Whatever happened to those names? Names my grandfather gave to his milk cows. My grandmother Annie’s friends from the bridge club she played with for over 50 years was his favorite source. The names carefully penciled onto the milking charts thumbtacked to the wooden walls of the old milking barn on the hill. Names etched into the living memories of the their descendants of this place. Names familiar to the kids that grew up in our valley in the first half of the century. Names etched into the fabric of the descendants that live here today.
How is it that they have vanished? Generations of names have disappeared as completely as a breath of wind. People we remember from our time as kids. The mothers and grandmothers of people that populated our community whose given names suddenly vanished. Minta, Mazie, Sadie, Birdie, Jessie, Muriel, Maude, Cornelia, Florence, Wilda, Bernice, Mamie and Maybelle, gone from the directory. Belva, Elsie, Blossom, Myrtle and Florita “Cushie”Harloe, who today, gives their children names like that? How about Frederick “Shorty” Fernamburg and the wonderfully rhythmic Morris Pruess who was married to Claudia. They owned the drugstore downtown. And Claude and Wilhelmina “Willy” Devereaux who owned the log cabin market. My grandfather didn’t give the cows those names because he though they were odd, they were perfectly normal at the time. He was a funny guy and he did it to amuse his Annie, my grandmother. Knowing him I’m sure he amused himself too. And the women, they took it as a compliment.
Hazel Miller, Stanford ’16, High School Teacher
Rebecca Denham married Hubert “Hu” Thatcher who was in the hardware business. Her second marriage was to James Mineau, also in the hardware business, fancy that.
Margherita “Nellie” Diffenbacher whose son was Carl “Buzz” Langenbeck, future town Barber who cut my hair when I was a little boy. They didn’t call him Buzz for nothing.
Muriel Loomis married Ralph “Rusty” Bennett, Storekeeper. She always gave me a piece of candy from one of the jars on the counter when I was little.
Lenora Clark, Cal ’18 She never married, She was high school teacher in Alameda, CA. Her father, the towns “Baby” Doctor delivered my aunt Mariel
Ronnie Swall, graduated from the San Jose Normal School, ’15 and began her teaching career on Maui, Territory of Hawaii in 1915.
Cora Bennett married Porter Clevenger whose father started and owned both the Santa Maria Times and the Arroyo Grande Herald newspaper.
Miss Lenora Clark, Cal Berkeley Yearbook. Class of 1918.
Michael Shannon lives and write from his hometown, Arroyo Grande California.
Just a regular Tuesday. The only two 8th grade girls in our little school. They were the Judy’s, one Gularte and one Hubble. Dressed in their skirts buoyed by crystal white petticoats, looking like upside down Chrysanthemums they huddled around the little portable 45 RPM record player in the corner of the classroom with their friends Jeanette, Cheryl and Nancy, they were playing and listening to a very popular song. The volume was low as Mrs Faye had asked them. They were crying, for the music that had died the night before in a scraped over cornfield in winter’s Idaho. A cheap little puddle jumper aircraft, 21 years old flown and by a 21 year old novice pilot had gone down killing all aboard. That old Beechcraft, worn out and dangerous to fly, especially with a low ceiling and swirling ground fog had slammed into the iron hard frozen ground, killing Richard Valenzuela of Pacoima, California, instantly. All the dreams of a poor barrio boy went with it.
Not one kid in that classroom could have imagined that the little tune, La Bamba would be immortalized by the tragedy of a seventeen year old boys death. But it was.
Valenzuela home movies. 1957
Don McLean, who wrote the greatest damn rock-and-roll tribute song of all time—the rhapsodic, rambling, profoundly metaphoric history of American rock from his self-proclaimed “Day the Music Died,” a concert about Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper’s plane crash. MacLean is the ultimate rock-and-roll outsider. No Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, no mega-shows in Vegas, just the guy Bruce Springsteen said was his greatest musical influence. For what are musical lyrics but storytelling.
After all, it used to go without saying that rock-and-roll was the musical expression—the voice, if you will, of the American angry young men (and women) of the 1950s and ’60s—those same rebels without a cause that McLean describes as wearing “a coat they borrowed from James Dean.”
I look at it and marvel – what’s their dream going to be? My dream ended with a lot of sixties’ assassinations. It didn’t have to end. It didn’t get a chance to play out as it might have. Someone else’s dream put paid to it.
Music, iconic songs, capture a time in the way an academic historian never could. Ritchie’s little ballad lives forever, even if he didn’t.
Richard Stevens Valenzuela’s name rolls of the tongue particularly when pronounced with the Mexicans soft and sibilant hiss, the sound dripping of the tongue like silk sliding across velvet.
In 1955 the 110-block area on the north side of San Fernando Road was the dusty little town of Pacoima. It consisted of a smear of sagging, leaning shacks and outhouses framed by disintegrating fences and clutter of tin cans, old lumber, stripped automobiles, bottles, rusted water heaters and other garbage strung along the back alleys. In 1955 Pacoima had no curbs, cement sidewalks, or paved streets. Pacoima had dusty footpaths and rutted dirt roads that in seasonal rains become beds for angry streams. The 450 houses in Pacoima, with only 2,000 inhabitants, squatted in the clutches of blight and neglect. There, but not there.
First Nations people had lived in the flats below the San Bernardino mountains for thousands of years. The original name for the Native American village in this area was actually Pakoinga or Pakɨynga in Fernandeño, but since the “ng” sound did not exist in Spanish, the Spaniards mistook the sound as an “m” and recorded the name as Pacoima, as it is today. Natives subsistance farmed and ran sheep in the foothills and the little town began as a rancheria where Mission workers at the San Fernando mission lived after the missions were securlaized in 1826. For the next century and a half it had been home to the marginalized people who could live no where else.
The thing is, like many marginalized communities with strong ethnic ties there was a richness of culture running throughout those dusty muddy alleys. With little migration, families had forged ties with one another and created a patchwork of social order. Fiestas, Quinceaneras, saints days and weddings brought the extended families together. It was a small town where everyone knew each other. The watchful eyes of aunties and abuelas kept an eye on kids as the went about their kid business. At the time you had to get out of town to get in real trouble.
Richie’s mother Conception must have dandled his chubby little body on her knee, boosting him up and down, holding his little fingers as they listened to the music of the Pacoima Barrio. La Bamba came to him as an infant.
It came a long way. From the ancient sub-saharan kingdom of Kongo. Spanning central Africa below the Gulf of Guinea, the kingdom included some dependent kingdoms, such as Ndongo to the south. Trade with other African states was the main commercial activity in the centuries before the white invasions. Kongo was a wealthy and influential kingdom state based on its highly productive agriculture and the increasing exploitation of mineral wealth.
In 1482, Portuguese sailing ships commanded by Diogo Cão arrived off the coast of the Kongo. Cão landed an expedition which explored the extreme north-western coast of Ndongo in 1484. Other expeditions followed, and close relations were soon established between the King of Portugal and the Kingdom of Kongo. The Portuguese introduced firearms and many other technologies, as well as a new religion, Christianity; in return, the King of the Congo offered for sale, slaves, ivory, and minerals such as gold and silver. Slave trading was an ancient and accepted form of trade, predating written history and fully accepted as a way of doing business by both the Portuguese and the African nations of central Africa. The slaves themselves had no choice as to their fate.
Over the span of two centuries, Kongo was ruled by the Portuguese, Dutch, Brazil and then the Portuguese again. Each change of ownership was accompanied by savage warfare between the nations wishing to exploit the riches of Africa and the Africans themselves. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners were sold into slavery by all sides, the majority being shipped to the New World. Brazil at first, then to Dutch possessions all over the world. They were transported to the Caribbean and what was not yet the United States. The future United States was still made up of Spanish French and British colonies but in order to grow they were in need of vast numbers of laborers to exploit their new lands. It is estimated that beginning in 1619 more than ten million people from Africa were imported into north America and sold like property.
The slave trade was and horrible you must never make light of it, bound people to their owners for life to do whatever they pleased with a human being that was considered just property. Millions of African people died or were subjugated to the interests of the plantation owners in the western hemisphere, there is something entirely missed in the textbooks you read in school. To believe that they were somehow sub-human is to fly in the face of our common history. Slave uprisings were common and planters had every right to be terrified of them. A people who were subjected, denied the simple right to read and right, worship as they pleased, denied any memory of their African culture and in many cases forbidden the simple pleasure of song. This festered.
The descendants of generations of the MBamba people from Ndongo (Angola) who lived along the Bamba River and had been sold west to Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica and the other Caribbean islands were also sold into New Spain (Mexico) at Vera Cruz a century and a half before they reached the American colonies.
What they brought our modern culture they paid dearly for. We learn early on in school how Europe and Asia gave us important literature, science, and art. How their nations changed the course of history. But what about Africa? There are plenty of books that detail colonialism, corruption, famine, and war, but few that discuss the debt owed to African thinkers and innovators.
They MBamba didn’t come alone. There is nothing physical that you can hold in your hand, no baggage that came during those centuries of slavery. No slave Hell-Ship carried any luggage. Everything came in their heads. All the things that defined culture, speech, art, history and above all, music.
By the seventeenth century, the west African people had made it west to old Mexico. Hernán Cortés founded La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (“The Rich Town of the True Cross”) in 1519. As the chief seaport between colonial Mexico and Spain, Veracruz prospered as a port and became the most “Spanish” of Mexican cities. Because of its strategic location and direct overland connections to Puebla and Mexico City. it was attacked and captured many times by pirates. In the 16th century Francis Drake and other British pirates savagely attacked the city several times.
Just before dawn on May 18, 1683, pirates stormed the port city of Veracruz in the Viceroyalty of New Spain on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, easily overwhelming its Spanish military defense. For two weeks, the buccaneers, led by the Dutch Captain Laurens de Graaf and several hundred French and English volunteers, wreaked havoc. They raped and looted, pillaged and murdered at will. The Pirates demanded steep ransoms for the release of their valuable hostages which included the governor of Vera Cruz.
But the ultimate crime is what they did in the end, They kidnapped almost the entire population of people of African descent, because slavery was rapidly expanding and the English and French colonies at this time and there was a a huge market for such captives. Human beings were worth more than gold and jewels.
Just before their departure on May 31, the pirates captured between 1,000 to 1,500 Veracruzanos and loaded them onto their fleet of 13 ships. Then they set sail for the pirate sanctuary of St. Domingue, todays Haiti. There, they sold their human cargo. The captives, people of African descent, many of whom had intermarried and intermixed with the Spanish and indigenous population, some already Veracruzanos in the second or third generation, were deemed mulatos, pardos, negros and morenos. Chattel slaves or not, the pirates loaded them up and sold them into slavery. New Orleans, Havana, Santo Domingo and Charleston South Carolina’s slave buyers were there with bags of coin. Slave markets in those places quickly sold them off. The seeds of Africa were scattered everywhere. The melting pot of musical style went with them spreading across the continent.
Soon after the slaves remaining in and around Vera Cruz organized a revolt called the Bombarria which, when put down scattered people even more. Each attack on Vera Cruz spread the slave population as they used the opportunity to run away, many headed north and west to live among Native Americans.
Again, without personal possessions they took only what they could remember. Their culture and their music. Especially the music which is always paramount in peoples who were illiterate. By the mid- nineteenth century this had become a mixture of Caribbean creole influences, Spanish Flamenco, Afro-American percussive and in the 19th century Celtic music from Brittany in France which was brought to Mexico by the French soldiers of the Emperor Maximillian.
Like a whirlpool pulling water down, mixing all these elements, hollers and chants from the cotton fields where enslaved people trudged, bent over, from dark to dark, native American drumming, the northern Mexican stomps and shakes, the Bombolear, danced at weddings and the percussive heel strikes of the Flamenco. Traditional La Bamba evolved along with Ragtime, Jass, (The original spelling,) and Rhythm and Blues. Throw in Gospel, Scots-Irish hill country music, Tex-Mex and Corridos, all of it played to a syncopated rhythm. Syncopation is the beat that still permeates much of the American music, a beat that comes from African slaves in the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean and central and south America. Syncopation is quite literally the rhythm of your heart.
“La Bamba” is believed to come specifically from that slave uprising in 1683. The song was traditionally performed at weddings, where attendees were encouraged to make up verses of their own. The traditional aspect of “La Bamba” lies in the tune, which remains almost the same through most versions. The name of the dance referenced within the song, which has no direct English translation, is presumably connected with the Spanish verb “bambolear”, meaning “to sway”, “to shake” or “to wobble”.
The music migrated to California. Some of the earliest histories of California have descriptions of fiestas, weddings and christening celebrations. Richard Henry Dana who wrote Two Years Before the Mast was a Harvard student from a wealthy shipping family who shipped as an ordinary seaman on a hide trading voyage to California and the west coast of America. His book paints a mainly unflattering picture of the people who lived here but in 1836 he and the crew of his Brig attended the wedding of Alfred Robinson, a gringo shipping agent and the daughter of Santa Barbara’s Principal citizen .The bride was the daughter of Jose Antonio de la Guerra y Noriega, one of the most prominent Californios in all of Alta California . Alfred Robinson and the beautiful Dona Anneta Ana Maria De La Guerra were wed in the old Santa Barbara Mission church.
Dana wrote: “The bride’s father’s house was the largest home in Santa Barbara, (It still stands) with a large court in front, upon which a tent was built, capable of containing several hundred people. As we drew near, we heard the accustomed sound of violins and guitars, and saw a great motion of the people within. Going in, we found nearly all the people of the town* – men, women, and children – collected and crowded together, barely leaving room for the dancers; for on these occasions no invitations are given, but everyone is expected to come, though there is always a private entertainment within the house for particular friends. The old women sat down in rows, clapping their hands to the music, and applauding the young ones. The music was lively, and among the tunes, we recognized several popular airs, which we, without doubt, would have taken from the Spanish Africans.”
A depiction of El Fandango a la Casa De la Guerra in 1836 is featured in one of the sprawling Santa Barbara scene paintings in the Santa Barbara County Courthouse.
Like all little children, Ritchie could dance before he could read or write. He was one of the fortunate few who knew what he was born to do. He was given a guitar when he was five years old and though left-handed, he taught himself to play with his right. He played completely by ear, copying the music he heard.
When he began playing at high school dances and parties he had a ready made audience impatiently waiting for the new music that always accompanies an emerging generation of young people. Their parents grew up on Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw or tunes from Tin Pan Alley. They went off the to war and dreamed the music while they waited to come home. Six Million men and women served in WWII, those that worked the defense plants, shipyards and aircraft factories got right down to business and produced the Baby Boomers. The Boomers, as they entered their teen years wanted little to do with their parents swing music, they wanted something to call their own. If it offended their parents that was all to the good. Elvis kicked down the door between “Race” music and the treacly harmonic clap-trap of street corner Philly and got their feet moving. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee and Fats Domino came a running. Johnny B Goode, Bee Bop a Lula, there was suddenly a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on Baby.
It wasn’t only music either. Clothing, food, social events were all busy rolling over. At the Pruess ReXall’s drugstore counter in our little town which had once catered to the high school crowd suddenly lost it’s appeal. Teens didn’t walk uptown to the fountain anymore. Now they had cars, they could go anywhere, and they did.
Bobby sox, loafers, ponytails tied up with ribbons gone with the snap of the fingers. Bobbie Chatterton had the last ponytail in my high school in 1958. Goodbye ankle length pencil skirts. So long the ducktail, the jelly roll and the spit curl. Hello the Pixie and lurking just over the horizon, Bouffant and the Flip.
The Lindy Hop, exit stage left. The Twist, enter right. Dance became free expression. “Bambolear”, “to sway”, “to shake” or “to wobble.” Just shake it up, Baby.**
Suddenly A&R men were trolling clubs, high school dances, intermission shows at movie theaters and Juke joints looking for new talent. Bob Keane the owner, engineer and janitor of a tiny home based record label, Del-Fi records got a tip. He showed up at a Saturday afternoon matinee show in a theater in San Fernando, California. He stood in the back as a band called the Silouehettes dragged their equipment on stage, tuned and with a cue from the stocky kid with a Telecaster guitar, launched into a driving, beat driven version of the old tune. Spinning to face the audience, Richard Valenzuela, a grin like a garden gate in a white picket fence, obligatory rock and roll spit curl dangling and dancing across his forehead, jelly rolled duck tailed hair brought the audience screaming to its feet, girls jumping and ponytails swaying, and boys stomping their feet. Keane was floored.
Within a week Richard Valenzuela was in Keane’s basement studio in Silverlake, making a demo and the next week his little band of high school friends were forgotten forever,
The Silouehettes were replaced by the already famous “Wrecking Crew” of studio master musicians. Hal Blaine on traps, Carole Kaye backing up on Rhythm guitar, Earl Palmer, bass and René Hall, guitarist and arranger. They cut four songs that day at Gold Star Studios, “Come On, Let’s Go” and three others, all originals, all credited to Valens. His second record. “Donna” Written about a real girlfriend Donna Ludwig, a classic last dance tune heard in every high school gym in the country for years. The “B” side, “La Bamba”. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc when a million records was really a million.
It was the late 1950s when a 16-year-old boy took an old Mexican folk song and set it to a rock ‘n’ roll beat. “La Bamba” made rock ‘n’ roll history when it became the first Latin-based song to cross over to the pop and rock audience. That teen-ager, Ritchie Valens, was made famous. it was the first Spanish song to reach No. 1 on the American charts, and the only non-English song to be included in Rolling Stones “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” at #354, surely far to low but that’s museum politics.
People all over the world, when they think of U.S. culture, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, “La Bamba.” Yes it is, but it’s not simply American but African, Caribbean, All-Americas rolled into one. That’s dope. This song has survived slavery, colonialism and you’re darn sure it’s going to survive anything that comes along, because it lives within us. I invite everybody to also make it yours.
And those Branch school girls? They are pushing, well I shouldn’t say what age but at high school reunions they can still shake it like they did in 1959.
The video above is a more traditional take on La Bamba. Note the old style instruments which have been in use for centuries. If you love this old song there are literally hundreds of version on YouTube and other sharing sites. Try Los Lobos at Watsonville High School or “Playing for Change, La Bamba”
If you need any proof for the appeal of this song put your three year old granddaughter down and play it for her. Bambolear!
*If you are California, especially from the Cow Counties, every Ranchero who settled here shortly after the wedding was there at the fiesta including Captain William Dana of the Nipomo Rancho and Don Francisco Branch of the Santa Manuela.
**La Bamba still works. In a 1988 at a concert in Argentina, “The Boss” brought 70,000 Argentinians to their feet before he finished the first three notes of the song. 70,000 people swaying, dancing and singing along. The old song still excites.
Michael Shannon is a writer, he lives in Arroyo Grande California with his family. This for his musical sons
If you came of age in the sixties, a kid like me, you knew this, Brian Wilson was a genius. He spoke to us. He came to your room and spoke to you personally. He wrote this song, surely one of the greatest pieces in our musical history. It still touches the heart.
At the very end, it says, “For the love of music.” This whole production is to show how artists from around the world and all different genres can connect to a single song. ‘God Only Knows’ is one of the greatest pieces in musical history,
I submit this for your consideration, to all, to all those you love and who love you in return.
In order of appearance: Martin James, Pharrell Williams, Emeli Sande, Elton John, Lorde, Chris Martin, Brian Wilson, Florence Welch, Kylie Minogue, Stevie Wonder, Eliza Carthy, Nicola Benedetti, Jools Holland, Brian May, Jake Bugg, Katie Derham, Lauren Laverne, Gareth Malone, Alison Balsom, One Direction, Zane Lowe, Jaz Dhami, Paloma Faith, Chrissie Hynde, Jamie Cullum, Baaba Maal, Danielle de Niese, Dave Grohl, Sam Smith.
Brian Wilsons family has petitioned to have him committed to hospice care.. Dementia has taken him and he can never return. This song is his gift and his legacy.
Michael Shannon is a writer, surfer, teacher and unabashedly sentimental.
1910. A great year in America. The year most often mentioned by those who wish would we could return. Nostalgic days when families came right from Norman Rockwell’s dreams. Can’t you feel it, smell it; why you can almost taste the beauty of the United States, untainted and in all its glory. Our time, when America was great.
Or maybe, not so much, not so much.
Stepping out of the buckboard into the middle of Branch Street where it crosses Bridge street, sticky adobe ankle deep mud or dusty dirt as the seasons dictate. No sidewalks, no electric streetlights, no lights of any kind when you are wending your way home of a night.
Just behind you on Branch street, the Capitol Saloon, a false fronted wooden bar where the town constable was gunned down in the doorway a couple of years ago. There is the old schoolhouse on Nevada Street where two hostlers from the Harloe stables perforated the walls with their six-shooters causing the kiddies to drop to the floor in panic. The citizens hurried to build a new school outside of pistol shot of the main street with its eleven saloons. Revolvers carried in coat pockets, stuck behind a belt, stuffed in the front pocket of the trousers surprisingly killed fewer people tha rifle accidnets.. Dying by gunshot was practically a weekly occurrence in San Luis County at the time. Children playing with their fathers guns, hunting accidents, accidental homicide, mistaken for a deer, all played their part in what was rather routine. No apparent hand wringing by the news of the day.
There is the old Loomis and Swall meat market with its skinned livestock hanging on hooks, each one slippery with fat and its resident colony of flies. Pheasant and Quail, feet lashed and hanging head down with glazed, dead eyes and lolling tongues. Take your pick madam, fresh a couple of days ago.
Mothers died during childbirth, their babies too. Death by Mumps, Measles, Scarlett Fever, Cholera, Typhoid, Diphtheria, Pneumonia, Diarrhea, Tuberculosis and Influenza. Lets not forget Sepsis; Blood Poisoning, which before antibiotics was almost always a death sentence. Men who worked with their hands were killed by simple cuts. Rusty hayforks, knives and other tools could kill. Mom at home could die from the lead in her house-paint, her babies too. Cast iron wood or coal fired stoves maimed and burned, kerosene lanterns set houses afire.
Bath time. Shannon Family Photo
I asked my dad what my grandmother must have thought about this, she having been brought up in privilege and after marrying my grandfather became a dairyman’s wife. Ranch life with few luxuries and lots of hard work for her delicate hands. He said, “Oh, she was used to it I think.” It seemed a strange thing to hear when I was sixteen but age has put me straight. Of course she was used to it the same as we are today when we look at our lives. At least if we are honest about that.
Your granny got down on her knees and scrubbed the oilcloth covered floors with carbolic (Caustic or Lye) soap and a bristle brush. Draperies were rare in working class homes because there was no easy way to clean them, no washing machine yet. Rugs were hauled outside and beaten with carpet beaters to remove dust and dirt. Floors were generally oak or fir, and varnished. This also and took constant maintenance. Granny brushed them with the same bristle brush she used for the oilcloth in the kitchen. No vacumn cleaner was the norm. Perhaps she had a newfangled carpet cleaner but in a small rural community, likely not. She washed clothes in a tub of hot water she boiled on the cast iron stove and hauled outside in buckets. The washboard and bristle brush were her main tools. Everyone had a clothesline. If she lived in town, she walked to do her shopping. Those that lived on Crown Hill had the a difficult path. It wasn’t paved of course and if you had children it was two trips a day to the grammar school, five days a week. She had to shepard the children and carry her baskets of groceries too. In the winter she slipped and skidded down hill and did the same on the return trip. For Mrs. Bennett, Mrs. Eldridge and Mrs. Paulding this was a daily chore. As always a home with a view comes at a cost.
Annie Gray and Mame Tyler off to town, 1901. Shannon Family Photo.
Country people traveled by horse. A horse was not a pet. Buckboards, Buggys, Surreys, and farm wagons served as primary transportation. People had to have a barn for the hay, grains and horse. They needed to maintain the leather harness and if they rode, saddles and bridles too. Horses could be cantankerous. A horse can kick you in any direction if you stand too close. They bite. A horse weighs around a half a ton and just leaning on you can break your bones. Falling from a bucking horse never seems to hurt anyone in the movies but in reality the ground is hard and it’s a long way down. A few horses were pets for the kids but in reality they were the same as any other piece of machinery, utilitarian and disposable when no longer useful.
Riding in the Huasna, mother and daughter. Riders unknown. Photographer unknown.
Farm work was all done with horse power. In 1900 around fifty million were at work each day. Not much short of the countries population seventy-six million. About half died every year. Horses, mules and oxen pulled plows up and down the fields. They pulled threshers, rakes, mowers and wagons. They pulled the big Haywain wagons too. Grading and roadwork was done by hand with only the Fresno Grader to lighten some of the load, horse pulled of course.
A blacksmith in Illinois invented the moldboard plow design still used today. It was a plow, basically unchanged for thousands of years but with an added moldboard of polished steel which didn’t stick to heavy soils. The blacksmith, John Deere produced one in 1837. By 1848 he was producing 700 per year. Without the polished moldboard and share, the heavy adobe soils of the Arroyo Grande would have been near impossible to turn. Deeres version of the plow was perhaps the greatest innovation in farming history. It had one small problem though, it still needed a large animal to pull it, which meant that farming on a industrial scale was still impossible in 1910.
Horse drawn threshing on the Shannon Ranch. Jack Shannon standing on the sewing board. 1918. Family Photo
At the turn of the century, stone fruit such as Peaches and apricots or apples and walnuts were the main crops here. Crops that needed little care such as bush beans, squash and pumpkins filled out fields. If a family wanted leaf vegetables, carrots and potatoes they had to have their own little plots. Like many crops that needed refrigeration, they were seasonal and took hard work to make them grow. Likely your greens came canned and you bought them at Frank Bennetts grocery.
Old horses were “knackered” (euthanized) and recycled into useful stuff; leather, bone objects, fertilizer, soap, tallow, lamp oil and, glue. Gelatin can be found in the hides, bone marrow, sinews, hooves, trotters and guts. It can be rendered into glue, known as “hide glue” or “sinew glue”. The horsehair was used as an ingredient in plaster and to stuff cushions or mattresses. People were less sympathetic about animals than today.
Chickens, hogs and cattle were slaughtered for food. Hunting was not a sport but a way to put food on the table. Little Timmy’s favorite hen was, sooner or later, going in the stewpot. As Timmy got a little older, killing the hen would be his job. My dad always said it toughened kids up. Dogs and cats needed to be useful. Unwanted kittens would be put in a sack and thrown in the creek. Thats not a made up story, I’ve seen my father do it. If cats don’t keep the mice away they aren’t useful. If a dog won’t hunt, well you can guess the rest. Dogs that trespassed on the heighbors property, killed chicken or other farm animals faced the death penalty. My dad took our dog and gave it to Lena Parrish because he came home with one of her chickens. She shot it. Nothing worse than a chicken killing dog he said.
Country people in Arroyo Grande didn’t keep little, precious, pampered dogs. No Corgis, Shitzus, Chihuahuas or anything smaller than a terrier. Terriers were good “Ratters” and therefore useful.
Mothers all nursed their children. Why? Cows milk was dangerous. Because of almost no regulation for the conditions of production, much milk was heavily contaminated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The new science of bacteriology demonstrated this. In about 1900, American milk contained pus from the diseased udders of country cows. Particles of manure, dust from the cowshed, dirt from the railway wagon: all of these made milk a dangerous cocktail for those who drank it raw. Its nutrient mix also made it the ideal breeding ground for a wide variety of diseases.
The deadly list includes well-known afflictions such as anthrax, botulism, brucellosis, cholera, diphtheria, dysentery, enteritis, E. coli, gastroenteritis, giardiasis, hepatitis, listeria, paratyphoid, salmonella, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, typhoid, and many others less prominent. In the period under review there were hundreds of recorded milk-borne epidemics across the country. The middle class suffered disproportionately because of their higher milk consumption and because their babies were most likely to be artificially fed rather than breast fed.
The two foremost causes of milk-related deaths amongst infants were tuberculosis and diarrhea. Bovine tuberculosis has been underemphasized in the literature of medical history, for the understandable reason that its close relative, pulmonary tuberculosis, was such the major killer at all ages and a social problem that afflicted the Victorians and Edwardians. In addition to being an airborne disease that thrives in overcrowded housing, tuberculosis is also potentially a trans-species infection. Milk was the medium of transmission from diseased cattle to unwitting consumers that led to approximately 500,000 deaths amongst infants in the period 1850-1900, and up to 30 per cent of all deaths from tuberculosis before 1930. The hazard was only brought under control gradually as milk was increasingly pasteurized in the 1930s and 1940s. My father and grandfather were dairymen and knew who, exactly, you should not buy milk from. They were not afraid to say so, right out loud. They understood the risks people took by buying cheap unpasteurized milk from those farmers who were trying to make the extra buck.
Domestic contamination is also likely to have been a factor. Only a small minority of houses had satisfactory food storage areas before the First World War and it seems likely that the poor quality milk delivered to the doorstep deteriorated further before it was fed to babies. My grandmother got her first refrigerator in 1924. It’s not likely a coincidence that my father nearly died from Scarlet fever the year before. There was nothing a doctor could do but try and ease the suffering.
Tuberculosis or consumption was the biggest killer in 1900. Cramped living conditions, damp and what might be surprising to the reader, chewing tobacco. Two things were contributory factors, Most men chewed what was known as plug cut. Plug cut was a block of compressed tobacco which a man would cut slices from and “Chaw.” My dad and the other men in our family all chewed. He said it was primarily because hand rolled cigarettes wouldn’t stayed lit so farmers, ranchers and other men who used their hands for work chewed instead. Red Man was his choice. The nicotine rush was much stronger than pipes, cigars or cigarettes. A direct result of chewing was the production of copious amounts of saliva. Men were constantly spitting. In the dirt, the wooden sidewalk, spittoons if they were handy or just on the floors. Not a good idea to swallow. Floors of public buildings were sticky with it. The concept of airborne disease was not well understood at the time so in crowds the bacillus was able to easily transmit itself. Sneezing, coughing and spitting was the most common way to transmit the bacillus.
Some of our greatest literary figures afflicted with TB include John Keats, Percy Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Anton Chekov, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. TB was called the “artist’s disease” and was linked with creativity and the bohemian life. Gunslinger and murderer Doc Holliday died of consumption. The composer Frederick Chopin, Edgar Allan Poe, and Sukanta Bhattacharya, the playwright Anton Chekhov, the novelists Franz Kafka, Katherine Mansfield, , Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, the actress Vivian Leigh, D. H. Lawrence, and George Orwell all died from it. Untold numbers of tenement dwellers, those that lived in slums and perhaps worst of all, children. Roughly a half million children under five died from TB in the last fifty years of the nineteenth century. In 1900, if you were attended by a doctor or not your chances were about fifty-fifty. Medicine had few tools with which to help. All in all, total life expectancy was about 49 years. There was little health education, not because people didn’t think it was important but not much was known about disease. There was also no public healthcare providers such as hospitals, few physicians, no community health centers, mental health organizations, laboratories, or nursing homes, which provide preventive, curative, and rehabilitative care. Public safety organizations such as police, fire and emergency medical services were rudimentary or nonexistent. Edward Paulding, Arroyo Grande’s first doctor eventually gave up his practice because he could not make a decent living. He was paid in kind, eggs, fruit, fresh killed game and even some money but it wasn’t enough to pay for his home and his family. His wife, a schoolteacher made more than he did. Teachers themselves made near poverty level wages, around two dollars a week.Teachers bought pens, ink, pencils and paper out of their own pockest the same as they do today. Being a country doctor cost more than it made.
Arroyo Grande’s Doctor Charles Clark, was the so-called “baby doctor,” in the town He delivered my aunt Mariel in 1917 at her parents home in the Verde district.
The discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming marked the beginning of the antibiotic revolution. Ernst Chain and Howard Florey purified the first penicillin, penicillin G, in 1942 but it did not became widely available outside the Allied military until 1945. This was the beginning of the antibiotic era. As children of the forties and fifties, my brothers and I might have been living on a different planet than our own parents when it came to medical care.
Home sweet home, Shannon Ranch 1918. L-R, Molly Moore, Annie, George, Jack and Jackie Shannon. Family Photo
So, at the turn of the century you lived in a house that was uninsulated though you might fold newsprint and stuff it in the cracks between boards but there were cracks everywhere and that was pretty much a useless exercise. The only heat was from a fireplace which was small, nothing like the ones we have today. By 1900 county newspapers were complaining about the scarcity of firewood. The once thickly oak forested hills were stripped clean. Old photos of towns in California around the turn of the century show the Sierra foothills almost completely bare save for the occasional lone pine. Wood cutting was a valued and lucrative trade. Not much coal in San Luis county so the boilers that powered machinery, locomotives and homes consumed wood nearly as fast as it could be cut.
Rural homes and many houses in town were lit by kerosene lamps. Untrimmed wicks caused them to smoke and coat the ceiling with greasy soot. There was a gasworks in Arroyo Grande and many houses had been fitted with gas fixtures. Gas provided better light than lanterns but could blow your house up or suffocate you if you weren’t careful. This was long before a scent was added to the invisible, odorless natural gas. A few homes had electricity but the theory behind it was a mystery to most and because of that it could be very dangerous. Unshielded wire and the complete lack of safety devices brought with it a certain amount of peril. Our house had five rooms, each one with a single outlet and one light fixture in the ceiling. That house I grew up in had rudimentary wiring known as Knob and Tube. A set of wires which were exposed in the attic and were a favorite of rats which liked to chew the insulation thereby executing themselves and occasionally burning a house to the ground as a by-product. My father, uncle and grandfather always referred to electricity as “Juice.” As in, “Put the juice to her son,” when they wanted the big exposed bayonet circuit breaker engaged. You know, like the one Gene Wilder used to animate Peter Boyle in the movie Frankenstein. It seemed like it only needed to be switched off and on during rain storms and in the dark of midnight. It was mounted in a wooden box on the side of our tank house where you had to hold the lid open with one hand and throw the switch with other, all while standing in the wet grass. It terrified me. Fuses, If we had none, well, we just used a penny. It was another of my fathers rites of passage though and I guess I passed or I wouldn’t be writing this.
In 1900 there were no airplanes. The Wrights would not fly until 1903. There was no Railroad that connected with the rest of California, that wouldn’t come until 1904. The first automobile to pass through town was a steam car and that was 1901. The town wasn’t actually a town as such. It didn’t incorporate until 1911 which meant there was no tax base to fund things like sidewalks, night lighting, paving streets or any other public improvements. The last lynching had taken place just fourteen years ago. Higher education, the high school was nearly nonexistent, only four girls graduated from high school that year which held its classes in a rented meeting hall. A mob of white men had just run the small community of Chinese out of town and burned their homes. With them went the only commercial laundry. The town constable bragged that he had recently purchased leg irons fitted with ball and chain to be used for any one he considered a vagrant.
There were no banks. If you wanted to borrow money it had to be obtained privately. There was little in the way of credit, most stores were cash and carry. The first bank was opened in 1901 in a saloon. In 1903 it was incorporated as the Bank of Arroyo Grande. You didn’t have to hide your cash anymore but bank deposits would not be insured for more than thirty years so you’d better hope they weren’t robbed.
Add to this no unemployment insurance, no social security, no Medicare or Medicaid, doctors treated you in their homes or yours. Newspapers advertised sarsaparilla as a cure all and people used it for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and many other conditions, but there is no scientific evidence to support any of these uses. In fact, it was banned in 1960 for being dangerous. Both my great-great uncle and aunt, Patrick Moore and his wife Sarah died from stomach cancer and it didn’t help them. Plus, as any western movie fan knows, drinking it in a saloon can get you shot by the local homicidal bully, Liberty Valance.
The good news? Since there were no radios, TV’s, or I-Phones meant that other forms of entertainment had to fill the time. People read much more, newspapers which were readily available, books, the town had a flourishing library, entertainments such as plays, live music, every town had an orchestra who would entertain at the drop of a hat. There were traveling public speakers and the ubiquitous Chautauqua. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is often quoted as saying that Chautauqua is “the most American thing in America”. What he actually said was: “it is a source of positive strength and refreshment of mind and body to come to meet a typical American gathering like this—a gathering that is typically American in that it is typical of America at its best.”
The annual Chautauqua shows were held west of town next to the race track, horse racing being perhaps the most exciting sport of the time. Baseball was king though. There were dozens of amateur teams spread around the county. Grammar, high schools and Cal Poly played each other. Each little town had one or more teams. In one case, a Nipomo team was comprised of players, all from one family, the Dana’s.
The Nipomo Ball Team, Dana family, used by permission
Dad slept in his night dress and so did mother. Most fabric was wool. Men wore suits as a matter of course with a vest and tie. Bathing once a week meant if you tended to be lazy, your long johns, supposedly named for the boxing costume of prizefighter John L Sullivan, stayed on for a week. If the missus washed on Mondays, the long underwear would be grey when washday came around again. High laced shoes, a pocket watch and hat made up a man’s daily dress. A farm hand din’t wear special clothes to work, he simply took of his coat before grabbing his hoe. A man didn’t have, or need many clothes. He likely had only a dresser drawer or two and since homes were not likely to have hanging closets, he and the wife made do with a wardrobe in the corner of the bedroom.
Women wore nothing you would wear today. The fashionable silhouette continued to be dominated by the S-shape created by a new “health” corset. These corsets pushed the bust forward and the hips back in an attempt to avoid pressure on the abdomen. The shape emphasized a narrow waist and large “mono-bosom,” sometimes referred to as a Pigeon Breast. Tops were blousy and loose, the extra fabric helping to emphasize this top-heavy shape. Sleeves were equally dramatic. The effect was enhanced with petticoats that had full backs and smooth fronts.Modesty was emphasized with day dresses covering the body from the neck to the floor and long sleeves covering the arms. Skirts were bell-shaped and lace was a popular decoration. For those who couldn’t afford lace, Irish crochet was a good alternative. Rich fabrics were used with silk satin and chiffon two popular choices. Colors were light, but embellished with decoration. Women were beginning to work outside the home. These women needed something more practical to wear and this came in the form of the “tailor-made.” These suits were introduced in the late 1800s and both working and the wealthy wore them in the 1900s. The suits allowed women to change the bodice or the blouse while keeping the skirt, an economic way to stay fashionable. This type of dress would stay in favor until after WWI.
Modesty was the watchword. No part of a woman’s body was allowed exposed below the collar. An exposed ankle while crossing the street would supposedly drive men wild. One of my grandmothers friends was expelled from the University of Califonia for shortening her skirts and exposing just the smallest part of her ankle to view. Entire portions of the english language were verboten in polite company.
Fashionable young women of Arroyo Grande. Bottom, Clockwise: Tootsie Lierley, Mamie Tyler, Grace Whiteley, Cliffie Carpenter, Annie Gray and Maggie Phoenix. 1903, Shannon Family Photo.
The delicate female was guarded from all knowledge, and even from all suspicion or suggestion of evil. “To utter aloud in her presence the word shirt,” said my father, “was an open insult.” No man or woman would pronounce the word corset in front of ladies. The word “woman,” in those days, became a term of reproach, the uncouth female took its place. In the same way the legs of the fair became limbs and their breasts, bosoms. The word lady was substituted for wife. Stomach was transformed, by some unfathomable magic, into a euphemism denoting the whole region from the nipples to the pelvic arch. It was during this time that the newspapers invented such locutions as delicate condition, criminal operation, house of ill repute, disorderly-house, sporting-house, statutory offense, fallen woman and criminal assault. Servant girls ceased to be seduced, and began to be betrayed. That happened to my grandmother’s hired girl Clara who was betrayed by the hired hand. She was “sent away,” another euphemism for the obvious. Syphilis became transformed into blood-poison, specific blood-poison and secret disease, and it and gonorrhea into social diseases. Various French terms, enceinte and accouchement among them, were imported to conceal the fact that careless wives occasionally became pregnant and had lyings-in. In public, my grandmother and her friends never used the word limb or leg. The term organ was equally forbidden. No belly button was ever to be mentioned or seen. Grandmother was given a chaffing dish as a wedding present but it’s handle was deer horn. That was just too, too vulgar and it spent 75 years in a dusty corner of the garage.
The last look is at the kids. They don’t care. What once was is what still is. Same kids, same concerns and thank goodness for that because their dreams keep moving them forward. The clothes are different but they wore them with elan, panache and like today, cool. They want change, they want things to be better, they, unlike their parents don’t want or need the status quo.
When I was in high school, kids were trying to figure out how to overturn the dress code. My wife secretly rolled the waistband of her skirts to make them shorter after she left her parents house for school. My dad told me the girls at Arroyo Grande high school wore nothing but a shimmy under their summer dresses and you could see right through them. I could tell you who they were because they were the 1960’s mothers who supported the dress code. My mom rolled her stockings like Louise Brooks and God forbid, wore trousers in public.
My grandmother and her friends could well be imagined as having the same conversation as the girls above.
Lying in the summer grass with a dog. What boy hasn’t done that. Talking about nothing of import, just shootin’ the breeze. The future is made from such as these. No matter the age, kids have not yet had imagination beaten out of them by “Practical Matters.” Be eternally thankful for that.
People would be the same of course. Same hopes, same dreams. Humanity has remained static for millennia. People deal with the problems in their lives like they always have. History repeats itself like turning a page. No one seems to learn much from it. The conversation, be it family, work, or politics doesn’t change, just the names. If you don’t study history you are doomed to repeat it, the man said. Study has changed little. People believe, it’s what makes them and few seem inclined to introspection. The original idea for this article was that, no, you really wouldn’t want to go back to 1900. There are few reasons to do so, but you can bet your bottom dollar that people would go. Human experience is as deep as the ocean but most of us live very near the top. For myself, I would go, but I’d also want to come back. It’s too bad you can’t have both.
Credits:
J. R. Williams was an American cartoonist, animator, and fine artist best known for his late 1980s/early 1990s work in alternative comics. Known for his manic, exaggerated cartooning style, Williams brought an underground comix edge to his work during this period. Born Thirty Years To Soon” and “Out Our Way” are mostly long forgotten today. The books these drawings come from was a Christmas gift to my father and mother in 1946. My uncle Bob who was a great teller of Jokes found it somewhere. He, my dad, Uncle Ray Long and my two grandfathers all lived it. Printed in 1936 it sat on a bookshelf in my parent house where I discovered it when I was about twelve. The many questions I asked about the drawings were my first research project. My parents and grandparents lived those days and loved to talk about them. They all said they’d lived hard lives in a way, but they’d do it again. They wouldn’t trade it for anything.
The title comes from a song by Mary Chapin Carpenter. “Twist and Shout,” a song about dreams contains the line, “When they play you a waltz from 1910. You’re gonna feel a little bit young again” is more than just words.
Michael Shannon is a lifelong Californian. Product of small town life with all its mysterious ins and outs. He lives in Arroyo Grande, California
Clara, Mrs E.L. Paulding, nee Edwards. Arroyo Grande Valley Historical Society photo.
Lets call her Clara for surely a woman of character deserves the use of the familiar. What she did she did without help from anyone other than herself.
She was born in the little town of Bath, Stueben County, New York in 1855. Bath is in the western part of New York state. It lies at the base of the Allegheny mountains and was about a half century old when she was born. Her father John Edwards was named for his distant relative Jonathan Edwards. A leading figure of the American Enlightenment. Edwards is widely regarded as one of America’s most important and original philosophical theologians. Perhaps this drove his decision to become a pastor and missionary in his own right.
Little Clara spent her early life on the move as missionaries were ordered to a new parishes as the church needed. In 1857 her father was ordered to take over the administration of the Wheelock Indian Academy in what was then Arkansas’ western territory, now Oklahoma. Wheelock was one of many schools formed by church organizations in an attempt to educate the native American peoples into subjugation and to make them “White Men.”
Wheelock served the Choctaw Nation. The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. As part of Indian Removal Act of, despite not having waged war against the United States, the majority of Choctaw were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory from 1831 to 1833. President Andrew Jackson was primarily responsible for the removal and defied the Supreme Court who had ruled against the act to do anything about it. David Crockett, the legendary frontiersman and Tennessee congressman, opposed the Indian Removal Act, declaring that his decision would “not make me ashamed on the Day of Judgment.” The congressmen resigned his seat in protest and went to Texas. It didn’t do him any good but it no doubt did not shame him before Saint Peter when he arrived at The Gates on March 6th, 1836.
The Edwards family traveled to the Arkansas territory by taking ship in New York and sailing down to New Orleans where they went up the Mississippi by steamboat to Fort Smith. They then bought a Studebaker wagon painted dark green with red wheels and bumped and banged their way southwest to the Wheelock Mission..
Indian children at the Carlisle Indian School. National Archives Photo.
Western Arkansas was a wild place when the Edwards family arrived.
Thought he Civil War wouldn’t officially begin until April 1860, Pro and anti-slavery armed bands roamed the Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas territories preying on each other and the citizens who lived there. Political butchery was in full swing with the likes of Senator James Lane’s Jayhawkers whose bands of men were willing to fight, kill, and rob for a variety of motives that included defense against pro-slavery “Border Ruffians”, who favored abolition. The Jayhawkers were intent on driving pro-slavery settlers from their claims of land. John Brown and his sons plied there murderous trade under the banner of God himself. Brown’s weapon of choice was a sword which he used to numerous hack pro-slavery men to bits. In the name of God, he said.
From the state of Missouri, pro-slavery Bushwhackers and Border Ruffians tried to force slavery on Kansas by resorting to the same methods. Bands led by William Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson and Dave Pool raided into Kansas from Missouri and the Arkansas territory. They then retreated to the lawless territories to avoid capture. Political murder was in full swing.
Regardless of anyones personal politics it was a very dangerous place to live. A missionary and his family were not be immune from the violence.
Bushwackers Archie Clements 1, Dave Pool 2, and Bill Hendricks 3. about 1858. Kansas State Historical Society Photo.*
The Wheelock school was right in the middle of the burgeoning conflict that would become the civil war. At the outset of the war, the Union Army abandoned all of its forts in the Indian Territories and withdrew its troops to Kansas and Missouri, knowing that they would be needed to fight the Confederate Army. All civil government essentially collapsed, and irregular guerrillas ran unchecked throughout the Arkansas territory. All other non-Choctaw personnel also left including the five year old Clara and her parents. The school closed for the duration of the war.
Though not as visible as the war in the east the conflict in the borderlands was extremely vicious. Those bands of quasi-soldiers took no prisoners and devolved into nothing more than thieves and bandits, killing, robbing and defying what little law there was. The were a breeding ground for the scourge of outlaws that would plague the west for decades to come.
16 year old Jesse James, already a killer. He is wearing a Bushwacker shirt made by his mother. They were made with oversize pockets for ammunition and carrying three Colt six shooters. 1863. Kansas State Historical Society Photo.*
Five year old Clara’s father, Pastor John Edwards was wont to tell the “Ruffians” that his oath forbade him to take up arms for either side. He just wanted to be left alone. That was not to be.
A few weeks later a neighbor lady came running to the school and between gasps for air informed Mrs Edwards that a gang of armed Texans had vowed to hang all northern sympathizers and the Pastor Edwards, the dirty Yankee, was to be the first. Mrs Dukes told Clara’s mother Rose that they were already on the way. The Edwards had no doubt about Mrs. Duke’s news. Her husband ran to the barn to saddle a horse while Clara’s mother gathered some spare clothes and food to take. The Pastor shook his wife’s hand, it was 1860 after all when public affection between even married people was rare, hugged Clara, told her brother George he had to be the man of the house and to take care of his mother and sister, George was eight. He jumped into the saddle and headed north towards the Little River. Mrs Dukes had run several miles to warm the family and was exhauste so she was invited to supper before returning home. During the meal the sound of galloping horses was heard in the yard and the Texas Ruffians arrived in a cloud of dust demanding to know where the H**l was Yankee Edwards. Being an honest women she pointed north. The didn’t believe her, surely a woman would lie to save her husband, they figured he wouldn’t be able to ford the Red river to the south and head into Texas without drowning or being killed. After talking it over they figured she was lying about going north which presented them with a conundrum about which way to hunt Pastor Edwards. Surmising that he would be forced to return they decided to stay until he did. Dismounting they pushed came up on the porch, pushed past Mrs Edwards and into the house where they turned over every piece of furniture and looked anywhere a man could hide, but found nothing. Still certain that the Pastor would soon return, they surrounded the house and spent the night waiting. The murmur of their voices and the glow of their pipes terrified the women and children in the house. All the next day they waited but by evening it was certain the Pastor would not be returning. Grumbling and muttering amongst themselves they mounted up and rode away south telling Mrs Edwards that they better not find her husband or he would be done for.
Arroyo Grande Herald:Dear Mr. Clevenger, when up Lopez creek yesterday and I met Mr. Eubanks andGeorge Balaam. They were very comfortably camped and they invited me to a Coyote dinner. Talk about hard times when Coyote is the best meat we have. John Mahan
Families and friends helped Mrs Edwards pull the wagon from the barn and up to the house. She loaded it with what goods she thought she could keep. Rose arranged to give 35 head of cattle and six acres of land to the local storekeeper for two horses which the husband of her neighbor told her weren’t fit to pull a loaded wagon and if she tried she’d be stranded on the plains with no help anywhere. He said he would trade her the horses for two mules instead. Poor Rose had to kick in $ 35.00 dollars to boot.This was not an act of generosity and left her nearly destitute. She sold most of her furniture, kitchen utensils and any other thing she could lay her hands on because she would need money when she arrived at Fort Smith to meet John. The mules were far superior for the job than the horses would have been. The little Edwards family headed north, with Mr Libby, John’s helper driving the old Studebaker wagon, Rose Edwards on the drivers seat with Mr Libby and Clara and her brother George sitting atop the heap of bedding and furniture. In 1861 the Arkansas territory was wild and deserted. It was the beginning of the Great Plains which swept west to the Rockies, seemingly flat but cut by gullies and washes which made travel difficult, especially for a 35 year old mother of two. She had only Libby to help her. After a long days travel they unhitched the mules at night, saw to their feed, set up camp and fed themselves and the children. Mr Libby slept under the stars and Rose and the children inside the wagon. A woman traveling with her children, completely alone, was far too risky and as Mr Libby was a slave owner that they would likely be left alone by any Bushwackers they might meet. The remnants of the Edwards family drove by day and camped without a fire at night and slowly found their way northeast. Still early in the war and US troops still in the territory she thought that the Choctaw and Osage would leave them be. The outlaws and Bushwackers would likely leave Mr. Libby alone if they were stopped. They’d assume, because he owned slaves he was a southern sympathizer. Somehow they crossed the Little River, mules wagon and all and got to Lennox where they met John and continued on to Fort Smith where they had to give an oath of parole never to serve the north and were finally able to get a steamboat up river. They would never return to Wheelock.
Mister Libby did return and he and his family sat out the war without any harm coming to them. The Indian children were simply left to find their way home if they could.
In 1862, Clara was to make the trip to California with her parents. At seven, like most children of her age she was a walking talking bundle of energy and about to head off on another of her great adventures. The trip, by sailing ship from New York to San Francisco began in December of 1861, just nine months after the Secessionist fired on Fort Sumpter. It would take them down the east coast, around Florida and to New Orleans. The risk of winter storms and Confederate Raiders was high, but other than a shifting cargo which put the ship over on her beam ends for a time, a very dangerous thing which could have resulted in the ship capsizing and sinking but which the children on board made into a game by climbing to the high side and sliding down the decks for fun.
The little Edwards family took ship from New Orleans to Aspinall Panama to board the cross isthmus rail road. The Panama Railway was the first transcontinental railroad in the Americas and was built to provide a shorter and more secure path between the United States’ East and West Coasts. When completed in 1855, the line was designated as an “inter-oceanic” railroad crossing as it connected ports on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The tropical rain forest terrain and outbreak of malaria and cholera, rendered its five-year construction, at a cost of $8,000,000, a considerable engineering challenge, and required more than seven thousand active workers drawn from “every quarter of the globe including from the United States, Europe, Colombia, China, the Caribbean islands, and also included hundreds of African slaves rented out by their owners. Many of these workers had come to Panama to seek their fortune and had arrived with little or no identification. Many died with no known next of kin, nor permanent address, nor even a known surname. The death toll ran upwards to as much as ten thousand men and women. Malaria, Yellow Fever, Typhus, the Black Vomit and Cholera scythed through the workers. Few records were kept of the dead because the laborers were considered disposable.
Aspinall, Panama. East to west, ocean to ocean on the Panama Railroad. 1860.
Arroyo Grande Herald:Charley Rice’s team was left in front of his City Meat Market shop while the driver went inside to collect some turkeys. There was a big fat hog in the wagon and he decided that he would givea big grunt, which he did. The horses thought they heard “Bear” and they made a wild leap and bolted. Geo. Thatcher tried to stop them and was rewarded with a kick to his leg which will likely cause him to limp for some time. George’s attempt caused the team to run up on the sidewalk where they were captured in front of Richards store. They haven’t stopped looking for that bear yet.
The Missionary Foundation paid the passage for the family as Pastor Edwards was being sent to his new posting in San Francisco. A ticket on the road was $ 25.00 dollars a considerable coast to travel just the 47 miles from Caribbean to Pacific. It was the most expensive railroad in the world.
It was said at the time that each tie on the road had cost a human life. It nearly cost seven year old Clara hers, as she quickly fell ill with Malaria. Once aboard the San Francisco bound ship in Panama City she took to her bunk and suffered bone breaking pains in her limbs and a raging fever. Her mother expected she would die and be buried at sea, but somehow she lived.
Clara was an adventurous from the get-go. She fell out of trees, slammed window sills on her hands, nearly drowned and was frequently sick. Malaria in Panama, Pneumonia in cold and wet San Francisco and when the family moved to Visalia she promptly contracted Valley Fever. In the 1870’s only three in five children lived past five years. Scarlet Fever, Cholera, Typhoid, Measles, Smallpox, Pneumonia, and Influenza along with the dangers of day to day living which brought rabid animals, blood poisoning, kicking horses and shooting accidents which nearly every family was familiar with. There was not much John and Rose could do to protect her, something common to all parents in the still wild west of the 1870’s. Visalia was still frontier, dusty, dirty, abundant saloons with rough characters everywhere and frequently heeled. With her friends, Clara ran free with little adult supervision. She was forming the character which was to lead her to Arroyo Grande where she was to lead the effort to save a school.
The Right Reverend John Edwards and his daughter Clara. Calisphere Photo. About 1868
Clara started school at ten in Visalia and proved to be a precocious student. With John Edwards connections to the University of California and Mills College he arranged for Clara to start her college education in 1871. Clara was off to Mills College at just fifteen. She, like most of her contemporaries was to study to be a teacher. Teaching was one of the few serious careers open to women at the time. Western movies would lead you to believe that any young woman could just walk into a school and teach but then as now it required a rigorous education at a Normal School or teachers school such as Mills. Three years of higher education led to strict testing system in order to earn a certificate. Curriculum was predicated on the fact that most students would not attend school past the eighth grade. Compared to today, classwork was more rigorous than than it is now. Most schools only went up to 8th grade. By necessity their education was much more difficult than even high schools today. Very few people went to college. In 1900 only around 4 percent of children even attended a high school. Less than one precent of those would attend college and just seventeen of a hundred actually graduated. Just over half of all children would attend any school whatsoever. They would be starting their adult lives much sooner. In order to graduate from 8th grade, students had to pass a final exam. Below is a snippet of a typical 8th grade test from 1899:
Orthography 1 1/2 hours
1.)What is meant by the following: Alphabet, Phonetic, Orthography, Etymology, Syllabication.
2.)What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3.)What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, Subvocals, Diphthong, Cognate, Linguals?
4.)Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
5.)Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, Dis, Mis, Pre, Semi, Post, Non, Inter, Mono, Super
6.)Mark diacritically and divided into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
7.)Use the following correctly in sentences: Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vein, raze, raise, rays.
8.)Write 10words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication
In 1883 Clara returned to California from Hawaii where she had been the private teacher and governess to the seven daughters of Alfred S. Hartwell the presiding justice of the kingdom of Hawai’i’s Supreme Court. She had traveled and worked independently without the supervision of an adult male which, for the time was quite unusual. Teachers of the female persuasion were forbidden to enter pool halls, saloons under any circumstances and were required to be escorted by an approved male when eating out or attending concerts or entertainments. They were typically enjoined to attend church each week and only certain churches were likely to be approved. They were to be in bed by ten o’clock and to exhibit the strictest morals as set down by the community. No smoking, sex, drinking, reading of “Racy” novels or unchaperoned courting were allowed. Marriage meant instant dismissal in most cases.
Arroyo Grande Oracle:Four slick and greasy tramps crawled out from under the PCRR depot this morning and proceeded to work Branch Street for grub. Constable Tom Whitely urged them to move on or become aquainted with the ball and chain…
In Hawai’i Clara showed an independent spirit to say the least. She rode horseback astride, She camped with other young people in Haleakala crater on Maui, completely unsupervised and she went where she wanted without asking anyones permission. She had an independent streak a mile wide. Returning to the mainland and needing a job, she went to see the California Superintendant of Schools who told her there was only one school available and that was in the little town of Arroyo Grande and if she took it she must start Monday next. In a split second she made the fateful decision to go. She said “yes.”
She made it on time. She sailed from the San Francisco Bay to Port Harford (Port San Luis/Avila Beach) and bought a ticket for one dollar on the Pacific Coast Railroad, one of the oldest in California. The rattler huffed and puffed it’s way to San Luis Obispo then over the hills south to Arroyo Grande. It clanked along at bare walking speed for it was no streamliner. It was built to haul goods, with passengers and their comfort simply an afterthought.
Clara Edwards Paulding on the wheel she rode from her home in Arroyo Grande to and from Branch Elementary School where she was teaching in 1898. She taught about sixty students grades 1 thru 8. She is 42 yo. Photographer unknown. CA.SP Photo.
Clara taught all over San Luis Obispo County. She listed the Court School in San Luis, Cholame and Shandon in north county, Santa Manuela and Branch in the upper valley and the old Arroyo Grande Grammar school on Nevada Street. When two Hostlers at the Ryan stables across the way perforated the school with their handguns, parents prompted the school to move down to Bridge Street. While at Branch, she heard a commotion outside during recess and stepped out the back door to see the kids surrounding a rattlesnake. One of the older boys said, “miss, you’d better shoot it,” and reached into his possibles sack and handed her an old Civil War revolver. She did too, shot the rattlesnake’s head clean off. If she wasn’t already respected, she certainly was now. Just another day at school. In 1898 it didn’t occur to anyone to question why a boy would take a revolver to school. It came in handy this day.
Branch Elementery School in 1886 when Clara taught there. It looks about the same today. San Luis Historical Society photo
She started the first town library and was a member of the WCTU which fought the saloonkeepers tooth and nail for years finally causing Arroyo Grande to “go dry” though none of the drinkers seemed to notice. She was a leading advocate for the high school which finally came to fruition in 1895. The “Wreckers” of Billy Buck and his cohorts had came up against Mrs Clara Dudley Edwards Paulding and they would be sorry.
*In the movie, Ride “With the Devil,” Pitt Mackeson played to great effect by Jonathan Rhys-Myers is modeled on Archie Clements a psychopathic killer responsible for numbers of cold blooded murders. Though the movie is fiction, it is a harrowing depiction of the border wars as they were known.
*James Woodson James did nothing in his short life that was of any value to humanity. He stole, he robbed, and was a casual murderer. The movies and books have made him something he was not. He was a killer of the first order.
Chapter Five
The Wreckers Get Their Comeuppance, coming next.
Michael Shannon is writer and a Branch Grammar School graduate. He writes so his children will know where they came from.
Arroyo Grande Oracle: The Arroyo Grande High School class of ’99 will have no commencement this year. Arrangements were being made for the affair and undoubtedly it would have been a grand affair and would certainly have obliterated much of the ill feeling towards the school by our neighbors who dominate the school’s board of control. Certain comments by students and faculty in the Herald caused the ceremony to be declared off by Willis Buck, chairman of the Board of Control. Buck was quoted as saying, “If the students and teachers are not willing to work to build up the school they cannot blame those who are prejudiced for trying to wreck the institution and cause disbandment of the High School district.” Hypocrisy at its grandest, say we.
The Oracle, voice of the Republican party in Arroyo Grande published by Pete Olohan, Saloon keeper, was quick to place the blame.. The Oracle, spinning the coming closing of the school as somehow being the fault of the students and the staff who knew they would be out of a job come June. No one was going to teach at the salaries they were being offered and no one would apply to fill the vacant teaching jobs. The school would be effectively closed. The “Wreckers” put up a smokescreen blaming the blameless and not the miscreants themselves. Why do that? Politics is not a new invention by any means.
The graduates, misses Edith Jatta and Edna Conrad, who would become a teacher in Los Osos, Edith Carpenter and the two young men, the red haired Archer “Arch” Beckett whose father owns most of the western Arroyo Grande district which runs from the sea to the Methodist camp and is an opponent of the High School and Albert Ore who will Study at St Mary’s college to become a pastor. All will receive their diplomas from Principal A. F. Parsons at their homes on Saturday. This could quite possibly be the last class to ever graduate from Arroyo’s high school.
The winsome Miss Edna Conrad, Arroyo Grande High School, class of 1899. Family photo
And so it looked to be, at least for a while.The classes of 1900-1904 were likely to be canceled for lack of funds. Next, the schoolhouse where the high school classes were being held promptly burned down. Less than a month after the board of control apparently ensured the closure of the high school, the building where all classes were taught was destroyed. Now wasn’t that a piece of serendipity. The “Wreckers” were having all the luck.
Arroyo Grande Herald: Oct. 14, 1899. At 3 o’clock this morning the public school building here was completely destroyed by fire, only a very small portion of the furniture being saved.
The Arroyo Grande Union School, 1898. It was the largest building in town and citizens took great pride in it. San Luis Obispo Historical Society.
The loss is estimated at $ 11,00.00 and the building was only insured for $ 7,500.00. The pupils of the school lost all their books, etc. The cause of the fire is said to be a stroke of lighting, but there are some who strongly hint at incendiarism. There is no probability of the fire being caused by a stove in the building as none had been lit since last winter. Principle Parsons stated that all coal-oil lanterns had been extinguished at the end of the day. The schools lightening rod was found in the wreckage, undamaged. Lightning is a very rare occurrence in Arroyo Grande and this raises serious questions. There was no chance to save the building and the walls soon fell in. There is still $ 2,500.00 due on the bond issued to build the school just six years ago.
San Luis Obispo Tribune:Cambria has the wheel craze once more. There are quite a number of new wheels recently purchased and now it boasts over thirty within the city itself, then there are a great many on the outside. It is rumored that the war has caused even some people to have wheels in their head. But we don’t believe that.
On an outing, 1899. National Archives Photo.
The Board of Control was now faced with a problem unanticipated. Luckily, the citizens of the town were quick to rally around the school. A meeting was called for the evening of the 18th at the Good Samaritan’s Hall where over four hundred dollars ($14,780.00) were pledged. The County Schools Superintendent, Mr. Messer spoke and assured the crowd that the county would beg, borrow and steal to provide books and school supplies. William Ryan offered rooms in his hotel for classrooms. The Good Samaritan Hall, The Library and the Union Hotel* also donated space. Classes would be held in the Columia Hall too. A call was put out for all the benches, chairs and tables that citizens could spare. The planned re-opening would be in just ten days.
The Good Samaritan Hall. Site of the High School and Temperance Meetings. SCHS photo. Note that Arroyo Grande had few sidewalks just before the turn of the century and those were wooden. Branch Street was a dusty and muddy place.
Within a week the Board of Control, in a public meeting discussed plans for building a new school house. Public speakers wanted a new building and were suspicious the “Wreckers” on the board would seek to delay rebuilding. Patrick Moore, who owned three rock quarries offered to donate enough stone and the labor to put up the building without charge. Public speakers supported this but the majority of the board voted it down, saying the process would take too long. Within a few days, overheard in Pete Olohan’s saloon, a meeting of the “wreckers” was overheard saying that Olohan had plans to open a brickyard at his property on Bridge Street and it was said that he planned to put Patrick Moore’s quarries out of business.* Without a doubt this news quickly became fodder for discussion around town and further turned public opinion against Willis Buck and his gang. If Pat Moore took note of it, he never said.
Arroyo Grande Recorder:Died: Egan, near Arroyo Grande, Thursday May 19th, Mary Agnes beloved wife of W H Egan a native of Londonderry, Ireland aged 27 years. (Childbirth)
The board decided that using the blueprints from the burnt school would be the most expedient way to begin. Expedient yes, but in 1899 the plans for a building were rudimentary at best and the builders were quite competent in putting up a structure without them. Two of the quarry stone buildings built over the next three years were built using the simplest of sketches numbering two or three pages at most. There would have been a set of simple dimensions, notes on the location of the foundation and perhaps two or three elevations showing the eventual look of the building.
The Reverend Bell of the First United Methodist church who had designed the church on Branch Street was chosen to update and modify the burnt school’s blueprints.
The First United Methodist Church, Arroyo Grande. Photographer unknown.
A call for bids was posted. Builders from counties north and south responded with estimates on the cost of putting up a new school. David Blosser of Santa Maria who came in as the lowest bidder has relinquished his right to claim the contract, stating that he forgot to figure the cost of plastering and that he must withdraw. Will Terry was the next lowest bidder but the board decided to award the contract to William Smith of San Luis Obispo.
Arroyo Grande Herald:John Poole who lives near the Branch School house, has been very ill for several weeks. Thursday he was operated on by Dr’s Norton and Paulding who found a large cancerous growth in his side. The size of the growth is of such a characterthat there is no hope for him.
Smith took the job in hand and quickly order redwood lumber from the mill in Cambria. Oak floors were ordered from San Francisco and would be shipped down by train along with window sashes, kegs of nails, and roofing materials. Stains and paint were supplied by local hardware stores.
Arroyo Grande Herald:Born to Mr and Mrs. JW Bennett, April 17th, a son. Bennett, a son, died, near ArroyoGrande, April 19th, Aged 2 days.
Smith began foundation work on December 4th. The floors were quickly done as the school was built over the existing concrete work left from the destroyed school. Contractor Smith expects to have the school framed up and completed, ready for students on March 1st 1900. The board of control has sent the students home for ten weeks, using the salaries saved to buy new furniture for the building.
San Luis Obispo Superintendant of schools, Mrs Woods published a notice encouraging her district’s schools, the parents and pupils, donate any textbook or school materials they can spare. She stated that they should be dropped off at the county courthouse in San Luis where they would be collected and sent down to Arroyo Grande by train. She said the sign of a good community is the desire to help those less fortunate.
San Luis Obispo Tribune:Osgood Guilty. John Osgood was found guity by a jury in the Superior Court last evening on a charge of seduction. The jury took only two ballots. That will teach the beast.
School districts all over the county, including northern Santa Barbara county all pitched in. Slate boards, erasers, extra desks, paper, pencils, ink and pens came from everywhere. Citizens and parents quickly turned their attention from the plans of the “Wreckers,” though that wouldn’t last long.
Mister Clevenger, publisher and editor of the Herald has made a very generous offer to the students of the high school. Editorial and writing duties for the Christmas edition will be turned over to the students of the school. All the proceeds from the edition will be donated to the students for the purchase of a new telescope to replace the one lost in the fire this October. The students have heartily entered into the spirit of the enterprise and have organized and selected the following committee to manage the holiday edition. Editorial will be Archie Haskins, Amy Hodges and Albert Ore. The advertising committee is made up of Chance Dana, Fred Phoenix, Addie Gibson, Edith Jatta and George Runyon. Archie Beckett, Gay Parsons and Clarence Waterman who will staff the Literary Committee and local reporters are Robert Forkner, Clara Conrad, Phoebe Poole, Albert Fowler and Fanny Taylor.
Stephen Clevenger, wife Edith (Fanny) and son Porter. About 1895. Clevenger was the founder and publisher of the Arroyo Grande Herald (1886) and Santa Maria Times.(1882). Santa Maria Valley Historical Society.
San Luis Obispo Tribune: The Celestials are at War: Some of the celestials declared war and have proceeded to do battle. Yu Kee, a Highbinder from San Francisco fired a shot at a brother chink in the store of Wing Sang Wan on Palm Street. He succeeded in perforating a door. Marshall Cook was called and made a thorough search through the rookeries of chinatown but could not locate him. There are rumors of more trouble to follow in chinatown.
Arroyo Grande Herald:As a fundraising event the students of the high school have put together another party. Next Friday they plan to stage a masked ball to raise money for their school. The student committee has written the invitations for the event to be held at Columbia Hall. The young people expect a large turn out. Much money is expected to be donated towards the high school. The students are to be commended for their public spirit.
Arroyo Grande Herald:Objections by the board of Control have been issued forbidding the students of the high school to us the school name in connection with parties and other events outside the school. Invitations to attend a fund raising masquerade to be given next Friday have been issued by the “Entre Nous Club*. It appears the students will not be suppressed.
The pettiness of the majority on the Board of Control finally tipped the balance. Another citizens meeting was called at the Good Samaritan Hall. About thirty concerned citizens showed up and after some debate a committee was formed for the purpose of exploring the possibility of raising private funds to increase the school budget for 1900. The plan was to raise enough to keep the school in operation. Stephen Clevenger of the Herald was named chairman. Thomas Hodges and Aron Henry along with Clevenger were tasked with exploring the legal issues involved. Another group was tasked with writing a flyer representing the right side of the matter. The flyer would be delivered to every household in the district. That committee was to be chaired by a local school teacher of more than formidable resolve, Mrs E. L. Paulding, Clara to her friends, a woman who could take the measure of any man. It would prove to be a master stroke.
NOTES:
$14,756.00 today.
Arroyo stone, the particular light sandy/red colored sandstone was used in the IOOF Hall, 1903 and Mankins Building, 1904. A walk down Olohan’s Alley shows the rear of several brick and cast iron fronted building built of the same material. Pat Moor’s Quarries would not go out of business just yet.
The Good Samaritan Hall was located where todays City Council Chambers are on Branch Street.
The Union Hall on Bridge Street was across the street from the Odd Fellows Hall.
The grammar school was located on the old Nipomo road, Bridge St, where the Ford agency is today.
Entre Nous: Between ourselves.
Cover Photo: The Old Verde School once located at the head of Corbit Canyon.
Michael Shannon lives in Arroyo Grande, California and writes so his children will know where they came from.
Superintendent Messer says he will not call an election to disincorporate the AGHS district unless the courts compel him too. It is probable the opposition will resort to the courts to force his hand. Frank Newsom and Willis Buck were in town working up the matter yesterday at Olohan’s saloon. The state legislature has ruled that county supervisors cannot tax land owners to support schools which leaves our high schools, in particular, nearly penniless. County school offices do not have nearly enough money to fund all the high schools in the county and ” Little Bald Billy Buck” and his “Wreckers” know that. The legislature is stuffed with rich landowners and the law was no surprise to anyone.
Landowners in San Luis Obispo County are not all paying their school tax. Board of Control members “Lobbied” taxpayers, newspaper publishers and businesses aggressively. They argued that high school curriculum was full of “Fads and Frills.” “Any foreign language classes were ridiculous in an English speaking country and drama, music and art were a waste of time and taxpayers money,” they said. The idea that preparing “Working mens children” for higher education was preposterous. Summer school was a complete and unnecessary luxury .Those students who couldn’t keep up were only good for laboring and teaching them was a waste of money.
Figures from the 1890’s show that the vast majority of children, mostly boys, dropped out of school at 12 to 14 years and went directly to work as my grandfather did. Rural schools in San Luis County had large numbers of students who were immigrants or children of recent immigrants and spoke little or no English. Waves of Portuguese, Japanese, German and Swiss Italian came to California in the 1880’s and ’90’s. They came because of wars and famine in their home countries, a lack of education, grinding poverty and no opportunity to improve their lives. They understood that schools were the key. The Branch School photo shown below lists five Perry kids, one Fink and one Nagagawa. Every one of the 24 remaining kids bears a Portuguese name.
The “Wreckers” didn’t care about these kids. They were only good for labor. Bald Billy Buck, himself a law student at Hastings Law School at the University of California, and who had his tuition partially paid for by Judge Venable, was quoted as saying, “Education is no help to these people. It shouldn’t be put on the shoulders of the successful to pay for it.”
Buck was reducing the uneducated as unworthy. He was referencing the theory of the Helot. Helot was a term used by the Spartans to describe a class of people who were in a sense wage slaves, bound to the soil and assigned to individual property owners to till their holdings; their masters could neither free them nor sell them. The helots had a very limited rights, after paying to their masters a fixed proportion of the produce of the land they worked. In America we refer them to as “Share Croppers,” a state in which the person is only a hair above chattel slavery. After the Civil War ended, Share Cropping was introduced as a way to keep former slaves bound to the land and the plantation owner in business. By the 1890’s Share Cropping had become an institution in America and Willis Buck would have known very well the import of his words.
An article printed in the Oracle quoted Columbia University professor Nicholas Murray Butler as saying, “We need to replace teachers and local school boards opinions on curriculum with education policies set by “College-Educated Bureaucrats.” These administrative “Progressives” forged an alliance with business leaders who liked the idea of top down, expert management of schools. They deplored the idea of local control and wished to lower their taxes by cutting away classes they deemed “Useless and Wasteful.”*
The “Wreckers were certainly aware of a reform movement that advocated replacing women teachers with men. “Feminization” of teachers was a major misstep according to William Rainey Harper, president of the university of Chicago. When Chicago teachers complained, that their wages had been frozen for twenty years and they deserved a living wage, Harper replied that women in the teaching profession should be glad they made as much money as his maid, who worked harder than they did and deserved her money, inferring, of course, that female teachers did not.
Under the guise of “Reform,” business leaders stated that non-university-schooled teachers were not qualified to make autonomous decisions, write lesson plans or discipline children within their own classrooms.* Reform leaders thought that “Normal Schools” gave only the most rudimentary education to women teachers and that graduates were not, thus, fully qualified to manage their classrooms.
Local people may have had just a simple education but they could read. The back and forth agreements were a staple of the local papers. Other county papers watched and commented on the Board of Control’s doings too. Though big city papers didn’t write about local news, they were readily available. Daily papers from San Francisco were brought down by train from the city by the Southern Pacific railroad which had a depot in San Luis Obispo. You could read a paper from Chicago or New York just a day or two old. Newspapers were the only mass outlet for news and were thoroughly read. Readers would not have been unaware of educational doings in other cities. Thinking that people in 1899 were completely unaware of world events would be a mistake. Disincorporation of the high school was a community wide concern and it was clear that the moneyed interests, the big landowners and their crony’s meant to kill the school.
Supporters of the high school were counting on a recent law passed in Sacramento which gave women who were eligible the right to vote in school elections. Governor Gage promptly vetoed it. He apparently stands with the Republican school Wreckers here. Surely women voters, mothers and fathers of children, would have tipped the balance for the school in an honest election. The last one was not honest. People knew that the ballot boxes had been manipulated. The head of the election commission had a vested interest in seeing the school fail as he controlled a very large ranch in rural Arroyo Grande.As Stephen Clevenger said in the Herald, we know because everyone knows that the government can’t keep a secret for five seconds, something that holds true today
Born 100 Years too Soon. Illustration: J R Williams.
Arroyo Grande Herald:Miss MaudGriebarrived in this place yesterday where she will spend the summer before retuning to Stanford.
Maud Grieb. Saturday Night Club. Stanford University Yearbook..
The immediate need was for donations to make up the nearly one thousand dollar shortfall in the budget in order to keep the school open until spring 1901. The Wreckers who had a majority of one on the board of control had lowered Professor Parsons salary to $65.00 a year hoping he would resign. He didn’t, so they lowered it to $40.00 and he did. So did the two teachers. They next hired a notorious local drunk and ne’er-do-well named Stringfellow to be the principal and not one new teacher. The students began to skip school. Clara Paulding saw Cliffie Carpenter and Helen Grieb walking arm in arm past Miller’s Stable and blacksmiths shop and asked them why they weren’t in school. Cliffie replied, “He doesn’t teach us anything and the boys like Tom Meherin, Louis Phillips and Charley Phoenix* jump out of the windows and go smoke down by the creek. There is nothing for us to do.” Clara shook her finger at the girls and said, “If you don’t stay in school there will be no school. Take your knitting or a book to read but please stay in school and I will tell the boys’ fathers, who will strip a piece from their backside if they are caught again.” She was as good as her word. All three fathers were supporters of the school. Meherin and Phoenix were both large landowners and had already made substantial donations to the school fund as had the Phillips Brothers.
San Luis Obispo Tribune:About 9 o’clock last evening Marshall Cook arrested one of the denizens of Chinatown who operates a house of ill-fame. She was released on bond of $50.00 by Judge Egan.($1,500.00 today)
The fund to support the school was quickly raised and the class of 1901 was assured of graduation. What kind of education they got was up for debate as the new principal did not change his stripes one bit. Nevertheless the class would graduate in the spring.
Arroyo Grande Herald:1898: Mister John Corbit a well-known citizen of this district is being mentioned in connection as a candidate for county Sheriff. He will make the strongest possible candidate that the party could put up.
The Honorable John Corbit From County Cork Ireland. B. 1832, D. 1912. Photo from Pat Moores photo album. Shannon Family.
Arroyo Grande Herald:24th June, 1899: At Oak Park, Mr and Mrs Willis Buck, born, a son.
Arroyo Grande Herald:25th June, 1899: At Oak Park, Mr and Mrs Willis Buck, a son. Died.
The members of the save the school committee tasked with exploring the legal issues surrounding the closing of the school went to work. Three local businessmen, Thomas Hodges, Amos Henry and the publisher of the Herald, Stephen Clevenger began looking into any legal issues they thought might give them an opening into reversing the decisions of the Board of Control.
Amos Henry was a young father with a 5 year old son, Daniel. At 31 he was successful farmer and lived and farmed on what would become Mason Street. He and his wife Aurelia were both community mended. Amos went on to become county assessor and was active in many organizations such as the IOOF. He was cerainly concerned for the future education of his little boy.
Thomas Hodges was also a farmer and grew fruit trees on the Arroyo Grande road southwest of town off todays Halcyon Road. His farm was where the mobile home parks are today. He and his wife Sarah had six children. All educated in Arroyo Grande schools. Thomas’s daughter Rose taught at Los Berros school in the 1890’s. Well known was their son Virgil who Chronicled life around the turn of the century with his camera. Virgil who always listed himself as an artist, left us an incomparable record of photographs of our town and the people who lived here. Virgil was a 1897 graduate of the high school.
Virgil Hodges, left and friend on the Pismo Road. After the turn of the century. Virgil Hodges Photo.
Arroyo Grande Herald:It is hightime the responsible citizens of the Arroyo Grande district arise and stamp into dust this whole hissing nest of vipers trying to dismantle education and bring anarchy to our school system.
After the citizens meeting at the Good Samaritan Hall, Mrs Paulding began going door to door, buttonholing anyone would would listen to her about the value of higher education. Carefully skipping around the manure dotting the dirt streets, pinching her flounce and lifting it to keep her hem out of the muck as she knocked on door after door. Some remained closed to her but most opened up and listened to what she had to say.
The flyer she carried was headed with the phrase, “The Plain Facts.” It went on to say that it had been requested that the flyer be circulated by the friends of the high school. In it they encouraged readers to take a look at the statements being made by the board of control; to wit:
1.That it is not possible to continue the high school because of the dissatisfaction of the people.
2. The majority of the board of control are opposed to the continuance of said school. (Six to five.)
3. As the high school district is so large as to make it impossible for students to travel to and from the school, property owners should not be taxed to pay for the school as no students would be wiling to travel that far to attend.
Mrs Paulding pointed out that there was no dissatisfaction by the public except on the part of the board of control whose six majority office holders were in fact large property owners who represented considerably less than a third of the district’s students but more than 60% of its land.
She also pointed out that 80% of all students who attended the school lived within four and a half miles of the school, a distance easily traveled by horse or wagon. The Patchett family farmed and ranched on land adjacent to Willis Buck. She stated they had no problem getting their children to school. In fact, the Fink children were students who traveled more than eight miles to school. She mentioned the Phoenix children and the Harloes who lived fifteen miles away on their ranches but who also maintained houses in town. Both families had homes off Bridge street which were within easy walking distance of the school. Ex-supervisor Moore and his wife Sarah also provided rooms for children during the week.
Clara said it was clear that there was a great deal of support for the school as evidenced by the funds the committee had raised to support it.
Mrs Paulding was quick to point out that the school had twenty-four students currently attending the school that came from these outlying district and that there were an equal number who would graduate from the eighth grade in May ready to enter the high school in the fall.*
She also said that without a high school diploma no student would be able to enter the state’s universities. There was already talk from the State Board of Education that the Arroyo Grande high school would lose its accreditation over the propose disenfranchisement fight.*
The opposition had also been saying that the grammar schools curriculum had been corrupted and that the Normal Schools had indicated that no graduate would be qualified to enter there. Clara was quite clear that this story being put about by the Wreckers was an outright lie and could easily be disproved.
Arroyo Grande:Died, Oliver Taylor, age 70
The three men working up a legal case against the board of control were ready to go to court. They had been working with the county District Attorney to draw up a bill of particulars stating the various crimes and misdemeanors of the Wreckers. A hearing would be held in the San Luis Obispo courthouse.
The Herald also posited that since nearly all of the grammar schools in the district had with withdrawn from the union high school, their seats on the board of control should be vacated as they no longer represented the school.
Arroyo Grande Oracle:An automobile passed through town yesterday on its way to Solano. It runs by steam.
Everything came to a head in September of 1899. The “Wreckers, by a single vote of the board of supervisors reduced the budget for Arroyo Grande’s high school to the point where it simply could no longer operate.
The Citizens Committee to Save the School quickly raised enough money through subscriptions to make up the budget shortfall and thus ensured that the school would remain open until June of 1900.
Up at the county courthouse Oliver Pence, the attorney representing the “Friends” was meeting with County District Attorney Arch Campbell who had won election the year before, defeating Fred Dorn who was no friend of the school. The Tribune wondered what kind of strategy they were cooking up behind closed doors. Willis Buck, who happened to be in San Luis was quoted as saying, “I will not show the white feather,* no threats from the committee will stop us from closing the high school. It is a burden to all taxpayers and must go.” Buck, Miossi, and Donovan are having a lively time of it said the Tribune.
Buck was soon to find out what they were up to. On Sept. 14 the district attorney issued a citation ordering W. B. Buck, et al, to appear in court on Wednesday the 20th to show cause why they should not be removed from office and judgement of $ 500.00* entered against each of the board members who had voted to reduce the budget and close the school.
Both parties appeared before Judge Unangst in superior court at 10 am. The “Wreckers’ immediately requested a continuance citing too little time to prepare their case. Judge Unangst granted the request and set a new hearing for the 22nd. That too was postponed for the same reason though Judge Unangst was not pleased with the continued delays by the “Obstructionists.” The opening of the trial was now set for Wednesday the 28th.
Outside the courthouse, Bernard Miossi, who represents the Pismo school district on the board of control of the high school said that the board would hold a meeting to formally close the school on Saturday. Daniel Donovan who is a member of the board from the two Los Berros schools agreed with Miossi that the school should not continue. They both said, “This will be an exciting meeting; the school, will, be closed however They can’t stop us, we have the majority.”
Except that it wasn’t. The citizens committee showed up at the Columbia Hall in force. They far outnumbered tose who wanted to close. It was a standing room turnout. Many fine speeches were given opposing the closing of the school. Mrs E. L. Paulding took the board to task stating that what they were doing was illegal and if they went ahead she would see them in jail for breaking their oath of office. At the end of the night the majority, the “Wreckers” voted to table the motion to close until after the superior court made its ruling. That trial was due to begin on Thursday the 28th and the majority said they were ready and would prevail.
Reported Expressly for the Tribune by P. A. H. Ararta in superior court the Hon. Edward P. Unangst, Judge, September 28th, 1899.
Plaintiff R. B, Musick* vs. Willis B. Buck et al. The defendants request for a trial by jury denied by Judge Unangst. The judge stating that he had had enough delays. The defendants then demanded that they be tried by separately. Denied again. Judge Unangst was visibly angry and threatened the defendants with contempt for their attempt to delay the proceedings. The defendants then asked for a continuance of five days on account of the absence of a material witness, viz: Mrs. A. C. S. Woods. Motion again denied. The following witnesses testified for the plaintiffs. D. Newsom, Albert Fowler, Mrs Clara Dudley Edwards Paulding, A. Slack, Geo. Balaam, Frank Swigert, Robert English, and A F Parsons.
David Newsom, was the son of Frank Newsom who built the first school at Newsom Springs but who was opposed to the high school. There must have been some interesting conversations around the kitchen table up in Newsom’s canyon.
Others testifying for the plaintiffs were Albert Fowler, the father of three young children was a farmer, Albert Slack an accountant, George Balaam, a Gensler (Goose breeder), Frank Swigart, a farmer, Robert English,* Arroyo Grande’s undertaker and A F Parsons, the county surveyor. They were all parents of children in school.
The missing witness, Adelaide Woods was the San Luis county superintendant of schools. She was the first woman elected to that position. She was a graduate of the state normal school in San Jose, the future San Jose State University and had taught a year at the Alma school, San Jose and two years in Eureka, Humboldt county. She taught at the Court school in San Luis before being elected to the job as superintendant. In fact, she was the first lady elected to any office in the history of the county. She was just 35 years old and had been elected in 1898 . She had been instrumental in collecting furnishings, books and other supplies for the Arroyo Grande Grammar school after it was destroyed by fire. It would be interesting to know what the “Wreckers” had in mind when they asked her to testify. It isn’t likely she would have been in favor of closing the high school. She had been elected and began serving the previous year and its easy to imagine her thought process. She had to uphold her office, an elected office to boot, and her primary job was supporting education. It’s difficult to imagine what the “Obstructionists” were thinking. It was extremely unlikely she would have anything to say to support the actual closing of a school. She made herself scarce.
When testimony was concluded, judge Unangst continued the trial to the next day, Friday the 29th for closing arguments. He said he was curious what the “Wreckers” might say in closing as they had produced no witnesses for their own defense.
San Luis Obispo Superior Courthouse, Fourth of July, 1898.
Late on Friday morning Judge Unangst ordered that the case of Musick vs. W. B. Buck be called. The attorney for the plaintiffs, Oliver Pence rose and informed the judge that the parties had reached an agreement and moved that the action be dismissed without prejudice* , and without costs to either party. Judge Unangst took a long moment then asked the attorney for the “Wreckers” if they agreed. With the answer in the affirmative he dismissed the case.
Overnight a deal had been reached. When the remainder of the case was presented to Buck, he realized he was done. State law required that an elected board could not dissolve itself. Elected officials, sworn to duty could not, as part of that duty, vote to disband themselves. In effect, closing the school was a crime under state law as they were duty bound to continue education at the high school level. The schemers would be liable for fines and possible incarceration if found guilty. Willis B. Buck was forced to show the White Feather. The high school was saved.
San Luis Obispo Tribune:Popular school teacher Miss Mollie O’Conner and several of her friends were up from Arroyo Grande yesterday.
In Arroyo Grande an election was immediately held in which new trustees were elected. The three remaining grammar schools and the high school board voted that Frank Parsons be rehired as principle and Amos Henry was then voted in as president of the school board. The withdrawal of eight of the grammar schools in the south county now meant that the individual school would no longer use their budgets to help support the high school. They would also no longer receive revenues from the high school which would reduce their operating costs. The new high school board, according to Amos Slack, the district accountant, needed to establish a fee for out of district students to attend the school. On the recommendation of Mr. Slack a charge of $2.50* a month for each student was so ordered.
The withdrawn grammar schools almost immediately began to hear complaints from parents that wanted their children to attend high school. What once cost them nothing suddenly became a burden on their pocketbooks and they let the trustees of their schools know it. To use an old phrase used at the time, they had “Shot themselves in the foot” or, as the case may be, their collective feet.
Those that followed the lead of the “Wreckers” now suffered with them. Over the next few years all the grammar schools that had jumped ship came crawling back and rejoined the Union High School District.
The High School Citizens Committee: The citizens committee in defense of the high school feels it must commend Mr. Clevenger for his unstinting support of the school these last nine years. His defense in preserving the school and defeating the opposition cannot go unnoticed. The committee takes great pleasure in saying a word in behalf of his generous and unstinting work. There is nothing that lends general prosperity to the common welfare of a community like an active local paper, one that is in harmony with the town and its beneficent institutions. Without Mr Clevenger, the high school would have been closed some time past.
The Herald Recorder Building erected by Stephen Clevenger in 1897. Arroyo Grande Herald photo. 1963
Arroyo Grande Herald:The Herald says that the class of 1901 of the Arroyo Grande High School will hold its commencement exercises at the Columbia Hall next Friday evening, May 31st. Doctor Thos. Hoyer will be pleased to give the commencement address The members of the class consider themselves very fortunate in having a school from which to graduate. The four* young ladies of the class are Mary v. Keown, Lou F. Parsons, A Gelka Barcella and Lorena B. HaskinsThey will be tendered a reception by the other three classes at the Union Hall this evening at 7:00 O’clock.
The program is as follows:
Song, “The Bugler”, John “Jack” Shannon*
Recitation: The Hen with One Chicken by Miss Stella Sims.
Coon Song; Six Girls*
“The Kitchen Clock,” Duet, Hazel Miller, May Clevenger
Selection, Orchestra.
Recitation: The Little Runaway, Florence Lynam.
Song: The Boot Black*, Eight Boys.
The Class Colors are Green and Pink.
Master of ceremonies is Miss Belle Bowden. Assistant Principal
So the “Wreckers” slunk back into their caves like the snakes that they were and nothing more was heard from them. Willing to destroy an educational opportunity for the children of the Arroyo Grande Valley they received their comeuppance from a dedicated citizens group led an educated woman whose life had taught her that you must take no prisoners when it came to matters of principle.
Herald Recorder:The high school will be constructed on new lines. This ought not to be such a hard job with such workers as Mr. Newsom, Mr. Fowler and Mrs. Paulding at the helm. The high school district and the people will fall right in and carry them out. We must have no more “Dog in the manger practice.”
Arroyo Grande High School, built 1904
Arroyo Grande High School today numbers more than 2,000 students. It is a California Distinguished school and boasts a 96% graduation rate. All of this grown from a tiny school with no building of its own founded in 1895. Today, one of the districts middle schools is named for Clara Edwards Paulding’s daughter, Ruth who taught for over thirty years in the district. Ruth Paulding taught both my father and my uncle. My children both attended Paulding middle school. The Paulding family home is now a state park museum and is open to the public.
On a final note. History like all of life is a very flexible thing. The issues written about here are still with us today in perhaps a slightly different form but nonetheless they are still bones of contention. Educational issues are never truly finally fixed. This has been an extremely interesting story to write about. All I can say is that, be like Clara, do your homework, work hard at educating yourself about educational issues and don’t be afraid. History tends to treat women as subtext, but be assured that, just as today, they were a serious factor in 1901 Arroyo Grande.
Miss Ruth Paulding.
Notes:
*The cover photo is of the new grammar school that replaced the one destroyed by fire. It was razed in 1931.
*Professor Nicholas Murray Butlers opinion that schools should be run by “College Educated Bureaucrats” is now the norm.
*Administrative bureaucrats posited that discipline should only be meted out by “Qualified Professionals.”
*Neither Tom Meherin, Charley Phoenix or Louis Phillips graduated with their class in 1901 though they were all from prominent and well off families and their fathers were supporters of the high school.
*The High School did lose its accreditation. My grandmother, Annie Gray graduated from the eighth grade in the spring of 1901 from Arroyo Grande grammar and would begin as a freshman that fall. Because she intended to enter the University of California she was forced to travel down to Santa Maria for high school where she graduated in 1904. She was a graduate of Cal, class of 1908.
*$500.00 in 1900 money is the equivalent of more than $18,000.00 today. It would have been a devastating fine.
*The white feather is a widely recognized symbol. It has, among other things, represented cowardice or conscientious pacifism; as in A. E. W. Mason’s 1902 book “The Four Feathers”. In Britain during the First World War, it was often given to males out of uniform by women to shame them publicly into signing up for the slaughterhouse in France. The true origins of the term are lost to history but Billy Buck certainly knew it was meant to show cowardice.
*R. Musick was a rancher in the upper Arroyo Grande and was the father of well known author and historian Madge Musick Ditmas who wrote a column on local history for the Herald for over thirty years . He is credited with being one of the county’s first grape growers.
*Robert English the town undertaker displayed my great-grandfather John Edward Shannon in his coffin behind the window of his parlor on Branch Street in 1924. I went to school with his grandson Jack, who is my life long friend.
*Communications marked as ‘without prejudice’ cannot be used by the other party as evidence in court. This means that parties can speak openly about the matters in dispute without the risk of the other party using that information against them later.
*The $2.50 a month is roughly equal to $90. 00 today. A serious levy for 1900.
*The four young ladies that graduated in 1901 were the remains of a freshman class of 18, including 6 boys.
*Coon song or “Turkey in the Straw” is a folk tune that been around in the United States for almost 200 years. With lyrics clearly intended to parody the speech of African-Americans in the rural South, it became a staple of minstrel shows and blackface acts into the twentieth century. It was a popular black-faced minstrel show song and one of the most popular sheet music covers for the song is dominated by an image of a caricatured black man. In sum, it appears that most credible sources date “Old Zip Coon” as the earlier song. “Turkey in the Straw” is adapted from it. The song illustrates the systemic and casual racism of the time. The civil war was part of the experience for many Arroyo Grandeans, many having fought in or migrated west from the border states. A large number of citizens had come out of Missouri after the war and brought prejudices with them.
*The Boot Black is another racially centered song. History shows that though it seems that no real changes have been made in our country’s conversation with race the opposite is true. The kind of overt racism presented in this music would not be tolerated today, at least in public.
*Prejudice against the Chinese was also extreme at the time. The Chinese Exclusion Act was approved on May 6, 1882. It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur.Jan 17, 1882. Following the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a period known as the “Driving Out” era was born. In this period, anti-Chinese Americans physically forced Chinese communities to flee to other areas.
*You will note that my grandfather Jack Shannon sang at the 1901 graduation ceremony though he never attended a single day of high school. He also played on the high school baseball team. Such was life in small town America at the turn of the twentieth century.
*And finally, Little Bald Willis Buck never went to law school. He lost and the judge never paid up. He died in Avila Beach, CA in 1933. In the ultimate irony, all of his three children went to high school.
*Patrick Moore ran for supervisor against Gilliam in 1902 and reclaimed his seat by a large margin.
*On a final note, the author went to school with the descendants of nearly all the families written about in this article. Patchett, Fink, Harloe, Phoenix, Donovan, Newsom, Fowler, Miossi, Jatta, Moore, Gray, English, Swigert and the others who still reside in our county.
Michael Shannon lives in Arroyo Grande and is a graduate of Arroyo Grande high school as were his father and uncle, 1928 and 1930. Both of his sons are AGHS grads also. He, his wife and his brother and sister-in-law all taught in the school district.
People prefer to find order and beauty in the past. The heritage business is devoted to making sure they do. Textbooks are written which carefully polish the past until it shines.The silk ropes strung before the exhibit are meant to keep you out. The partition is to block your view. There is no place you can stand to see all the parts at once. Much of history is the shadow of somthing, blurred, which fails to to mark the place where an event, almost familiar, once was. Much history has runoff like water after a storm. It’s blown by the wind into nothing. Sometimes, from the tail of the eye an image appears. You have caught an instant of transparency, then the present draws the veil. This is a tiny drop of that local history, long, forgotten.
Arroyo Grande Herald: Sept. 10, 1898.
There are a number of citizens who are anxious on one ground or another that the educational facilities of the Arroyo Grande region should not have a high school….
So began the editorial laying out of the back and forth war between the factions who were at odds over the continuation of Arroyo Grande High School.
Arroyo Grande Herald: There will be a third stakes race Saturday at the Arroyo Grande Chataqua grounds between Jake See’s “Jennie T” and Will Heath’s “Perrine,” an eighth of a mile for a $ 50.00 purse. ($1,9750.00 )
In the very beginning Don Francisco Branch had sent for his sister, asking her to come out to California to take in hand the teaching of his children and those of his employees sometime before 1848. She made the trip from Scipio, New York to California by sail from New York to Panama, crossed the isthmus by mule and sailed north to California arriving in San Francisco in 1848. Escorted by a party of Rancheros returning to their ranches in the Cow Counties, she arrived safely after a trip of around 7,000 miles. She spent three to five months on the trip. She survived Bandidos, yellow fever, malaria, bad food, sea sickness and a great deal of discomfort. The trip cost between three and four hundred dollars. Getting to the west coast cost roughly $11,000.00 in todays dollars. Francis Branch could afford it. Most travelers were wealthy enough to pay their own way. This meant that most immigrants had some education and important skill in order to pay their own way. The poor stayed home.
Don Francisco Ziba Branch, sailor, mountain man, trapper storekeeper and Ranchero. Litho Print from 1860’s.
Miss Branch taught in the Branch home of her brother for five years. She did not speak Spanish, though it was the universal language of California before the gold rush. She learned quickly enough. She taught basic reading, writing and arithmetic along with drawing and music. The children taught her Spanish and how to ride horseback in the Californio style where women rode astride like a man. Once her students were old enough they were sent up to San Francisco to be “Finished.”
Arroyo Grande school, 1867. The first after the township was formed. SCHS photo
In 1867 Francisco Branch deeded a plot of land on todays Nevada street and a small wooden schoolhouse was built there. It was the first.
Arroyo Grande grew exponentially after the War Between the States. As always, wars create a world of widows and orphans. Add to this hundreds of thousands of veterans of the brutal fighting it is no wonder people felt the need to pick up and go. Go west it was and many came here.
Large landowners in California, the original Rancheros had little choice in finding a way to profit from their vast holdings. With statehood, organized government demanding taxes and the decline of trade with the east, the Ranchos were sold or were broken up, subdivided and along with active boosters who advertised nationwide, small farm took on a new importance. Many of the new residents were veterans. They brought their families with them and were familiar with schools in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, where many came from, the wanted the same opportunities for children here.
Arroyo Grande Herald:The Philllips boys have shot a Condor in the upper Lopez. It measured over nine feet wingtip to wingtip.
The teachers were no longer adventurers or men and women who had some education that supplied the first decades of schooling in the Arroyo Grande valley but graduates of the Normal Schools. The California State Normal School was the first teaching college in state, founded on May 2, 1862. The school later evolved into San José State University in San Jose. The southern branch campus evolved into the University of California, Los Angeles.
California State Normal School, San Jose. 1888. Calisphere photo archive
The San Jose school was created when the State of California took over a normal school that educated San Francisco teachers in association with that city’s high school system. This school was founded in 1857 and was generally known as either the San Francisco Normal School or Minns Evening Normal School.
San Luis Obispo Tribune:County hunters asked the Board of Supervisors to set a bounty on Blue Jays. The birds eat the eggs of quail and other game birds and reduce the populations. They have also been known to kill small children. The board will take this under advisement.
Normal schools were developed and built primarily to train elementary level teachers for the public schools. The term “normal school” is based on the French école normale, a sixteenth-century school with practice classrooms where model teaching practices were taught to teacher candidates.
San Jose State Normal School students about 1896. Calisphere
The Anna S. C. Blake Manual Training School, opened in 1889 was located in Santa Barbara, taught home economics and skills like sewing and cooking. Sloyd, a Scandinavian system of handicraft education, was also offered at the training school. Almost all of the original teachers in our town were graduates of one of these two schools. Margaret Phoenix Harloe, Hattie and Mamie Tyler, Molly O’Conner Moore, Gladys Walker Sullivan, and young women of the Rice, Poole, Conrad, Carpenter and Ide families.
Education was important to families with children. They wanted the best they could get but large landowners, businessmen and those with no children in the home were far less concerned about education and much more concerned with the taxes that supported the schools and that’s where the trouble started.
San Luis Obispo Tribune:The proposal to apply for a Carnegie Library in this place has met with stiff opposition from certain taxpayers. The application has been tabled until more study can be done. The opposing parties claim there is not the slightest reason to provide free books to the public.They state that it is a well know fact that excessive reading leads to sloth and indolence.
In 1893 when the high school was proposed a vote was held using the Australian voting system. It simply required that the voter write yes or no on a slip of paper and drop it in the box provided. There was no requirement that voters be registered only that they be personally known by the clerk accepting ballots. The system worked quite well as there were less than sixteen thousand people in the entire county. Arroyo Grande had a rough population of about 466. The demographic area covered the entire lower and upper Arroyo Grande valley. Oak Park, Los Berros, Cienega, and Oso Flaco, the Pismo and Nipomo votes were counted as well. A small population but they had pretensions.
The Arroyo Grande Herald: Saturday, June 3, 1893.“From the official returns of the election of May 27th, 1893 proposing the formation of a Union High School District a large aggregate of the votes tallied from the districts proposed a large percentage, 181 yea, 11 nay, the election is hereby carried. The nay votes came from the following districts; Arroyo Grande, three, Branch, two, Oak Park, four, West Los Berros, one and Los Berros one. All other districts were carried in a convincing fashion. We will have a high school.
In those Nay votes were the seeds of rebellion which began showing itself very quickly. Each of the smaller elementary schools would pay a portion of the tax needed to fund the high school as the California Supreme Court had ruled that taxing landowners to pay for high schools was illegal under the states constitution. It only took a few years for the big ranchers to figure out that if they could get the small elementary school districts to leave the union of schools which supported the high school, the school would fail for lack of funds. A number of them went to work. They weren’t shy with their opinions either. The newspapers of the south county reported on the doings on a regular basis. The Arroyo Grande Herald, owned by Stephen Clevenger who had arrived in Arroyo Grande from Missouri by way of Santa Cruz, promptly founded a wife, Edith Finney with whom he started his first paper there. He came down to Arroyo Grande, started a new paper for which he was owner, editor and publisher. Known as the Weekly Herald, Clevenger quickly demonstrated that he was without fear when it came to reporting the doings in the valley. He was definitely pro school and went after the men he called “Wreckers” with a vengeance.
Arroyo Grande Herald: Lodge no. 258, I. O. O. F.The Angel of death has invaded our mystic circle and removed from us our beloved brother, I. D. Miller. In his death our order has lost an active and useful member and the community a useful person. A.F. Parsons, Secretary.
Saturday go to town, Branch Street, Arroyo Grande. Photo, California Historical Society. Town constable Henry Llewellyn was shot in the doorway of the Capitol Saloon, left, and died the next day in the Ryan Hotel. Ryan Hotel is the large building distant left. Peter “Pete” Olohan’s building is the tall building on the right. There are eight saloons in this photo. Saturday afternoon was shopping day for the rural ranchers and farmers. A time to stock up on necessities, get the local gossip and scheme and deal politically.
Self styled important men objected to the high school and met at Pete Olohan’s saloon on Branch Street to hack out a way to get the school closed. Sitting around a table on a Saturday afternoon while their wives did the weekly shopping, they pulled on cheap cigars and passed a bottle around and discussed strategies for closing the school and getting themselves out from under the burden of paying a tax they didn’t agree with. Daniel Donovan owner of substantial acreage in the west Los Berros section, Ed Newsom, Hotel owner and farmer from the Newsom Springs ranch on the old Santa Manuela Rancho, Bernard Miossi owner of Sycamore Springs and Willis Buck who was ranching on the Corral de Piedra and Oak Park area planned a campaign to relieve themselves of the property taxes that supported schools, particularly the new high school. Sitting with them was Judge Venable from San Luis Obispo who controlled the big Biddle Ranch in the northern end of the valley.Their scheme was to find a legal way to close down the high school district, and if no strictly legal way could be found, well….
The Newsom Sulfur Hot Springs Hotel, 1887. Calisphere photo
Arroyo Grande Herald:Charles S. Clark M.D. Professionalcalls attended to, day or night.*
The group chose young Willis Buck as their spokesman as he was studying law and being advised by Judge Venable and apparently had a big chip on his shoulder. It pretty evident that Stephen Clevenger of the Herald didn’t care for him as evidenced by this description which he published soon after the meeting at Olohan’s. “Little Wrecker Billy Buck” or “Little Baldy Billy Buck” were terms the paper used to get under his skin, both of which just made him angry. Clevenger kept it up.
The Wreckers put the first part of their scheme in motion soon after the September 4th, 1897 meeting at Olohan’s. The began to pressure the clerks of the board who held the elementary schools vote to terminate the Union with the high school, thus depriving the school of it’s main source of income, the districts elementary schools who paid into the high school operating fund. They also called upon County Superintendent Messer to schedule a special vote to elect a new High School board. No regular vote was scheduled but political pressure and the thought that the voters, all men of property of course, would support the school as they had done in 1893 when it was first approved, convinced Messer this election would end the same way. Women who were likely the most concerned for their children were still more than twenty years away from suffrage and were excluded.
The third leg of the plan was to pressure the voters of the old fifth supervisorial district to vote out the incumbent, Patrick Moore. He had announced for a third four year term and was known to be a supporter of all schools.
Patrick Moore was born in Cavan, Cavan, Ireland and had immigrated with nearly his entire family to the old Guadalupe Rancho in the Santa Maria area. A very successful rancher, farmer and… as he always listed on his census forms, Capitalist. He owned wide swaths of property in the Santa Maria and Arroyo Grande area. He had spent eight years as a supervisor in was was still known in the later nineties as the “Bloody fifth,” a sobriquet that was very well deserved. Hardly a week passed without a report of a murder, Saloon shooting, accidental death by gunshot, crushed by accident, dismemberment, fratricide and the killings of wives, children and husbands and neighbors. The newspapers from the Paso Robles Leader to the Arroyo Grande Herald faithfully listed the mayhem. If a person survived all the above, they still might be poisoned, killed by bad food or eating too many green Cherry’s. They could be shot in cold blood by the road agents and bandits which infested the still rural “Cow Counties.” For children, dying before five was also a distinct possibility. Horses routinely caused mayhem, kicking men to death, crushing and running away with their owners happened all the time. A spooked horse reared and then backed a buggy with its driver and her infant daughter over the side of the railroad bridge and miracle of miracle, no one was hurt unless it was the horses dignity. There is is only one recorded legal hanging in the county, all the rest, and there were many over the previous 45 years, had been impromptu. The latest, a lynching of a fifteen year old and his father from the Pacific Coast Railroad bridge in 1886 by “men unknown.” A curious part of that event is that the men were certainly not unknown and were in fact, some of the leading citizens of Arroyo Grande. An older man who spoke at my grammar school when I was 11, told us of his father being called out at night to assist in the lynching of the man and his son. He said the men doing the hanging were known to all, their names were an open secret. A state detective was ordered in to investigate the extra-legal murders but interviews with the towns citizens yielded no one iota of information on the identities of the men who did the deed. Mrs. Eldridge’s daughter Missouri was one of the children who witnessed the dangling bodies the next morning on the way to school.
The Arroyo Grande Herald: Many Children See Bodies.Missouri Eldridge, chattering gaily with her chum approached the bridge over which the children crossed each day to the schoolhouse. “Oh, Zoo! There the most terrible thing on the bridge.” Exclaimed one of the group of breathless girls rushing back to her. But Missouri was not to be plagued. “Don’t be silly.” she replied sedately. “You are only trying to fool me because this is April Fools Day.” Then, her eyes widened as she stared past the chalk white faces of the other girls for she saw they were not fooling, indeed. She saw, hanging from the bridge, the bodies of a man and a boy, hung during the night. She ran home to tell her mother.**
No legal measure was ever filed against them. My own great-grandfather was known to carry the Smith and Wesson 41 caliber pistol he had used as a Santa Clara County deputy sheriff in his front pocket on occasion. Very little law enforcement existed beyond the town constable. Nefarious deeds were seldom punished. Most citizens seemed to take a certain Ho Hum attitude about it all. What is common fare is barely noted, even today.
The offending bridge. Home to buggy accidents, impromptu lynchings and even an occasional train. Pacific Coast Railroad, photographer unknown.
The bridge was one of only two ways to cross Arroyo Grande creek. There were few houses on the east side an area that was still mostly small holdings and farms. The dirt paths and buggy crossing illustrate the fact that it was routinely used by pedestrians, wagons and the train. This bridge would be washed out in the floods of 1911.
Arroyo Grande Herald: September 8th, 1897:Yesterday at the Cienega just south of Arroyo Grande near supervisor Moore’s home a sad accident occurred . The ten year od son of Mr and Mrs Costa who live at the old stagecoach stop along the Nipomo road was playing with a loaded gun which accidentely discharged killing his infant brother. The parents of the children were away from the home at the time. The Coroners inquest was in accordance with the above facts.
The Costa home, lower Bridge Street and Nipomo Road, late 1880’s. Arroyo Grande Herald Recorder, Costa Family Photo.
In 1898, the superintendent of county schools realized that he was up against real opposition to the Arroyo Grande high school. Screeching and whining had finally reached the point that anti-school “wreckers” were on the march and meant to throttle the high school once and for all. They were aiming for Supervisor Patrick Moore and citizens wondered where they would strike after that.
San Luis Obispo Tribune:Mrs Strobridge will have her yellow dog safely in her possession. City Marshall Cook confirmed her that his brother, City Marshall of Morgan Hill has found the dog and arrested the man who swiped him. The yellow dog will be brought back to this county and will be made to tell what he knows.
It was reported that Supervisor Moore would sit on the Dias at the courthouse in San Luis Obispo and with a sphinx-like expression and was rarely readable until he made his decision. He was also immune to bribery. As a supporter of education and a rich man, he was bulletproof when it came to lending support and his personal fortune to the school district. For many years and into the decade to come he consistently used his money to pay tuition for boys and girls who were off to school to become professionals. Numbers of young women including my grandmother were recipients of his largesse. No school was ever given his name but a local elementary school carries the name of a young woman who became a teacher thanks to Patrick and Sarah Moore’s generosity. Obviously in order to guarantee the success of their scheme, the Wreckers had to boot him out of office.
Annie Shannon nee Gray, The honorable Patrick Moore and Mary “Molly O” O’Connor schoolteacher. 1900. Shannon Family Photo.
The election of 1898 saw many scenes that would be entirely familiar today. The Wreckers put up a candidate named John Gilliam. Gilliam had been the supervisor for the Santa Margarita district but was tossed out after a single term. Moving from that district to Pismo Beach he declared himself a candidate for the fifth against the incumbent, the Honorable Patrick Moore the two time holder of the seat. There were three challengers initially but after some closed door meetings two of them “graciously” withdrew their names from consideration. The Herald reported this incident with more than a touch of snark, stating that “What promises were made is unknown but it is certain they were made and if Gilliam wins will be fulfilled.”
Arroyo Grande Herald: October 8th, 1898.Say! It was rather nice for Fowler and Eddy to step down and out and make way for Gilliam wasn’t it? Such exhibitions of “Good for the order” are so seldom met with.”
Pat Moore was a popular man in the fifth and was considered a fiscal conservative. In the way that politics works, his record as such was used against him. In the last quarter of ’98 he had voted to do away with the ground squirrel bounty of .01 cent for each tail turned in as a waste of good taxpayers money. He stated that 21, 687 tails was just a drop in the bucket compared to squirrels breeding far faster than they could be killed. This was used by the Wreckers as proof of his anti-farming bias. He was bad for farms and ranches. He had also voted against the purchase of all new walnut furniture for the Superior Courts office of Judge Venable, thus showing disrespect for the courts and law enforcement. He objected to the high rates set by the county for road sprinkling which no doubt cost him the vote of Martin Fly who sprinkled the dirt streets of Arroyo Grande including the road in front of Pat’s own house. He was in favor of the ban on the export of Pismo clams, Abalone, and Seals, the ordinance which he authored in 1892 which he said, “Will reduce their populations and show no advantage to our county.” He also was not in favor of the county building a road from Arroyo Grande to the Pozo district over the Santa Lucia mountain range which would only benefit the large ranches along it’s route, the cost to be paid by the counties taxpayers. All sensible but when has sensible ever entered political considerations.
Pat Moore, a Republican and staunch conservative always tended to be frugal with county monies. He didn’t believe taxpayers should be on the hook for the benefit of the wealthier citizens of the county. A perfect example was his almost always negative vote on propositions that the counties Roadmasters take over the many toll roads across the districts. The Cuesta Road was still a toll road and rather poorly maintained by it’s owners who petitioned the supervisors, asking that the county purchase it and relieved them of its maintenance because, they claimed, they couldn’t afford to do so themselves. “Nonsense, “He said, “they made a good profit from the most heavily traveled road in the county and did the least amount of work on it as they could get away with.” The completion of the Southern Pacific over the grade had cost them most of there freight traffic and they were desperate to unload it. They would certainly make a profit from any deal with the county. Supervisors were just as canny as politicians as they are today and ultimately bought the right of way which then operated as a financial loss to the county but grew the supervisors power base and individually cost them nothing, the burden being passed on to the taxpayer, most of whom would never even use the road. Spun properly this stamped Pat Moore as anti-progress and anti-business. It was to cost him his job.
The Honorable Patrick Moore, 4th district supervisor, Official Photo. San Luis Obispo County, 3 terms, 1890-1898, 1902-1906. Shannon Family photo.
Even the Herald, a paper run by Pat’s friend Stephen Clevenger could not afford to turn away advertising from the opposition which bought ads like the one below.
Arroyo Grande Herald:“Say! Have you seen the recommendations of J W Gilliam in the press? They present him as a “Clean Man.” Why don’t Pete Olohan and some other good Christian men take Pat Moore down to the creek and give him a good bath so he won’t be handicapped in the supervisorial race”.
Stephen Clevenger and Pat Moore were friends and Moore, an astute politician did not force Clevenger to take sides but instead ran his attacks on Gilliam in the Paso Robles Leader, the Cayucos Oracle and San Luis Breeze. He was shrewd politician and wanted no one to know where he stood.
Arroyo Grande Herald:“Say!There is some very wild guessing which way the election will go in Arroyo Grande. The Republicans claim the town by 82 majority and the Fusionists ( Democrats and Peoples Party) by over a hundred. They both claim to have the figures to prove it.”
Pat Moore was a well known patron of William Ryans saloon on Branch Street which was considered by the “Fusionist” party to be the nest in which the Republican vipers lived. It was his defacto office and where he held court and did his so-called shady deals along with his cronies Ryan, Corbit, Meherin, Beckett and the Rice brothers.
Arroyo Grande Herald: Yesterday rifle pellets were seen chasing a patron of Ryans Saloon as he scampered up Tabernacle Hill. Constable Whiteley has secured a horse and is in hot pursuit.
When the ballots were returned to the county courthouse to be counted, it was found that many clerks had not signed and certified the vote count, so Judge Venable locked the boxes up in his courtroom while his clerks re-counted them. The judge ruled that only his court clerks could do the counting, He said the Democrats were notoriously corrupt and could not be trusted. So the Democratic officials were given the boot. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Republican candidate Jim Gilliam walked away with the election and Pat Moore went home.
the Screechers and Wreckers next used their power as wealthy and influential landowners to lobby the clerks of the individual elementary school boards to withdraw from the Union High School district. All twelve schools did vote on this as each clerk had the individual power to do so. All the schools other than the town school had few students, Black Lake School polled just 21 boys and girls, most not landowners or in many cases, even US citizens. Enrollment lists show large numbers of names that could only be recent immigrants and unable to vote or even to read and write in English. Voting to withdraw by the various clerks of the boards must have been comparatively easy. The advantage to the clerk of each school was that they no longer would have to apportion some of their budget to support the high school. Only Arroyo Grande, Branch and Santa Manuela schools elected to stay.
The newspaper, referring to the opposition as rattlesnakes published figures showing that Newsom Springs school had paid in just $28.07 to the High School fund but received nearly $400.00 dollars from the county in recompense. Clevenger took this to mean that the schools themselves were not the main issue but the cost of taxation on the big ranch owners who made up less than 30% of the taxable acreage was. This made it a purely personal and selfish issue. He kept his paper hammering at them.
Arroyo Grande Herald:May 28th, 1898:Miss Edith Jatta and Miss Edith Carpenter went down to Nipomo yesterday after school on a visit to the first Edith’s sister, Mrs E. C. Loomis. They return in the morning.***
Francis Branch who started the first school in the valley for his children and those of his workers was more than fifteen years in his grave and his ranches had been deeded to his children who, in many cases married them out of the Branch family or failed as ranchers and sold the property to speculators and developers who had little connection to the land and the people on it. For example, The big Biddle ranch, once Branche’s Rancho Arroyo Grande and large portions of the Santa Manuela rancho were controlled by Judge Venable, he of the Walnut office furniture. He who we will hear from again.
San Luis Obispo Tribune:Some person with a can of poison for dogs has made a great success of his nocturnal adventures yesterday and quite a number of canines of more or less value, have turned their toes to the daisies.
After the by election to choose new clerks for the Board of Control and against all expectations, the “Wreckers” controlled six of the eleven seats on the district board. Bernard Miossi of the Sycamore Springs Ranch represented the Pismo school, “Bald” Willy Buck sat for Oak Park, Frank Newsom son of D F Newsom and founder of Newsom Springs school whose father had originally supported education and built the school. Frank didn’t like the fact that school taxes bit him in the pocketbook, Daniel Donovan from the lower Los Berros school district, Judge Venable from Santa Manuela school and James Beckett, a real estate speculator property owner and board member from Branch school figured they had the winning hand and set about the “Wrecking.” It was a case of the voters apparently not believing what was in plain sight as they still so often do and voting the way their bosses told them to do or not voting at all.
Arroyo Grande Herald:Mrs Robert English is expected home tonight fro San Francisco where she has been this week selecting her spring millinery.
San Luis Obispo Tribune: September 18th:School Tax Levy Fixed Yesterday. During the afternoon proceddings of the Board of Supervisors Budget allowances were set for the coming 1900 school year.
The only incident if note before the board was the matter of making an estimate to maintain the high school and over this the conflict raged merrily for hours.
Willis B. Buck of Oak Park and Bernardo Miossi, the former the president and the latter, the secretary of the board of control appeared before the board of supervisors and argued that the board should adopt the estimate of $ 775.00 made by a majority of the board of control to maintain the high school for the new school year.
Mister Orville Pence appeared on behalf of the citizens committee of the Arroyo Grande high school and demanded that the estimate be raised to something more than the previous years budget of $ 1,700.00. He stated that any reduction of the budget would make it impossible to keep the school open.
Willis Buck argued that there was little need for the school and that it was a needless burden on the taxpayers. Questioned on what the students were to do he stated they could attend school at the old Mission school or the parents could hire tutors. He said that eight students had already made plans to attend San Luis Obispo high school. When asked if this might be a financial burden on the parents he said he believed those that could afford to send their young people to San Luis Obispo would do so and those that could not were not really in need of any higher education.
There was much spirited back and forth but in the end the board sustained the estimate of the board of control and fixed the lower rate accordingly. The board was split 50-50 and chairman Gilliam cast the deciding vote.
The opponents of the Arroyo Grande Union High School won out. With the chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Mister Gilliam, elected from the Arroyo Grande district in 1998, voting to break the tie, it was ordered that the budget for the high school be reduced as requested by the board of control. The ousting of Pat Moore from his supervisors seat had its intended result.
With the budget firmly in hand, the high school board promptly voted in a pay schedule for principal, vice-principal and teachers. The principal, A F Parsons, the former county surveyor was to have his salary reduced by sixty eight percent. An article in the Santa Maria Times put it succinctly;
Santa Maria Times: September 11, 1898:The “Oppositionists” concocted a plan by which the high school will be stopped. They have fixed the salaries for the coming academic year, 1899-1900, as follows: Principal, $40 per month, Assistant, $25; Janitor$1; Rent for the school building per month, $5, and incidental expenses for the term, $2.50. Last school year the Principal received $125.00. The two high school teachers were reduced to $1, and $2, dollars a week. As it is now impossible to secure teachers at those salaries the “Wreckers” have made their point. The school will be unable to open in the fall of 1900.
San Luis Obispo Breeze:Many of the young ladies from Arroyo Grande have been visiting lately. San Luis Obispo may be a little dilatory in the way of street improvements but when it comes to pretty girls she is way up in the head of the procession. go down the street on any sunny afternoon and you will see more beautiful women to the square inch than any town in California. Up on the train today visiting our fair city were the misses Tootsie Lierley, Maggie Phoenix, Annie Gray, and Aggie Donovan. They were accompanied by Miss Edith Fesler of Santa Maria. (Teenagers all, 13 and 14 years old)***
Note: The cover photo of the young girls, top row L-R Annie “Nita” Gray, Margaret “Mamie” Tyler and Agnes “Aggie” Donovan. Bottom L-R “Tootsie” Lierley and Margaret “Maggie” Phoenix. Annie Gray was the authors grandmother. “Mamie” Tyler would become a teacher and teach in Western Washington in a log cabin school. Maggie would Marry Archie Harloe and teach nearly her entire career in the Arroyo Grande School District. Margaret Harloe elementary school is named for her.
*Doctor Charles Clark was affectionately known as the baby Doctor. He buzzed around the valley delivering children by day and night including my own aunt Mariel who was born at her parents home in Bee Canyon up in the Verde district in 1916.
*Missouri Eldridge was the niece of Pete Olohan, who was very likely another participant in the hanging.
*I’ve often wondered who their chaperone was. They wouldn’t have been allowed to go without one in 1900.
*The Misses Jatta and Carpenter’s fathers were well known members of the lynch party.
Arroyo Grande Oracle: The Arroyo Grande High School class of ’99 will have no commencement this year. Arrangements were being made for the affair and undoubtedly it would have been a grand affair and would certainly have obliterated much of the ill feeling towards the school by our neighbors who dominate the school’s board of control. Certain comments by students and faculty in the Herald caused the ceremony to be declared off by Willis Buck, chairman of the Board of Control. If the students and teachers are not willing to work to build up the school they cannot blame those who are prejudiced for trying to wreck the institution and cause disbandment of the High School district….
When I was a little guy I would sit at the kitchen table and listen to my parents talk. I wasn’t home schooled, I went to a regular school, a two room one nearly a century old but my real education came as I sat at that grey Formica table and listened to lessons from my parents and their friends. I don’t think they saw themselves as teachers but those little lessons have been rattling around in my head. I’ve been trying to catch up with that time all of my life.
My dad was a big teaser. He loved to tease his mother, my grandmother, who was easily embarrassed and would blush at the drop of a hat. He especially he liked to work on us, his three boys. Almost every thing he said had some little joke woven into it. Some play on words that he knew would confound us. Teach us too. What would you expect from a man who kept a very well thumbed World Almanac right on the kitchen table next to the salt and pepper.
Some of his talk made no sense to me. Such as, who was Leonard Rong and why was he the opposite of Leonard Wright. I heard right and wrong. No one explained this to me. They just tossed out names as they spoke with no explanation added. I’m sure mom and dad never thought twice about explaining who these people were, we were just little kids and didn’t know those men. I had seen Leonard Rong and he looked all right to me, nothing about him seemed wrong. When I asked why he was wrong, dad said, “Why he’s a man out standing in his fields.” What did standing in the field have to do with it. The little mind tried to fill in the gaps.
I mean, did “Dick Dock” have a real name or was the eponymous one just too good not to use. And how about George Arita? George, what Japanese man used the name George? I knew Kaz, Stone, Sab, Haruo and Aki, but George, it didn’t seem correct. There was no explanation for “Jinks” either, or “Ace,” “Bunny” “or “Arza.” Ace was a cool name, Arza seemed weird and what grown up is named Bunny. Seriously, we just though they were making a joke.
My dad sold some of his vegetables to a Mister Get in Los Angeles. I gathered that he was a Chinese man which confused me because I wasn’t sure whether Mister was Chinese or not, and did he go get something, was that his job, getting things. So confusing. Later on I went with my father to Mister Get’s home in Silverlake and had dinner with he and Mrs. Get. It was pressed duck. What! What did they mean pressed duck? Did they mean it was picked up off the highway or was it smashed by a heavy weight. Dad said it was cooked with a brick. How is that even possible. There was no telling.
What about “Coot?” I didn’t think that was real name for a person. I mean the little black ducks with yellow feet that swam in the Oceano lagoon were Coots, but a person. I didn’t think so but when I asked Pop about it he just laughed and said, “Silly Boy.”
My great aunt Anna lived in Santa Ana. Well, OK, but who was she and why was she ever mentioned? Dad said she was a spinster. A What? Was she good at spinning around, did she spin webs? Please explain. I saw her once, she was dumpy, another confusing word, had her hair tightly curled as maiden aunts did in 1955 and turned out to be a seriously vague person, at least to me. She wore a blue dress, pointy spectacles and sturdy shoes. There was no spinning.
We wondered why aunt Mickey was named after Mickey Mouse and my aunt June after the sixth month. Was she born then? Were grownups deliberately trying to confuse their children? Maybe it was a trick my aunt started so that we’d remember her birthday and get her a present.
My dad did not swear, or if he did he sure didn’t do it in front of us. He did have a few choice words he used though. Once he called a man a chiseler. I thought that meant he was a carpenter and built things but at the same time I knew the man sold groceries so how could he be chiseling? It just didn’t make any sense. Dad once called someone and S. B. in my hearing and being about six or seven, I said, “Daddy, whats an S.B.?” He explained that it meant the Silva Brothers, Manuel and Johnny who farmed next to us. When I mentioned it at school, Manny jr. took a swing at me which made it all the more confusing.
My uncle Jackie had some phrases he liked to use. He would say “It’s the Berries.” What in the world were the berries? Did he mean we were going to eat some or pick them, he never explained. How big was a bunch of malarkey? Was it something that needed to be counted or possibly weighed. I once heard him call someone a “Dumb Dora,” to which my dad replied, “She ain’t so dumb.” They both laughed at this. Was it some kind of secret code? We didn’t know. Made me feel like a “Dumb Cluck.”
My mom told dad that my cousin Brucie was a Holy Terror. I thought she meant he tore up hymn books or Bibles in church. Later on I learned from himself that he really was, he smashed my toy truck and hit me with the same stick for telling on him. Mom was right as she so often was.
Gobbledygook, Hodgepodge and flabbergasted were enough to make your head hurt. Parents could talk in a language that was almost foreign or maybe it was and children were not supposed to understand.
My aunt Eva talked to me about her dog Skipper and said that after Thanksgiving dinner she was going to walk him. What in the world did that mean? Every dog I knew could already walk. We never had any dogs that couldn’t. Matter of fact they almost always ran. From here to there and after the pickup, the tractors or they ran in circles around my dad when he was in the fields. Aunt Eva lived on Orange Street in Santa Maria which was the largest city I had ever seen so I assumed that strange goings on happened there which I knew nothing about. The street wasn’t orange either, it was grey colored, so, see what I mean?
My parents being silly. 1943. Shannon Family Photo
Then there was the cornbread. Cornbread was a staple of our diet in the fifties and I’d say all the kids liked it. My mom didn’t use recipes much, she cooked from scratch, another word that didn’t seem to make any sense but cornbread was easy and in lean years it might be the main course. The kids ate it with butter, my dad did too but my mother put it in a glass of milk, stirred it and ate it with a spoon. That seemed so strange to me, I mean, we were four against one when it came to eating it the right way I think. She said it was because she was from the south but like all confusion she wasn’t from the south, she was from California, born and raised. Her great grandparents were from Mississippi and came through Texas to Anaheim but that wasn’t her. She never traveled there. I just though that parents would naturally be on the same page. Boy was I wrong about that. And what exactly is the same page?
Another one; what’s a Mairzy Doat? It simply could not be explained. Dad said it was a song. Must be in a foreign language because I’d never seen either a Doat or a Mairzy. Maybe like a horse? I don’t know.
When my dad got a little transistor radio he told me that, “It was the greatest thing since sliced bread.” Come on Pop, everybody knows all bread is sliced. It comes in a blue and white checked plastic wrapper and its in pieces, nobody has to slice it. I knew he was pulling my leg then.
He once told me he drove out to the See Ranch and that it was out past Bunny’s on the way to Stony Creek. See the problem?
Was there no end to it? Please explain these things to me Dad. He said “I’ll do it when the cows come home, O K?”
He didn’t though, we lived in a time where children were seen but rarely heard. We would have to figure it all out ourselves. Maybe it would all be clear under the Blue Moon. I don’t know. I could be Rong.
atthetable2015 