Summary:
Laura Torkelsen interviewed Mary in October 2018, when Mary was 96. Her daughter Sophie was present. The Machado family has long been associated with the Alta Crest Dairy, which once existed on the former Hamlin property in the Silver Springs area in Lafayette. The dairy was actually started by Mary’s older sister, Cecilia. When Mary was in third grade she would get up at 3 AM to help Cecilia deliver fresh milk to customers in Lafayette, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, and Concord. In this interview she also recalls major events of her life, including taking part every year in the Holy Ghost Feast at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Walnut Creek and the Lafayette Horse Show.
Oral History:
Laura Torkelson: This is an oral history interview with Mary Machado Ginochio in the Lafayette Historical Society History Room on October 23rd, 2018. The interviewer is Laura Torkelson. So the first thing that, of course, we want to know is the beginning, right? Were you born at the Alta Crest Dairy?
Mary Machado: Mm-hmm.
LT: All right, so do you have any remembrances about your early childhood there at the dairy, or…
MM: Well, it depends what age. We all had to work sooner or later, and help. At first we didn’t have a dairy for a long time.
LT: I understand it was 1930 that the dairy… with your older sister.
MM: Had just about then… yes…
LT: I thought that was so fascinating that your older sister was such an entrepreneur. She’s a smarty. A go-getter, I would say. Cecelia, yes. So when you were growing up, can you tell me about your house, your neighbors, how you got around.
MM: Yeah well, our neighbors across the street were Edgars and at another house there were the Prices, and that was seven acres out there that now has million dollar homes on it.
LT: I know.
MM: Dad could have bought it, but he couldn’t afford it, and he could already feed the family, in fact, you know, with the eight of us, but then we all, we had help, and I drove the truck there for a while…
LT: To make the deliveries?
Sophie: She learned to drive at, like, twelve.
MM: Well, I was eleven when I started to drive, but my older sister, you know, she really was the one to drive, and then Charles…
LT: Okay, so I know that your father and mother came to Hamlin land in 1915, but where did they come from?
MM: My dad was from Saint George (Sao Jorge) in Portugal, you know, we were Portuguese, and my mother was born in St, Louis, Missouri, and her parents were from Bern, Switzerland.
LT: Interesting, and how did they meet?
MM: …Dinner with him. And you know you sit around, this is before the dessert came, you walk away or visit, and come back, and that judge, he got up and he came over to me, and he wanted to know about my family, so I told him, and he said the same thing when I told him about my parents.
LT: Well, St. Louis, Missouri and some place in Italy, I mean Portugal…
MM: How did they ever leave, Because she was in San Francisco then.
LT: I see. So did her family come out to San Francisco, or just she?
MM: Well, no, we have too many in the family I think. There was just her at the time and then they had a son and a daughter, or two daughters, Aunt Mary and Uncle Frank and Katie.
LT: You mean Grandma’s parents.
MM: Yeah.
LT: Came out to San Francisco?
MM: Yeah.
LT: Okay. So grandma’s parents came out to San Francisco. I thought you meant just grandma came to San Francisco.
MM: No, because she was a wagon-maker.
LT: A wagon-maker. Interesting.
S: Her grandmother was.
LT: A wagon-maker in San Francisco. All right, and so then this Portuguese young man came by one day to buy a wagon, or what?
MM: They came out, and I think they may have lived with him… no, I take that back because they lived in San Pablo. That’s where my mom and dad lived. And, I have to think this over here, then, from San Pablo, well, before they moved to San Pablo they were to Modesto because that’s where my older sister was born, in the hospital, in fact, Barbara and I were talking about this morning, and the rest of us were all at home because my mother said she never suffered so much as she did when I was in the hospital, and she was never gonna go back…
LT: She did?
S: No, all her other children were born at home. Yeah, I remember Sophie saying that, that she was born at home.
MM: In fact, my dad helped deliver my sister Theresa, so then they moved to Lafayette, and they rented the ranch there, and then he started his own cows and that’s about all, you know, he really had was the cows that… and the calves he would sell, he butchered them too for Goulart’s, a meat market in Oakland, and I had gone with him though the Old Tunnel Road.
S: And so, at that time you were driving the truck? Or somebody that…
MM: No, my dad was driving the truck, you know the old…
S: Not covered wagon, I mean not horse and wagon but vehicle…
MM: But you know the Old Tunnel Road, how crooked it was.
S: Well, I’ve heard, and how narrow that tunnel was, and how drippy and dark.
MM: Yeah, so that’s… that went on for quite a while.
LT: Can I ask you a question? How did Grandma and Grandpa meet in San Francisco, or San Pablo? How did they meet?
MM: Now that’s what that judge wanted to know and that’s what she wants to know.
LT: How did they meet?
MM: I thought a dance.
LT: Okay. Kind of like you and dad.
MM: Yeah. I’m pretty sure a dance.
LT: Okay, so then they started out with the cattle business and then when your sister started the dairy…
MM: Yes, she loved horses she used to teach them to jump.
LT: Oh, interesting, she’d train the horses.
MM: She’d put one of those, what do you call them?
LT: A course, I guess, yes.
MM: Yeah, you’d call them a… and she’d put it in the middle of the yard, and she’d toss it…
LT: Then did she go to competitions?
MM: No.
LT: Just for her own satisfaction, yes, all right, that’s great. Oh, I forgot what I was gonna ask, so did you go then to Lafayette School, I imagine.
MM: And my older sister went to the church…
LT: Oh, the second Lafayette School.
MM: The first school was the… and then they built the…
LT: The one on the other side of the road? And that’s the one you went to?
MM: We all went there.
LT: And did you walk, did you…
MM: Oh no, we walked.
S: “Uphill, both ways in the snow…”
MM: It really wasn’t that far, we didn’t know, you know.
LT: Well, it wasn’t as far as the kids from Happy Valley or something like that.
MM: Some did, though.
LT: Yeah, I know. I’ve heard that. So we walked to school and did you feel like you had a lot of work, a lot of homework, a lot of schoolwork, or was it pretty…
MM: No, it’s just something that you have to do.
LT: Yeah.
MM: You know, it’s not like today, “I don’t wanna do this, or change that”, you know.
LT: Well, I wonder if you had as much homework as kids nowadays have, I don’t know.
MM: I don’t think so. I really don’t know.
LT: I don’t think so either.
MM: I think today they give them too much homework.
LT: So what kind of, like, can you tell me about friends that you had or kind of the games you used to play, or how you entertained yourself?
MM: We talked about that the other day too. Hide and Go Seek, Kick the Can, and our home was just a, well, you probably saw the picture but Squirm.
LT: Is this the home?
MM: Yeah, yeah, there’s the porch in the back, and we used to say, “Annie Annie over”, one would be here and one would be there and we threw the ball over.
LT: Over the roof. My mother told me that of her memories of childhood, yeah, and I remember Sophie talking about how much you just played in nature, I mean it was just… you were outside and hiking…
MM: Yeah, we thought that, where we were going, we made a sandwich to go up on the hill and we thought we were really going someplace.
LT: And how many bedrooms were in the house?
MM: Two bedrooms.
S: Eight children.
MM: In the living room.
LT: So did you put all the girls in one and the boys in the other and the parents? What happened? How did you do that?
MM: Well, that’s about how we did it.
S: Several slept in one bed too, right?
MM: Right.
LT: Yeah, because you had six girls.
MM: Of course my older sister, she married, I think she was twenty…
LT: So she was gone before the little ones were.
S: I think she was gone before Sophie was born.
LT: Okay.
S: That helps. Get out of the house so we have room for you. And one bathroom, right Mom?
MM: Well, lucky to have that.
S: But didn’t you used to not have a…
LT: Well, you probably had an outhouse. Did you have an outhouse?
MM: Yeah, at the beginning.
S: That’s what I thought.
LT: When did you get the indoor bathroom? About how old were you when you had indoor plumbing?
MM: I guess I was maybe seven or eight.
LT: So you pretty clearly remember.
MM: Sort of, yeah.
LT: How did you do bathing? Before running water in the house?
MM: Well, I can always remember running water in the house.
LT: Okay. So you didn’t have a toilet, but you had the running water?
MM: Yes, and it wasn’t too much longer that then we had a toilet because the doctor he rented the place from, his wife too, they were just so, so nice.
LT: The Hamlins. Yeah, that’s great. So what about friends? Just mostly your siblings or did you…
MM: No, from school, maybe, but my mother was the type that not bring that person home.
S: She was strict.
LT: Well, she probably had her hands full, she didn’t need more.
MM: Yeah, but we had friends.
LT: I’ve been very curious about, because every time I look at the class pictures from the ‘30’s, say, there’s always a Japanese face or two, and I know that Sophie was mentioning about how there were Japanese vegetable farmers, and that your mother would trade milk for tomatoes that she could then can, this may have been when Sophie was, you know, she was that much younger, maybe you don’t remember that, it might have been a different time.
MM: I don’t remember…
LT: I think it was during the Depression she was talking about. The point is I wondered if… I’m just curious about, there having been Japanese people, and them having them disappear.
MM: I was going to say, I don’t remember Japanese people.
LT: Okay, all right.
MM: The farmers we had were Italian.
LT: Ah ha.
MM: In fact, when I delivered… you know where Happy Valley is?
LT: Yes.
MM: Okay. I think I was about fourteen and we had a little route about four o’clock in the afternoon, just several places, the Rossis and the Ravazzas, and the Ravazzas, they couldn’t speak English, and the boys, they learned English when they were about ten, twelve years old, and they would tell me what the mother wanted, and one of those boys is still living in Lafayette.
LT: I thought I had heard that name, do you know how to spell it?
MM: Ravazza, R-A-V, I think there’s a “Z” in there, right in the corner from Paul.
LT: Does he?
MM: Yeah, Sophie knows him very well.
LT: Ah, okay, That’s the kind of thing that…
S: Is your voice loud enough to pick up?
LT: I hope so. Yeah, so I know that the Portuguese aspect, that there was a large Portuguese society and they had festivals and…
MM: Yes, we had the Holy Ghost Feast and that’s one of the big things we used to go to, in fact, our family picture, we were all dressed up…
LT: This one.
MM: …and we went to the Holy Ghost Feast.
LT: The Holy Ghost Feast.
MM: Sophie still goes to them, they not around here.
S: They were saying that, yeah.
LT: So this Holy Ghost Feast, can you kind of describe it?
MM: Well, they have a parade, they choose a girl from one of the families to be the queen, and that was a big thing, you know, and then they’d go down Main Street in a big parade in Walnut Creek and then they’d come back and they have the Blessed Sacrament I think, ‘cause it’s a Catholic thing, and they’d march it in and put it on the altar and then they’d have what they called soupas, a Portuguese dish, and they’d all went in and eat, and it was a big hall.
LT: Wow.
S: They still have a lot of them in different areas. Auntie Sophie goes up to one…
MM: Yeah, I was just telling her.
LT: How many would you say, it was like coming from all over, obviously Lafayette, Walnut Creek, Concord, all over the whole area?
MM: Yes, yes, Walnut Creek is where they had their office and their buildings, and the little St. Mary’s Church…
LT: …that’s still there on Mt. Diablo Boulevard?
MM: Yes, but it was downtown…
LT: Oh I see.
MM: I think Capwell’s was in there.
LT: Okay, Macy’s. That sounds like a lot of fun. Was that like every year you guys went to this, and it was like the big event?
MM: It was something, yeah.
LT: Yes, all right. One of the things Sophie said was that you always had lots and lots and lots of laundry.
MM: I wonder why.
LT: And I didn’t ask her, but I’ll ask you, is how did you do the laundry?
S: Good question.
MM: My mother… you have to look back and see how much she did. She not only worked in the house, but she went out and she fed the hogs, and she has chickens all the time. She really worked for a city girl, yeah, she had her share or work.
LT: How did you do the laundry though? On a rock?
MM: By hand.
LT: Well, I mean by that, did you have to boil water and…
MM: Yes.
LT: Okay, so you had a big pot?
MM: Well, it was like a tub, we had a porch in the back.
LT: And then you put all the clothes in it?
MM: Little by little.
LT: And you used a washboard?
MM: Yes.
LT: Okay. All right, and then hang it up and…
MM: Yes.
S: We’re so spoiled.
LT: You were so spoiled.
MM: Oh my gosh, you have no idea.
LT: No we don’t. That’s why you need to tell us.
MM: No idea.
LT: That’s really cool. All right, let’s see what else. So I wondered, how long did you live in Lafayette total, I mean, when did you move away, or…
MM: Me? Myself?
LT: Yes.
MM: When I was twenty when I met Daddy.
LT: You were twenty when you met Daddy?
MM: Yeah.
LT: You had Johnny at eighteen, and lived in San Francisco with your mother …
MM: Yeah, that’s right too.
S: She was married early and had my brother when she was eighteen…
MM: Yeah, I didn’t think of that.
S: Well, I lived in San Francisco with my grandmother Machado.
LT: Oh, your grandmother moved back to San Francisco?
S: Yeah, she was on Mission and Delores Street.
LT: So I know that after leaving Lafayette as a family, you went to Clayton, the family went to Clayton, and then I understand, the father died of a brain tumor or something.
MM: Yes he did, on his pituitary gland.
LT: And so then after that, obviously you were talking about, his widow, your mother, moved to San Francisco?
MM: She always loved San Francisco.
S: She wasn’t in San Francisco when Grandpa died.
LT: No, no, they were in Clayton.
MM: No, that’s not what she said…
LT: I thought you said, then she moved after your grandfather died.
S: Her grandma moved to San Francisco
LT: No? Okay.
S: Grandma didn’t move to San Francisco after Grandpa died, she moved to Concord Boulevard.
MM: We’re saying where she went after he died.
LT: Subsequently, later.
MM: She went to San Francisco because she always liked San Francisco.
LT: Okay.
MM: And then she lived over that, that was her Dad’s place, and after she got tired of that, she went to live with my sister Teresa and Charles in El Cerrito and she had a nice little house there and then, well, she got older, she…
S: She lived with us, and then she…
MM: We’d take turns, so…
LT: And apparently, you too lived with her than until you were twenty, is that what you’re saying? Or Eighteen?
MM: Mm-hmm.
LT: Yeah. Did you go to high school?
MM: I didn’t graduate from high school. I went a couple years to Mt. Diablo on the train.
LT: Can you tell us about that? What was that like?
MM: I liked it. I liked raiding the train. Yeah, it was fun.
LT: So you walked down from your land, from Hamlin land, to what station?
MM: Well, there was only one station, and you know what the big hall is there by the school that…
LT: Town Hall?
MM: Town Hall, between the school and that, there’s a road that goes down the street, that’s where the station was.
LT: Aha! And so you waited with a whole lot of kids, or not too many? I mean, you know, lots of high school kids or…
MM: They came from all around the area. That was the only place they…
S: That was the only high school for a long time.
LT: But I mean at that particular station.
MM: Yeah, and there was a man who had, not too long ago, he died, his name was Giglioni, he was Italian, and he was very nice looking and those girls liked him.
LT: The high school girls?
MM: Giglioni.
LT: I know that name, Giglioni.
MM: There was another Giglioni family but they weren’t related to this man, they lived in Happy Valley.
LT: Happy Valley, that’s right. All right, so you got on the train, and then how was it? What was it like? Loud, quiet, noisy, what was going on? On your train ride, just everybody silent?
MM: No, yeah, it’s not like it would be today.
LT: You were well behaved and quiet, huh?
MM: Yes, there never were any fights that I know of. It seems like there were more women, more girls than boys.
LT: And you chatted and then you got to school.
MM: That’s all.
LT: About how long did it take? The train ride to school?
MM: Oh my… we would stop at Walnut Creek and pick up kids too that went… I don’t know, maybe an hour. Two hours.
LT: Oh, that long?
MM: Well yeah, because then the train…
LT: Was it a high-speed train?
S: No, no, it wasn’t a high-speed train, and that is a fair distance even when you think about it now. It would take a good half hour to get there.
LT: I could see that actually. So about what time did you get home in the evenings? I mean, was it dark in the wintertime?
MM: Oh no, three thirty, four o’clock maybe.
LT: Oh, that’s not so bad.
MM: Yeah. In fact, there’s still a station not too far from here before you get to… I think you go on Olympic, if you want to get there, besides the back way is the big boulevard in Walnut Creek. There’s the store, and there’s the restaurant on the corner there.
LT: Saranap.
MM: Yeah.
LT: Do you remember that store, ‘cause I heard, somewhere I read about the store there at Saranap that is now the Italian restaurant, that it was the place where the kids got candy and stuff, do you remember the name of it?
MM: That store, I don’t know, but I’m trying to think of the name of the… you know where it is.
S: Il Pavone is the restaurant. Il Pavone?
MM: Yeah. Right on the corner.
LT: Yes, in fact, I have pictures of today and how it looked then, and you can see it’s the same building, It’s been added onto, but you can tell it’s the same building. Somebody told me it was something like “Slow Sam’s” or some name like that.
MM: I couldn’t tell you.
LT: Okay. Yeah, that’s cool. So what are your fondest memories of Lafayette? Do you remember where your family did shopping, or what downtown was like?
MM: There was Stark’s Store that had all the candy.
LT: What store was that?
MM: Stark’s grocery store. I know just where it was, it’s still building there.
LT: Uh huh. What is it now, do you know?
MM: I don’t know.
LT: Okay. So Stark’s Store for candy, what kind of candy did you particularly like?
MM: You could take your hand in and take some, and now you can’t do those things.
LT: Kind of those penny candies that…
MM: Oh yeah.
LT: But did you have a particular favorite?
MM: No, I love candy.
LT: Any kind is fine, huh?
MM: I love candy. In fact my mom used to say that the only one was sweets. That I was so not eating, and we had a nurse from the school that used to check us all and weigh us and she thought I lost too much weight, I was too skinny, and she did the wrong thing, she went to my dad, and he said, “No daughter of mine is going with the Sunshine Camp, it’s up on…
LT: Sunshine Camp?
MM: Morris Creek Road, I think it’s an alcoholic place now.
LT: So the kids were… the students were going to go to this camp, the Sunshine Camp, as a school thing?
MM: No, if you didn’t look well, you…
LT: That’s what I mean, you couldn’t go unless you were healthy.
S: That’s where they were sending them if you weren’t healthy.
LT: Oh, I see. Sending her to get healthy. Oh, she was actually that concerned, as she thought you had to go to a place to get better.
MM: Yes.
LT: My goodness.
S: Well your children didn’t have that problem.
MM: No, and I didn’t later either because I gained weight and…
LT: Do you have any idea why you just went through that time when you weren’t eating?
MM: I don’t know, well I love sweets.
S: Didn’t hurt you, you’re ninety-seven.
LT: So it was much ado about nothing.
MM: Yeah, that’s what I think. I didn’t like her afterwards.
S: Did you go to the camp?
MM: No, my dad said, “No daughter of mine is going to that camp.”
S: So eat your chicken.
LT: Yeah, absolutely. So can you think of any other stores or any other downtown memories?
MM: Well, there wasn’t much to remember. There was a drug store, of course this was much later because I worked there.
LT: Oh, you worked at, which drug store? The Stanley one?
MM: Well Stanley owned the building. The name of the druggist that I worked for, I can’t remember his name.
LT: But it is a Stanley building.
LT: All right, yeah.
MM: Then Borghesanis came.
LT: The what?
MM: The Borghesanis.
LT: Oh yes, uh huh. And that was the Roundup Saloon and the, what else?
MM: Very nice, very nice people, and I think they’re both still living.
LT: I don’t know.
MM: I know he is, and that was going toward Oakland, it was on the right hand side but now it’s on the left.
LT: That’s cool. So what do you think are the biggest changes you see when you…
MM: Oh my, after the tunnel opened?
LT: Yeah, it changed everything, huh? And World War II I think. In other words, all the people moving to California.
MM: Yes, yes, mm-mm.
S: Suburbs, yeah. It grew.
LT: So what are your fondest memories when you think about Lafayette? The word Lafayette, what kinds of things come to your mind?
MM: My family, yeah.
LT: That makes sense.
MM: And I think of how we lived, you know, and what we had to do.
LT: What do you most remember that you had to do?
MM: Well I think we had the milk. The delivery.
LT: Milk delivery. That must have been fun though, driving all around in.
MM: Well sort of, but then… we did Walnut Creek. Lafayette, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, and Concord.
LT: Kind of a big area.
MM: It was. There was quite a few, and when my sister had to drive, we didn’t have a driver and I think I was in about third or fourth grade, no one to go with her but me, so we get up at three o’clock in the morning, we’d go over the hill in Pleasant Hill, and you look at Concord, and it was just one row of little (inaudible).
LT: What was the road?
MM: When you come over from Acalanes…
LT: Like Pleasant Hill Road?
MM: Yes, and you go over…
LT: Yes, yes?
MM: In Concord, just a little, maybe six or seven lights, street lights…
LT: Clayton Road? Or Salvio?
MM: In Concord.
S: Do you know what street it was? That’s what she’s asking you.
MM: Well yeah, she said it.
LT: Pleasant Hill Road, over the hill.
MM: When you’re over the hill, and you look at Concord.
LT: I know where it is.
MM: And that’s how many (inaudible), Concord was nothing.
S: Yeah but what street was that in Concord, Salvio?
LT: What was the main street?
MM: Well, it had to be Main Street, it had to be Salvio Street, if it was named that.
S: That’s true, the names changed, yeah.
MM: Yeah.
LT: All right. That’s really a lot of territory, you had to do all that before school?
MM: Yes I did.
LT: Huh, that’s a lot. You sister’s driving, and your job was to what? Deliver the actual milk?
MM: Well, she stopped at the home, and all the times they maybe had a note, they wanted two bottles or three, or they didn’t want any, and hop back in and…
LT: Fill the order and then move to the next place. I remember those days when you put the note in the milk bottles to say you want two quarts today or whatever.
MM: And some people wouldn’t pay, so I had to go…
LT: A little third grade person? A little third grade person had to go and ask for money?
MM: I was older than that. No, I think I was…
S: The collector.
MM: Fifteen or sixteen. And one of my sisters would come with me.
LT: Good. Well, I think you probably learned a lot about being confident and talking to people and…
MM: Well sometimes I’m too much so…
S: No, not you, Mom.
LT: Well, that’s really cool. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about life in… ?
MM: Well, I was a devil.
LT: Give me an example of that.
S: And you still are!
MM: No, I wasn’t “backward”.
LT: Precocious, people say.
MM: Yes, you could say that.
S: ‘Cause you’re sort of in the middle of the pack, too, of age.
LT: So can you give us an example? Tell us a story about on of the times you were a devil?
MM: Oh my gosh.
S: Pick one out of many.
LT: You didn’t take any candy from the candy store, did you?
MM: No, that I never did. I never took anything from anybody.
LT: But what caused you to have that reputation for being a devil?
MM: Well I guess because I started out young, you know, with people, I’d just think, it didn’t bother me.
LT: So you’d just talk to people and just step right forward and talk to people easily. Claim your space, kind of.
MM: Yeah.
LT: Yeah, I like that.
MM: I guess you could say that. My sister Theresa, she would never, she was “backward”…
LT: Shy.
MM: That’s what her personality was. And my sister Frances, she was pretty forward too because when she graduated, she went to work in San Francisco for…
S: That’s her.
LT: As a secretary? Was that it? I think I read these, yeah.
MM: Yeah.
LT: Yeah, so I do definitely want to know… oh, I thought I’d show you this too, this was from Ollie Hamlin’s office, I guess, but maybe you’ve seen these. Paintings that he had in his office, I think they might be of your dairy.
S: Nice. Oh, beautiful.
LT: Do you recognize those?
MM: No.
LT: You don’t recognize those buildings particularly?
MM: No.
LT: Okay, so maybe it’s not
MM: No, we didn’t have trees like that.
S: That a beautiful tree.
LT: Yeah, he says it’s a cottonwood.
S: A cottonwood.
MM: That’s a vineyard there.
(Shuffling)
LT: So these are not.
S: We were here last year.
MM: No no, that’s when I came in.
S: That’s what I’m saying.
MM: No, today.
LT: Today?
MM: It was a barn…
LT: Oh, here, this?
S: Yeah, these are pictures of…
LT: This has snow.
S: Yes, there is snow. Holy moly.
MM: Yes, this is where the dairy was. That’s my brother Tony.
S: He was a good guy.
MM: This must be in the hall or some place. And that’s my dad and mom. Agnes (inaudible) Sophie.
LT: Well, that’s what I wanna do next, is to get names up to put with these things. This is purposely a photocopy so I can write on it. Can we write down one that we could know?
S: Can you think of anything that made you a devil, an example to give her? That’s what she was asking. You know how you said you were a little devil when you were young? When you’re old too?
LT: This is Joe, where do you want me to write it?
S: There, it’s just a photocopy.
LT: This is Joe.
S: But can you give her an example of things you did? This is the oldest…
LT: Were you mischievous?
MM: No, I wouldn’t say that. I’d just do things that people…
LT: Did you get in trouble at school?
MM: No.
LT: This is Mary. Barbara, who’s the guy on the right? Is that your Uncle Joey?
S: Uncle Joe.
LT: That’s what I thought.
S: This is Mary Lamsen, right? This Cecilia and Gene. Your older sister and her husband, and that’s Mary.
MM: I’m trying to think about…
LT: So can you think of anything else you want us to know about Lafayette, or the future generations to know about Lafayette?
MM: I liked it over there, I truly, truly did. I lived where we lived and the people I knew, of course they’re all gone now.
LT: Did you feel like you knew most people?
MM: I did.
LT: In Lafayette, in this very small town?
MM: Yes. In fact, the other lady that was here, we were talking, and (inaudible) and I did.
LT: That’s great.
MM: Everyone was so nice. Different today.
LT: So you must have left here right around World War II, right?
MM: Yes, yes.
LT: At the beginning of World War II?
MM: I was gone to work at the drug store, and they had bombed…
LT: Pearl Harbor.
S: Oh, that’s right.
LT: When did you find out? Was it like, people talking about it, or radio?
MM: It was a radio.
LT: So the radio was on in the drug store?
MM: No, I was in the car.
LT: Oh, in the car. I could believe it. I just want to be sure I hear about this World War II. So of course, you were very shocked, so were driving in your car, you hear that Pearl Harbor has been bombed, and you’re… so what did you do? I mean, you drove to work, and then…
MM: Well yeah, what do you do?
LT: You talked to everybody, of course.
MM: Well, everybody was talking about it.
LT: Yeah, yeah. Did you know that it meant war right away?
MM: Well yeah, sure, a bomb? And of course I’d known there was friction to begin with. And another thing that was shocking was when the bombing and the bomb went off in Port Chicago.
LT: Tell us about that. Where were you and what did you see and hear?
MM: I was in bed and all of a sudden this happened, the bed shook, (inaudible) I thought it was another bomb.
S: Didn’t it blow out a window?
MM: It blew the front door open. That was a heavy door, and a window.
S: Where were you living then?
MM: On Clayton Road then.
LT: Oh okay.
S: And really, that was about five miles away.
LT: Yeah, that’s a lot closer.
MM: Then the people in Port Chicago, in fact, to this day, there’s a nurse that comes to the house on Sunday to see me, and she had to move her family, they had to move away. They had just built a new home.
LT: I believe it, yeah. That was a very powerful explosion.
MM: Awful. Really awful. When you moved out to Clayton then, what was the job that your father did until he was not able to?
MM: My dad never worked outside the ranch until they moved there because they needed him. He had a few animals he brought with him, but he went to work for the county.
LT: Oh, I see. Okay.
MM: But that didn’t last.
LT: He was sick, yes. Okay, well, I think we’re pretty much…
MM: That’s about all I can tell you.
LT: Oh, I’m sure you could tell us a whole lot more.
S: Tell her the story about the cream, when you guys would go out and… I think that’s neat.
MM: That cream was…
LT: Unbelievably good?
MM: And thick. And if we had strawberries, oh boy… Of course, my mom had to watch us because she knew what we would do.
S: The bucket used to sit out there and nowadays you worry about, you know, it souring, remember you used to say it, it’d sit outside as you go and take a break of it and didn’t even think about it, ‘cause I remember that story. I thought that was neat. Just a bucket of cream.
MM: That’s a lot of little…
S: That’s what they wanna know.
LT: Those things are, like, your little pleasures that you had of that life, and we do wanna know those.
MM: Well I think when you get several kids together, you think of a lot of things to do, and that’s what we did.
LT: Well, see, we can’t do those things anymore. I’ve never done that.
MM: Well there’s a lot of little things.
S: Well, you could tell her those things, those are the stories they’re interested in. What about your Christmases?
LT: Oh, good question.
MM: Well Christmas, we always had a Christmas tree.
LT: That you cut down yourself?
MM: No, My dad bought it, because then there were hundreds of trees, and we had the little clips, we’d put a candle in, and my mother used to worry, “Now, be sure, keep an eye on that tree”, when I think now…
S: Real candles on the tree.
LT: What was the most exciting part about Christmas for you as a kid?
MM: Whatever we got, we couldn’t wait, but it was always fruit.
S: I told my grandkids that. “Nonny got fruit.”
MM: And you were lucky to get that. My dad would buy a box of oranges or box of apples. That’s your Christmas present.
S: And they were probably happier than the kids are now.
LT: And what was your Christmas dinner?
MM: Oh that was really good.
LT: What did you have?
MM: My mother raised her own chickens, or we had geese, and a goose, and one time she had, I think, about four that were ready to eat, and she sold them at Christmastime, and I plucked them.
LT: For the customers.
MM: Go pluck a goose and you’ll never pluck another one. No, that’s truth.
LT: What were some of the side dishes that you had, along with your chicken or your beef?
MM: Vegetables, there was always potatoes, you know that, potatoes and gravy.
LT: Like mashed potatoes and gravy?
MM: Oh yeah.
S: You’re making my hungry.
LT: And vegetables like what?
MM: Pardon?
LT: I’m trying to visualize the table. What was on the table? The Christmas table?
MM: Could be beans, green beans, sure, salad, lettuce, maybe some fruit, whatever, you know, she had…
LT: …Was available at that time that year.
MM: Yeah.
LT: What did you look forward to the most? Seeing the tree, or the fruit or…
MM: The apples and the oranges.
LT: So you never got a present like wrapped up or anything?
MM: Later, later, later, later. There was a store in Walnut Creek, Bigelow’s, and she was about the only one that had dresses or materials and little things like that. My mother loved that store, and she’d buy little things once in a while at Christmastime, you know, when there wasn’t all of us to buy for, we’d get a little gift.
LT: How about birthdays? How were they celebrated?
MM: A cake…
LT: Well, that’s something.
MM: …otherwise, there wasn’t any big party.
LT: Just the family and a cake.
MM: Yeah.
LT: What was your favorite cake?
MM: Pardon?
LT: What was your favorite cake?
MM: I can’t say if I had a favorite cake.
LT: You liked them all, just like the candy.
S: Grandma made the cake from scratch.
MM: Well, yeah, we ate simple, we had the milk, dairy, we had the bakery in Walnut Creek, and then my dad would get a… if we had a birthday, ‘course we were older then, we needed to have to order a nice cake.
LT: Crazy. All right, well, thank you so much. This has just been fun for me to hear your story and people will too enjoy it, kind of make it come to life.
MM: I could probably talk a lot more about…
LT: Well, you’re welcome to.
MM: But I think I did pretty good.
LT: You did. You told us lots of fun…
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