Oral History: Rita Santos — October 3rd, 1978

Summary:

Rita Santos moved to Lafayette in 1900 at the age of 3. She lived in Happy Valley, first on her father’s ranch, and then her husband’s, until she passed away in 1992. In this interview she describes what it was like to grow up and to live in a small town that was rural and agricultural, and also a true community. She rode her horse every day to a school in the town center in which a single teacher taught all eight grades. Her accounts of daily activities, like making the trip to Oakland through the “old” tunnel, give us a sense of how different, and how challenging, life in this area was a century ago.

Oral History:

Angela Broadhead: This is an interview with Mrs. Rita Santos, wife of Mr. Manuel Santos, who lived at 4052 Happy Valley Road in Lafayette. Mrs. Angela Broadhead recorded the interview for the Lafayette Historical Society on October 3, 1978. Mrs. Santos, when did your mother and father first come to this area?

Rita Santos: In 1903. I was born in Berkeley and when we first moved here, we lived in Mrs. De Laveaga’s place in Orinda. My father took care of their place for a while. Then they went back to Berkeley to College and Claremont Avenue where they had a little store on the corner. It used to be out on the ranch. Then my father got typhoid fever and the doctor advised him to get away from the Bay Area. That’s when he bought the place next door out here in Lafayette in 1903.

AB: What was your mother and father’s name?

RS: My father’s name was Antonio J. Borges—they called him Tony. My mother’s name was Augustine.

AB: Was your father born in this country?

RS: No, he was born in the Azores.

RS: He had an uncle who lived in Pleasanton, California who owned a lot of land that is now owned by the San Francisco Water District. He sold the land for $40,000, which was a fortune at the time. He went back to the Azores married, and had a son. When my father came, he got a job in San Francisco working for the Schultz liquor people delivering in barrels with a team of horses. He met my mother and they were married in San Francisco. My mother was born in the Madeira Islands. She went to live in Brazil for a while and then later came to the United States. Met my father and married. They moved to Berkeley and that’s where I was born. We moved to Lafayette on December 7, 1903 when I was 3 years, 6 months, and 2 days old. I was born June 5, 1900.

AB: Did your father buy the ranch on which you are now living?

RS: No, he bought the ranch next door. My husband bought this ranch in 1918, I believe. My husband’s family was from Brazil and my husband had no one here but himself. In 1913 my husband came to Massachusetts and then in 1916 he came to California.

AB: Do you know how your husband happened to come to California?

RS: Lots of people from the East were coming to California because they heard it was a good place to live and that there was work. We met and five years later we were married.

AB: Tell us about your childhood in Lafayette. You went to school here, didn’t you? How did you get to school? Did you have your own horse?

RS: I used to ride horseback to school. I was an only child and my father would saddle up my horse for me every morning and he brought it up by the picket fence and I would ride to school. There was a time when Happy Valley Road had a lot of gates. Each ranch had a gate across the road to keep in their cattle and horses. W had to open the gate, go through, and close the gate again.

AB: Were there other children who went to school at the same time?

RS: Yes, there was Lou Belle Morris, Irene Coates, who later became Jones. Lou Belle later became Groshang. She came from over the hill on horseback to go to Lafayette School. I am talking of the time from about 1907-1915. I think the Orinda children went to school in Moraga.

AB: What do you remember most about your childhood in Lafayette?

RS: Well, I remember cattle. We had milking cows on the ranch. My father had 28 acres here and my husband later bought twelve acres so we had about 40 acres. We had a few cows and they used to skim the milk with a separator. Mr. John Buchan used to come along and take the cream. The skim milk went to the pigs. When they were ready to be butchered, my father would butcher them and take them into town in Oakland. They would be inspected there in town. The butcher would buy directly from the farmer. My father would go into the different dairies to buy calves. Sometime the cows would have so much milk that one calf couldn’t drink it all so my father buy another calf and the cow would raise the two calves. When the calves were old enough, my father would take them in to the butcher in Oakland or Berkeley. My father did all of his own work. He was a hard worker. When my husband took over, he did it all, too.

AB: Tell us more about your neighbors.

RS: At that time we had Mr. and Mrs. Albert Gerow, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Thomson, Mr. and Mrs. Ed Keefe, who later became a traffic officer on the highway, and Mr. and Mrs. Robert Roberts. These people all had farms. The Roberts’ had a dairy with some cows to milk. The Gerows had a team of horses. The Thomson’s had four horses, I think. They used to call him the Road Master because he used to take care of the roads. His son-in-law, Ed Keefe used to go with him. When we had hard rains and the ground would slide, they would shovel the mud so you could go over the road. We used to have big rains but it didn’t keep us from going to school. I had a raincoat and a horse. Sometimes I used to get to school with my shoes full of water but we would just drain them out. The poor teacher would have a big fire going in the wood stove in the middle of the room. There were 32 children at the time and we were all in the same room. Marian Dipple was out teacher for all eight grades. She would start with one grade and then teach the next grade. The first grade was at the head, and then the second and so forth until the eighth. When I was in the eighth grade I was down near the window. The school is now part of the church on Moraga Road. My horse was so used to going that when they rang the school bell at a quarter to nine, our horses would jump and gallop to school. We would tie our horses up in the barn and then they would stay there all day. After school we would go to the barn, get on our horses and come home. I remember one year when he had a flood and the creek got full of water and the water went all over the school yard. By the time we stepped off the last school step, we were in water. We walked to the barn in water and got our horses and by the time we got to the bridge it was covered with water. Some of the men in town were there with ropes tied to bricks They called to us and said if the bridge gives, the horse will swim out by themselves. We were to grab hold of the ropes and be pulled in. But thank goodness, the bridge held! One bridge down below by the railroad did move. This was about 1915.

AB: You said you went to school in Lafayette until the eighth grade. Where did you go to high school?

RS: I didn’t go. At that time we had to go to Lafayette and catch the train and leave our horses somewhere we couldn’t leave our horse at the grammar school because they needed the stalls for the schoolchildren. You couldn’t very well leave your horse out in the sun or rain all day. My father wanted me to go to school in Berkeley and stay with friends there. My mother kind of objected; I was an only child and I think she felt sorry not to have me. I would have to stay in Berkeley all week and it wasn’t very convenient to get back and forth. It was the old tunnel and my father would have to go and get me on Friday night. In the winter it would be dark when I got out of school. It would be hard… there were no lights in the tunnel. My father, when he was going through the tunnel with the horse and buggy, would take the hard end of the whip and guide himself on the left side through the tunnel. When he couldn’t touch the wall, he knew he was too far over so he would pull the other way a little bit. If he was too close he was afraid the hub of the wheels would catch on the timbers of the sides of the tunnel and he would pull out a little bit. The horse would kind of find the way but, of course, they couldn’t be expected to think about the hub of the wheels. At times he would put a lantern under the wagon so that if anybody was coming, they could see him. Once in a while the horses would stop and my father would say, “Oh, someone is coming.” Then he would whistle and the other people would whistle. Then they would get out of their buggies and see how much room they had to pass one another. It was very close. Our neighbor, Mr. Johnson, was killed in the tunnel by some robber. They held him up and he was found dead in the wagon. The children were in school with me. I remember Agnes was one grade behind me. It was probably 1911 or 1912… somewhere in there. Someone came along in the tunnel, and when their horse stopped, they went to investigate and found Mr. Johnson dead. When the wagon touched the side of the tunnel, the horses had stopped and waited there until someone came along and found Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson had taken produce into town in Berkeley or Oakland. Someone must have watched and followed him and then robbed him in the tunnel. I remember when Mr. Tony Lucas of Moraga was held up in the tunnel. Another time someone was hit over the face with a buggy whip. They had robbers in those days, too.

AB: Mrs. Santos you were telling me that your father came from the Azores.

RS: Yes, he came from St, George Island and he spoke Portuguese.

AB: Do you speak Portuguese and do your children speak Portuguese?

RS: Yes, I speak Portuguese, but we do not have any children.

AB: So when you went to school you were bi-lingual.

RS: I didn’t know Portuguese too well as a child, but I have picked it up since I got older. I can read, write and speak it.

AB: Were there other Portuguese children going to school with you?

RS: Just two brothers. Their family name was Buralho and they lived over there near Acalanes High School. They still live there. They sold some land for the Springhill School. Our families were acquainted.

AB: Did you feel any discrimination at all when you were in school?

RS: No, none whatsoever. They never spoke about me being Portuguese.

AB: Mrs. Santos, where did you meet Mr. Santos?

RS: I met him at my cousin’s house in Oakland. He had come from the east and knew of her and went to visit. We met there. I was 16 and he was 20. We were married when I was 21 and he was 25. When my mother took sick, we came live here at the ranch and to take care of her. Later we went to live at Major Garrett’s place for about a year. His place we just down the road from here.

AB: Is this Major Garrett the same as the Colonel Garrett who built the beautiful brick building down on Mt. Diablo Blvd. in Lafayette?

RS: Yes. They were lovely people. My husband managed his place. His name was manual Garrett and my husband was also Manuel. Sometimes when I would call my husband, Major Garrett would answer, and I said, “Major, I would never call you Manuel!” After about a year we came back here to my father’s place to take care of him. When my father remarried and went to live in Concord, my husband managed the whole ranch there. We built part of this house 21 years ago and then we added on to it recently. Yes, it’s a large house and we enjoy the view. When the leaves fall, we can see the houses clear over in Rheem. At night we can see light from the houses in Rheem.

AB: I see that you have a great variety of trees near your house. Has your husband planted all these trees?

RS: Yes, he has and he does quite a lot of grafting and budding. I think he’s started half of the avocado trees in Oakland. He experimented with grafting my cousin’s trees in Oakland and pretty soon he had so many avocados that he gave boxes away to his patients.

AB: You mean they are edible? I thought edible avocados were not grown here.

RS: Yes, of course, they are edible… just like those you buy at the store. We have two or three avocado trees here and we get boxes of fruit. We have about 6 varieties of figs, kumquats, pomegranates, loquats, persimmons, shoots, several varieties of guava, lemons and oranges. He had 22 large orange trees out in front but the big freeze we had two or three years ago took them all in one day. The shoots are now coming back and my husband is going to bud them. We used to have boxes and boxes of oranges that we gave away to the PG&E men or the water men and to others.

AB: Can you tell us something of your present activities and organizations?

RS: Yes, we belong to all the Portuguese organizations around the Bay Area except one. We also belong to the Knights of Columbus, The Redmen, and the native Daughters. We have about 3 things every night!

AB: Would you tell us about the Portuguese festivals that used to take place in Concord and Walnut Creek?

RS: Yes, that was the Holy Ghost Celebration. They discontinued the one in Concord many years ago and the one in Walnut Creek was discontinued about 5-6 years ago. The old timers died or moved away and the young were not active enough. It was a lot of work to get the hall, to get the permits for the parades and to get the music. I don’t think the festival will ever revive because there aren’t enough Portuguese families in the area. I was secretary of the organization for about 20 years.

AB: Mrs. Santos, won’t you tell us how you used to go to church in Orinda when you were a little girl?

RS: We used to drive a team of horses. We sat three in the front seat. If we had guests we put another seat in the back and I sat back there with the two children. They were Gertrude and Charley Malley. They lived in Oakland but they had property out here and they used to come out here for the weekend. We would come home from church and after lunch I would go down and play with them. They were just about my age. We used to sit and talk and play tag. We weren’t too active—we had to sit down and be good because it was Sunday.

AB: Did you have little chores to do on the farm?

RS: I used to pick up eggs, bring in the wood. When I was quite small my father would let me help him plant corn. My father went along first with the horse and made the furrow and we would drop the kernels of corn in the furrow. Then he would come along again with the horse and cover up the furrow. I would also help him plant the seeds for squash in the garden; also plant the tomato plants. Let me tell you about going to school on the horse in the wintertime. The roads were all muddy because they weren’t paved. I would go down Happy Valley Road, opening and closing all the gates. The biggest gate was at the end of happy Valley Rd. at Mt. Diablo Blvd. The gate was so heavy that after a while my parents wanted me to go down Upper Happy Valley Rd. because there were no gates to open and close on this side. When we reached the highway, we went on down to school in Lafayette. The highway was not paved, just dirt and rocks. I remember when the first automobiles started to come through Lafayette. The teacher would give us permission to go out and see the car go through town. We could hear the coming; they had those big wheels and just those thin tires on the rim of the wheels. They never went flat; they just wore out.

AB: When did your father get his first car?

RS: In 1915 he got a Model-T Ford. We just thought it was very nice… it had a top but no sides. Sometimes we would just go down the road and gives rides to people and thought it was just wonderful. After my father bought the car, he was refunded $100.00. The manufacturer said that if they sold a certain number of cars, the would refund $100 and they did! They kept their word. My father thought that was wonderful. To think he originally paid $700 for it and that was a lot of money. My father used to make $1.50 to $2.00 a day… that was the going wage at the time. I remember when he used to pay 50 cents for my shoes. One time he bought a pair that he had paid seventy-five cents for and my mother was horrified and said, “Look how they have gone up!” Now you can’t get shoestrings for that!

AB: Thank you Mrs. Santos for giving the historical society this informative interview on the last seventy-five years in the area.