the turn of Happy Valley Road in the big house which they just tore down who was a lawyer. Mr. McGuire, who lived right next to us, was a lawyer, Colonel Garrett, whose building is where the Postino restaurant is in Lafayette was a lawyer, but he was also a drunk, and the joke was, you never wanted to ride with Bill Garrett up Happy Valley Road because he would stop to pick you up, like when I was walking home from the drug store, but then he couldn’t drive anymore so he walked up Happy Valley, and he was an attorney, the Babcock’s owned Babco Castings, Slubergers owned Sluberger Florists in Oakland, Dard and Roma were both renters, the Brannon’s, Mr. Brannon was the man who did the pest control, the Malleys were contractors, they built houses everywhere, and the Park Theater I worked there, I worked at the drug store, I worked at the Sun, I worked for Jim Sherry’s Men’s Store, the Roundup Room, and the Pharmacy had a hitching post, Lafiesta Square, where Lafiesta Square is now is just small houses and a creek, and I was married in the Lafayette Presbyterian Church, so I don’t know if you want this or not, yeah, you can have any of these if you can figure out what the chicken scratches mean.

RM: Where was the Presbyterian Church?

AS: It was right across from the firehouse, which now is called the Firehouse School on Moraga, and then Stanley School’s over there, the church is right in there, sort of tucked in on the other side of the street, and I think they have a church school there too, the firehouse, which is the Firehouse School, was the firehouse, we had our own fire engine, and on the Fourth of July it used to come out, but you can have any of these if they’re of any interest to you.

RM: Thank you so much for doing this, and… interview ends at 12:37.