Summary:
Marianne talks about growing up in Lafayette when it was a small, mostly farming community where everyone knew each other by name. In 1932, she moved here with her family from Oakland when she was 2 years old. In 1910, her grandparents Francis and Agnes Malley had purchased land east of Upper Happy Valley Road, south of Lower Happy Valley Road, and north of Los Arabis Drive. The ranch had pears, peaches, walnuts, and a grape vineyard. Francis and Agnes Malley later subdivided the area of their ranch, which became known as Peardale.
Oral History:
Ryan McKinley: This is an oral history interview with Miss Marianne Millet. The interviewer is Ryan McKinley. The interview takes place in her home on Lafayette, California. The time is 10:00 AM. The date is May 5, 2014. So when were you born?
Marianne Millette: I was born in 1930 in Oakland, California.
RM: And what were your parent’s names?
MM: Lucille Boetto, and my father was Charles Malley.
RM: Where were they from originally, were they originally from Oakland, or…
MM: Yeah, Oakland.
RM: Had they been living in Oakland for quite some time before you were born or had they just moved there?
MM: My dad lived there all his life and my mother was born in Napa, but she moved down there and was really from Oakland.
RM: What did they do, what did your father do for a living?
MM: He did a little bit of everything, I guess, but his father was a contractor, developer I guess, and he did that, but he didn’t like it. He just didn’t. He sold cars and I don’t know what else he did. Oh, he was a florist too.
RM: What did your mother do, was she a housewife?
MM: She worked, well, she would take the ferry across to San Francisco and she worked for Southern Pacific Railroad in the office. Until she was married, then she never worked.
RM: Do you know when your parents first met?
MM: Well, they both would go to Sacred Heart Church and they just knew, sort of, each other, and then they met later at a department store, they hadn’t seen each other for a long time, and that’s when they stared to go out.
RM: Okay, and so when they were going to the church, was that was when they were much younger or…
MM: Yeah, my dad went to Sacred Heart School for a while and then my mother went to Emerson which isn’t far away, it’s in North Oakland.
RM: So you grew up in Oakland?
MM: No, I came out here when I was two. We came out here because the Depression was at its peak and my dad, no work in Oakland, I imagine, and in Happy Valley in Lafayette, my father had bought loads of acres, two hundred or more, I don’t know, and he always had a caretaker taking care of it, he never worked, my grandfather, he just invested, and I guess he planted all the pear trees, had them planted, and that’s what he did, he sold lots of pears. I remember the pears coming in big semi trucks and all the pears going out…
RM: So you moved here, and he became a pear farmer, then that was his profession then?
MM: Well he took over the ranch, sort of, they had, I don’t know what caretakers he had, I remember, my dad sort of ran it for a while, I imagine, then the Japanese, the Mukinos that lived, well, he was from Japan but his wife grew up in Happy Valley also, and they took care of the ranch, they were the caretakers for a long time, until the war came, then that had to go to an interment camp.
RM: To growing up, then, in Lafayette, what do you remember before your school days, do you remember anything like that, of what you did?
MM: Yes, we lived… there wasn’t a lot of people, there was homes, and we knew mostly kids along Happy Valley, we knew most of the people, and even if we didn’t know them personally, we knew their names, and there was usually rope pairs between the properties, you know, never a fence, not like now because we didn’t have deer, they were up in the hills, but now, since the “progress”, they’d have to find a place to live, and one just walked down the street just now, but we never saw them here.
RM: And so everyone around at that time were farming different things?
MM: Yeah, people were farming, what I remember, there was farms, well, we didn’t really call them farms, more like a ranch, and truck farmers, or pear ranchers, I mean they planted pairs, and walnuts, that’s how they made their money, growing walnuts, I know a lot of walnuts and loads of pears in Happy Valley, in Lafayette here.
RM: Any specific people you used to spend time with, in that part of your life before you started going to school?
MM: When I went to school, my older brother, which I wish he was here, he knows a lot more, but he had to walk to school, he lived three miles from school, but by the time I went to school, and my brother ahead of me, there was a school bus, it would take us to school, and once we got to school, that was it, we got home, my mother didn’t drive, so when we got off the school bus, that’s where we were, three miles from town and never ventured down there, except when we got older we rode or bikes to town, to Lafayette.
RM: Since you were so isolated, did you and your brother play on the ranch?
MM: And my sister was two years younger, yeah, my brother always had a horse, or a pony and there were right in the back yard, and I rode a little bit, but I never cared to ride, and then my brother loved to hunt, he always had a .22 rifle, he got one when he was twelve, I think, from his older brother. We had guns in our house, no one ever shot each other, no one ever thought of bullets everywhere, and we lived about three pear rows from the creek area, and we’d put cans down there, and I got to be a pretty good shot too, and we’d just shot .22 at cans, and pretty soon, someone else moved across the way, way up in the hill, and they asked if we’d stop shooting.
RM: They don’t want a stray going somewhere.
MM: I guess it’s just a little .22… it’s pretty bad, but no one ever got hurt, and I think of all the guns now, everyone’s so afraid of guns and I just grew up with them, and it didn’t mean anything to me, we were not to kill each other, even when we were mad at each other, we never thought of a gun.
RM: What elementary school did you go to?
MM: I went to Lafayette. It was the only one now that was Lafayette, Walnut Creek, and Orinda, but they’ve all closed but Lafayette’s still going.
RM: What do you remember about the school from that time, when you were first going there?
MM: It went from first to eighth grade. We didn’t have kindergarten. I didn’t go to kindergarten, maybe it was just too far from town, I don’t know, but I think we all started first grade, and went to eighth grade and then from there we went onto Acalanes High School.
RM: So during your time in elementary school, were there any specific people or teachers that you remember interacting with at that time?
MM: No, it just seemed like they were ancient, I just remembered that, and it just seemed to stay, and then it started to grow after the war, I was still in grade school, and then we got more teachers, it was just booming out here, I guess everyone who went to war sailed out of here, and we thought, it’s a pretty good place to live! They all came back. I don’t know if that’s true, but I feel like that was it.
RM: What grade were you in when the war started?
MM: Let’s see now, I was probably, I remember I was probably in fifth grade, and my friend was Ida Kaya, we had a few (Native American) families here, and June, my best friend, and I remember I felt so bad that she had to go, it’s strange because I think about her, you know, and I thought, and I wanted to give her a present, and my mother said no, because on our ranch, the Mukinos, whom I said were the caretakers, they had a wine cellar, I never saw the wine cellar, but it was down there, and they found all these pictures of the Bay Area, all along the coast, and then I found out… she was an American citizen, but he wasn’t, and then they went to the internment camp, when they came back, they went to Japan, I don’t know because of him or what, that’s how it went, and a few years back, about ten years ago, I found out where they lived, and it was really sad because she was such a good lady, you know, and she was so American, but then she said, when I wrote the letter, she said all the little children in the little area she lived in wanted to hear the letter from America, but she said we’re not allowed to speak Japanese, I mean America, English, they couldn’t speak English in the town where they were, and I almost forgot how to write, but she wrote beautifully, you know, because she was American, and she went through Lafayette School, I guess.
RM: Those were the people who were the caretakers, I guess.
MM: Yes, but they packed up and left, but a lot of them came back here, in the area, but they didn’t, and their son Henry, they had a son, and I understand he’s still a doctor, I know, in Japan, but I think they’ve gone because I haven’t heard from her in at least ten years. So that’s what I remember about the wartime, and then my brother was drafted, my oldest brother, and I thought it was exciting. Now I think how awful it was, I was young and didn’t think anything of it.
RM: And did that effect the pear business or anything like that?
MM: I don’t know about that, but then my grandfather about that time, I don’t know when he started to develop a lot of the property out there, Malley Estates it was called, he sold lots, and then he was starting to get rid of a lot of the property, but he still had a lot, there was a lot of hills, and then he sold huge pieces to somebody and that man developed it, then everything started to grow, and everyone coming out here… of course they built the tunnel, it used to go over the hill, but it was scary, and then when the tunnel went in in ’39, I don’t know when it went in, I mean it was exciting but I don’t remember the year, then they opened it up. Everyone could get here quick, quicker than they used to.
RM: So you remember the tunnel being about before the war then?
MM: Yeah, I remember the tunnel. I didn’t want to go to Oakland very often because—my eyes water like crazy, I have allergies—anyway, I never wanted to go to Oakland, but where the tunnel is, on the left side you go up and it was just a short little tunnel, but I remember it leaking water, I remember that, and there was not a tree on the other side, and was a scary road, that’s what I remember, and when the new tunnel came in, now we have, how many? Four?
RM: Yeah, and they just opened the fourth one.
MM: The fourth bore, yeah. So that’s when it opened up out here.
RM: So all through that war period you just continued through Lafayette Elementary?
MM: And Acalanes. Let’s see… forty… yeah, I was, the war was… it ended, I don’t know, in ’44? I don’t know when the war ended.
RM: I think about ’45.
MM: And I was still in grade school.
RM: So moving into Acalanes High, was it similar, you thought the teachers were ancient as well?
MM: No, they weren’t, and it’s strange, my son lives in Walnut Creek, and his neighbor, about four doors across the street, he was my typing teacher, he’s still going, that makes me feel good, but he was really young when we was there. I was gonna say something else about… oh, and Acalanes was the only school here, there was no Orinda, Moraga, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, everyone went to Acalanes.
RM: Wow, so almost the whole of Contra Costa went to…
MM: In this area, yeah, but like I said, that’s when it started to really build up, and then we got a high school in Walnut Creek, and that took people away, and so that’s how it happened, and Acalanes was a very unique school, it was flat, which a lot of schools are now, but I remember we had people coming through there all the time, you know, from India and everywhere, to see how this school was, it must have been… and now it’s just a regular school.
RM: You had a lot of visitors from…
MM: Well, I don’t know, they just seemed to come, it was fairly new because my older brother was part of the first class at Acalanes in ’41, I guess, and then we went to the war.
RM: So it was built about…
MM: Yeah, he was the first class, it was probably built in ’39, whatever, and he graduated in ’41, I think, I think that’s the first class, or ’40, I don’t know. My son was in the fiftieth class.
RM: Oh wow, okay. So before Acalanes, did you just stay at the…
MM: Oh, you know what they had to do, they went to Mt. Diablo High School in Concord, and the Sacramento Northern, you know the train, you don’t know what that is, it used to come past St. Mary’s College and into Lafayette and pick up, I don’t know where it went, I think it was called the Sacramento Northern, I don’t now, I never rode on it, yeah, that’s how they went to high school.
RM: So every morning they’d have to take a train all the way to…
MM: Yeah, they’d have to walk to the train, the only train that stopped just in back of Lafayette School, and it had another stop and then I’d heard in some places they would be running for their train and the house was close, they train, they’d stop and pick them up, and it would have been fun, but I didn’t get to do that. It seems so modern now, and I remember Lafayette being so friendly cause we knew everybody, you knew every storekeeper and just, its not like that now. They come and go. I’m still here.
RM: So you said, when everyone started moving in, did you start to notice the shops being built up and things like that, or did they all try to be farmers?
MM: No, it didn’t get built really fast, now I don’t think, I mean it was still small when I was a teenager, then, I guess… we used to shop in Oakland, I had never been to Concord until I was in high school, I remember on the school bus to the… we played against Concord High School, and it seems so funny, I go to Concord all the time now, but it was a way, you know, so crazy.
RM: During your high school years, what were the things you did in your spare time, things like pep rallies, football games, movies…
MM: Yeah, we had football games, and we’d go to the football games, we didn’t go far, I don’t think, then we played Piedmont high school, I remember that, but I never went there, I only went to Concord, Mt. Diablo for a football game, I’d just go to the Acalanes, ‘cause Mom didn’t drive, and my dad was busy so he didn’t even ask him to take us.
RM: He was working too hard?
MM: Yeah, I don’t know. That’s all I can remember about what went on in my days, but like I told somebody, I said my oldest brother would be great, but he lives in Manteca right now but I don’t know if he would, he probably wouldn’t do much anyway , he’d probably know the same thing I knew. We’d hibernated up in Happy Valley.
RM: Have you been back to Acalanes since you graduated? I mean, I know your son went there…
MM: I have six children, and my oldest one went to De La Salle, and then my daughter was going to go to Carondelet and then she decided to go to Acalanes, so then the rest went to Acalanes, all graduated at Acalanes.
RM: And has the school changed a whole lot since you’ve been there?
MM: Oh well, no, we had a swimming pool, which was… but, it has grown. Yeah, it has…
RM: Expanded?
MM: Yeah, but it’s still, I don’t know, I haven’t really been though the, you know, I worked over there when they were in high school a little bit just helping out, but it looked the same to me more or less. Of course they built a new gym, so it has grown. I guess they chose that area because it was centralized, so they knew all of Orinda and everyone had to get there, so…
RM: So when you were going there though, it was about the same amount of buildings and things like that?
MM: Yeah, I think the amount of buildings, probably, it looks more or less the same, they may have added a couple towards Pleasant Hill, I don’t know, and then we were, I think, when I graduated, there was like a hundred and fifty in the class, my daughter graduated with four hundred, so I don’t know what it’s like now.
RM: I had talked to somebody else and they had graduated from Acalanes in the sixties, I think, they were saying the graduating class was 370, I think.
MM: And when the built… over by Rossmoor, what was it called? Del Valle, but it’s closed now. It kinds goes into Rossmoor, so that one’s closed. When they closed Del Valle, we had absorbed so many children, and they were furious they had to come to Acalanes and I guess I remember my daughter saying, we have to give them special treatment, so they gave them the head of the “Blueprint”, and everything, you know, they were really accommodating, if they went somewhere else, but the kids were, they were just being bad, and they don’t want to be there, naturally, even though, probably what the school… and so then when the graduated, they wore the colors of Del Valle. I mean, after you go to school for a year or two, you’d think… anyway, that has settled down, now I guess they can go to any school, I don’t know, I think with Campolindo and Acalanes you can choose, but they go to Stanley here now to middle school or junior high or whatever it is, so they meet friends, and they say, “Where are you going?” “Okay, I’ll go to Campo too then” or “I’ll go to Acalanes.” It kind of separated Lafayette into two divisions.
RM: And so you graduated from Acalanes in what year?
MM: ’48.
RM: Did you go off to a university or…?
MM: No, I went to a business school, and then I found a job right away.
RM: What did you study at the business school?
MM: Well, just all kinds of things, and then there was a strike somewhere from Safeway stores, but it was (?), the same kind of stores, and they needed someone right away so I got a job real quick and I worked there until and I met my husband there, he was state board (?), just out of college, but so then I never worked again, that was it, I had all the kids.
RM: You just mentioned your husband, where did he grow up?
MM: He grew up in South Dakota, and I guess his parents came here, I think I’ve heard the story that Red’s father used to deliver groceries in this little tiny town, in South Dakota, Dell Rapids, and he wanted a raise and they said no, and then the Henry J. Kaiser Group came through and wanted workers out here, so we came out here and worked in the shipyards, then pretty soon my husband finished high school, he didn’t want to come out here, so he finished high school in South Dakota, and then he went back for a year for college, then he came here and he went to San Francisco State. His brother went to Cal, so they just became Californians.
RM: And he just happened to be…
MM: Well, he was the junior auditor, and he was auditing the books here, so no need to be an auditor, and then he got to become the top fellow eventually, what he meant to me was a little flumpy, so that’s what he did for a living.
RM: And then shortly after you were married and had children, and then you stayed home with the children?
MM: Yeah, I never worked again.
RM: And at that time you were living…
MM: We were living in Lafayette, we lived in an apartment first for a year and a half, and we moved with my mother and dad because we were going to go on vacation for a month with his parents, we weren’t going to rent that apartment because it cost money, so we moved in with my parents, and then six months later I guess, we rented a little house by the Roundup, a little tiny cottage, and we had three children there, and then we built this house.
RM: And the apartment that was on Mount Diablo Boulevard…
MM: We lived in Oakland in an apartment, but here we lived in a little cottage, it was in just a string of little cottages.
RM: Near the La Fiesta Square that’s probably all gone right now?
MM: Well I could tell, there was one tree there, I said, “That’s where our bedroom was”, between, what is it? Chow’s and something else, the hamburger place or something.
RM: Okay. When you were living in Lafayette at the time, was that when it was kind of developing? I know you said it was a very slow development earlier.
MM: No, it seems like it was always Lafayette, and now, all of a sudden, it’s really developed. I mean they’re building everything, all of the apartments, and you can’t even move in Lafayette, all the restaurants, that’s how they survive, so many restaurants in Lafayette.
RM: When you were living near the Roundup and things like that, it was still pretty simple and…
MM: Oh, yes, it was very still, you know, still small, because where Chow’s is and all that, that was just, it was a grocery store and now it’s a parking lot. There were no other stores, just a grocery store and a hardware store on Moraga, facing Moraga, and we knew a lot of store owners then, but now…
RM: Now it’s nothing. What drew you to appear in this area to build a house? Were they opening this area to develop?
MM: Yes. The strange part is, all this development here, my grandfather’s best friend, my grandfather bought loads of property in Happy Valley and Hamlin, which is Hamlin Road, Dr. Hamlin was my grandfather’s friend, and he bought all of this around here, property here and Silver Springs, and all that, and then he started to develop his properties too. There was a horse show right as you come into Solano Drive, famous horse show in Lafayette, we had very, and that was really exciting times, but that’s when it was, I didn’t know when the… I guess that’s when we started to develop, the horse show left.
RM: So it was like a ranch, or…
MM: I don’t know what they… a friend of mine was born right down in Silver Springs at a dairy that her family rented from Dr. Hamlin, and he had a dairy there, I don’t remember the dairy, but I know she went to school with me, but I don’t remember ever seeing the dairy there, and I guess when they started to develop, he had to move, and he went to Concord, and everyone was coming out here.
RM: Okay. I’m curious, did you ever attend the horse show?
MM: Oh, the horse show, yeah, I attended it. It was famous, and the parade was, I mean it was a very famous horse show, and we were in the parade once, my brother and his friend built, well they had a ranch here, Jack’s friend had a trailer, and they covered it over and we all rode in the parade. Yeah, I remember that, and Jack used to enter his horse and do things, but not me, but I’d go to the horse show.
RM: And that was like an annual thing?
MM: Yeah, it was very famous. I don’t know when would that end? Probably the last 40’s, probably. I don’t now when the last horse show was.
RM: So it would have been shortly after you were out of high school?
MM: Yes, probably. I would think around, maybe just before I was out, maybe during I was out of high school, it ended, you know. It’s hard, I don’t know. I can’t remember that. All of a sudden there was homes. But everyone had horses where I lived, oh, everyone had a horse. They’re riding all the time. Boys and girls had horses. And then it just got to be girls mostly.
RM: And so all through this time, your parents kept a pear farm?
MM: No, my grandfather did, we lived on it, we never… and we lived in the original ranch house, I guess it was, and then my brother built a house, grandpa gave him a piece of property, and he built a house and he went and sold it for fifteen thousand dollars, now it’s probably two million, almost that. Anyway, we moved into there because my aunt wanted the other house, so it was a crazy time.
RM: You mentioned your grandfather. What did he do?
MM: He was quite a developer, I mean he was… he worked hard, he had no help from anybody, but he really made it.
RM: And that’s your mothers…
MM: He was my father’s father.
RM: Was he from the area originally?
MM: He was from Oakland, West Oakland, and he lived up at Lakeshore Avenue, he owned a lot of property on Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland, and he was one of six or seven boys in the family, and he was the second oldest, but he’s the one that really, he just hit it, he just did it right, but he hired his brothers as carpenters and they built homes in Piedmont, there’s a lot of homes out there he built, so that’s how he made his money, and with the ranch, the property in Happy Valley.
RM: How did he afford to buy these properties and things like that?
MM: He would just work hard, and save his money, and invest it, I guess, invest in things, I never saw him without a tie on and a suit, but he must have worked hard before when I was younger that I don’t even, maybe before I was even born. He worked his way up, in other words.
RM: So that was your father’s father, right? Did you have much contact with your mother’s parents?
MM: Well, I didn’t know ‘em. I knew my father’s parents, my grandmother died when I was nine, so I remember her, you know, and I knew my grandfather, I guess I was twenty-one or so when he passed away. My mother’s parents, they were from Italy, and they were… I just seen pictures of them.
RM: And so your mother’s parents emigrated here?
MM: Yes, they emigrated here, and then my grandfather’s parents are the ones, they emigrated from Ireland.
RM: Do you know, by any chance, what your great-grandparents did when they came over here?
MM: I don’t know, I guess I could look on the census, it will say something about what they did. I don’t know what, I have no idea. I never even thought about it, I know how my grandfather got into building, it was probably a good time then to start to build, I’m sure my dad was in the early 1900’s that he started building. Probably the turn of the century he started to build things, I don’t even know. That’s strange, you know, I never thought of that. What they did, they came here because they were probably sent out because they had no potatoes or something, the potato famine that came, I don’t know, and I know they didn’t go to Ellis Island because that was before, they came before Ellis Island.
RM: Oh, before it was established?
MM: Uh huh, I’m sure they came before Ellis Island, and even my Italian, I don’t think they came through Ellis Island, either. Some of the Irish came around the Horn, I know, that’s all I remember.
RM: And so how long did your family keep the pear farm going?
MM: I don’t know, I just know it from the time it was… I can remember, like I said, I came when I was two, and it always the pear ranch, and they would come in, and we had Filipinos, were the workers, it was a hot season, when you pick pears it’s always August, end of July, August, and they would live on the ranch, on the lower… well, one of those two areas, we lived on one part of Happy Valley and the other ranch was further down with the barn and the horses and everything, and they would stay there the whole time, when it’s time to prune everything, loads of trees to prune, then they’d come when it’s time to pick.
RM: So they would kind of come at a certain point…
MM: Yeah, just like they do now I think, but they were all Filipinos, and we got to know them, I remember one used to come and give my brothers their haircut, as extra money he made, strange, and then they’d bring us… that’s what they did because then they’d work on the asparagus fields, ‘cause then they’d bring us big cases of asparagus, you know, working when the pear season was over, so you got to be friendly with them.
RM: And that continued with always Filipinos growing up?
MM: We did all the time, and lots of them. A lot of them , and the Japanese ran the stand and Susie Mukino ran the ranch from my grandfather, then my dad came in when they had to be sent to the internment camps.
RM: And then your father ran that for the rest of the time?
MM: Yeah, for a few years, and then Frank Soares, who was a family in Happy Valley, he ran the ranch for a while too in between the Japanese and Dad or whatever, yeah, he ran it for a while. Then it got down a little and my brother Jack, who was two years older than I was, he wanted to quit school so he quit school and he ran the ranch, that was when hardly anything was left, you know, most of the property was sold or, it wasn’t subdivided, but my grandfather did, they build homes for sale too, when they subdivided, they built, I think, four homes for sale, then people would come and buy lots. I don’t know where the map is, but they’d come I and they’d look at the map and buy a lot, and they’d built their house.
RM: And when they started to subdivide it, that was…
MM: Yeah, that was subdivided, I think I might have been still in grade school, when they were starting to subdivide it, right after the war, you know.
RM: Your family stopped growing the pears in the 1950’s or something like that, or they just continued on a smaller piece?
MM: My Dad, no, he did something else, he opened a bar on Mt. Diablo Blvd., well, it was between Lafayette and Orinda, and it ended up quite well for him. That’s what he, for quite a while, because there was no more ranch to do, you know, there wasn’t much to do on that. It’s hard to look back and think, you know, something that might be interesting.
RM: So the Mukinos that ran the ranch at the time, did all the other farms as well employ Japanese to run their farms?
MM: My grandfather had the biggest, and he always had the caretakers, the other ones, the Cossos still are up there, and well, they just divided the property, there was five siblings there, they do a little bit on their own, they come there and meet there and have lunch, and they plant their little vegetables and stuff, most of them did, like I said, most of them took over, well his family had a ranch, not far but they did it themselves, they were from Portugal and they just maintain it themselves, and that’s how they raised… I don’t know what they, I know they had milk, oh, and then we used to get… I don’t like milk because we only had an icebox, and we’d get milk at the Santos’s not too far, we’d have to walk up there, and at the end of their driveway would be this can of milk and something, but to me it was always sour, it wasn’t pasteurized, you know, and I still don’t like milk, then chocolate milk, well, not out of the cow, but this one came out of the Santos’s cow , and it’s funny when you think about it. Even hot chocolate I didn’t like, I don’t know how long it would get there, and how it’d keep, Mother had an icebox, people next door not too far away, they had refrigerators but we still had an icebox, than finally we got an icebox, I mean a refrigerator, and then she’d buy store milk, cause the Santos’s went out of business too. It’s funny when you think about it. I mean, how it changed to quickly, in a way, I guess it’s doing the same thing now, but it’s not as noticeable. It’s just, if we finally meet in Walnut Creek, it will be noticeable.
RM: So everything will become one giant city.
MM: Like East Oakland or something. My grandfather always talks about East Oakland, it was… was it Fruitvale Avenue? I guess it was Fruitvale Avenue. It was where all the prizefighters lived, he said, and it was dirt road, just a dirt road and you see now how much it changed, and I guess my grandparents, my Irish grandmother, she was raised in San Leandro, and Dad always talked about the ranch out there, and that ranch has… our name is out there because the Morgans lived—my grandmother’s name was Morgan—so it’s Morgan Avenue, so… I haven’t been on it, but that’s where the ranch was, that’s what I call… the Santos’s live there, that’s how they got their names.
RM: Do you know anything about how they named that? Somebody just decided to pick Morgan?
MM: I don’t know, I really don’t know. That’s where the Morgans lived, I think there was like thirteen Morgans or something, we can’t forget them. I don’t know, that would be interesting to know too, I never thought of that. It was very country, now that’s the same way, no more country there, and then I remember I was just telling my brother, our friends were married, and I was younger so I went with them, I stayed with her he was in the Navy. Yeah, that was it. What was I gonna say about that? Oh, I know, she was gonna make me a dress, a Hawaiian one, and they didn’t have patterns in the stores made up, we had to go to a bakery, and they opened the drawer, this is in 1951, and there were some patterns you could buy. They got popular, Hawaii got popular, and patterns everywhere.
RM: I think you can buy them right down the street now.
MM: I know, I know. I mean it was… I bought the pattern, and went to a men’s barber shop, I remember that, and in back were all of these ladies, Hawaiians, sewing, and I had the dress in a day, they’re really clever, I still have it because it was so… it was really nice, but they knew what they were doing. So that’s Hawaii though, we’re talking about Lafayette.
RM: No, we’re talking about you. So in that time… so I’m curious, how long between when you graduation in high school and when you got married, how many years was that about?
MM: Graduated eighteen, I got married at twenty-four.
RM: So about six years, okay. And from there you went to a business school for…
MM: …For just a year, not even that, and then they needed… I got my job and I stayed there, I was lucky.
RM: And so at that time you were just working, did you do anything else at that time?
MM: No, come home, stay home, I didn’t have a car, I never bought a car, I used to take the Greyhound bus to Oakland, and I think now my kid would want me to drive, not now, they’re grown, but drive right down to BART, you know, I walked down Happy Valley Road and got on the Greyhound bus down there, and my dad could be in bed, how our younger generation’s spoiled. I was just in between there.
RM: So am I. I was just trying to imagine taking a Greyhound from here to…
MM: Uh-huh. And I had high heels, I walk down, then I got in with… a neighbor was going into… I could walk down to her house and get off somewhere in Oakland and get a key system bus to Berkeley, that’s what I did.
RM: And what exactly did you do at the store?
MM: Oh no, I worked in the office.
RM: Oh, you worked in the office. I’m just curious, since that chain and company, you said it was like Safeway, but it wasn’t Safeway.
MM: Yeah, I understand that, I’ve heard. Mr. Haigstrom had lots of stores way back before I went there, and Safeway was coming into the area, so he sold his, I don’t know how many stores he had, but I worked… but then he reopened under his name, and he had like sixty stores.
RM: So he had sold the Safeway, then he opened up a new company…
MM: And put it under his name. It was the Mutual stores or something like that before, that’s what he… when he first came, he came from Denmark, and he did that. So he did quite well.
RM: But they were just large grocery stores…
MM: Yeah, just like Safeway. The Safeways and the Haigstrom’s were right next to each other in Walnut Creek, Haigstrom’s was here and Safeway was here. And then he sold that to… now Safeway’s gonna do whatever, they’re having their problems.
RM: I’m just curious, you’re done some work, I’m just curious about that point in your life, what was it like working being the working lady for five years.
MM: Yeah, it was fun. I lived at home, never had to pay rent, why would I move? And my sister always lived at home too, and my brother Jack too, until he got married and moved out.
RM: So you got three other siblings? Two brothers and…
MM: Yeah, there were four of us, the oldest brother and my brother Nick, there’s a big difference between my older brother and me, the three of us were more close.
RM: So how old is he?
MM: He’s 91.
RM: Your oldest brother?
MM: Yeah and he… it’s unbelievable. You should have him here. He knows everything. He was just moving out to Oklahoma. He just left there about three years ago, moved to Manteca and he was a contractor also, he’s a builder. Now he’s having a house built in Oklahoma. He just sent me a card and he said he’s having a storm cellar because he wants one of those in Oklahoma. I can’t believe he’s doing that at his age, but he’s very young.
RM: And he was the one who served in World War II?
MM: Yeah, he was in World War II, and my older brother, he was drafted, and my other brother, he joined, I remember the war… I guess, I don’t know, I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on in the world when I was in fifth grade, but Chuck wanted to join the Navy, and my Dad said, “You are not joining the Navy, I won’t sign for you”, so Pearl Harbor came, the next day he signed up for six years, he was sorry, he was showing my dad something, ended up six years. So he got his fill of the Navy, and then Jack was drafted, and he never liked to swim, and Chuck wanted him to join the Navy, but no, he went into the army, but he never went to the Korean War, he was always stateside. That was lucky, but my brother, he saw a lot of battles in World War II.
RM: Your oldest brother?
MM: Yeah. It didn’t seem to harm him, he doesn’t have any of that, what, what all the soldiers are having now, but they see a lot more, maybe. I guess if you’re in the Navy, you’re in a lot of battles, but you’re not, I don’t know what, on the ground.
RM: And so what does your sister do?
MM: They needed someone else, and Patty was in between jobs, she just never liked to do any office work, but that’s what she was doing, so I went to my boss at Hagstrom’s, they weren’t hiring, they’re not going to hire siblings because Mr. Hagstrom, everyone from Denmark worked there, but they said okay, so she came to work where I worked, until they closed.
RM: You stopped working there about 1953, or something like that?
MM: Let’s see, when I… I started Hagstrom’s in ’49, maybe, almost the end of ’49, and I worked until five years, no wait, you needed to have ten years to get Social Security, and then I worked after I was married for a few years, didn’t have children right away, and so I needed one more quarter to make forty, so they sent home work for me to do, so then I got my forty. Something like that happened.
RM: So technically you worked there for ten years?
MM: Yeah, I was saying, about ten. Almost ten years, yeah, just about ten years. Might as well say ten years. I didn’t know I worked there that long, I’m tired.
RM: Interesting. That’s pretty much all of my questions.
MM: Yeah, I guess there’s nothing much else. I know too much about, just little things, like I said. I can remember, this is probably not too interesting, but I remember, on a Sunday, when Pearl Harbor happened, we were watching “One Man’s Family” or something, not watching, listening, and it was so exciting for me, I thought it was wonderful, they turned off all the lights on the Bay Bridge, and everything was getting dark, I guess because they didn’t know if they were coming, coming here after doing Hawaii, but I just remember that was very exciting. You think now, how exciting was that, Marianne?
RM: Did you have to… I know some people have said they had to black out the windows…
MM: Some man, his place was really blacked out on Happy Valley, but we didn’t really do that, I don’t remember doing that, and then have you ever heard of the Port Chicago blast?
RM: No. What is that?
MM: Port Chicago is over by Pittsburg, and there was a huge blast there, we thought we were being bombed. It was horrible, broke windows in Lafayette, it was really scary. Mother had us all sitting out in the back stairs, it was very scary, but it wasn’t, no one was coming after us, it felt like they were.
RM: So that was just an accident?
MM: It was a big… something about a ship in Port Chicago, just over the hill from Concord, if you go down there, Port Chicago’s to the left, and blew up, just a freak accident that, I don’t know how many, I think it killed a lot of people, I don’t know the details, but that was one thing that was scary there. Yeah, I don’t remember too much, I don’t think we blacked out too much, but they had wardens or something, in case something happened they would tell us, I guess, but nothing ever happened.
RM: You mean like somebody would drive around…
MM: In charge or something, I just remember something like that. Like I said, I was only in the fifth grade then, so… I didn’t even think about it, you know.
RM: When you were older, like in the 50’s and ‘60s and stuff, did you have bomb scares and things like that, where they were afraid of the
MM: No, nothing. That Port Chicago was really early, you know… it was early. We didn’t know what happened, it was just… and communication was… no television, it was… that’s the only thing I remember. (electronic song “London Bridge is Falling Down plays) Well that means you’re been here an hour. My mother would have loved this clock. Sometimes it drives my crazy, but I’d hate to get rid of it. Certain show, there’s one show I watch, I don’t watch too much television, it’s at night, it must be eight o’clock or nine o’clock, that thing I’d like to throw at somebody. I can’t turn it down, it’s just run by a battery. Crazy.
RM: Is it some kind of heirloom?
MM: It’s not even an heirloom, she sent away for it, and she got two. One’s gone now. My Daughter went all four years, and then Joe went to DVC and then went to St. Mary’s and he became a baseball player and then he went to work for Chevron and he wanted to try out in a tryout camp, you know, tried out here, didn’t make it, went to Los Santos and someone said, “We have to have that arm”, and he made it to the Phillies.
RM: Oh, wow.
MM: Shortstop, for a half year and another half a year, so that was fun, It was fun watching him, and then Ted just went there, and his wife went there for her Master’s, I guess.
RM: So this would probably be my last question, but your children, I know you had six of them, do they still live in this area?
MM: They all live so close, and I tell this joke, I’m having them all come in, and one can’t come, I say. “Aww, that’s too bad.” One less piece of choc- or something. They all live in Walnut Creek, Oakland, my daughter lives in San Francisco, so she worked for… and she got a good job at St. Mary’s, she took paralegal extra and then she went to work for there attorneys and now she’s head of all the attorneys and so it’s been wonderful, so she’s been lucky, she got a good job.
RM: So you think they stayed in this area to be near Lafayette?
MM: I don’t know, they just didn’t… well, Tom went to work for Chevron, and Joe did too, and Tom is still at Chevron, and Ted with PG&E, and who are the other ones? Tim has his own little gardening business, and tony didn’t go to St. Mary’s, Tony went to USC, and Music, so he’s Pastoral Associate of something at Santa Maria in Orinda, but he does more than the music, he almost runs the place. he has a good job too, and then Joe married my daughter’s roommate at St. Mary’s and her family owns the Concord Ironworks so Joe’s learning to iron business, the whole family worked there so they all stayed. We don’t have to fly anywhere.
RM: I think that’s it for me. Thank you very much for this.
MM: Yeah well…
RM: Interview ends at 11:05 AM.
MM: Very good.
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