The Voices of the Ranches

Painting of the Martin Ranch in Tennessee Valley

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 17928

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Ranches in California and the Marin County were established before the United States and they later coexisted with the military use of the Marin Headlands. This area combines Tribal, Mexican, and Portuguese cultures into what has been described as California Dairy history. Here you can listen to these stories as told by the people who lived and worked there.


For more on Marin Headlands Agriculture

 

Dairy farmers c1920s'

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 17928

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Yes. As I say, in today's way of living, you could say they were shacks, but we lived in them. You [know you] talk about discrimination what have you, and it was wonderful. God, we had milk to drink, meat to eat, we never starved. I think it was great - Mary Machado

 

• Mary and Tony Machado

  
  

  Mary and Tony Machado discussing dairy farming in the 1930s
  Audio Transcript

  Darcy Booth:                    This is November 27, 1993.

  Mary Machado:              Is that right? I don't even know.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    I'm here with Tony Machado and Mary Machado-Brazil. My name is Darcy Booth and they're here [00:00:30] to tell me a little bit about their experiences growing up in the Rodeo Valley area as dairy ranchers. This is for some of the benefits of the rangers doing their interpretation, that kind of thing, spanning the program and learning a little bit more about the dairy ranching history. I don't think we really know very much about that.

  Mary Machado:              To begin with, I don't know where they get Rodeo.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              There's a street coming out of Sausalito that we used to walk and come [00:01:00] up here to the old ranch, the big ranch called Rodeo Avenue, but that's probably the only thing I can think of.

  Darcy Booth:                    You pronounced it Rodeo [roa-deh-oh]?

  Mary Machado:              No. Well, in Sausalito yes, Rodeo. It's a street or road or whatever, but out here I never heard that name in all my born days.

  Darcy Booth:                    That's interesting, because people always come in and ask about that, and they also ask whether it should be pronounced Rodeo or Rodeo [roh-dee-O or roa-deh-oh] and we just say either one.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, which is [00:01:30] true, it's either way. As I say, this was Jolly Beach, and the lagoon, and Rancho La Punta, Ranch of the Point and that was it. This particular one, the little one. Now, the big ranch, which was up a little ways, I don't know what they called that one.

  Tony Machado:               I don't know what they called it either. We just called it the big ranch.

  Mary Machado:              That's right.

  Tony Machado:               The small ranch and the big ranch.

  Mary Machado:              Sam Silva owned both dairy [00:02:00] business. Now I don't know about the property, but I think it was a corporation or more than one owner.

  Darcy Booth:                    Then the Newmans, they were just-

  Mary Machado:              They were hired employees like we were.

  Darcy Booth:                    They didn't own any part of the business?

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Mary Machado:              She cooked for the men. She had a big troop of men up there.

  Darcy Booth:                    How many?

  Mary Machado:              Oh, I don't know but-

  Tony Machado:               About eight or 10 maybe.

  Mary Machado:              Oh, yeah, I think even more than that.

  Tony Machado:               More than that?

  Mary Machado:              Because she used to cook baked bread every single day. They had one daughter, [00:02:30] and she was there for many years. From there they went back to the Azores. We were here, I'm sure we came here in 1928, and we left here in 1932.

  Tony Machado:               '32.

  Darcy Booth:                    Where did you come here from?

  Mary Machado:              We came from Hayward, where we were, and we stayed up here.

  Darcy Booth:                    You'd been doing dairy ranching there too?

  Mary Machado:              Not in Hayward. My father had been goofing off there, without working. I haven't [00:03:00] really been-

  Tony Machado:               How long before that?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah we used to have in Tomales, they would have the dairy. This is where he and my other sister were born, in Tomales. Most of his life is in the dairy business. Not his business, but working for somebody else.

  Darcy Booth:                    He never owned his own business.

  Mary Machado:              Yes, he did. In 1938, we bought a business in Muir Beach.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh that's great.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, we [00:03:30] moved from here in 1932, moved to Sausalito. We lived there for six years.

  Darcy Booth:                    You did dairy when you were there?

  Tony Machado:               No, just lived in the house with my Dad, just working for wages at that time.

  Darcy Booth:                    That was when you were worked in the tunnel?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              I imagine so.

  Tony Machado:               He worked at WPA at that time. In 1938 that's when we moved. He bought his own business in Muir Beach.

  Mary Machado:              Then he sold it, what, in 1948. It was 10 years. [00:04:00] We were around there because I think we went in pretty near every ranch there in Muir Beach. Does not exist today. There's no ranches left, but anyway.

  Tony Machado:               Buildings are there, but no ranch. They sold that part.

  Mary Machado:              Because the rangers use those buildings. We had just built a new house.

  Darcy Booth:                    Before you sold?

  Mary Machado:              Before the state bought it.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              And told us to high tail it.

  Tony Machado:               You ever been over there?

  Darcy Booth:                    To Muir Beach? [00:04:30] I've been in the general area.

  Mary Machado:              From Muir Beach to Muir Woods, there's a road there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right, right. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

  Mary Machado:              That's where our house was.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really? Right over there. Right next to the Brazil.

  Mary Machado:              Right.

  Darcy Booth:                    They sort of bordered on each other?

  Tony Machado:               It was Brazil's ranch was the first building going from Muir Beach to Muir Woods. First buildings on the left, up the road there.

  Mary Machado:              We lived, there are no buildings left. That was before you get to it.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Those have all been dismantled. We lived in [00:05:00] them nevertheless.

  Darcy Booth:                    When you were down here, those buildings were already there? You didn't actually build them?

  Mary Machado:              Oh no, no. They were here. Yes. As I say, in today's way of living, you could say they were shacks, but we lived in them. You [know you] talk about discrimination what have you, and it was wonderful. God, we had milk to drink, meat to eat, we never starved. I think it was great, and as I told you, my [00:05:30] father was earning $30 a month.

  Darcy Booth:                    Which is pretty low.

  Mary Machado:              That's right.

  Darcy Booth:                    But you didn't really have, you never felt like you were really poor.

  Mary Machado:              Oh no, no, no.

  Tony Machado:               No, we always had plenty to eat, plenty of clothes and all that.

  Mary Machado:              My mother sewed, she'd make over clothes because people would give us clothes. No, no, we never, I can't see that ...

  Tony Machado:               We never went without.

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Tony Machado:               We [00:06:00] didn't have candy bars and ice cream, we didn't have those kind of things.

  Mary Machado:              Ordinarily if you got a new pair of shoes, that lasted you a year. You don't go around like today. I mean, it's so different. So different. We didn't have any hot water. We had running water in the house, but no hot water.

  Tony Machado:               No refrigerators.

  Mary Machado:              No. We had a wood stove.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you have electricity?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes. One night, this [00:06:30] I can remember, my sister Ida was a baby. We had a wood stove, I can just picture this kitchen. You walked in, the sink was on this side, which was the sink and a little drain board. Over here was the wood stove, and over here was the table. There was a big table to feed all these people. One night I had to warm milk for Ida on the wood stove, so I threw a piece of newspaper or something, just enough to warm the milk. There was a window behind the stove, [00:07:00] and pretty soon there's somebody knocking at the window. It was this girl, and her hair was all wet. I went and called my dad, and he came.

                                             Well, the poor girl had been hiking. They'd been hiking out here in this area. People used to hike a lot, and she got lost, but she saw the light when I turned on the light in the kitchen. She was way up on the hill, she saw that light and she came down. Anyway, we brought her in, and she got cleaned up, and she stayed overnight [00:07:30] and then she went out in the milk truck or something, I can't remember, from there on.

                                             That's the way things went. You trusted everybody, and there was no such thing as not helping somebody in need.

  Darcy Booth:                    People came out and hiked here a lot.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    On your land.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    That didn't bother you.

  Mary Machado:              Oh no. They had to worry about the bulls or the cows getting after them, that was their business, their hard luck.

  Tony Machado:               Well, because they had all these [00:08:00] military buildings. A lot of military people was out here too, you know.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you have much interaction with them? Because they were right here, right? I mean, they were just right up here.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah, well you see, the kids went to school with us. In fact, in this book there's a picture of all the mothers and the fathers. Well, I think there was not the fathers, but I think the mothers. Where in the world is that? My mother stood out because my mother was a great big lady. [00:08:30] It was Mrs. Diaz was up the road here, to this other big ranch, there was a house on the right hand side. A real nice house that they built for Luis Diaz and his wife. They were the foreman and his wife.

                                             See here? Here we are. Here's the teacher.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh.

  Mary Machado:              Here's Mrs. Diaz, [00:09:00] this was ...

  Tony Machado:               They wouldn't want to do it.

  Mary Machado:              This was the Maxwell, one of the Maxwell girls. Here was Madeline's mother, Bolsingham. See, these are all military people.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really? Okay.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, Mr. Diaz there, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, and Madeline's mother right here.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    What was this picture taken for?

  Mary Machado:              At the school.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh, it's a school picture.

  Mary Machado:              See, this was the school building.

  Tony Machado:               This was my mother here.

  Mary Machado:              This is Mrs. Nunez.

  Tony Machado:               [00:09:30] Yeah. Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              See, I can't remember who these other ladies are.

  Darcy Booth:                    Most of them were probably military?

  Mary Machado:              Oh, I'm sure of it, because we were the only ... Elvira, where is Elvira, here, and us were the only nonmilitary people.

  Darcy Booth:                    Who's Elvira?

  Mary Machado:              The Nunez girl. They had one daughter.

  Tony Machado:               Lived with the other grandchildren.

  Darcy Booth:                    Everyone else was military.

  Mary Machado:              Right.

  Darcy Booth:                    You-

  Mary Machado:              Military or navy. Coast Guard.

  Darcy Booth:                    Coast Guard, lighthouse.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, over here, letting the two [00:10:00] rangers, that's the only people that was there. The rest of them was all military.

  Mary Machado:              That's right.

  Darcy Booth:                    There was nobody else doing, Martin? There wasn't a Martin up doing it by course area, doing any steering or anything?

  Mary Machado:              Martin in Tennessee Cove.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah, but there was, I thought Jordan Silvas said something about another Martin, but maybe not.

  Mary Machado:              No, no. Martin in Tennessee Cove.

  Tony Machado:               There's something here, might be a Martin before we were here.

  Mary Machado:              No, no, because you know who was here before? A [Spanish 00:10:27] [Ponte]. Yeah, [00:10:30][Ponte} his wife.

  Darcy Booth:                    Okay, those are the people who lived in your-

  Mary Machado:              In that place before we came.

  Darcy Booth:                    How do you spell that?

  Mary Machado:              Ponte, P-O-N-T-E.

  Darcy Booth:                    They lived there.

  Mary Machado:              It was Manuel and his wife, I can't remember what his wife's name was.

  Darcy Booth:                    They were working at the Silva's too.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, and they just up and left one day. I don't know how come we got the job, but I know we got here, and my mother had to cook dinner that night for the men.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, it wasn't [00:11:00] a thing like, well these people gave notice a certain day.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    They just up and left. This happened to do with the man who ...

  Mary Machado:              No, no.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh, that was a different thing?

  Mary Machado:              No, that was a different family.

  Darcy Booth:                    Okay.

  Mary Machado:              No, that was a different thing entirely.

  Darcy Booth:                    Where exactly were your buildings? Were they just here where they built the fort conclaves now?

  Tony Machado:               It was direct, back [00:11:30] behind where this big picture is there.

  Mary Machado:              You know where, I looked. Where's that parking lot? Where did we park?

  Tony Machado:               The parking lot, the red parking lot behind those buildings.

  Darcy Booth:                    That's where it was?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, you just look up.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah, you probably couldn't see very well back here.

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Tony Machado:               No, you can't see it. It's that furthest parking lot down there, that's-

  Darcy Booth:                    The big one. The big one where there's the red rooms.

  Mary Machado:              The red rock. Oh, I don't know.

  Tony Machado:               Beyond there, there was a lot of houses there. Well, as far as you can go to the right.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right.

  Tony Machado:               The red rocks parking lot.

  Mary Machado:              Just look up in there, and where all the [00:12:00] calla lilies in there, that's where the barns were, and we were to the left a little bit.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you have those calla lilies when you lived here?

  Mary Machado:              There was a lot of calla lilies, but not like that, because it was all mud. With the cows traipsing all day, you know.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh yeah.

  Mary Machado:              No, we had a lot of calla lilies all over the place. They just grew wild. Not in that particular area.

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Mary Machado:              I think, I was telling Tony, I think that was where the manure pile was, because it's so fertile.

  Tony Machado:               You can see a [00:12:30] patch of them up there on the hill.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah, right behind it.

  Tony Machado:               It's here, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              There must be a spring or something up there.

  Darcy Booth:                    I think so, but you don't know? You've never been here?

  Mary Machado:              I haven't been here in 40 years. Tony has come out, because he comes fishing.

  Tony Machado:               See, we never had running water here. All we had was spring water.

  Mary Machado:              No well water or anything like that. It was spring water.

  Darcy Booth:                    That was how you watered the cows and got all your water?

  Mary Machado:              Oh sure.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Comes out of the ground, and you ... [00:13:00] I don't know.

  Tony Machado:               Cows were to drink out of this creek water.

  Mary Machado:              Out of the polluted waters now that they say, this is the crick polluted water.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah. Yeah, I think that's alarming.

  Mary Machado:              But you see here, you look at this, and this is probably where the parking lot is now.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right. I can see that.

  Mary Machado:              Right about there.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              There was a road that came up here. This was plowed, and planted with oats or, I don't know.

  Tony Machado:               Hay for the cows. Yeah. [00:13:30] The barns and the cows, the house was all back up in here.

  Darcy Booth:                    Okay.

  Mary Machado:              Quite a ways a little back here.

  Darcy Booth:                    That's like a view from the house.

  Mary Machado:              Right from the house, the front porch probably.

  Darcy Booth:                    That's a neat little porch.

  Mary Machado:              Isn't it though?

  Darcy Booth:                    You didn't have to worry about water too much.

  Mary Machado:              Oh no, no. We had plenty of water.

  Tony Machado:               All we gotta do is make sure the springs were clean all the time. You know, they get plugged [00:14:00] up, things like that.

  Mary Machado:              See, the water comes from the ground, it's like a cistern.

  Tony Machado:               It's a spring, it just comes to the surface. That's why that green spot's over there, that's all spring water.

  Mary Machado:              It doesn't ever dry out.

  Darcy Booth:                    It was never too little for the cows.

  Mary Machado:              No, no. We always managed to have plenty of water. I never heard of them being dry.

  Tony Machado:               Well, you just imagine how fast that water runs out the lagoon in wintertime, so just think how much water comes up all these hills every day.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did [00:14:30] you go swimming in the lagoon at all or anything like that?

  Mary Machado:              I think we did in the lagoon. See, I'm pretty sure. In [Muir] Beach, we had something similar to this with a lagoon and a beach. Now I used to swim in [Muir] Beach, in the ocean though.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Wow.

  Mary Machado:              Not here, because I was young then.

  Darcy Booth:                    It's awfully rough, the surf's awfully rough.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Did a lot of fishing off of there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, my father used [00:15:00] to fish.

  Tony Machado:               Now going up Point Bonita, the lighthouse, you see that so far and then they used to go down the stairs. They used like a dock down there, I don't know if it's still there or not.

  Darcy Booth:                    Something might be, I'm not sure.

  Tony Machado:               We used to go fishing, me and my dad used to go there fishing lots of times. To the right, between that dock and the point you'd see a beach down in there. You couldn't get to the beach, because it was too steep. My dad used to cast his fishing pole up toward the beach, that's where he'd catch the bass all the time.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really? Good fishing there.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, [00:15:30] yeah.

  Mary Machado:              That's where he hooked up to a body one time.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Tony Machado:               They were building the Golden Gate Bridge at the time. They think it was, might have been somebody who fell off the bridge.

  Mary Machado:              No, no, no. It was during the teamster strike on the docks.

  Tony Machado:               That's right, no, they didn't start building the bridge yet.

  Mary Machado:              No, no, this was way back in about 1930.

  Tony Machado:               I think they were starting the bridge already. I think they started it already.

  Mary Machado:              Could be. Yeah, they probably did, because I don't know how many years it took.

  Tony Machado:               I know he did, we were fishing there one day, and we seen this thing in the water, we didn't know [00:16:00] what it was. Dad asked me, what's that? I don't know, it looks like a barrel or something. Kept going and going, and pretty soon they seen it was a body, so my dad threw the line out there, he got the hook on his clothes. Then I had to go get ahold of the Coast Guard, so they could come over and get the body. They took the body over. My dad says, told me to go over there to get the hook off the body.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh no! That's terrible.

  Tony Machado:               I asked one of the guys to do it, and they wouldn't do it.

  Darcy Booth:                    You had to do it?

  Tony Machado:               I had to do it.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh no.

  Tony Machado:               [00:16:30] The guy's forehead, you could see his skin in his forehead was all, like it was a crab or a fish or something, biting him or something.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah. Wow.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, that was during the teamster strike on the waterfront, because they killed quite a few guys there.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, coulda been.

  Darcy Booth:                    That, and speaking of the union, did your dad end up joining a union?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did he?

  Mary Machado:              Because they locked all the milkers in, into the smithy.

  Darcy Booth:                    When was this?

  Mary Machado:              When?

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              [00:17:00] I would say about 1930 or '31 maybe.

  Tony Machado:               We were here yet?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. They call this meeting for all the milkers, and they all went. I mean, it wasn't only these milkers here, it was all Marin County.

  Tony Machado:               All Marin County, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    That's really neat.

  Mary Machado:              As the owners would sign to join the union, they released the milkers. They had to, because those animals would die.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              [00:17:30] That was funny.

  Tony Machado:               Because those years it was just Swiss and Portuguese milking cows in those years.

  Mary Machado:              They were all milked by hand, no machines.

  Tony Machado:               No milk machines, everything by hand then.

  Mary Machado:              All by hand.

  Darcy Booth:                    You had electricity here, but you did not have-

  Mary Machado:              Milk machines.

  Darcy Booth:                    ... milk machines.

  Mary Machado:              I don't think they were even in existence then.

  Tony Machado:               No. No. At that time, no place had them.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Tony Machado:               All the milk was all [00:18:00] those milk cans, like you have outside there. All the milk was hauled in those.

  Mary Machado:              Nowadays there is no such thing as a milk can. They bring in the tankers and take the milk.

  Darcy Booth:                    When you were here, you took it all out through the tunnel over there?

  Mary Machado:              When we could, and when you couldn't you'd go up over, which is the road now. Not all of it, I think it's been detoured a little bit [00:18:30] here and there.

  Tony Machado:               The road?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, but I used to up one lane, and it's a cliff all the way down, and a dirt road, and that's where we had to go.

  Darcy Booth:                    That's scary even now with a guard rail. I wouldn't wanna be going down it and run into someone, like you said.

  Mary Machado:              No, no.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you take it out twice a day?

  Mary Machado:              Once a day.

  Darcy Booth:                    Once a day.

  Mary Machado:              I can't remember now, was it morning or night?

  Tony Machado:               In the evenings.

  Mary Machado:              In the evenings?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, because don't you remember, [00:19:00] we had the hose was in Sausalito. The one guy was driving the truck, he went there and he got loaded, he'd come home and turn the truck over at Point Bonita.

  Mary Machado:              That's right.

  Tony Machado:               Coming around that turn there by that tunnel, he turned the truck over sideways.

  Mary Machado:              That's right.

  Darcy Booth:                    What happened?

  Tony Machado:               He had a few drinks in him, and hit. A Portuguese doing in Sausalito.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh, and so then he was coming back from a holy ghost?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, that night with the truck. He turned the truck over.

  Mary Machado:              That's right.

  Tony Machado:               He just laid the truck on its side, he didn't get hurt or nothing.

  Darcy Booth:                    That's good.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:19:30] Did you usually go to those, to the holy ghost? Were you active in that?

  Mary Machado:              Not when we were here, but after, yes.

  Tony Machado:               When we moved to Sausalito we did.

  Mary Machado:              Yes. After we moved. My mother cooked down there for years for the holy ghost.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh did she?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes. She cooked for many, many years, until she practically was-

  Tony Machado:               Well, we did go to the holy ghost from here, because-

  Mary Machado:              Did we?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah. I remember that's the night we went to holy ghost, and that's the day he turned the truck over.

  Mary Machado:              That was probably the last year.

  Tony Machado:               It was probably the last year.

  Mary Machado:              Because I can't remember, yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Probably 1932, [00:20:00] '31 or '32, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. Then we weren't very far from the hall of the holy ghost up there, we lived on Spring and Bonita Street, which is now Ripley Boulevard.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, and Spring. Yeah, Spring Street. That's where we lived.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you milk the cows twice a day?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    But you only took it out once a day.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. I don't know [00:20:30] how they kept it, they just kept it in the cans.

  Tony Machado:               That's all.

  Mary Machado:              I don't think we had icebox then.

  Tony Machado:               I think they had an icebox.

  Mary Machado:              Oh did they?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    They put it out, they throw it on the icebox until the evening.

  Mary Machado:              Right.

  Darcy Booth:                    Until the second milking.

  Mary Machado:              Right.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Then they'd take it in.

  Darcy Booth:                    Then you all walk it up at 2:00 or 4:00? What time did you milk?

  Mary Machado:              Probably at 2:00.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, they probably started around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, certainly.

  Mary Machado:              Twice a day.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you ever help in the milking [00:21:00] at all?

  Tony Machado:               Not here.

  Darcy Booth:                    How old were you?

  Mary Machado:              Ask me that question too, I did my share.

  Tony Machado:               In Mir Beach I did.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh yeah? You both did, huh?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Not until Mir Beach. How old were you both? You said you were five when you moved here, right?

  Mary Machado:              Right, right.

  Darcy Booth:                    And you were-

  Tony Machado:               32. I was born in '25.

  Mary Machado:              You were ... well, when-

  Tony Machado:               '28. I was three years old when [00:21:30] we moved out here.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, you're two years younger than I am.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah. When we moved out of here, I was eight years old, no, three. Seven years old when we moved out of here.

  Mary Machado:              I was nine.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    I guess you were kind of young to start on the milking.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah, we didn't do any of that. No.

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Mary Machado:              We really didn't, when we went to Muir Beach, then we worked because it was our business. You know what I mean? That was a different story, and during the war you couldn't get milkers. They'd [00:22:00] rely on the young kids. Here, no.

  Darcy Booth:                    What was it like having the military out here? Were they just other people? Were they just mothers?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah. Just, yes, that's right.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did it feel like military at all?

  Mary Machado:              Oh no, no. Not at all. We were just one big family, you know. If there was, once in a while maybe twice a year, they'd have a [00:22:30] party at the school, like Halloween maybe, and we'd all meet there. Otherwise there was no activity that went on here. There just wasn't.

  Tony Machado:               Once in a while a military guy did something, they'd come up in ramps, you know, looking around and stuff like that.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh yeah?

  Tony Machado:               Very seldom.

  Darcy Booth:                    They pretty much just left you alone?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              We weren't prevented from going anywhere on the military grounds or anything like that.

  Tony Machado:               I remember me and the military, [00:23:00] we used to go fishing, we used to go down by where the horses are at. Me and my dad, we used to walk up to the top of that hill there and then walk down the other side to go fishing.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Tony Machado:               That was quite a walk, because you had to walk all the way up, and then down, and then back again.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh my gosh.

  Mary Machado:              Was that the [balloon] hangar?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              That's what they called balloon hangar.

  Darcy Booth:                    They called it what?

  Tony Machado:               Balloon hangar beach.

  Darcy Booth:                    Balloon hangar beach.

  Tony Machado:               We used to call those big buildings the balloon hangars.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:23:30] Why?

  Tony Machado:               I don't know if they ever did-

  Mary Machado:              Maybe they stored some balloons.

  Tony Machado:               Maybe they stored those big balloons in there or something. I don't know.

  Darcy Booth:                    Huh, curious. That's really interesting.

  Tony Machado:               I remember, I think there was another one, wasn't there Mary?

  Mary Machado:              I think so, either one.

  Tony Machado:               There was two of them there.

  Mary Machado:              See, we never came so close to it like we do now with the road, because that road used to-

  Tony Machado:               Way down below.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. That road was not there, not even the dirt road was there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Tony Machado:               It was outside the crick.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:24:00] The road was over there, and then wound up through.

  Tony Machado:               We used to have to cross that bridge up there to come down to this ranch over here.

  Mary Machado:              That's right. Cross that bridge, and then we'd go all the way down along the lagoon to get to the ranch. That road goes up here, up here, there was no such thing as that. It was right on down along the bottom.

  Darcy Booth:                    How funny. I wonder why it goes up now.

  Mary Machado:              I don't know.

  Darcy Booth:                    That was new.

  Mary Machado:              Yep. I don't remember that at all.

  Darcy Booth:                    Interesting. How many cows did the [00:24:30] big ranch have, do you know?

  Mary Machado:              There were a lot. There were a lot.

  Tony Machado:               Let's see, how many cows?

  Mary Machado:              300 or 400 cows.

  Darcy Booth:                    Wow, that many.

  Mary Machado:              They had a big dairy. It was one of the biggest dairies.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Mary Machado:              I'm sure, Tony. 12 milkers, say 12, 30 a piece, what is that? Figure that. 360.

  Tony Machado:               Maybe about [00:25:00] 400.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Three-something.

  Mary Machado:              Because I remember going up there and Mrs. Nunez setting that table, and those guys filled that whole table. That bunk house they built was a great big, long bunk house that they built.

  Tony Machado:               I can't remember that area up there much, you know.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah.

  Tony Machado:               I remember this one down here.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you go up there very often?

  Mary Machado:              Not too often, no. Because see, Elvira was my friend, because we were about the same age. Not too often did we go back and forth, [00:25:30] because we'd have to walk. There was no other way.

  Darcy Booth:                    You didn't go visiting much.

  Mary Machado:              Not much. Maybe on Sundays. Sundays we would go up there, or she-

  Tony Machado:               We didn't even have a car.

  Mary Machado:              We had a car of some kind. Yes we did.

  Tony Machado:               When was it we used to borrow the Model T from Amerous and come through the wood? We used to come from down on the other side of the tunnel, [00:26:00] up that hill there. The car wouldn't make it going forward. It had more power in reverse than forward, so we had to turn the car around and back up the hill, toward the tunnel. [laughter]

  Darcy Booth:                    What? Are you serious?

  Tony Machado:               No, no.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh my goodness.

  Tony Machado:               The hill was so steep that the car wouldn't go up forward.

  Darcy Booth:                    This is coming from where?

  Mary Machado:              Baker.

  Tony Machado:               From Baker, down at the bottom, come to the hill there. From Baker, up towards the tunnel, up that steep hill the car wouldn't make it forward because the gear backward, reverse is lower. Had to turn [00:26:30] the car around and go up ass backwards to get up the steep part of the hill. [laughter]

  Darcy Booth:                    You guys didn't even care, you had that-

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    It was your car or you borrowed it?

  Tony Machado:               We just borrowed it.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh you borrowed it, from a friend?

  Tony Machado:               No, it was a cousin of ours [from Petaluma].

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh.

  Tony Machado:               I remember that.

  Mary Machado:              That was funny. I remember the day we moved in here, I can't remember what kind of car we had, but we had Ida's crib. Not Ida's, Hilda. [00:27:00] Her baby crib, and our clothes that we had, and that was it. That's all the furniture we had, because my sister Hilda was what? If you were three-

  Tony Machado:               She was two.

  Mary Machado:              Two, yeah. I can remember seeing the crib for her, because on this house that I told you about, this bedroom was my mother and dad's and this one was where all three of us slept. My mother and dad [00:27:30] had a double bed, and down here at the foot of the bed was the baby's crib. This was after my other sister was born.

  Darcy Booth:                    This was Ida?

  Mary Machado:              Ida, Ida, my youngest one. Then in the corners they made the closets. They just took a corner and made a closet. Now this next room with a double bed was my sister and I slept, and my brother slept at the foot of the bed in a little cot.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh my goodness.

  Mary Machado:              That was it.

  Darcy Booth:                    This was your mom and dad here, and a little crib. [00:28:00] Then this was, then you-

  Mary Machado:              The two of us, the two girls.

  Darcy Booth:                    Two girls.

  Mary Machado:              And my brother had his bed across the bottom there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Interesting, and doing hard work.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, the closets. Just one, one in each room.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh, you just had one. Oh my goodness.

  Mary Machado:              God, you don't have anything.

  Darcy Booth:                    No, we're doing it out of fun.

  Mary Machado:              It had wooden floors. My mother, every Saturday she used to scrub the floor with a brush, a heavy brush, and soap and water.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:28:30] Sounds like your mother worked very hard.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes, and we had to go outside and let her dry, you know.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Those were such good years, and not only that, but it's made us enjoy what we have today, even if it is little. It makes us appreciate every little thing that we have today.

  Darcy Booth:                    That's really important.

  Mary Machado:              It is, it is. Today, children today it's a shame I [00:29:00] feel. They've got everything handed to them on a platter. They've got their telephone, their TV, their VCR or whatever. I can't remember what year it was that we got our first radio. It was a little radio, I have a facsimile at home. It's just a little round one that you set on the table, and it was over here in this corner. There was a dresser, and inside on that corner.

  Darcy Booth:                    In your mom and dad's room?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, but my father was the only one that [00:29:30] could use it. Nobody else could listen to it.

  Darcy Booth:                    That's great.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. It is. It's really interesting when you stop and go back, and think about it. As I say over here, this little breezeway, it wasn't a breezeway. My mother, I think it was my uncle, her brother bought her a washing machine, because we didn't have a washing machine. It was a wooden one like, you know what they press grapes in, those big, it was [00:30:00] similar to that except it was like a barrel. It had a wooden paddle in the middle. I guess it was electricity, yes, because it was in this shed right here.

                                             Then he built her a clothesline out in front. We'd have to walk through here to go back here to this outhouse.

  Darcy Booth:                    This is on the entrance, right here?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. The door was here to the house. Yeah, there was no door there, and [00:30:30] you'd have to come out here on this porch and go through here.

  Tony Machado:               You got the clothesline out in front then, I remember.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, yeah, because you remember the skunks?

  Tony Machado:               The skunks would come right underneath.

  Mary Machado:              Used to tie the dogs down underneath this platform, and feed the dogs there, because we had cow dogs. We'd feed them and keep them tied up. At night the skunks used to come and eat their food.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh no.

  Mary Machado:              You know what we used to do? We used to boil some water, and go there, and pour it on them.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:31:00] That's terrible.

  Mary Machado:              That's what we did.

  Darcy Booth:                    Didn't they spray you?

  Mary Machado:              Oh no, because we were high.

  Tony Machado:               We were up on a porch. You're up on the porch.

  Darcy Booth:                    This is like in front, then?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, it was right in front of the house. Yeah, it was, god.

  Darcy Booth:                    Was there a lot of animals around besides skunks?

  Tony Machado:               Not those years, no.

  Mary Machado:              Up here, there were rats and deer.

  Tony Machado:               [00:31:30] We never seen no deer or nothing like that.

  Mary Machado:              No, no.

  Darcy Booth:                    Possums?

  Tony Machado:               Not really.

  Mary Machado:              Coyotes we used to hear.

  Tony Machado:               Once in a while.

  Mary Machado:              Once in a blue moon, but no. We never saw really, I know there are rattlesnakes.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Because we caught one right there by the house.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Tony Machado:               Right there behind the gate.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, right here in this area were the rattlesnakes.

  Darcy Booth:                    Then down here would be a look in area on that. Oh, okay. Well, I have a kind of feeling for the kitchen.

  Tony Machado:               I was gonna say, when they [00:32:00] used to haul hay in here, this ranch out here, and stop on the other side of the tunnel and take the top row off your truck.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Because you wouldn't fit through the tunnel. They'd have to take one top to go off, and drive the milk truck, then they get through the tunnel.

  Darcy Booth:                    They had to bring in hay?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah.

  Tony Machado:               To feed the cows.

  Mary Machado:              To feed the animals.

  Darcy Booth:                    You couldn't just [00:32:30] put them out to pasture.

  Mary Machado:              Well, you could, but there isn't enough pasture.

  Tony Machado:               There wasn't enough pasture for all of them.

  Mary Machado:              Not for all year round.

  Darcy Booth:                    How much of the year could you put them out?

  Mary Machado:              I don't know, you did the same thing at Muir Beach.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              We fed the cows in the barn every day.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Mary Machado:              Every day.

  Darcy Booth:                    Every day, all year round?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Then they'd go out and get to nibble on grass or whatever, but every day we'd have hay, which came baled, and I know we'd have to break [00:33:00] it loose, and we'd fill the mangers up for them to eat as they came in.

  Darcy Booth:                    They must have done the same thing up there.

  Mary Machado:              Oh sure.

  Darcy Booth:                    How could they have done that with so many cows though?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    How did they? That must have been so much hay to bring in.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes. Yes. Because we didn't have a very big dairy, and we brought in a lot of hay.

  Tony Machado:               Well, how much hay we raised? All we raised was that one field there.

  Mary Machado:              That's right. That's all we had.

  Tony Machado:               The other ranch up there, they had two fields, and throughout I think they used to raise hay. One way at the end, and one [00:33:30] way up behind the barns, I think. They used to raise hay and that was it, I think. The rest would have to be all hauled in.

  Darcy Booth:                    Because they couldn't, there wasn't that much for the cows to eat.

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Tony Machado:               No. No, the hills there, there's not enough grass there for that many cows to eat.

  Darcy Booth:                    Interesting. I wonder why this would be a place for a dairy if there wasn't that much grazing.

  Mary Machado:              Well, all dairy ranch, every dairy ranch are fed hay. There's no dairy ranch [00:34:00] that supplies the meals for the cattle all year round. There is none.

  Tony Machado:               No, no. Unless they-

  Mary Machado:              Now they have-

  Tony Machado:               Not unless they got 500 acres and they only got 20 cows.

  Mary Machado:              Now they have a new deal, Tony was telling me, he took me for a drive out to Malice where they're planting some kind of grass. I don't know what it is, then they chop it up and put it in these long plastic tubes. They're huge tubes.

  Tony Machado:               They're like silos or what they call it.

  Mary Machado:              But they're laying on the ground, and they [00:34:30] keep digging this out and feeding the cattle. I've never seen that before either.

  Tony Machado:               They still feed them hay besides that.

  Mary Machado:              Oh they do?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Oh.

  Tony Machado:               They can't give the cows too much of that stuff, because they bloat them or something.

  Mary Machado:              Oh, I see. It's a source of food for them, anyway.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              See, I didn't know that either.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you get them a certain picture or anything?

  Mary Machado:              Oh, well then they have feed. They have coconut, what was it? Barley, coconut.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there were all kinds of feed mixed, you [00:35:00] give it to them.

  Mary Machado:              You give them a scoop full, you know like those flour scoops, but they're big.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              You give them a half a scoop or one, depending on what cow it was.

  Darcy Booth:                    You had personalized treatment for each different cow.

  Mary Machado:              Oh sure, sure.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh. 90 cows you had.

  Tony Machado:               Just like the ranch we had in Muir Beach, we were milking 120 cows out there. Each cow had their own name.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:35:30] Oh really?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you name the cows down here too?

  Tony Machado:               I don't know if they did or not.

  Mary Machado:              I don't, oh I imagine the milkers did.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. I'm sure they did.

  Tony Machado:               Each cow had their own name.

  Mary Machado:              I know out at Muir Beach, when I had milk cows, I had one called Martha. She was so hard to milk. I'd squeeze and squeeze. He used to always come to my rescue and do it for me, because I just couldn't get a drop out of her. Silly thing.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh geez. That's nice you had those, and you had cow dogs. You used the cow dogs to bring them in?

  Mary Machado:              Oh sure.

  Tony Machado:               [00:36:00] I remember we were over here, we had cow dog. My dad, he had to go up and get the cows. They trained this one dog, the dog used to go partway up the hill, and he'd go up the back. My dad was on the bottom, he went like that, the dog went a bit further, go a bit further. Sure enough, saw it look back, and the dog is all the way by himself, gathering the cows and bring them down.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah. All by himself, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Okay. Wow. [00:36:30] They were just wandering, you just let them wander up over the hill?

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    You didn't worry about property lines or anything like that?

  Mary Machado:              Well, they had fences.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, there was fences.

  Mary Machado:              There were.

  Tony Machado:               These cows, yeah, they couldn't go with those over there at the other ranch. There was a fence in the way.

  Darcy Booth:                    Other what? Where was the fence?

  Tony Machado:               I don't know where it's at now, I couldn't tell you.

  Darcy Booth:                    You didn't worry about it too much. Did they have a problem with other cows coming in?

  Mary Machado:              Every so often they had to fix the fences, you [00:37:00] know.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, you always had to fix the fences. Then they had fences going towards Tennessee Cove on the other side. You can't have, they couldn't go over there where the other people's, where Martin's ranch was over there.

  Mary Machado:              It was Martin Bettencort there at that ranch.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    That was when you went-

  Mary Machado:              When we lived here.

  Darcy Booth:                    What was his name?

  Mary Machado:              Martin, it was a family. Martin and the family Bettencort. Now I think all that family is gone except the kids, the Martin boy was in Petaluma, [00:37:30] and now I think he's in ]Lodi].

  Tony Machado:               [Lodi], not here.

  Mary Machado:              Yes. Yeah. He was a little younger than we are.

  Tony Machado:               Not much younger.

  Mary Machado:              No. Then there were the Luis. What was the one Riposa had? Who was in there?

  Tony Machado:               Bettencort. Bud Bettencort was there.

  Mary Machado:              Oh Bud, and then the Silvas, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Cunja, does that ring a bell?

  Mary Machado:              Cunja, yeah. Cunja was there too.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Right.

  Tony Machado:               Sam, right?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Wait a minute-

  Mary Machado:              [00:38:00] When my father-

  Tony Machado:               Cunja was up where Mrs. Lopez is now.

  Mary Machado:              Oh is it? That's what I was wondering about.

  Tony Machado:               I think so, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Oh.

  Tony Machado:               See, there's Lopez ranch there, and then those, Bettencort, and then Martin.

  Mary Machado:              That's right. I know where Martin-

  Tony Machado:               Then there was another ranch out further, where Mel Silva lived. Mel was-

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               ... right across there. It was many, many years ago too.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, but not Schwann.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               I don't know who was there.

  Mary Machado:              I don't know either.

  Darcy Booth:                    Was that running when [00:38:30] you were here? Do you know?

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Darcy Booth:                    They were probably in Georgia at the same time.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, they were [Borga’s]. When my father came here in 1920, he worked for Cunjas.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              That was the first job he had.

  Darcy Booth:                    Where was that?

  Mary Machado:              In Tennessee Cove.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh, so your father actually started out over in Tennessee Cove. Did he live over there?

  Mary Machado:              Oh, I guess sure, in like a bunk house, because he was single then.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh. Isn't that neat.

  Mary Machado:              In 1920, he came, I can't remember what the month it was. Well, it must have been about [00:39:00] January-February, because then he sent for our mother, which was his girlfriend, and she arrived on the 28th of August, and they were married on the 4th of September.

  Darcy Booth:                    In 1920.

  Mary Machado:              1920.

  Darcy Booth:                    She was over in the Azores?

  Mary Machado:              Mm-hmm (affirmative). He came over here I guess earned enough money to have her sent over. My mother was 23 years old when she came here.

  Darcy Booth:                    Wow, and then-

  Mary Machado:              [00:39:30] They got married in Mill Valley and then started off. I was born in Gridley. In Butte County. They were working for somebody up there.

  Tony Machado:               I was born in, the boys is older than you?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah, she miscarried or something, yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Because I think she lost three.

  Tony Machado:               Three of them, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh man.

  Tony Machado:               No, she did, and a couple of them I think lived, but they died when they were really young.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, I don't remember really.

  Darcy Booth:                    Poor you.

  Mary Machado:              [00:40:00] I know.

  Tony Machado:               I think there was one between her and me.

  Mary Machado:              One, that's right, because she would never celebrate my birthday on March the 8th, because she had another boy that was stillborn on March the 8th.

  Darcy Booth:                    That was your birthday?

  Mary Machado:              Yes.

  Darcy Booth:                    Aw man.

  Mary Machado:              I can't remember, it was the year before or the year after, but that was just the make, you know.

  Tony Machado:               One before you and another one after you, and there was another one somewhere.

  Mary Machado:              Between you and Hilda, I think.

  Tony Machado:               No, because me and Hilda is only a year apart. It must have been between Hilda and Ida.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, probably.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:40:30] Oh, so you left here for the goonies over there.

  Mary Machado:              My dad. That was before he was married.

  Darcy Booth:                    Interesting. It's funny because I keep on coming across the name Machado were there other Machados in the area?

  Mary Machado:              Not too many. That wasn't a very common name. There was a Machado family in Sausalito. I don't even know if they were Portuguese or not. Was Jack Machado Portuguese?

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Mary Machado:              Maybe [00:41:00] his dad was and his mother was Italian or something.

  Tony Machado:               Could have been, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              It was a mixture there of some kind. Yes.

  Darcy Booth:                    Was the name, Manuel Postino?

  Mary Machado:              Manuel Postini, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Who was that?

  Mary Machado:              He worked for him for many years.

  Tony Machado:               I worked for him for quite a few years, when I worked for the county and road department.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Who was he? Where did he live?

  Tony Machado:               He lived in Citizen Beach and Mill Valley.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh, he didn't do dairy ranching.

  Tony Machado:               Not that I know of.

  Mary Machado:              Well, maybe [00:41:30] Joanie. Maybe, see, when the Amerals lived in ...

  Tony Machado:               [San Rafael 00:41:36]

  Mary Machado:              Mill Valley. When Tia, Theresa, and-

  Tony Machado:               Where does the Mill Valley end? I don't know.

  Mary Machado:              Walden, Abner, or something. There was a dairy or something there.

  Tony Machado:               I don't know. I never did live in Petaluma.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, but because Margaret was born just when they moved to Petaluma. [00:42:00] Before that, they lived in Mill Valley, and I'm sure they had some kind of a little dairy.

  Tony Machado:               Okay.

  Mary Machado:              They used to deliver milk from house to house.

  Tony Machado:               Oh, okay.

  Darcy Booth:                    Those are other Machados?

  Mary Machado:              No, no. They were Amerals and the Fosteens I think were in the same category. Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    You worked for them, but you weren't really, no relation at all.

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Darcy Booth:                    Huh.

  Tony Machado:               I went worked for him in 1950, when I worked with him.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, that Fosteen's an old family, [00:42:30] and Henry's still alive.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, he's still alive.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. Out there on Lower Avenue. Because that would be an interesting man to talk to for their purposes.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Mary Machado:              Henry Fosteen.

  Darcy Booth:                    Henry Fosteen?

  Mary Machado:              I think he's like 94 or something like that. He lives at 341 Miller Avenue.

  Tony Machado:               Too bad old Rodriguez wasn't so hard.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. Yeah, but he'd give them a lot of line and scuttle news.

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:43:00] Oh yeah, we'd wanna hear all, any old stories.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, but Henry would be, I think he would be a good-

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              He has a brother, Jerry. I don't know where he lives, but Henry would be real good.

  Tony Machado:               He should remember a lot of this out here.

  Mary Machado:              Oh god, because he's been in Mill Valley all his life.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, Henry Fosteen would be a really good, I can't think of anything else either, except Mary that maybe [00:43:30] Tony thought ... Bravo. Mary Bravo. Tony Bravo's wife. She's my age. She might be of some. I can't remember any old timers that are familiar with this area is what I'm trying to say.

  Darcy Booth:                    I'm just wondering, why is it that there seems to be a lot of, [00:44:00] it seems like up north there were bigger areas of land. People ranched on bigger areas of land?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes, yes.

  Darcy Booth:                    Why was it that it was so crowded down here? Why were there so many?

  Mary Machado:              I don't know.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right in the middle of the area.

  Mary Machado:              I don't know.

  Darcy Booth:                    It just seems like, for 400 cows to be in that little valley, it's so tiny.

  Mary Machado:              You know, it's like Tennessee Cove. There were about four or five dairies in there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah, why is that?

  Mary Machado:              I don't know. I don't know. There wasn't that much land-

  Tony Machado:               Even nowadays I think, I remember I used to haul hay halfway down there, to Sacramento. [00:44:30] One guy down there, he had 10 acres, he was milking 600 cows.

  Darcy Booth:                    Wow.

  Tony Machado:               See, everything was in corrals, they had no hills for them to go out and feed.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh man.

  Tony Machado:               He used to load hay up every day.

  Darcy Booth:                    He just kept them in a corral.

  Tony Machado:               All in a corral, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    You never did that up here.

  Tony Machado:               No, no.

  Darcy Booth:                    No. I just don't see that you would do that.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    What other animals did you keep besides the cow dogs and cattle?

  Mary Machado:              Well, we had chickens. We raised our own chicken. [00:45:00] Mr. Silva would supply the milk and the meat, and flour for bread, and maybe beans. Dried fish.

  Tony Machado:               He would supply all the food that feed the men.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Nothing fancy.

  Tony Machado:               No, no, nothing fancy.

  Mary Machado:              The men from up at the big ranch would love to come down to my mother's, because my mother would bake cakes.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              You see?

  Darcy Booth:                    Mrs. Nunez wouldn't?

  Mary Machado:              No. She didn't have time to begin with, but my mother was a terrific baker, and [00:45:30] she'd make sweet bread. Those guys used to love to come down, because they knew what they'd get down here. I know she managed somehow. She probably wouldn't take the cream off the cans, to make it butter. I'm sure she did, and then as I say, she raised her chickens so she had plenty of eggs to feed the men and also make something little-

  Tony Machado:               See, before your times, [00:46:00] it used to wind up in a bottle like this.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               From here up was solid cream. You've never seen that.

  Darcy Booth:                    No. Although I maybe, we did get milk with a shed door when I was really young, but of course by that time it's just a carton.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, it was all-

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              ... homogenized.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, homogenized, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Where was I reading the other day about the cream in the top of the bottle? I read something and I can't remember. I mentioned it to you, and I thought, gee. I wouldn't even know what [00:46:30] a bottle of milk looked like, raw milk, because the thick cream up on top.

  Darcy Booth:                    Your mother would skim that off? She wasn't supposed to do that, was she?

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Tony Machado:               Because that's what the dairy got paid for.

  Darcy Booth:                    Is for the cream.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    You wanted to make, you lived here, because I know this has changed a lot with how much butter fat in the milk.

  Mary Machado:              Oh sure.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right? Now it's bad. ( [00:47:00] silence)

  Mary Machado:              [47:18]Everything is homogenized, so therefore there is, but they still I think buy milk according to the butter fat.

  Tony Machado:               I think so.

  Darcy Booth:                    You had, what kind of cows did you have? Do you know?

  Mary Machado:              [00:47:30] Mostly Holsteins, I think. No, I think there was a mixture.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, it was a mixture. Yeah, but most were. It was probably three fourths Holstein.

  Mary Machado:              Well, and this picture, let's check out how many cows. What kind of cows were out there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Well, you can just squint at those then.

  Mary Machado:              Oh no, we can tell.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, right there.

  Mary Machado:              Okay, see, there's the white ones? Those are all Holsteins. Tony, they're pretty near all Holsteins.

  Tony Machado:               Are they?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. Pretty near all of them. There's no Guernseys there.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:48:00] Gosh, these are nice. They look like skunks to me.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, they're all Holsteins. They're black and white.

  Darcy Booth:                    Holsteins give off, I think a bunch more fat?

  Mary Machado:              No, they give a lot of milk, but not as much fat.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    I see. You were trying the way everything was going.

  Mary Machado:              Well, they produce a lot of milk, see.

  Tony Machado:               The Georgia, they get more fat than the Jerseys did. The Jerseys would get more fat than the Guernseys did.

  Mary Machado:              But not as much milk.

  Tony Machado:               Not as much milk.

  Darcy Booth:                    You only shipped out milk. [00:48:30] You never made cheese or butter, anything like that.

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Darcy Booth:                    Because, why was that?

  Mary Machado:              I don't know. See, we weren't ... dairies up around [Tomales], Petaluma, and those places, they used to, oh god what do they call that? Separate their milk and make butter, but we never did.

  Darcy Booth:                    I guess because you're so close, you didn't have to worry about it spoiling.

  Mary Machado:              Probably, and these were grade A dairies, and [00:49:00] the only dairies that could make those were grade B, wasn't it? In the later years, I know.

  Tony Machado:               I think so.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, the grade A dairies you couldn't. Here, I can't remember inspectors, but out at Muir Beach, we always had inspectors come.

  Tony Machado:               The grade B dairies, they had to separate their milk and stuff. They couldn't ship-

  Mary Machado:              Couldn't sell whole milk.

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Mary Machado:              Out at Muir Beach, when we were there, we'd have I don't know whether they were federal or state, inspectors [00:49:30] would come in any time and check the place out.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Tony Machado:               You never know when they're coming. They might come once a month, maybe once every three weeks or something, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Wow.

  Mary Machado:              They would inspect everything, because everything, all the dairy equipment had to be sterilized twice a day. My mother usually did that here. She did all the sterilization here.

  Darcy Booth:                    You sterilized in here?

  Mary Machado:              She did it all.

  Darcy Booth:                    How would you do that?

  Mary Machado:              Oh, they had a boiler with [00:50:00] hot water, steaming water, but it was a wood fed burner boiler. That steam just sterilized everything.

  Tony Machado:               We had a big sterilizer up there near that wall, about so high, with all the buckets, everything in there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Just toss it all in one big thing.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    You didn't have tanks, you just had those big old meal cans, right?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    You were just milking straight into the milk cans?

  Mary Machado:              No, no you had buckets, five gallon buckets.

  Darcy Booth:                    [00:50:30] Oh, and then-

  Tony Machado:               Then you brought in this thing here, and run down this cooler. The cooler had all ice on it and everything. The bottom of that cooler was like a little trough. Had three or four holes in the bottom of it, and the one out the end, you put the cans in it there. The milk would run into those cans, and they'd be afloat in the can. Once the can got full, it would float it shut.

  Mary Machado:              Then the excess would run into the next one over there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh I see.

  Tony Machado:               In case all these got filled, and then [00:51:00] they had the other one, they wouldn't run out until the end then.

  Darcy Booth:                    Someone, it was someone, you know-

  Mary Machado:              Well, you see, I can't remember exactly here, but being the same concept. In Muir Beach we would milk the cows, come with the five gallon buckets up these stairs, pour them into this looked like a big wash basin. This was all outside, and then the milk would start trickling inside, and it'd go down this cooler, which was all these rods. It was ice almost, [00:51:30] and then go down into the can.

                                             It was all, what do you call it? Gravitation I guess, if that's what you can call it.

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah.

  Mary Machado:              It was no pumps, no nothing.

  Tony Machado:               No pumps, no. All gravity.

  Darcy Booth:                    That wasn't-

  Mary Machado:              Stainless steel. No, stainless steel, but they had ammonia I guess in them to make it colder.

  Tony Machado:               They had a motor in the other room, that's like a compressor usually.

  Mary Machado:              But they had ammonia in there.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              You remember sometimes it would leak?

  Tony Machado:               You couldn't stand to go in there with the ammonia, we couldn't.

  Darcy Booth:                    You didn't have that [00:52:00] down here?

  Mary Machado:              Yes, we did.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh you did?

  Mary Machado:              We had to have that.

  Darcy Booth:                    You said the ammonia would leak?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Sometimes in spring.

  Darcy Booth:                    Then what would happen? Would it spoil the milk?

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Darcy Booth:                    Nothing really happened. Did you ever worry about milk spoiling?

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Mary Machado:              If we're sour, we're sour. You see? It curdled, it was sour sour. You just ...

  Darcy Booth:                    You just sell?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Then you just throw it, I mean, did you ever-

  Mary Machado:              We never had a refrigerator. [00:52:30] We didn't even have a cooler.

  Tony Machado:               Well, we got fresh milk every day.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right, but I forgot shipping out out.

  Mary Machado:              Oh no.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you have to worry about it spoiling when you shipped it?

  Mary Machado:              No. Because milk won't spoil overnight, as a rule. Of course today I don't know, because it's been homogenized. I don't know what else they put in there, but not the raw milk.

  Darcy Booth:                    You didn't do any pasteurization.

  Mary Machado:              Oh no. There was no such thing.

  Darcy Booth:                    Interesting, and no homogenization at all.

  Mary Machado:              [00:53:00] Oh yeah. As Tony said, the milk bottle, three quarters of it was milk and the rest was cream.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    You never kept pigs.

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Darcy Booth:                    It seems like a lot of other dairies did.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, some did.

  Tony Machado:               Did what?

  Mary Machado:              Pigs.

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah.

  Mary Machado:              When we lived in Muir Beach, we'd buy a hog in August, and fatten it up, and then October we [00:53:30] would slaughter it. That was it, that was just one.

  Darcy Booth:                    Just one.

  Mary Machado:              We never raised them.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did the Silvas in the big ranch, did they do-

  Mary Machado:              No, no. They never had hogs either.

  Darcy Booth:                    Huh.

  Mary Machado:              I forgot why.

  Tony Machado:               Go out with their sheep, wasn't it?

  Mary Machado:              No goats or nothing like that. I don't know why it was.

  Tony Machado:               A few horses.

  Mary Machado:              I suppose if the owner had lived [00:54:00] on the ranch, I mean worked with the men, it woulda been different. See this guy was, you never saw him. That was his business, he had these people working for him, and that was it.

  Darcy Booth:                    He never came and checked up on you or anything like that?

  Mary Machado:              I can never remember that man. We'd go to the store, if we ever went to buy anything, we'd have to go to his store because that was the only dry goods store in Sausalito.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              That's the only time we ever saw him.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Tony Machado:               Because he had his foreman there running the dairy for him.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, Mr. Diaz was his foreman.

  Darcy Booth:                    Down at the little [00:54:30] ranch?

  Mary Machado:              Well, he ran both ranches.

  Darcy Booth:                    He ran the ranch, okay. That was Mrs. Diaz, and you went to school with ...

  Mary Machado:              With her, no, no.

  Darcy Booth:                    With Nunez.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, I went to school with Elperin and Lucia.

  Darcy Booth:                    Diaz was the foreman, and Nunez was-

  Mary Machado:              Luis Diaz was the foreman, and his wife, I can't remember what her name was, Betty or something. They had a couple of children, they lived in this house that I said was a real nice house that they built for them. They're [00:55:00] all gone now.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did a Nunez, you said a Nunez cooked?

  Mary Machado:              Yes.

  Darcy Booth:                    Her husband was just another milker?

  Mary Machado:              That's right. Frank and Rita Nunez, and then their daughter Elvira. Last time I spoke to Elvira, she was in [Lodi]. I don't know if she's still around or not.

  Tony Machado:               What's her married name?

  Mary Machado:              I think it was Torres. Like T-O-R-R-E-S. I may be all wet.

  Darcy Booth:                    What did you [00:55:30] do when you were children? Did you just go out and play? What did you-

  Mary Machado:              That's about it.

  Darcy Booth:                    I mean, but where did you go play and what did you do?

  Mary Machado:              It didn't take much. As I say, it just didn't take much for us to keep occupied. Tony was telling the other girl a story, the manure from the barns, because you have to scrape all this manure, and you'd haul it out in [00:56:00] wheelbarrows. Up at this little ranch where we lived ...

  Tony Machado:               They had this ramp they could go up, higher, higher, you know.

  Mary Machado:              A little narrow ramp, just for the wheelbarrow.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, just to carry the wheelbarrow, and they would dump the manure off the side. Then it kept going up further as the manure pile would get higher and higher.

  Mary Machado:              It'd spread out.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah. One time me and my two sisters went up there, we started from the bottom here, we were jumping from the plank [00:56:30] to cross over the manure pile.

  Mary Machado:              Was that a hard press.

  Tony Machado:               See who could jump the furthest across, you know. This one time I got about on fire was my foot slipped, and I fell.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh, you fell into it?

  Mary Machado:              I had to pull him out.

  Tony Machado:               I cussed out about this deep.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh no.

  Mary Machado:              I can remember him, I pulled him out, took him to the barn, and with the hose in the barn I washed him off.

  Darcy Booth:                    Trying to show off.

  Mary Machado:              Well, we did little things [00:57:00] like that. Another time, under the hay barn, the big barn, there was lattice work, and there was a skunk under there. This guy goes under there and pokes it with a stick. Of course he got, what a mess he turned out to be.

  Darcy Booth:                    You were the only boy and there were that many girls?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    A baby and two girls. You must have been the mischievous one. Yeah. Gotta be some ways to get in trouble.

  Mary Machado:              We used grow all our vegetables, you know. Our potatoes and [00:57:30] kale and whatever. As the men came from the barn, at the end of the house there was a wash basin, outside. Outside.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Right here. They'd walk through the barn over here, and right in this corner there was a wash basin where they'd wash. Back in here was our garden.

  Darcy Booth:                    Then the garden was here?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. Yeah, here and around the [00:58:00] back there. That's what we did, we raised our own vegetables. Whatever we could.

  Darcy Booth:                    Beans and-

  Mary Machado:              Not beans. Probably potatoes.

  Tony Machado:               Onion, garlic.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, and what's the knob?

  Tony Machado:               Turnips.

  Mary Machado:              Turnips, yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Kale.

  Mary Machado:              We used to get a lot of watercress from these cricks. We use to always have watercress, and we'd make soup with those. It was [00:58:30] delicious. You can't even get it now.

  Darcy Booth:                    You never played with any of the military children?

  Mary Machado:              Oh no, except at school.

  Darcy Booth:                    Except at school. Why? It was just too far?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes. There was no way, you've gotta remember we had to cross that beach to go clear come over here. I don't know, I keep saying over here, where these houses, where Melvin lived. Clap.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, right up there.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. It was a long way, so you just didn't do that.

  Tony Machado:               You just had to walk, that's all. [00:59:00] You couldn't drive.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah. They just pretty much kept to themselves?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah. I don't think they did any more than we did. Because we entertained ourselves somehow, and we didn't listen to radio or have TV.

  Tony Machado:               No TV.

  Mary Machado:              None of that stuff.

  Tony Machado:               Where were we living when we got the first radio?

  Mary Machado:              Here.

  Tony Machado:               Here, was it?

  Mary Machado:              You remember that little radio?

  Tony Machado:               Just like the one you got at home?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Stuck in mom and dad's room.

  Tony Machado:               Okay, yeah, I remember. Yeah. [00:59:30] I remember the radio but I don't remember where it was at.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, it was in their bedroom. He was the only one that could listen to it, we couldn't.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you go into town every Sunday for church? Did you go to church?

  Mary Machado:              Oh no.

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Darcy Booth:                    No. You didn't go-

  Mary Machado:              In fact, I took holy communion. We were brought up Catholic, and I had to go in for, I don't know, whatever lessons or something, but I don't know. I know I used to come home on the milk truck at night. [01:00:00] Now maybe I went in the night before, and I stayed with Mrs. Suza on B Street.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Or no, Furtados. Furtados I think. Yeah. Then I think I'd come back the next night on the milk truck.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really? You'd have to stay over.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes. Then when we moved to Sausalito, our teacher, Olsen, I can't remember what her name was prior, but she [01:00:30] lived just as you go out of [Fort] Baker into Sausalito, you start down the hill there, right on the right hand side. For a whole semester we came to the school, we'd ride with her in the morning, back and forth.

  Tony Machado:               I remember, yeah, we stayed.

  Mary Machado:              Until the school district caught up with us.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really? You kept going to school here even though-

  Tony Machado:               Yeah. Because I remember we'd stop in Port Bonita there and pick up, who was it down there?

  Mary Machado:              I don't remember.

  Tony Machado:               We'd just go around that circle, that military building [01:01:00] down there.

  Mary Machado:              I can't remember.

  Tony Machado:               Used to leave one or two of them off down there.

  Mary Machado:              Right?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              She shipped all of us back and forth. She was just like one of the family, really, because heck, all these weird kids.

  Tony Machado:               I wonder if she's still alive.

  Mary Machado:              No, no, she died about two years ago.

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah?

  Mary Machado:              She was in Blackpoint. Yeah, I saw where she passed away. I can't remember what her maiden name was. Tagert. Mrs. Tagert. Miss Tagert.

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Darcy Booth:                    Does the name Secura have-

  Mary Machado:              Secura? Sequera?

  Darcy Booth:                    [01:01:30] Yes.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, that's out in Tennessee Cove too.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really? Was that, where was that? Was that next to Martin and Bettencort?

  Mary Machado:              I think it was on, as you go in Tony, to the right. That shore was ...

  Tony Machado:               Bailed across from where now civil leaders are.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, but further up.

  Tony Machado:               More up toward Ten Valley?

  Mary Machado:              I don't know, Tennessee Falls.

  Tony Machado:               Towards Tennessee Cove.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. There's [01:02:00] a puddle where ...

  Tony Machado:               [inaudible 01:02:01]

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. I think it was to the right there. See, those Sequeras were gone before we even moved out there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh.

  Mary Machado:              We think. I'm trying to think of all these Portuguese people were known by nicknames.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah. Pretty near all of them had nicknames. You wouldn't know who they were, the Bettencort, or Asevine, or this and that and the next guy.

  Darcy Booth:                    Kind of like Sam Silva? [01:02:30] That wasn't really, wasn't that a nickname?

  Mary Machado:              I'm sure his name was Manuel Silva.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              You see? I'm sure it was.

  Darcy Booth:                    You didn't really have, in terms of like parties and going into Sausalito, you didn't really do that.

  Mary Machado:              No, no way. No transportation

  Darcy Booth:                    With the milk truck, I guess.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Well, no transportation, and by the time you get through locking your cars in the evenings, and have dinner, it's be [01:03:00] 8:00-9:00. Then you gotta get up in the morning at 2:00 again, so you didn't have too many hours of sleep.

  Darcy Booth:                    Was that [inaudible 01:03:10]

  Mary Machado:              Well, as I say, we didn't go to too many when we were there, but after that we did. When we went back out. We went and even when we were in Muir Beach, we went to all of them. We had transportation then.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right.

  Mary Machado:              You didn't have it here. That was a long trip to make, [01:03:30] you know.

  Darcy Booth:                    Especially with that. That car you had, you only could borrow it for special occasions?

  Mary Machado:              I can't remember that, but he did.

  Tony Machado:               I remember that.

  Darcy Booth:                    Run it in reverse?

  Tony Machado:               I remember that one.

  Darcy Booth:                    You mentioned only, you didn't get to use that one very much.

  Tony Machado:               No. No. We borrowed it for certain, for some occasion.

  Mary Machado:              Some doings or something.

  Tony Machado:               For some kind of, I don't know what it was. I still remember going up that hill, and we got about halfway up, had to turn around.

  Mary Machado:              [01:04:00] Go in reverse.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah. That was part of the tunnel, they actually got that, that bottom was too bad. Then we'd go.

  Mary Machado:              Didn't they have guards at that tunnel years ago?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. You'd have to check with a guard before they would-

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah, they've got the telephone, one each. They'd talk back and forth.

  Mary Machado:              That's right, yeah.

  Tony Machado:               They didn't have the signal light at the time.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              There were guards assigned to it.

  Darcy Booth:                    That was really your only, that was the biggest military.

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    I guess the guard there.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              [01:04:30] Because up here, I don't know where we drove, but you go through these two old buildings. That was storage sheds or something there, and the guy who has the Percinis worked there. They were civilians, but they lived in Sausalito and Lee and John Percini.

  Tony Machado:               They still alive now?

  Mary Machado:              No, they're both gone now, but I can remember those guys. They [01:05:00] didn't, I'll say every time that they see us, of course they knew because as little kids. It brought back memories when we went by those buildings, and I could just see John or Lee sitting up there on those ledges. Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Wow. When you moved, it was because the- ( [01:05:30] silence)

                                             A random ranch down there, that's on the Soto?

  Mary Machado:              Well, not really. My father had an uncle that lived in Sausalito, but he was very senile. I mean, really bad. They decided, the wife wanted my father to go there and take care of him, and that's what they did. In the meantime, Sam Silva decided he'd do away [01:06:00] with us.

  Darcy Booth:                    I see. I see. He just, what? He just used that-

  Mary Machado:              Just took the cows up to the other ranch, and then just let that place go, I guess.

  Tony Machado:               How long did the other ranch stay there then? I don't know.

  Mary Machado:              I don't know. Because I can't remember when the Nunez's, they went back to the old country, you remember?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Elvira must have been about 14-15 [01:06:30] when they went back to the old country.

  Darcy Booth:                    But she moved back here.

  Mary Machado:              Yes, she came back here.

  Tony Machado:               When she came back here again.

  Mary Machado:              What happened I believe, Mr. Nunez, he and her both worked real hard, and he kept sending money to the old country to build a house there. They built a beautiful house, evidently, from their standards. Anyway, he kept sending this money to save back then. When he got there, whoever was in charge had [01:07:00] used up his money, he didn't have any.

                                             They had to come back to the United States again.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh no, that's a shame.

  Mary Machado:              That's what happened. I know that we went back there in I think [19]48, and they were already here, the mother and dad had already come back, Mr and Mrs Nunez, but in the meantime Elvira had married back there, and I think she had a youngster. I can't remember. Anyway, the mother asked us to take her fur coat. I remember taking the fur coat to give to [01:07:30] Elvira back there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Back in Azores.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    That is where you were from is from the Azores.

  Mary Machado:              My parents.

  Darcy Booth:                    Your parents.

  Mary Machado:              We were born here.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right. Do you know which island?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, St. George.

  Darcy Booth:                    St. George.

  Tony Machado:               Dad's wasn't the same ...

  Mary Machado:              No, he was from St. George.

  Tony Machado:               Was he? I thought he moved over there to-

  Mary Machado:              I don't know exactly where he was born, but his mother was from St. George.

  Tony Machado:               Okay, I thought he said he made it there when he was young or something.

  Mary Machado:              Could be.

  Darcy Booth:                    [01:08:00] I'm trying to get an idea of what you do. You get up in the morning, you didn't. You didn't until you got to Muir Beach, but your father would get up.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, that's right.

  Darcy Booth:                    At 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.

  Mary Machado:              That's right.

  Darcy Booth:                    He'd go out and-

  Mary Machado:              They'd work until noon.

  Darcy Booth:                    Until noon, and then they'd start all over again at 2:00.

  Mary Machado:              They'd take a nap. They have their lunch, and they go take a nap, and then they start up again at 2:00. [01:08:30] See, in the morning they do their barn churn, have to clean everything out and what have you. Then they'd either fix fences or chop wood or something, make hay or whatever, and then they'd rest from noon until 2:00 again or 2:30, whenever they started. Same jazz until 7:00 or whatever time it was. They have dinner, and they're ready for bed. So were we, there's no two ways about it. You go to bed too.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              [01:09:00] Yeah, there was no running around, no nothing.

  Darcy Booth:                    They'd get up and they'd get the cow dogs to go and bring the cows from wherever they were.

  Mary Machado:              My father was in charge of that. Each one of the milkers had certain things that they did, and he was the one that drove in the cattle.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh. They all had their own little tasks. They all had their own set tasks.

  Mary Machado:              That's right. Oh yeah, their own cows. When we were in Mir Beach, my brother used to drive in the cows, but he had [01:09:30] a horse. Some strays didn't come in, tell Snow when to come home. They really know, but there is always two or three strays some place along the line. Then you have to go get them.

  Darcy Booth:                    It's true, the cow dog would bring them in, and they all were penned in a little line.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes, oh yes.

  Darcy Booth:                    What do you know?

  Mary Machado:              They just walk back and forth, and then barking and biting them in the ankles. Get them in there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Okay. Did you bunk them head to head or tail to [01:10:00] tail?

  Mary Machado:              Head to head. Yeah. They have what they called, what did they call them? Manger?

  Tony Machado:               Mangers.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. All the way down, and there's hay on both sides, and the stanchions let them put their heads in.

  Tony Machado:               The cows would come in like this.

  Mary Machado:              You'll lock them in there, they can't get out.

  Tony Machado:               Okay, another thing with the cows. The cows that come in the barn, each one's got their own stall.

  Darcy Booth:                    They know their stall?

  Tony Machado:               They know just like which one it is.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Could you get them all at once or did you have to knock them into shifts? Could [01:10:30] the barn hold all the cows?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              In this dairy, the little one, but the big one, no.

  Tony Machado:               Surprising enough the cows, they get used to one stall, and if another cow gets in their stall they get in there and hit them. Butting their head to get them out of there. You know. Once I get a new [cow] or something like that, you know. It's really something the way they do that.

  Mary Machado:              They know, they know.

  Tony Machado:               There's only one cow, she's a leader, that one [01:11:00] that all the other ones follow.

  Mary Machado:              That's the one we used to have a bell on.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you have a name for that cow? Do you remember?

  Mary Machado:              Oh I imagine so.

  Darcy Booth:                    But you don't remember.

  Mary Machado:              No. Did the ringer have a bell?

  Tony Machado:               No.

  Mary Machado:              Oh.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you have any pets or any pet cows or anything that you as children kind of were favorites or anything like that?

  Mary Machado:              No.

  Tony Machado:               We had this one little jersey cow, she was real small, used to call her tiny. She was scared of the dogs.

  Darcy Booth:                    [01:11:30] Oh really?

  Tony Machado:               I used to go across the road, open the gate, the cows are coming. Open the gate for the cows, dog would get in. She'd see the dog, and she'd come over to me, and she'd hide behind me from the dog. The dog would come around this side, she'd run around the other side of me. She was scared of that dog.

  Darcy Booth:                    Her name was tiny.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, and if you happen to set a bucket of milk on the floor some place, she's go in there and take a look at that bucket.

  Darcy Booth:                    She would?

  Tony Machado:               She would.

  Mary Machado:              Muir [01:12:00] Beach, we had a little jersey cow, my husband had it, but she was the kind she'd take anything. We used to put two sheep on her, and the sheep would drink, she'd nurse the sheep until they were full grown. You could get her to goat, you could get a calf from some other cow and give it to her, and she'd take them all.

  Darcy Booth:                    She didn't mind, oh.

  Mary Machado:              Ordinarily there's no way.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you ever use any of the cows, [01:12:30] was it just milk cows? Did you have any cows for meat?

  Mary Machado:              They slaughtered the cows here, but up at the big ranch. We just got, they never killed cows on our place.

  Darcy Booth:                    Okay.

  Mary Machado:              No. When we were in Muir Beach we'd slaughter our own cows, our own beef. Yeah. Whenever we run out of beef, they'd just go out in the barn, pick one. I don't know how they did it anyway. That was it.

  Tony Machado:               I think we would get one that didn't produce very much milk.

  Mary Machado:              Slam her on the head, and that was it.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              [01:13:00] She never knew what happened.

  Darcy Booth:                    You were little and you didn't, like that didn't bother you?

  Mary Machado:              Oh no, no. That was part of the life.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right.

  Mary Machado:              It's like-

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, we used to go out there-

  Mary Machado:              I've had this trouble with people, coons, raccoons. If I see a raccoon, I'll kill them. I just hate them. You tell somebody this and they go, "Oh, poor little thing." Poor little [01:13:30] things my foot, because they used to kill our chickens. They used to go in the henhouse and kill the chickens.

  Tony Machado:               Eat the eggs.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, the guys would go out there with a 22 trying to shoot them, and they're so hard to kill, those things. I mean, it's the same like seals. We're inundated with seals, but try to tell the public that. I don't understand.

                                             No way you're gonna get rid of all of this stuff. It's no [01:14:00] different than rats and mice and ants and flies. Not if we catered to everything, we'd be in [inaudible 01:14:07]. People do not realize what a struggle it was for these early settlers. It was a struggle.

  Tony Machado:               To make a living, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              It was a struggle.

  Tony Machado:               That life, that was [Bolinas and Simpson Beach], a lot of dairies up there, [01:14:30] but everybody knew they had 50 acres, 100 acres, you know. They only load 10. Five, 10, 25. That was it. They were set to make the milk, sell the cream, maybe they make cheese and stuff like that and they would sell the cheese to people. That was their living.

  Darcy Booth:                    One of persistence.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, because the trucks, they wouldn't go out there to pick up the milk. It was a long ways off.

  Darcy Booth:                    You think comparatively speaking you had a good lifetime here?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yes, we did.

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    On the ranch here?

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah. I think pretty near [01:15:00] all ranches. We were very fortunate. Sam Silva was very good to us, I imagine there are some of the bosses were, the owners of the dairies probably were nasty to their help, but I couldn't say we were. My mother adored that Mr. Silva, see, so therefore I know that he gave us enough to eat and what have you, and a job. She [01:15:30] was very thankful, but they had a job, because this was during the depression mind you.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right. That's true, that's true.

  Tony Machado:               We got the orders, Sausalito, my dad was going to Tiburon. He used to drive over twice a day to Tiburon.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really? When you were in Sausalito.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, and even though he was only getting $100 a month then.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, that was for Reid's ramp.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, see going out to Tiburon, there used to be four dairies I think, three dairies, big dairies.

  Tony Machado:               Big Reid's, Bill Reid's.

  Mary Machado:              Got one left. Bill and Rita.

  Tony Machado:               Joel Billaway at the end.

  Mary Machado:              I think, yeah. You [01:16:00] just ... as far as, that's about all I can remember out here. I'm trying to think of what we did for entertainment as kids.

  Tony Machado:               I don't remember what we used to do.

  Mary Machado:              I can't remember-

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you like to play games like with each other?

  Mary Machado:              Marbles probably.

  Tony Machado:               Probably lost. I remember we used to go outside [01:16:30] there, playing around, we'd take a spoon and eat dirt. Yeah. Didn't we?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yes, yes. I can remember that day we got the rattlesnake, I was out early in the morning, now don't ask me what I was doing, but I started to go out of the yard and there was this black gate that was opened up against the ...

  Tony Machado:               Building, the house?

  Mary Machado:              Bunk house. I saw this thing there.

  Tony Machado:               [01:17:00] All curled up.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, and I thought, I'm just gonna go pick it up. I thought it was something came up on the beach. Then I noticed it was a snake, so I called my father, and he come and killed it.

                                             See, we used to go to the beach too quite a bit.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Wander the beach, and you find all kinds of little treasures. I was surprised, this beach has hardly anything on it. There used to be garbage like, not garbage. Wood, mostly wood.

  Tony Machado:               You probably could keep it in a net or something.

  Darcy Booth:                    Maybe some of the lessons [01:17:30] that went on there I think, while you were there, you tried to get the financial. But people might walk out there and collect things.

  Tony Machado:               I'd go fishing on the other beach. I go to the other small beach more than I do this one.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh do you?

  Tony Machado:               I go up to the top, right there, walking down that trail there. I fished down there only 3-4 years ago, last time I was down there. There was a lot of wood and stuff down there, you know.

  Mary Machado:              They used to have a lot of tar, oil-

  Tony Machado:               Same thing over there. Not tar and oil, but-

  Mary Machado:              Dead seals or you know.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of seaweed over there.

  Mary Machado:              Oh, is that?

  Tony Machado:               Over there, [01:18:00] yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    You could go and pick up a starfish, and those little stars?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, the starfish.

  Darcy Booth:                    Tide pool.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Dead seal would wash up, and we'd go down with gasoline I guess, or something and pour over it, and burn it up, because it stank to high heaven.

  Darcy Booth:                    Were there any particular flowers? The calla lily that you remember that would bloom or anything you would collect?

  Mary Machado:              We used Indian paintbrushes, I don't know if you know what they are.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              There [01:18:30] was a lot of that and a lot of blue lupines.

  Tony Machado:               Blue lupines, yeah,

  Mary Machado:              Or purple ones. Especially after we left the beach to go up.

  Tony Machado:               Start up the hill, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              To go to school, all kinds of lupines up there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh really?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, big. I mean big bushes. I didn't like to go because I was afraid of snakes, but he'd always go ahead of me, because there was just these little trails as we'd go along.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you ever walk up to the school from the beach?

  Mary Machado:              Sure. We had to cross the beach.

  Darcy Booth:                    [01:19:00] From the other far end of the beach?

  Tony Machado:               From the ranch all the way across the beach.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really? Were there some wooden steps or something?

  Tony Machado:               No, there were no wooden steps.

  Mary Machado:              There were none there then. It was just a trail.

  Darcy Booth:                    Just a little trail to the top of the hill.

  Mary Machado:              We'd go along, where they have, what do they call those gun? The cannons.

  Darcy Booth:                    The battery, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Underneath there, honestly I hate it when they were shooting those things out, because they'd do it every so often. We'd go that way up to the school, that same way.

  Tony Machado:               [01:19:30] When the water was running out of the lagoon there, we used boots to go to school, and we had to walk across that. My dad used to help us walk across because that water would run so fast through there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right.

  Mary Machado:              In certain time of the year we couldn't even do that, we'd have to go all the way around to go to the store.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh my gosh. Wow, so the only way in and out was crossing a beach or-

  Tony Machado:               Or the bridge, to cross that bridge, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    [inaudible 01:19:56]

  Mary Machado:              Right. I often think about, [01:20:00] that's a long walk that we had over there.

  Tony Machado:               Because see over there, there was no military buildings over there or nothing before.

  Mary Machado:              Nothing.

  Tony Machado:               Nothing over there, and they knew they went to the top of the hill, and nothing the same. Maybe all that, I guess during the war.

  Mary Machado:              There was absolutely nothing except us up there.

  Tony Machado:               That was it.

  Mary Machado:              But that was a long walk to go from the ranch down, across that beach, up the hill to school.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              Kids wouldn't do that today.

  Darcy Booth:                    No, probably not.

  Tony Machado:               Because they have a bus.

  Mary Machado:              [01:20:30] Yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    They'd probably want to. How often did you get into town?

  Mary Machado:              I can't remember going to down.

  Tony Machado:               The only times of year, clothes or something like that.

  Mary Machado:              That's about the only time.

  Darcy Booth:                    Got it.

  Tony Machado:               Once a year, twice a year.

  Mary Machado:              My father used to go to down quite often, because he could go to the movies, but he never took us. He'd come home with a tube of chocolate, looked like chocolate ... god, what is it?

  Tony Machado:               Tootsie Rolls?

  Mary Machado:              No, no, no. More like [01:21:00] those things I gave Donna the other day. The chocolate, you make chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate chips.

  Tony Machado:               Chocolate chips.

  Mary Machado:              They used to come in a tube, about like that.

  Tony Machado:               Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              You remember?

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              He'd bring us that to pacify us I guess, I don't know.

  Tony Machado:               It was a little round chocolate candy about that big around, comes up to a little point.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, it looked just like chocolate chips.

  Darcy Booth:                    Kisses?

  Mary Machado:              They're tiny, tiny.

  Darcy Booth:                    [01:21:30] They're like that big?

  Mary Machado:              Oh no, they're real tiny. They were like chocolate chips that you use for cookies, maybe a little smaller than that. They used to come in this round tube, and about this long. You can bring us one of those for the four of us to share, or the three of us, or whatever it was.

  Darcy Booth:                    That was a treat.

  Mary Machado:              Oh yeah, that was, oh god. That was a big thing.

  Tony Machado:               Well, we moved to Sausalito in '32. It looked to break down [01:22:00] at that time.

  Mary Machado:              A dime.

  Tony Machado:               A dime something, yeah.

  Mary Machado:              We used to buy day old, like nickel piece.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you have any kind of big family dinners or anything for Christmas or anything?

  Mary Machado:              No, we never exchanged gifts. We never got a gift. At school, the teacher would make us make things, like you take a sardine container and maybe paste paper on it or something. She [01:22:30] just helped us out, trying. I guess these military people knew what Christmas [was], but what did we know about Christmas? Nothing.

  Tony Machado:               We didn't know it was a holiday.

  Mary Machado:              No, we didn't. Yeah. I can remember, I think the first Christmas tree we had was in Sausalito.

  Tony Machado:               Then those years, they'd work every day of the week.

  Mary Machado:              Right.

  Tony Machado:               You didn't get no days off.

  Mary Machado:              Right, [01:23:00] yeah, that's true.

  Tony Machado:               Where now the guys, they get days off during the week, or maybe every two weeks, or beginning of the month, or something like that. They get so many days off.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right.

  Tony Machado:               Not in those years.

  Mary Machado:              You'd work every day, every single day, and every day of the year. Whenever vacation or no such thing as a holiday.

  Tony Machado:               Even right now, they have the cows every day, Saturday, Sunday, and everything right now, but they get days off.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah, true.

  Tony Machado:               [01:23:30] Some guys, they milk the cows, once they milk the cows, they're all through and they don't do no more until somebody else comes in and needs the barn, beats them, and all this.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right. Yeah, people do a lot more, you know, equipment doing the work.

  Tony Machado:               Yeah, yeah.

  Darcy Booth:                    Did you have trees down there? Did you plant a lot of trees?

  Mary Machado:              No. I saw those trees back there and I told Tony I don't remember any trees. The only trees I remember is the eucalyptus trees up on the other ranch.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right.

  Mary Machado:              Never down there. I said those trees have grown since we [01:24:00] were there, because there were no trees, period. If there were, we cut them down for wood.

  Darcy Booth:                    Right.

  Mary Machado:              It seems to me like behind the barns was a crick, but there was mostly willows back in there. Never those evergreens that I saw today.

  Tony Machado:               Cypress trees?

  Mary Machado:              Yeah. I never saw them. There were none there. Those are probably fairly young trees, maybe 50 years old.

  Tony Machado:               [01:24:30] There's no Smith slab up there or nothing?

  Darcy Booth:                    You know, I don't know. I haven't, I know there's some at the top. Firstly, I don't know what the difference between the army and stuff that came before that, but if it were a nicer day, we should walk out there.

  Mary Machado:              Well, the army wouldn't have built anything and destroyed it.

  Darcy Booth:                    No, well, there's just some stuff that was never completed.

  Mary Machado:              Yeah, but you see out there where we were, there was no military stuff, because up here all these bunkers and stuff you can see. [01:25:00] Out there, there was none of that.

  Darcy Booth:                    I don't think there's much left, because I think a lot of the park service actually, before they knew what they were doing, tore a lot of stuff down.

  Mary Machado:              Well see, the signs say I was out here, I came to the house many years ago, but it seemed to me I saw the walls of a barn left up there, but that was all.

  Darcy Booth:                    Really?

  Tony Machado:               I remember seeing the slab on that one. Right over there, but I don't know if it's still there. It's a mute, because the vegetation is so high now you can't [01:25:30] see the ground.

  Darcy Booth:                    Well, if you want I can drive down there and take a look. Now I'm thinking I wanna look at it.

  Tony Machado:               If you're going up, it'd be on the left side of all that green stuff there. It'd be right up in there. Right next to the green, right up by the calla lilies there. Should be right there.

  Mary Machado:              Well, you can't miss it, because you see the green. It's just a big green mass of stuff there. I know there was a spring back there, and all of them outmaneuver that fertilizer, I know. That must be super duper [01:26:00] soil up there.

  Tony Machado:               They still set off those big liters over here?

  Darcy Booth:                    No.

  Tony Machado:               They did here about three years ago. At the end of that road they still got that one section fenced off.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah, no, they pulled that down. They moved out of there back in 1974, I think. They've got stuff there, but they haven't used it in a long time.

  Tony Machado:               I was out there about 2-3 years ago, and I was fishing on a Thursday.

  Darcy Booth:                    [01:26:30] Is that gonna set it off?

  Tony Machado:               I heard these loudspeakers, I couldn't hardly understand what they were saying, and I was there fishing. All of a sudden, I was down on that rock, I wasn't inside their fence there, you know. Went down fishing there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Tony Machado:               All of a sudden rocks, I heard this great big blast, and the rocks started flying all over and everything.

  Darcy Booth:                    Oh gosh. I have no idea what that was. You know, as far as I know, but I mean-

  Tony Machado:               They set all three of them while I was there, the last one caught the grass on fire up there. The fire trucks were there and everything. I had to pack up my poles and got [01:27:00] out of there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Gosh, I thought it was gone.

  Tony Machado:               This one, fireman asked where was I at, I told him I was down there fishing. He said, "Did you hear us tell you everybody get clear of the area?" No. I said, don't worry, I won't be back. [laughter]That's it, I'd like to go fishing over there.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              You've got something if there's this Point Bonita photos.

  Darcy Booth:                    Yeah.

  Mary Machado:              What is that?

  Darcy Booth:                    You wanna look at it? It's all about, I think I'm gonna turn this off now.

  Mary Machado:              Point Bonita- (silence)

 

Dairy Ranch c1928

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 40087

---

"This ranch over here, everything's gone. Where Sam Silva was. And dairy ranch, everything's gone over there too. Nothing left there. I can remember buildings here. Especially Sam's had a big ranch over here." - John Cunha

 

• John and Rose Cunha

  
  

  John And Rose Cunha discusses ranching and ranches in the 1940's and 1950s
  Audio Transcript

  SIDE A

  Darcie Luce :      [00:00]  Today is November 28, 1993 and my name is Darcie Luce and I have Gail Lester here assisting me in interviewing John Cunha and his wife, Rose Cunha.  We're just doing this just because --------------- to help also with giving programs for future to help the rangers doing interpreting to the public and to tell the public a little more about some of the legends and the aspects of the dairy ranching and that kind of thing.

  Interviewer 2: [00:40] You don’t want to be telling the wrong stories.  I don’t want to give them the wrong impressions too.  I think part of the thing is that people come out here and they just see the military.  Cause there aren’t any buildings . . . many buildings standing from the diary ranching time.  So, they get the impression that the only thing that's been out here is the military.

  Cunha: [00:57] Military.

  Interviewer:       [01:00]  And that's not true.

  Cunha: [01:02] This ranch over here, everything's gone.  Where Sam Silva(?) was.  And dairy ranch, everything's gone over there too.  Nothing left there.  I can remember buildings here.  Especially Sam's had a big ranch over here.  Where the blunt ---------- where the riding stable is up in that valley there.  Many times, I came over those hills in that place.

  Interviewer:       [01:29]  Your ranch is only standing          because you --------------

  Cunha: [01:34]  Yeah.  The horses were there, yeah.  Had houses there.  I want to tell you about that house.  Don't want that to go in there.  A----------- years ago we come to Tennessee Valley, we didn't have electricity. No electricity in the Valley.  So, everything was powered by kerosene or gasoline engines.  My mother used to cook on a kerosene stove and one year she was doing some cleaning, not at the house, but we were going to hire somebody.  And she turns around and looks up at the house and the house was all gone up in smoke.  And I was at school.  I come home from school that day just in my school clothes and had to go to work in my school clothes.  So, we didn’t have any other place to stay or anything, so we had to build another house.  So, we're poor as church mice at the time.  We didn't have anything.  Over in Alto there was a . . . used to be where the electric trains . . . years ago they had a substation there to run the electric trains – for years and years – all electric trains around there.  The fifth rail.  So, my dad bought that house.  He bought two houses over there.  Me and my brother – we tore that house down, the two houses.  Took all the nails out.  Hauled them over to Tennessee Valley, and the house is there, Darcie.  We built it.  Me and my brother built it with another man that knew a little bit about carpenter work.  We built the whole house – a two-bedroom house for $4,500.

  Interviewer:       [03:29]  How old were you when you built that?

  Cunha: [03:31]  Oh God, I don't know.  Fifteen, sixteen.

  Interviewer:       [03:34]  So young.

  Cunha: [03:38]  Yeah.  Me and my brother.

  Interviewer:       [03:41]  Is that the house that Laura Lopez lives in?

  Cunha: [03:43]  That's the house that Laura lives.  And the house down below -  that's my grandmother's.  You know down in the lower part of the ranch  where the park is.

  Interviewer:       [03:51]  The Spanish-style house?

  Cunha: [03:54]  Yeah, right down by the cypress trees.  Right there. Lived there.

  Interviewer:       [04:04]  Neat.  So now we know where the woods and that old house is  found.  All the way -------------------.

  Cunha: [04:15]  I don't know.  You ask me some questions.  I don't know what to  actually say.

  Interviewer:       [04:19]  Okay.  The first Cunhas that moved out here were your grandparents?

  Cunha: [04:25]  My grandparents.

  Interviewer:       [04:27]  And they came out here in . . . ?

  Cunha: [04:30]  I don't know.  Eighteen something I guess.

  Interviewer:       [04:33]  Late eighteen hundreds?

  Cunha: [04:38]  Yeah.  Our name is Cunha, but my grandfather was . . . see the name Cunha translated to American is a woods.  Just woodlands.  My middle name is Ferrereo(?) which translated is a blacksmith.  When my grandparents came out, they were in Tennessee Valley here, and he was a little bit of a guy they tell me.  I never did see him, but they told me.  And they called him "little male" or "male Ferrenia(?)", small.  And he went by that name all the time because he was that way, from the old country – we're that way – great for nicknames or changing things around.  By that name all the time cause he was that way. 

  Interviewer:       [05:25]  So the grandparents came out here together?

  Cunha: [05:28]  Yeah, from the Island of St. George.  A little village, like a little small town around here called St. Anthony.  That's weird.  The Machado’s were here yesterday.  They're from the same island.

  Interviewer:       [05:51]  Yeah.

  Cunha: [05:52]  Yeah, they're from the same island.  But a different . . . we call them in Portuguese, "fragzia(?)" – a village.

  Interviewer:       [06:02]  So your grandparents came out here and they were the first ones to live on that ranch over there?

  Cunha: [06:07]  ---------- yeah.

  Interviewer:       [06:09]  And then they had your father or . . . ?

  Cunha: [06:13]  Yeah, three boys and a girl. 

  Interviewer:       [06:15]  And they all grew up on the ranch?

  Cunha: [06:17]  …. My uncle Joe, John ------------------------ yeah.

  Interviewer:       [06:27]  Then your father met your mother here somewhere?

  Cunha: [06:30]  My mother was from Pescadero.

  Interviewer:       [06:32]  And they inherited the ranch or how did they . . . ?

  Cunha: [06:35]  Yeah, we took it on as a family deal.  And then we took it over when my grandmother was there.  And then when my grandmother passed away, it was a family deal, and you know how a family deal is.  One wants this and one wants that and so that's when we moved out of there.  We moved over to Alto which my grandparents also had that ranch where Enchanted Knolls is today.

  Interviewer:       [07:08]  How did they, they ran two separate ranches?

  Cunha: [07:13]  Enchanted Knolls years ago . . . this seems awful – out of line, but years ago Enchanted Knolls you could . . .  they used to bring hay to the ranchers in barges and you wouldn't believe it by seeing it today, the barges used to come up and there was water all around – around that island.  See now where Enchanted Knolls is now towards facing Strawberry, that's been all filled in – where the highway is.  You know where that is?  That's all been filled in through there.

  Interviewer 2:    [07:46]  Yes, and I'm not sure where Enchanted Knolls is, but I, Dorothy Silva talks about the barges.

  Cunha: [07:53]  Yeah.

  Interviewer:       [07:55]    Is that near Coyote -------- at all?

  Cunha: [08:00]  Oh no. 

  Interviewer 2:    [08:01]  Kind of where where the heliport is?

  Cunha: [08:04]  No, no.  That's Manzanita.

  Interviewer 2:    [08:06]  Okay.

  Cunha: [08:11]  We used to call it Manzanita at the time.  Enchanted Knolls is right at . . . you know where the Strawberry Shopping Center is?

  Interviewer 2:    [08:14]  Uh huh.

  Cunha: [08:15]  Well just across the highway.

  Interviewer 2:    [08:18]  Kind of near where Goodman's is.

  Cunha: [08:20]  Yeah, above Goodman's.  That's Enchanted Knolls.

  Interviewer 2:    [08:22]  And that's all filled?

  Cunha: [08:24]  That's all been filled in there.  Like there's apartments there now.  Condos or apartments ---------------------------.

  Rose:     [08:28]  Homes.

  Cunha: [08:29]  Homes in there and it's all been filled.

  Rose:     [08:34]  Across from Longs, you know where Long’s Drug Store is.  That's Enchanted Knolls.  Right above that.

  Interviewer 2:    [08:46]  Oh.  Yeah.  Right

  Interviewer:       [08:49]  So they had two separate ranches.  They ran both of them?

  Cunha: [08:53]  Yeah we had both places.  We moved . . . we had both for a while.  We had another ranch over there, but it didn't belong to us.  They called it Tunnel Ranch where Eddie McGuire School is today.  My dad run that that for a while.  And then the one where Enchanted Knolls is.  And then when it got closed in, there were so many houses, and then they wanted to build a road.  See there was no overpass there going on Highway 113.  You know where the overpass is now?  Going to San Francisco on 101 and then you go to Tiburon from Mill Valley?  Well there was a stop sign there years ago.  Many a wreck I've seen there.  Great God, stop signs.  And we were there and then we kept getting closed in.  So we had to move.  And we moved to where today is Peacock Gap.  Do you know where Peacock Gap is?

  Interviewer 2:    [09:58]  Yes.

  Cunha: [09:59]  By San Rafael.

  Interviewer 2:    [10:02]  Go out towards McNears.

  Cunha: [10:04]  McNears.  That's 25 hundred acres in there.  And that's what Peacock Gap is today.  That's where we had the ranch when we sold, quit   dairy business.  My dad sold out.  My brother went to work for the phone company and I went to work for the oil company.

  Interviewer 2:    [10:15]  About what time period was that?

  Cunha: [10:18]  We sold out up there on October 4, 1955.  We had 410 head of cattle.

  Interviewer 2:    [10:27]  So you had all these . . . three different ranches that you ran for a while and your grandparents ran and then eventually consolidated it all into Peacock Gap.

  Cunha: [10:36]  We moved up there.  That was the last.  Yeah, that was the last spot we were in.

  Interviewer:       [10:42]  That seems like a . . . that's pretty spread out.  To be running three different ranches in three different spots.

  Cunha: [10:47]  My dad . . . this was long before the roads, the freeway now you'd take to go to San Rafael and to go to San Anselmo, Larkspur, San Rafael and to go to Santa Rosa – my dad had a dairy for a year in Santa Rosa. 

  Interviewer:       [11:02]  Really?

  Cunha: [11:03]  But it was so far away – to get the milk to San Francisco it didn't pay.  We had a beautiful place up there.  The home…  I can still remember it.  I was just a kid.  Big mirror you know.  You'd pull it down and it'd be a bed.  Pull it up and it'd be a mirror.  Size of the whole , I can remember that, yeah… That was in Santa Rosa in Bennet Valley.  I go up there quite a bit.  The business I'm in now.  I think of that just about every time I go up in that area. 

  Interviewer:       [11:40]  Did you . . . did your grandparents have their own dairy business or did they working for other people?

  Cunha: [11:47]  No, no.  It was their own. 

  Interviewer:       [11:49]  Did they have . . . what was their name?  Cunha Dairy?

  Cunha: [11:54]  Oh yeah.  Just our name.  We never had any ---------

  Interviewer:       [11:58]  Nickname?

  Cunha: [12:00]  No.

  Rose:     [12:01]  Didn't have any regulations.

  Cunha: [12:04]  No.  My dad used to tell me stories of years ago in Sausalito when they delivered milk.  My dad and the Rosa family.  There were no bottles like this.

  Interviewer:       [12:15]  Right.  What did they . . . ?

  Cunha: [12:17]  Horse and wagon.  In a ten-gallon milk can.  And you wanted a quart of milk, or two quarts of milk you'd come out with your pitcher and you had a measure on the wagon.  You'd pour a quart or two – pour it into your pitcher and you'd go home.

  Interviewer:       [12:33]  Oh really?

  Interviewer 2:    [12:34] So folks were coming right up to you in the dairy?

  Cunha: [12:40]  The wagon, horse and wagon. 

  Interviewer 2:    [12:41]  The wagon.

  Cunha: [12:42]  Yeah, horse and wagon.

  Interviewer 2:    [12:44]  Where would you take the wagon?  Where would the wagon be when they'd do that?

  Cunha: [12:47]  They'd go around just like a route.  Delivery milk route years ago.

  Interviewer 2:    [12:50]  Oh I see.

  Cunha: [12:51]  Just like today they drop off quart of milk.  But then was no bottles.

  Interviewer:       [13:01]  Was it straight from the ranch right here in the can.  Straight to people's doors basically.

  Cunha: [13:09]  Yeah.  There was no pasteurization or none of that jazz like today.  God no.

  Rose:     [13:17]   And they lived to be 100.

  Cunha: [13:21]   They were much healthier then than now.   They spoil everything I think, myself, because I'm from the old school.

  Interviewer :      [13:30]  What was life like then?  Day to day life growing up on this ranch out here?

  Cunha: [13:35]   Well I'll tell you.  I started grammar school there and I went through high school.  And I was able to drive when I was fairly young, but I couldn't because I couldn't get a driver's license.  So in those days it wasn't like today.  Today the ranchers come right to the ranch with a truck and pick up the milk.  Those days we had to take ten-gallon milk cans and fill them.  We had a cooling system, refrigeration.  A big tank and we'd get the milk.

  Interviewer 2:    [14:15]  Rods with ammonia inside?

  Cunha: [14:17]  Ammonia inside and we'd fill the cans, load them into the truck, and we'd have to go down to the highway.  They'd come by and pick it up.  The milk trucks from San Francisco.  We shipped to Marin Dell when we got to that point.  When we were shipping to San Francisco.  And, like I said, I wasn't old enough to get a license, so I'd take the milk down.  The road at that time, well I guess it still is, was a private road.  Was a dirt road.  We'd have to maintain it ourselves.  So I'd drive down to the platform, what we called a platform.  We'd put the milk on the platform and they had these empty milk cans there from the day before.  We'd leave the full ones and take the empty ones.  And leave the truck there and the school bus would come by and we'd catch the school bus.  Cause I couldn't drive, like I said, I was too young.  We'd catch the school bus and go to school.   Dorothy and Grace, Georgina, me and my brother.  And catch the school bus and go to school.  Come back in the afternoon.  We'd get in the milk truck and come home.  But before that when we were younger, we'd have to walk sometimes.  And right down at the end of the – that church down there, right at the end of Tennessee Valley . . .

  Interviewer 2:    [15:43]  The Lutheran Church.

  Cunha: [15:45]  The Lutheran Church. There was an old fella that lived there.  He had dogs and they were meaner than the devil.  And we hated to go by there.  All five of us.  We'd get together and go together past there to get by those dogs.  I can't forget that.  That's why today I can't stand them.  I'm in the gasoline business and I go all over to these ranches you know.  That's my business now.  And I carry a can of cookies – dog biscuits in the truck all the time.  When I see dogs, I throw then a cookie and then they're friends of mine. 

  Interviewer:       [16:24]  You caught the bus with the other neighborhood – other rancher's children?

  Cunha: [16:29]  Oh yeah.  You had Dorothy and then there was a ranch down by the beach and there was the Martin Benecourts.  There was George Benecourt and Ernie Martin.

  Interviewer:       [16:47]  Mentioned some of the other kids.  Georgina?

  Cunha: [16:51]  Georgina.  Yeah, she lives up in Petaluma now.  That's Dorothy's sister.

  Interviewer:       [16:54]  Oh, okay.

  Cunha: [16:57]  And then Grace is Dorothy's sister.  Three girls. 

  Interviewer:       [17:01]  I only had two sisters.

  Cunha: [17:06]  She didn't tell you?  She didn't mention it to you?

  Interviewer:       [17:09]  No, she mentioned her sisters, but I guess not by name.  I just listened to a tape. 

  Cunha: [17:12]  Oh.  Grace, Georgina and Dorothy.  Three girls.

  Interviewer:       [17:16]  So you pretty much grew up with them.

  Cunha: [17:18]  Oh yeah.  We went all through school.  All of us.

  Interviewer:       [17:22]  And you all went in Mill Valley?

  Cunha: [17:24]  Yeah, Grace was younger.  I think Grace . . . she didn't graduate from Tam.  I think she graduated from San Rafael cause they had moved up to Novato, I think. 

  Interviewer:       [17:40]  Did you play with them much in the neighborhood?  Outside school?

  Cunha: [17:45]  We didn't have much time for that.  Just work on the ranch.  Get up in the morning and milk cows and go home and eat breakfast and change clothes and go to school.

  Interviewer:       [17:56]  Did you get up with the rest of the men – get up and milk the cows?  What time . . . you'd get up at what, two or . . . ?

  Cunha: [18:03]  Three, four, two.  All depends.

  Interviewer:       [18:06]  And then you'd go to school all day.

  Cunha: [18:08]  To school, and then I'd come home at night, do some studying.  I couldn't do, I was like this falling asleep.  We went out t a banquet last night a friend of ours . . . we were talking about that.  The kids of today don't what . . .

  Rose:     [18:30]  They don't know how lucky they are.

  Cunha: [18:34]  They don't know what work is.  They don't know what work is.

  Interviewer:       [18:38]  No.  Definitely a different . . . not even the dairy ranchers today work like that.

  Cunha: [18:42]  No, Darcie the milk is pipelined right into the cooler.  Everything's goes by pipe.  There's no . . . we had milking machines.  We have buckets, four of ‘em.  We'd have to milk two cows at a time, we’d milk eight cows.  And we'd have to dump the milk in buckets, carry it to the what we'd call the milk house, where the cooling system was.  That's the way we . . .

  Interviewer:       [19:17]  And that was even when you had milking machines.

  Cunha: [19:19]  Yeah, right.

  Interviewer:       [19:20]  It was even harder before.

  Cunha: [19:22]  My dad made a – I don't know what you'd call it – a sling, I guess, from the branch of a tree, kind of curved.  Put a rope on each side with a hook on each one.  Put it over your shoulder and you'd squat down and pick the buckets up, stand up and . . .

  Interviewer:       [19:43]  Just like being an ox or something.  Carrying the buckets.

  Cunha: [19:46]  Oh yeah.

  Interviewer:       [19:50]  So when you grew up and were helping out with milking the cows, did you have milking machines, or did that come . . . ?

  Cunha: [19:59]  We started pretty early with them.  We got them a lot of times . . . when we finally got electricity in Tennessee Valley – it was strung all the way from down Tam Junction.  In the winter time sometimes the weather, you know, with the trees – it would knock down the line and we'd have no electricity.  So we had an old Model T Ford and just to milk the cows.  We had the milking machine pump which was a vacuum thing.  So the Model T Ford – I don't know if you know how they are, but I mean the lugs(?)   were different than the cars are today.  You'd take just a tire off and the wheel was there.  So what we'd do – we'd take part of the wall board off the milking machine house where the milking machine pump was, we'd back this old Ford up to it, jack one hind wheel up, and we'd take a belt and run it from the milking machine pump to the wheel on that Ford and that would run the milking machine pump and the darn old-time car never had water pumps, it was just flow through, so my mother would be out there with a bucket of cold water pouring it over while we were milking the cows. 

  Interviewer:       [21:17]  That's ingenious.  Problem solver. 

  Cunha: [21:31]  It's a lot different today, I'll tell you.  My business is – it's a gasoline business, and I deliver mostly to agriculture.  I see all the ranches all over.  Point Reyes, ---------------, Sonoma and all over the country you see this.  And the way they do it today and the way we did it. 

  Interviewer:       [21:55]  How big of a ranch did you have over there?  Was that . . . ?

  Cunha: [22:00]  Tennessee Valley was 517 acres.  Peacock Gap was 2,500 acres.  Let's see, Alto was about 180, 200, somewhere around there.  I don't quite remember that one. 

  Interviewer:       [22:14]  You had . . . did you have a lot of cows -----------------?  Did you have a lot of hired hands?

  Cunha: [22:20]  No no.  We had to do without hired help as much as we could.  We couldn't afford it.  We did the best we could with what we had. 

  Interviewer:       [22:30]  So you did most of the milking?  Your father and you and your brother?

  Cunha: [22:34]  All three of us.

  Interviewer:       [22:35]  Just the three of you?

  Cunha: [22:39]  Yeah.  We had an old fellow who used to come and live with us.  He'd help out once in a while.  The roads, delivery. The roads in Tennessee Valley were just dirt.  And down there where Dorothy lived – well, Dorothy's this way – that was kind of a marsh in there.  Where those willow trees are.  In the winter time the ruts would get so deep that we'd be going out with a truck – the milk truck – and we'd couldn't get through.  So this little old fellow we had living with us, cause he didn't have anybody, he'd go down and lead us down there with the team of horses.  When we got there, then he'd hook onto us with the team of horses and pull us through.  Coming home he'd pull us through.  Coming home would be better because it wasn't as bad because the truck wasn't loaded.  But going out taking the milk, it would weigh down and get caught on the ruts.  The old Chevrolets we had the fly wheel was not like today.  Fly wheels today are covered.  In those days they weren't covered.  They were open and when the engine hit that dirt it would kill the engine on us.  We couldn't go.

  Interviewer:       [23:58]  So you had you and your brother and your father doing all the work and your mother . . .

  Cunha: [24:02]  She'd help out.  She did all the cooking.

  Interviewer:       [24:04]  You had got . . . it must have been pretty small, right?  You couldn't have milked that many . . . what'd you – milk 30 cows each or something?

  Cunha: [24:15]  Oh yeah.  We had . . . Tennessee?  Let's see, we milked more than that.

  Interviewer:       [24:21]  Really?

  Cunha: [24:25]  Yeah.  More than that.  We had quite a bit of ground.  I mean, you know, 517 acres would take care of quite a few animals.

  Interviewer 2:    [24:34]  How did you retrieve the cattle?  Obviously they wanted to be milked and everything, but that's a big acreage.

  Cunha: [24:45]  We had the ranch divided.  We had what they call the back ranch where the dry cattle were.  Or the young cattle were.  And then the milk cows would be in separate ranch.  But there was always one or two who would lag behind.  It seemed like they'd do it purposely.  That they wouldn't . . . you'd have to go.  In the spring of the year, see, they would pasture out.  The grass is green and they pasture out, they didn’t like to come home.  But the balance of the year we'd have to feed them at home, at the ranch.  And they come in pretty good.  At Enchanted Knolls I can remember walking those hills I don't know how many times to drive the cattle in.  For some reason or other we always had a little trouble at the other places getting the cattle in.

  Interviewer 2:    [25:40]  Too enchanted maybe.

  Cunha: [25:42]  Maybe.

  Interviewer:       [25:43]  Did you have cow dogs at all?

  Cunha: [25:45]  Yeah we had real nice hunting dogs.  I had pointers.  I had deer hounds.  We had one cow dog that used to haul cows from the ranch like here to where Sam Silva  was or ------------ the truck to the back ranch.  My dad found this dog one time.  We used to call him Brownie cause he was just a little dog and God he was good.  I don’t know what he really was.  We were trying to load the cattle on the truck and you couldn't do it.  You know sometimes they won't go, they’d get stubborn. He'd nip them on the hind legs right down at the heel and then nip them and he'd duck.  Check over them, you know.  And they'd go flying in the truck.  Soon as he'd bit them, he'd bite them and sit down, and then we'd have them, like I say, the different ranches.  He used to follow my dad all over and God it made us sick.  My dad was going from one ranch to the other and wanted him to stay there, you know.  But he wanted to go.  He was always following my dad to the truck and a car hit him and killed him.  God, it made me sick.  I'll never forget that.  Yeah.  He was just a dog that we picked up.  I don't know what breed he was or anything.  Called him Brownie.  God he was good.  ---------------- used to do a lot of deer hunting.  Used to deer hunt on horseback, me and my brother.  Had two deer hounds.  I had a cousin.  He's dead now, but he lived out in Slide Ranch.  You know where Slide Ranch is?

  Interviewer:       [27:21]  Uh huh.

  Cunha: [27:22]  He was there for years.  He used to come over and hunt with us.  He had a Blue Australian Shepard.  Used to deer hunt with.  One time we were over here at Sam Silva’s on this side and we were going up the hill and here's a rattlesnake right across the trail.  The dogs see him and they'd shy.  Another time we were over on the other side and I was going up . . . me and my brother we had two horses, and I had the gun tied on the saddle, and I had the dogs – two hounds.  And my brother was following me.  And we'd get up the hill there and I heard . . . the horse turned around so quick I pretty near fell off, but it was a footprint from the wintertime where a cow had stepped and there was a rattlesnake coiled up in there.  The horses were scared of those things.  Boy, it turned on a dime.  I could have fell off the horse.  You know I didn't expect it.

  Interviewer:       [28:27] There must have been rattlesnakes back here a lot.

  Cunha: [28:29] Oh yeah.  Years ago.  I don't know about now cause I haven't been over these hills, but there used to be a lot of them.

  Interviewer 2:    [28:35] Up high where they have that FM station.  That's where the favorite breeding ground . . . but they're actually pretty shy.  I've not seen very many of them.  When we do see them they seem to want to just go on their own.  They don't seem quite as aggressive as some of the other.

  Cunha: [28:59] I don't think they're . . . not for me.  Whether they're shy or not shy, I don't . . .

  Interviewer 2:    [29:05] I understand.

  Cunha: [29:06]  I know a friend of mine worked – when they were building that Sonoma Lake up there and he says, you come to work in the morning and the tractors and the turner(?) poles and what have you, and here they were, all over, hanging on the . . . he says, God it was something terrible to work on that job.  Especially up there.

  Interviewer:       [29:31] Were there a lot of wild animals in there?  Did you ever see coyote or anything like that?

  Cunha: [29:35]  At night time, yeah, they'd make a racket. 

  Interviewer:       [29:40] Really?

  Cunha: [29:41]  The coyote, yeah.  Bobcats.  A fella by the name of Hadler, had a chicken ranch just below us.  I don't know if you heard about that.

  Interviewer:       [29:57]  No.

  Cunha" [29:58]  Yeah he had a chicken ranch there.  Well the ranch we were in, where Laura is now . . . as you go down towards Dorothy's with that – I don't know if there's still a cattle guard there or not, a bridge – a cattle guard there . . .

  Interviewer 2:    [30:10]  By Oakwood Valley.  Wasn't it a little road – a one-way.  Just sort of a one-way bridge and there's a cattle guard that goes . . . there's a big open valley?

  Cunha: [30:24]  Kind of open, yeah. 

  Interviewer:       [30:29]  Kind of an open field.

  Cunha: [30:31]  Yeah.  There's a road that goes up in there. Yeah.  George Hadler ..  That's it.  Had a chicken ranch there and he used to trap bobcats to eat.

  Interviewer:       [30:48]  Really?

  Cunha: [30:49]  It was a delicacy, sure.

  Interviewer:       [30:52]  It was a delicacy . . . ?

  Cunha: [30:55]  German I guess.

  Interviewer:       [30:57]  He was German?

  Cunha: [30:59]  Yes.  He used to trap those things to eat.  I went by one day and there was one in a trap and wow, those things were wild.  This goes back further yet.  Just down from his place was a place there that --------------------- long before bootlegging – our bootlegging days I should say. A fellow used to bootlegging there.  Years ago, and they raided the place one time.  He was trying to get away and he jumped in the mash pit.  And you know they dug all that mash pit out and they never could find that guy to this day.

  Interviewer 2:    [31:49]  Mash pit.  Isn't that where when they are making the alcohol that’s the stuff that’s left over?

  Cunha: [31:56]  Right. 

  Rose:     [31:57]  Maybe he disintegrated.

  Cunha: [32:01]  They never could find him.  Years ago.  It's different now.  Too far the judges are concerned.  We only had one judge and that was Judge Butler in Marin County.  He was about as bad as everybody else.

  Interviewer:       [32:19]  Were there a lot of people who lived in that valley in there?

  Cunha: [32:23]  No.  There's one by the water, by the ocean, down in Tennessee, and then there was where Louis or Rainer was and then there was where we were and then there was down, Bagshaw lived there.  He just had a house there on the left as you go – you're talking about going to the where the chicken ranch was . . .

  Interviewer 2:    [32:53]  Right.

  Cunha: [32:55]  Bagshaw lived there.  What do you call it?

  Interviewer 2:    [32:59]  The call it Oakwood Valley now?

  Cunha: [33:01]  That what they call it?  I don't know what they . . .

  Interviewer:       [33:04]  Bear Valley?

  Cunha: [33:05]  Bear Valley.  Bear Valley.  That's what they called it, Bear Valley.

  Interviewer:       [33:08]  That was what Oakwood Valley used to be called.

  Cunha: [33:11]  And then from there down, let's see.  There were a couple of houses there where Terry – what's Terry's last name?

  Interviewer 2:    [ 33:18]  Warden?

  Cunha: [33:19]  Terry.  The one who was in charge of the Marin County  ----------.

  Interviewer 2:    [33:25]  ----------------?

  Cunha: [33:26]  No, Terry that lives by Dorothy and ------------.  Sure, we’d seen the heck all the time.  Terry Houlihan?  Used to be in charge of the trucks and everything at Marin County . . .

  Interviewer 2:    [33:43]  Yeah, what about him?

  Cunha: [33:45]  What's his last name, I'm trying to think.

  Interviewer:       [33:47]  ---------------.

  Cunha: [33:50]  You heard of his last name. I can't think of his last name.  Well he lived there and then Dorothy's at the old house – the original house.  And then the house now and exactly across, I guess Dorothy has told you where the school is today that's where the ranch was.

  Interviewer:       [34:09]  Right.

  Cunha: [34:10]   The dairy was. 

  Interviewer:       [34:12]  Right.  That was her parents . . . ?

  Cunha: [34:16]  Her parents, yes.

  Interviewer:       [34:20]  Does that name Sequera, Tequera

  Cunha: [34:23]  Sequera

  Interviewer:       [34:25] Does that ring a bell at all?  Were they ever around anywhere?

  Cunha: [34:29]  Not that I remember in there,.not in there.  Sequeria was up in San Rafael.

  Interviewer:       [34:31]  Oh really?

  Cunha: [34:32]  Yeah, I looked -------------------

  Interviewer 2:    [34:34]  San Rafael.

  Cunha: [34:36]  Yeah, Sequeria.  He was up there at Marinwood.

  Interviewer:       [34:39]  I'm just curious cause I thought I'd heard someone mention them and I . . .

  Cunha: [34:43]  Oh!  I know why you get Sequeria.  Sequeria was on top of the hill going to Muir Beach, the Jim Diaz Ranch. 

  Interviewer:       [34:50]  Oh.

  Cunha: [34:52]   When he came over from the old country he landed there.  Joe Sequera, Joe.  That's right.  Yes, you're right.  And he landed there and he worked there.  Jim Diaz Ranch.

  Interviewer:       [35:05]  Okay.  But he didn't actually live, he didn't have his own . . .

  Cunha: [35:11]  Nope.  No, he did have business afterwards.

  Interviewer:       [35:14]  That was in San Rafael?

  Cunha: [35:18]  That was in San Rafael.  He worked up there – for Jim Diaz for I don't know for how many years.  And then he married the Techera girl and let’s see where the devil did he go, I think it was in Lucas Valley.  Yeah.  You'd never see it now, but it's all filled in with the homes.  The house is still there that he built.  He married the Techera girl. He was one of the big bootleggers over there too.

  Interviewer:       [35:55]  Very interesting.  Would you . . . how would you characterize life, living here in Tennessee Valley.  You lived in . . . your family ranched in so many different places.  How was it here versus some of the other places?

  Cunha: [36:12]  It's all the same to me.  I mean ranching was ranching.  It's getting up early and trying to go to bed early.

  Interviewer:       [36:19]  Different locations must have had benefits.

  Cunha: [36:23]  No.

  Interviewer:       [36:24]  None at all?  Not really?

  Cunha: [36:27]  Not locally.  I mean if you were to go ------ from here down maybe to San Joaquin Valley or up north to Red Bluff or somewhere, it would probably be a change, but . . .

  Interviewer 2:    [36:44]  I think you said earlier that part of this year that the cows would get enough by grazing and then the rest of the year you needed to bring them in and feed, right?  Did you also grow feed?

  Cunha: [36:59]  Oh yeah. Over where Bear Valley is now?

  Interviewer:       [37:01]  Yeah, that was in . . .

  Cunha: [37:06]  Many a times I'd be plowing and disc’in and seeding.  One day my dad was cutting hay in there, with a team of horses.  No tractor then.  Team of horses.  And he was going along and he hit a bees nest – one of those that's underground.  The horses took off with him and took off with the ----------- hanging and he took his hat off and he was trying to get . . . God he got all puffed up.  Yellow jackets they'd make nests underground too.

  Interviewer:       [37:44]  Did you go berry picking in Bear Valley?  Was that a good place for berries?

  Cunha: [37:48]  We never did much of that.  We used to cut wood in Bear Valley.  We had to.  We had nothing else.  We had to sterilize everything, everything was heated with wood or kerosene and when we got through, after we got out of school, and whenever we had time, we'd go to Bear Valley and knock down trees.  Before we had bought an old tractor – we bought an old tractor from Dorothy's in-laws.  But before we had just horses – we'd cut down a tree and then drag it down the hill to Bear Valley where it was open so we could work.  We'd trim all the branches.  Take all the branches off, cut up the wood, and take it home and then split it by hand with an axe.  Split the wood and let it dry out so you could put it in the stove.  Like I said, we didn't have electricity.  The stove was a wood stove with coils in it.  The wood would heat up and you'd go under this boiler, take a bath in a big tub in the middle of the kitchen. 

  Interviewer:       [39:01]  You had to sterilize everything.  So that must have taken a lot of wood.

  Cunha: [39:04]  Oh yeah.

  Interviewer:       [39:05]  And a lot of water too, didn't it?

  Cunha: [39:07]  Well not so much water.  It's funny, the ranch we had in Tennessee, I never figured that out.  The highest point on that ranch, up there by the Nike site is where our water supply was.  Right on top of the hill.  And water all the time.  All kinds of water.  And it seems to play – you think it would be down – right smack on top of that hill.  We had a spring . . .

  Interviewer 2:    [39:32]  The one out here.  Hill 88.

  Cunha: [39:35]  Where the Nike site is?

  Interviewer 2:    [39:40]  The radar station.

  Cunha: [39:42]  Yeah, the radio tower.  Whatever it is up there.  Yeah.  Rock up there on the hill was kind of a reddish color.  All kinds of water from there.  We had water all the time.

  Interviewer:       [39:52]  So you never had a problem with water?

  Cunha: [39:54]  No.

  Interviewer:       [39:55]  Cause it's interesting because Laura Lopez,  who lives now, she said they had a big water problem.

  Cunha: [40:00]  They had a water problem?

  Interviewer:       [40:02]  Yeah.

  Cunha: [40:03]  We never did.

  Interviewer:       [40:04]  I don't know why.

  Cunha: [40:06]  Must be a pipeline.  Pipelines we had up here years ago weren't the best, but I guess they're still there.  I don't know.

  Interviewer:       [40:15]  So did you ever . . . I'm just wondering cause it seems like a lot of dairies kept hogs or pigs or something like that.  Did you ever have those?

  Cunha: [40:24]  No we never.  What we were talking about, this morning at breakfast over there where we live now in Tiburon where the Del Mar School is now there was a lady that – she was widowed young and she was a great big woman and she ran a ranch by herself.  She had all kinds of hogs over there.  Where Strawberry Point is today.  You know where Strawberry Point is today?  That's where she had out there.  She had the dairy where the school is and where the Cove Shopping Center – we're getting away from over here now, but the Cove Shopping Center was a great big diary area.  There were seven partners at one time in there.  That was one of the biggest dairies around the country at the time.  There was a the one there at Alto where we were.  There was one there where the Edna Mc Guire School is where we were.  There was the Moraze family, the Rock Moraze family that had one over on the hill.  Jim Diaz up on top of the hill.  Where Laura Lopez  was on the other ranch above Mill Valley, Slide Ranch, the Brazil Ranch in Muir Beach, Joe Sadis(?)Joe Ponti,  they’re all on Muir Beach.  Let's see.  Going on further north, I'm think’in Stinson Beach.  Noonis, was it Noonis?

  Interviewer 2:    [42:06]  The woman that's in charge of Bolinas now or something?  Near Bolinas.  She was from this area wasn't she?  Family?

  Cunha: [42:17]  Franciscos?

  Interviewer 2:    [42:19]  No, maybe it was Noonis.

  Cunha: [42:22]  Noonis?

  Interviewer:       [42:24]  The Reed Ranch . . .

  Cunha: [42:26]  The Reed Ranch. That's over at Tiburon. 

  Interviewer 2:    [42:31]  That's sort of where you live now.

  Cunha: [42:34]  Yeah.

  Interviewer 2     [42:35]  I can't remember the name of this person.  I think she was up at Stinson, but I can't . . .

  Cunha: [42:40]  At Stinson Beach, or by Stinson?  North of Stinson Beach?

  Interviewer 2:    [42:44]  No south of . . . between Stinson and Muir Beach.  Not Slide Ranch.

  Rose:     [42:51]  Julia ---------?

  Interviewer 2:    [42:53]  Yeah.

  Cunha: [42:54]  That's the one that was up on top of the hill.  Where the Audubon Ranch is – that's my cousin's there for quite a few years.  Leo(?) Leal(?).  He's dead now, but he had that.  He had a dairy there and he used to make ice cream and sell ice cream there in Stinson Beach years ago.  Are you from Stinson Beach?

  Interviewer 2:    [43:18]  She's from Kentucky.

  Interviewer:       [43:20]  I'm from Kentucky.

  Cunha: [43:23]  Kentucky!

  Interviewer:       [43:25]  Yeah.  I was looking. . . somewhere I had a list of names.  Now I can't find it.  Never mind.  But I thought maybe I'd had it somewhere.

  Interviewer 2:    [43:42]  Could I ask a question?  --------------------------------.

  Interviewer:       [43:46]  I found Leal,  Slide Ranch, Stupa.

  Cunha: [43:52]  There's Slide Ranch and there's the Audubon.  Jim and Susan Stantis(?).

  Interviewer:       [44:00]  For some reason, Borges.

  Cunha: [44:03]  Oh yeah.  They were there where Bagshaw was too.

  Interviewer 2:    [44:14]  I was curious about holidays.  What holidays were like growing up on a dairy ranch.

  Cunha: [44:21]  There weren't.  We used to get a day off.  We'd get somebody to . . . we called it the day off.  We'd milk the cows in the morning, but we wouldn't milk them in the afternoon.  Somebody else would do it, but that was so seldom.  And it was a problem to get anybody just for an afternoon.  We thought that was great, a day off.  Work this morning, but this afternoon we don't have to.  But that wasn't very often.

  Interviewer 2:    [44:48]  Was there any Christmas traditions or anything like that?

  Cunha: [44:52]  Oh yeah.  We had . . .

  Interviewer 2:    [44:57]  Cause one of the things that we do with visitors is we do workshops around the holiday ornaments and have ----------------- anything interesting to talk about?  Kind of things that you remember about being in the dairy, sounds like...

  Cunha: [45:14]  Years ago it's not like today I can say.  We used to go out to the Brazils or .  . . cut our Christmas tree down, carry it home and decorate it.  That was about it.  And there was no electric decorations, just candles.  They're out there pitching on the branches – the candles on each one of the branches.  We had a lot of experiences in Tennessee.  One time – this is a little different.  One time a friend of ours had passed away – close to the family.  So we were going for the services that night for this lady.  Mother went earlier…

  SIDE B

  Cunha: [00:00]  And like I said, she left a note on the table and I say the three of us, after.  So I come home, we come home and went to bed.  I park the car down – we used to park right down below we call the horse barn at that time.  As I was walking up from the garage to the house I thought I heard somebody kind of (clears throat) like that.  I wasn't too sure.  I didn't think nothing of it.  Went to bed and after we were in bed somebody had been in the house – and after we went to bed, and everybody went to sleep, they come back in the house while we were sleeping.  Took the shoes that I had worn that night, took my coat, and let's see – something from my brother's – a pair of pants.  While we were asleep!  And they hit every ranch that night.  When they went to Dorothy's ranch there was one of the fellows home.  They used to keep a pistol under their pillow.  And the fellow came into the house – years ago what they called a pantry – he came in through the windows of the pantry to rob, takes some stuff, whatever he could.  So this fellow happened to be home that night.  He was the only one cause everyone went to this service for this lady.  And he hollered at him – he knew who it was.  He hollered, he said, "hey wait a minute, I'll help ya."  And he went to get the pistol and they took off.  Somebody knew the whole thing.  That was the Valley.  We still don't know who it is.  This was years and years ago.  But that was something else, I'll tell you.  I'll never forget that.  ------------ yeah. In fact we didn't stay there forever.  Oh, I don't know.  Three or four nights.  We went over there tonight.  Tamalpias Motel is there.  Right across from Enchanted Knolls.  We stayed there for four or five days.  We were so scared of that.

  Interviewer:       [02:18]  How do you figure that somebody would come in and steal shoes . . .

  Ruth:     [02:23]  Did you have two pairs of shoes I hope?

  Cunha: [02:27]  Yeah.  After you’re in bed sleepin they came in.  What they did while we were away, they seemed to know, knew that we were go’in to be  away.  And they seemed to know it and they unlocked the front door of the house.  Cause we used to go in through the back door and we'd lock the night door, but left the door they opened it – unlocked it.  And we come back in.  That was sure creepy.  I'll never forget that.  We were scared stiff there for a while.  Do you want to go? It's three o'clock.

  Interviewer:       [03:07]  Do you need to get going?

  Cunha: [03:10]  No.  Why you got a lot more . . .

  Interviewer:       [03:12]  I can ask questions till you're blue.

  Cunha: [03:17]  Go ahead then.

  Interviewer:       [03:19]  But I don't want to keep you if you if you want to be moving on.

  Interviewer 2:    [03:24]  We've got a few more.  Then we can . . .

  Interviewer:       [03:27]  Maybe we can come out some another time.  You were going to bring out your saddle, right?

  Cunha: [03:32]  I've been thinking about that.  I have too many memories of that.  I'm going to loan it to you, I'm not going to give it to you I told you.  Sometimes.  I've got an awful lot of memories of that.  I've been thinking about that.  I've got it and you'll eventually get it over here but that's what I wanted  to go.

  Interviewer:       [03:50]  That's fine, you don’t have to give it to us.  Do you have any pictures are – anything that you'd want to part with, oh, we’d love to, I’m sure we’d love to have.

  Cunha: [03:59]  When I was coming out now I've got a picture . . . well, I don't know if that would do any good, when I graduated high school. 

  Interviewer 2:    [04:04]  Great.  Tam?

  Cunha: [04:11]  Tam.  When I graduated high school . . .

  Rose:     [04:13]  He just went to his 50th reunion was it?

  Cunha: [04:16]  Yes.  If you want to take a picture of it.

  Interviewer:       [04:19]  Yes.

  Cunha: [04:21]  I don’t want t part with it, but you take a picture of it.

  Interviewer 2:    [04:26]  I was going to say that's something that we can do.  If you can loan it to us long enough to get a copy made.  That's the sort of thing that we'd love to have.

  Cunha: [04:32]  And then I've got . . . maybe Dorothy has told you – we used to call it the pie.  It's a book of everybody.  The senior class and all.  She ------------ as one of those too.  I don't know if she's ever . . . you call them yearbooks.  I wonder how they ever got that name – pie.  Yeah, but some day I’ll bring in that picture.  I thought about it today and I didn't know if you'd want it or if you were interested or not . . .

  Rose:     [05:05]  I told him to.  I said, “I don’t think they'd want that.”

  Interviewer:       [05:08]  It's neat just to have pictures of the berries and the places, but also I kind of want to have pictures of the ------------------.

  Cunha: [05:15]  Yeah, involvement around here.  The time years ago.

  Interviewer 2:    [05:22]  Do you have anything in particular, burning issues?

  Interviewer:       [05:25]  Yeah I think I have one question that I remember that I was talking to you about before.  I'm just curious, cause it seems like other areas where there were dairy ranches like up in Point Reyes or Bolinas, that type of area – the ranches were a lot more spread out.

  Cunha: [05:41   ]  Oh yeah.

  Interviewer:       [05:42]  The area between ranches and – here you were so compact  It seems like it was so crowded. Do you know why that is?

  Cunha: [05:50]  There wasn’t enough ground, not enough area, that’s all. For one thing, you never did have enough ground to farm in Tennessee Valley.  The only thing you had – we used to farm Bear Valley and where Laua lives in the back of the house up that hill, we used to farm that.  And we had what we they called a side hill plow.  A --- with three horses.  And you'd be fillin’ the dirt down the hill all the time.  Say you’d fer.  You'd go by here – say this is the north side.  And you'd be throwing the dirt this way.  And you go over there as far as you could go and the fence is you couldn't go any farther, so we would turn the horses around and drop one of the plows and pull one up and you'd come right  back on the same . .

  Interviewer:       [06:52]  Split the whole thing . . .

  Cunha: [06:54]  Split the whole thing and we'd come back again on the same fer the only way that you could farm that.  There's some fellow that we used to have working for us – he used to live with us.  After we'd cut the hay and we shock it.  Put it in little piles.  Then we'd bring it down to the barn.  We had what they call a rig, a buck rake.  And you'd go under.  Say this is the shock ----.  Like this.  This one you'd pick it up. And we had another one, it had a rake this way, it was like this.  Two rakes.  And the only way you could rake the hay with that – you'd get a bunch of hay in front of it and to get rid of the hay, you'd lift it up and the teeth would catch in the ground and you'd flop over and the other teeth would be raking.  It was with one horse.  And the rope, say the rake was like that and the ropes were tied from here to the horse.  To the harness,  to the double tree or single tree, and it would go like that through this little hole . . .  it seems -------------.  One time he was coming down the hill, he was hanging on to the hayler, the handle of the rake.  The thing went over and dumped him right out with the hay on top of him.  Whole stack of hay on top of him.  I'll never forget that.  Just happened to catch on the ground here.  Flopped over on him.

  Interviewer:       [08:38]  -------------------?

  Cunha: [08:40]  Yeah.  Then we used to pull the hay into the barn with what they call a . . . I forget what they call that . . . hayfork.  There's a name for it.

  Interviewer 2:    [08:55]  Pitchfork?

  Cunha: [08:57]  No.  They would go up.  The horses would pull it up.  They'd go up to a track.  And this was a track in the barn, just like in a slaughter house for meat.  Like a butcher shop or a slaughter house.  And we'd go up, catch on that track, and go in, and we'd have when we want to dump it, we'd pull the rope, the rope would fall and the hay which would come down.

  Interviewer:       [09:23]  Just up there in the loft?

  Cunha: [09:25]  Yeah.  Like we used to have . . . we had a whole bunch of owls.  They used to nest up there all the time.  They were something else.  All the time.  Nesting up there.  And after we took the hay in for the winter and we have to feed it to the cows in the barn, and after a dump like that with the rake it was all tangled together, you know.  And you couldn't pull it apart.  So we had a knife.  A hay knife.  That would be nice if you had one of those things.  A real sharp, crude knife.  Real, real sharp.  Oh God, it was that tall.  And it had two handles on it.  What you did – say this is the . . . the edge of the stack of hay here and you'd want to get over here, so you’d get here, stand here and you'd go like this with that saw, keep going. Then it would fall over, a whole big slice of it.  Just like slicing a . . .

  Interviewer:       [10:24]  Slicing bread.

  Cunha: [10:27]  Slicing bread. 

  Interviewer:       [10:32]  That's really neat. 

  Interviewer 2:    [10:35]  Very ingenious.

  Cunha: [10:36]  Corn.  We used to raise some corn.  But we didn't have much room for corn anyway.  We used to . . . we had a little chopper.  It was an old timer, though.  Just a hand chopper.  So we rigged it up to run it off the truck or off the tractor.  We finally got an old tractor afterwards like we bought from Dorothy's.  And we put a pulley on it and we'd chop up the corn . . . didn't have no silage or anything in those days.  We'd take a big sack and fill the sack with it and take it in and feed it to the cows.  Fill another sack, take it in and feed it to the cows. 

  Interviewer:       [11:17]  So you raised the corn for the cows?

  Cunha: [11:20]  Yeah.

  Interviewer:       [11:21]  Did you have a vegetable garden back in those days?

  Cunha: [11:24]  Oh yeah, my dad always – he was great for vegetables.  We had everything.

  Interviewer:       [11:28]  Like kale?

  Cunha: [11:30]  Oh yeah. People from the old country . . . my dad wasn't from the old country, he was born here.  So was my mother.  But the people that come over now from the old country are the old timers who were great for gardens.  Yeah, they'd raise everything.

  Interviewer:       [11:45]  Did you ----Portuguese-?

  Cunha: [11:47]  Oh yeah.  The old fellow we had working for us . . . they were great on salted fish.  Barracuda, codfish.  On Belvedere, there used to be a place over there – I forget the name of it.  I read about it not too long ago, but I remember it well.  We used to go from Tennessee here over there to get that fish.  They used to drive there.  There was no road down there.  Boats would come in and they'd fix it there.  Dry it in the sun, salted.  To go down there, if you had to go by car or truck, we used to go around Belvedere Island and stop up and then we'd have to walk down and we'd pack the fish up on our backs up the hill for the truck to bring it.  I can remember that.  Going down there many a times with my dad, picking up that stuff.

  Interviewer:       [12:49]  Were you pretty much in touch with the Portuguese celebrations?

  Cunha: [12:54]  Celebrations?

  Interviewer:       [12:55]  Celebrations that went on, the Holy Ghost and that kinda thing?

   Cunha: [12:59]  I'm the secretary of the one in Sausalito for 37 years.  No, 34 years in August.  Dorothy's husband was the president for 17 years.  I worked with him.  Dorothy's role as president now.  We made a celebration every year. 

  Interviewer:       [13:22]  When you were growing up, did your family do that a lot?

  Cunha: [13:28]  The old timers – this might sound funny to you, but the old timers had so much faith – an awful lot of faith in that – one year, Tennessee, here, this sounds kind of out of line and maybe I told her.  My dad was ill with – my uncle, my dad's brother – and they had a cow that got sick.  And they said they promised it to this celebration of the Holy Ghost, if she got better.  And she got better.  And the day for the celebration, my uncle didn't want to give it cause she was a good cow.  That cow went from Tennessee Valley to Sausalito where we’d slaughter them by ourselves.  It just could be, I'd seen different things happen myself, but the old timers are really strong on that. Yep. I know you're anxious to go.

  Rose:     [14:43]  Well, I think you've told them about everything.  First time I'm hearing these too.  I haven't heard them before. 

  Interviewer:       [14:50]  Thank you so much for being so patient.  This has been really, really helpful, and I'm sure we'll have so many more questions.  I hope you don't mind, would we be able to call you up, if we were, I know you’re busy.

  Cunha: [15:05]  Not the month of December, not for a while now.   Next time we got a party to go to or different things. There's a lot of things going on now.  And I belong to…. we're talking about last night.  We went over to Castro Valley, we belong to what they call the Portuguese  Golden State Social Club.  And every year we install our new officers.  So I was installing like that over there last night.  And we got everything.  I belong to the Native Sons for . . . I'm the charter member.  Tell you how old I am.  Fifty-four years I've been a Native Son so I played the drum and bugle corp. years ago in Sausalito here.  Whenever I get Chad – me and my brother – play for Louie and Mayo(?). 

  Interviewer:       [16:09]  I have one quick question.  What was the old fellow’s name that worked for you and lived with you guys for so long?  Do you remember his name?

  Cunha: [16:19]  I remember his first name.  It's Joaquin but I don’t remember his  his last name.  I don't remember.  I know it was Joaquin, but I can't remember his last.

  Interviewer:       [16:32]  Joaquin?

  Cunha: [16:34]  Yeah. 

  Interviewer:       [16:35]  W?

  Cunha: [16:36]  No, J.

  Interviewer:       [16:37]  J.  I'm sorry.  J –o-a?

  Cunha: [16:39]  How do you spell that Joaquin?

  Rose:     [16:41]  J-u.

  Interviewer:       [16:43]  J-u?

  Rose:     [16:45]  J-u-o-q-u-i-n.

  Interviewer:       [16:50]  I'm just curious.

  Rose:     [16:51]  I think that's the way you spell it.

  Cunha: [16:53]  Yes, something like that.  Yeah, that's how you spell it.  Q-u-i-n.

  Interviewer:       [17:01]  Q-u-i-n.

  Cunha: [17:03]  He was a relative of the Souza's in San Anselmo, but his name wasn't Souza.

  Interviewer:       [17:08]  Alright.  Since you mentioned him so much, I wanted to know if you remembered.

  Cunha: [17:15]  You ever go to those celebrations that they have around here?

  Interviewer:       [17:18]  No, actually I wanted to ask you about that.  I'd like to come to the . . . you have a library or something don't you? 

  Cunha: [17:24]  Yeah.  We have the Queens for the past years back to . . . we celebrated our Centennial . . .

  Rose:     [17:34]  in 1988.

  Cunha: [17:35]  1988. 

  Rose:     [17:36]  That was 100 years.

  Cunha: [17:38]  May 13, 1888.  Yeah.

  Interviewer 2:    [17:44]  So it's usually a spring event?

  Cunha: [17:50]  It's a religious. . . Pentecost.

  Rose:     [17:52]  Pentecost is after Easter.

  Cunha: [17:56]  Yeah, seven weeks . . . six or seven weeks.

  Rose:     [18:00]  And every Pentecost Sunday they have their parade.  And the Sausalito City Council has been very active in it.  They encourage . . .

  Cunha: [18:09]  participate.

  Rose:     [18:10]  things that they do.  Wouldn't want to block the streets, but they march and they like it.

  Cunha: [18:16]  I don't know if you know, but Robin Sweeney that's on the City Council?

  Interviewer 2:    [18:20] I saw her at the Centennial but I don't . . .

  Cunha: [18:26]  You were at the Centennial?  Did you come down to hall by any chance?  We had the buildings at the hall, we had . . .

  Interviewer 2:    [18:30]  I didn't know about that.  Just the parade that night.

  Cunha: [18:34]  Oh you just went to the parade.  We had doings at the hall.  We  let them use the hall for nothing.

  Rose:     [18:40]  Yeah, they use the hall for nothing.

  Cunha: [18:42]  We gave the hall to them for nothing.  Just to put on their ---------- that they had there that . . . Lucy Suckle(?) was there.

  Rose:     [18:51]  Lucy Suckle, the whole Council.

  Cunha: [18:55]  I can’t remember.  Something for . . . oh, people living in Sausalito for 50 years or better.

  Rose:     [19:04]  Oh that's right.  The old timers.

  Cunha: [19:08]  Old timers.  Getting back to the ranch in Tennessee.  Years ago our mail was through Sausalito.  And then eventually they moved it to Mill Valley.  And that's why I was in Sausalito 50 years ago.

  Rose:     [19:27]  That's how he got in on the Sausalito.

  Cunha: [19:29]  That's how I got in on the deal.  God, the hall was full of people.

  Rose:     [19:35]  It was packed.

  Cunha: [19:36]  Yeah, I was surprised that so many people . . .

  Rose:     [19:39]  It's a big hall.

  Interviewer:       [19:40]  I've just only seen it from the outside.

  Cunha: [19:42]  Come by some time.

  Interviewer:       [19:45]  It always seems closed.

  Cunha: [19:47]  Well it is.  Yeah, we rent it out quite a bit.

  Rose:     [19:52]  It doesn't look as big from the outside as it is inside.

  Cunha: [19:54]  Yeah, it's a big hall.  It's a nice hall.  

  Rose:     [19:57]  Big dining room.  Big dance floor.  Big kitchen.

  Cunha: [19:59]  We've got a chapel and we've got seven of them.  And when we built the hall we built it in on brick.  And there's these big pots.  It holds about 200 pounds of meat in each one.  And there's a . . . I don't know if you've ever seen it, but do you remember how years ago they used to . . .

  Rose:     [20:19]  They wouldn't remember it.  I never saw it till I saw it at your place.

  Cunha: [20:24]  Scald the animals.  Scald the pigs or something like that.

  Interviewer 2:    [20:28]  Take the skin off.

  Cunha: [20:30]  And they'd boil them in these big pots.  Well we got seven of them.  And they are all built in with the hood and everything with the chimney and gas range fire.  You know, ------------.  And we'd use those.  We got a fellow that comes and cooks for us.

  Rose:     [20:52]   A cow, 1500 pounds of meat.

  Interviewer 2:    [20:56]  Good heavens!

  Cunha: [20:58]  He is.  And it amazes me all the time when I think about it.  He's a banker, and he's not just a plain teller.  He's one of the higher ups.   And he loves to do this.  He not only does it for us, he does it for us, he goes across the Bay, Castro Valley and Newark and what-have-you and cooks.  And then ----------- does.  He'll come . . . sometimes he brings one of his boys or brings both or sometimes a alone, whatever.  Say they're going to have a celebration tomorrow and we're getting prepared for it today.  He'll come over, start cooking, and he's got his own recipe.  He won't give it to you.  Nobody.  You can't get it from him.  We tried.  And he'll stay there all night.

  Rose:     [21:45]  In that creepy hall.

  Cunha: [21:51]  All by himself.  He'd lay on the floor . . .

  Rose:     [21:53]  in a sleeping bag.

  Cunha: [ 21:57]  In a sleeping bag or something.

  Rose:     [22:01]  Stays overnight.  He's cooking all night long. 

  Cunha: [22:03]  Stay there cooking all night.  He lets it cook slow.  God, he uses

  Interviewer 2:    [22:09]  It must be delicious.

  Cunha: [22:11]  Oh it is.  Flavors it real nice. 

  Interviewer 2:    [22:14]  Probably the best vacation our family ever had was in Portugal.

  Cunha: [22:18]  Yeah. 

  Interviewer 2:    [22:20]  I love Portugal.

  Cunha: [22:23]  When I started work for, when we sold the ranch. I started working part time for them and fooling around and his first wife passed away and when he remarried he went to Portugal.  And he says, Jack you gotta go.  And I said I have to stay here.  My dad, like I said, was born and raised here and so was my mother. They never did go.  We never will either.  But what I was getting at was like just what you're saying.  He says it's one of the prettiest places you'll ever see.  He said it was really nice.  He enjoyed it. 

  Interviewer 2:    [23:03]  Friendly people too.  Very friendly.

  Cunha: [23:07]  Yeah, they say that.  I don't know.  Like I say, I've never been there, but they say that time means nothing there.  Two hours for lunch and you start working at 4 ----------------------- I don't know. 

 

Holy Ghost Ceremony c1920s.

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35185

---

"It was they had the big famine and drought. And Queen Isabella had been praying for relief from the famine. And then all of a sudden the ships came in laden with the breads and food ---------- And that's when they started celebrating the Holy Ghost." -Dorothy Pimentel Silva --Describing the reason for the holy ghost ceremony.

 

• Dorothy Pimentel Silva and Manuel Silva

  
  

  Dorothy Pimentel Silva and Manuel Silva discuss ranching in the 1930's
  Audio Transcript

  Drayton:                           ... Tennessee Valley Road, regarding your long tenancy in the Tennessee Valley, and their life there as dairy ranchers.

                                             [00:00:30] Being interviewed and have it not on tape, but as I think I said to you on the phone, this is an interview to collect history about the Tennessee Valley, obviously in general, and in particular about your family's involvement with dairy ranching here. And this information will be used for park interpretive programs.

                                             I don't know if I said this to you on the phone or not, but right now over in the Marin Headlands, they do lots of tours about the military history, but they know precious little about the ranching history, which is actually longer. And so, we're trying to make up for that a little bit [00:01:00] by having a couple of oral history interviews with folks. I transcribe it, or at least index it, and that information goes back out to park interpreters. So, hopefully they can include that ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         [crosstalk 00:01:10] that information a couple times to different ones that went by here, but they never did bother.

  Drayton:                           Yeah, well, [crosstalk 00:01:18] they get busy, or they're interested, but they haven't been trained in how to ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, then this part doesn't interest them any.

  Drayton:                           Which is surprising to me.

                                             Well, anyway, now I should get you guys ... If you don't mind, I'm going to [00:01:30] ask you to scoot forward a little bit. I should move this closer to you. Or else I hear my big voice, and you're way off in the background. Theoretically, no one cares about me.

                                             First of all, just tell me a little bit ... I guess we'll start with you, because your maiden name was Pimento?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Pimentel.

  Drayton:                           Pimentel. Okay. And you've been in the valley how long?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I was born in that front house. And my mother was born in that front house. So that's ... Let's see, she died at 92. And the house was built in [00:02:00] 1878. I think that's it, 1878. My grandparents built the house.

  Drayton:                           My goodness. And so your grandparents ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         So there's five generations in that house that have been born in that house.

  Drayton:                           That's fantastic.

                                             And then your daughter's continuing to live in now.

  Mrs. Silva:                         My daughter lives there and her ... Well, her children ... They're living there, but they're not married or anything. But that's-

  Mr. Silva:                          [inaudible 00:02:21].

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, the fifth generation. Yeah. 'Cause her kids were born ... Well, I had mine, of course. My mother and [00:02:30] all them were born right in the house. And then when we got married, we moved in there and I had my daughter, but it was in the hospital, but then I came right back to the house.

                                             And my daughter was the same thing. She had hers, and then she moved in because we moved over here. And now her kids are living there.

  Drayton:                           And then you, Mr. Silva, you're from this area, too?

  Mr. Silva:                          No, I came over in '32.

  Drayton:                           From Portugal?

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Drayton:                           No. Oh, [00:03:00] Silva. I was thinking ...

  Mr. Silva:                          Santa Clara.

  Drayton:                           From Santa Clara. And is your family also ... I assume both of your families are from the Azores originally?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yes, mine. Uh-huh (affirmative). [inaudible 00:03:10].

  Drayton:                           And was your family a dairy ranching family in Santa Clara then?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, many years ago, when we moved to Fresno. Then I came over here. I was 20 years old, I guess. My godfather had a dairy down at the bottom of the last ranch down there. Martin.

  Drayton:                           Oh, you're a Martin? [00:03:30] Oh! Or related to the Martins.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah. Well, he was my godfather.

  Drayton:                           Oh. Well, Godfather, right. Oh, interesting.

  Mr. Silva:                          Martin and Bettencourt. They had a partner. Matter of fact, his son lives in Lodi now. And Bettencourt's son just passed away.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Last week.

  Drayton:                           I heard that. I heard that from Laura, Mrs. Lopez.

                                             And Bettencourt would be spelled ... 'Cause I was writing that down with Mrs. Lopez's interview. I assume it's B-E-T-T-E-N-

  Mr. Silva:                          C-O-U-R-T.

  Drayton:                           ... C-O-U-R-T? Okay. And Martin, just the way it sounds?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Drayton:                           All right. And, of course, [00:04:00] I know how to spell your name.

                                             And Pimentel? P-I-M-

  Mrs. Silva:                         P-I-M-E-N-T-E-L.

  Drayton:                           Right. Okay. I got that.

                                             Let's concentrate on your family for a little while. What brought the Pimentels to this area?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, my grandparents, their name was Seamas.

  Drayton:                           You want to spell that for me?

  Mrs. Silva:                         S-E-A-M-A-S. Guillermo was my grandfather's name, Seamas. Well, he came from the old country. And his brother, I believe, came from the old country about the same time.

                                             Then how they happened to buy this property or anything, that I don't know. 'Cause [00:04:30] all I know is ... All I can remember is my grandfather. I can't remember, you know. But the house was there. Oh, I can remember that house because I was raised there, too. And we had an orchard out in front here. Of course, as things went on, that disappeared. And, let's see ...

  Drayton:                           Had they been dairyers at all in the Azores?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know.

  Drayton:                           'Cause I know that land is ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know. I don't know what they did. I think my dad was a whaler.

  Drayton:                           Of course, that's makes lots of sense.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And I don't know what [00:05:00] my grandfather did back there. I don't have any idea what he ...

  Mr. Silva:                          That's about all they could do back then.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, that's all I ...

  Drayton:                           Did they come to America via Boston, Massachusetts-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           Rhode Island, or just come direct immigration?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, my dad came into San Francisco somehow or other.

  Drayton:                           Oh, so your dad ... Wait a minute. I'm getting confused.

  Mrs. Silva:                         My dad came from ...

  Drayton:                           Your dad-

  Mrs. Silva:                         He came from the Azores.

  Drayton:                           ... was from the Azores.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And he was a whaler over there. And then he ... Well, when he met my mother and ...

  Drayton:                           And it's your mother's family [00:05:30] that ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         That owns this-

  Drayton:                           Got it.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... this place. It was my mother's family that owned this.

  Drayton:                           Right. So your ... So just to make sure I get all these names right because I know this will show up on the tape. Just so I'm following along here.

                                             Your paternal grandparents were Shames or -

  Mrs. Silva:                         Seamas.

  Drayton:                           Seaman.

  Mrs. Silva:                         S-E-A-M-A-S.

  Drayton:                           And then your mother's ...

  Mr. Silva:                          [inaudible 00:05:52].

  Drayton:                           Can you [inaudible 00:05:54].

  Mrs. Silva:                         My mother's name was Seamas.

  Drayton:                           Seamas.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Before she married my dad, [00:06:00] which was Pimentel.

  Drayton:                           Okay. So your dad's family came from the Azores.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, so did my grandparents. All of them had come from the Azores.

  Drayton:                           Ah! But your mother was born here.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes.

  Drayton:                           Your father was born in the Azores.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes.

  Drayton:                           All right.

  Mrs. Silva:                         My mother was born there. Okay. And my father was born in the Azores and he came over here. And I don't know what year he came. I do have papers somewhere showing what year he came in.

                                             And then they settled here. And at that time then the dairy business had started. Because I still don't know, to this day, I don't remember, other than seeing my grandfather [00:06:30] work in the gardens out here, vegetable garden and things like that. I don't know how they made a living before that. I have no idea. Because then I can ...

                                             Then my dad moved in over here at the dairy.

  Drayton:                           There was a dairy across the road, right?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, that's where my dad was.

  Drayton:                           And that was ... Oh, that was the Seamas?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. No, no, no. That was [Borges 00:06:48]-

  Drayton:                           The Borges.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... owned the place, but my dad rented that place for, what was it, how many years?

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh, he was there for ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         About 40 years.

  Drayton:                           Oh, I see.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, he-

  Drayton:                           And that's how your parents met?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I guess. I don't know.

  Drayton:                           They were [00:07:00] neighbors.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. I don't know how they met.

  Mr. Silva:                          A tide used to come into where the school is now. And we used to have hay come in on barges, and they used to ... Tugboats would be out there, and they'd tie it to a big Eucalyptus tree. I think it's still there.

  Drayton:                           Oh, my goodness.

  Mr. Silva:                          And then they'd unload the hay there.

  Drayton:                           And that's silted in now, is that it?

  Mrs. Silva:                         That's where all this flat, all these houses are.

  Drayton:                           Oh, they filled it all in.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, that's all filled in.

  Mr. Silva:                          All these trees out here. I used to plant potatoes in those trees. See they'd grow along the road there.

  Drayton:                           You've seen a lot of changes around here.

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh, God.

  Drayton:                           Yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          [00:07:30] You know, there-

  Drayton:                           Some not too good.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Mr. Silva:                          Some is not so good.

  Drayton:                           Sure. So then this was a working dairy ranch from, should I say 1878 on or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. No because ...

  Drayton:                           If the house was built in '78, or was the-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes.

  Drayton:                           ... house here ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, they built the place themselves, and I guess they added on. That's all I can ... As I said, that's all I can say because I don't know anything back beyond that ... is I don't know how they made their living. And it was just ... I don't know. I have no idea.

  Drayton:                           Did your-

  Mrs. Silva:                         They supported themselves. And I don't [00:08:00] know. My grandfather never worked. I mean, I was five years old or something when he died, but he never worked. I mean, he worked, yes, around here, they get all their own ...

  Drayton:                           Hire at [crosstalk 00:08:10].

  Mrs. Silva:                         They had their own gardens and everything. And I guess I don't remember him ever working out. And then other than that ... And my dad had the dairy there and, of course, he worked there all those years on the dairy. And he'd walk back over, go across. There was no willow trees there or anything, so [crosstalk 00:08:28].

  Mr. Silva:                          There was a street right across the road.

  Mrs. Silva:                         There was a road right across.

  Drayton:                           [00:08:30] This Tennessee Valley Road did exist, although it was probably not paved until ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, it wasn't paved.

  Mr. Silva:                          I used to-

  Drayton:                           But it was the road that did go up into-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes, that did go-

  Drayton:                           ... the other-

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... to the other valley. Yes-

  Drayton:                           ... the other Martin and Bettencourt.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Right. It's the same road.

  Drayton:                           And [Cunias 00:08:41].

  Mr. Silva:                          I drove the horses here. It's a great ... this road here, from the ... That was all the milk down over the ... First it was right off of the highway, when it got to the highway. And then they moved the platform from there, and then put it over across where ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         Where the heliport is now.

  Mr. Silva:                          Richardson Bay Bridge. Right here, on the corner there.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Where the [00:09:00] heliport-

  Drayton:                           You were selling to [Marin Dell 00:09:03]?

  Mrs. Silva:                         To Marin Dell.

  Mr. Silva:                          Dairy Delivery.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Dairy Delivery at the time. My dad first started with Dairy Delivery, and then ...

  Mr. Silva:                          Marin Dell wasn't existing yet.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, it was Dairy Delivery to begin with. And then it was Marin Dell.

  Mr. Silva:                          Later in years.

  Drayton:                           Now your dad came from Portugal. Your mother was born here.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Portuguese was obviously your father's first language.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           Did your mother also speak Portuguese?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yes. I'm sure. We all did.

  Drayton:                           And were you brought up speaking Portuguese?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes. Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Drayton:                           So was there a strong tendency [00:09:30] to retain Portuguese customs and traditions and Christmas?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes, some parts. Yes. We still do. We still belong to the Portuguese lodges and things like that. Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           I'm curious because there does seem to be some difference between what traditions were held onto here in this area, versus. Say, up in more rural areas. So like what of the old traditions were kept up, and what were sort of ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, we still go by our old traditions.

  Drayton:                           The Holy Ghost, I assume?

  Mrs. Silva:                         The Holy Ghost-

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... yes. And then ... Yeah, there ... [00:10:00] times, too, I mean.

  Mr. Silva:                          I belong to a Portuguese Lodge. So our seal, which has the Holy Ghost every year. I was president for 16 years.

  Drayton:                           Oh, my goodness. Did you ever have a daughter that was a queen?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yes. Uh-huh (affirmative). I had my daughter. I was queen three times. My daughter was queen once. My granddaughter was queen twice. So we've had ... We've been very involved.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. It [crosstalk 00:10:26] adds up too.

  Mrs. Silva:                         This year hasn't been as bad, but [00:10:30] when the girls were old enough, you know, they wouldn't to be queen or anything. They were kind of ... You didn't have to worry about getting the kids dressed to go in the parades and things like that. You kind of backed away from it.

                                             You didn't actually back away from it, but you didn't get involved in that part of it.

  Drayton:                           Right. It's like, "Okay. Somebody else's turn."

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, let somebody else worry about it.

  Drayton:                           And I'm interested because all of the families, apparently, here in this valley were Portuguese, Portuguese-American.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           And I'm curious if the language that you would use to talk to one another, would you talk to each other in English or Portuguese, or both?

  Mrs. Silva:                         [00:11:00] It would depend on who you were talking to. If we were talking to Martin, then of course we talked in Portuguese. Then we got into ...

  Mr. Silva:                          The kids going to school.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The kids going to school. And also then when we got away from the Portuguese and we spoke English.

  Mr. Silva:                          There was one down below there, just before where ... I don't know if you've been down, the last house on the left.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. Where Bill Oswald lives now.

  Mr. Silva:                          Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Drayton:                           That was Bettencourt's house?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes, Hollis.

  Mr. Silva:                          Virgil Hollis.

  Drayton:                           Virgil Hollis.

  Mrs. Silva:                         He's the ex-superintendent of schools here in Marin.

  Drayton:                           Oh. I just know [00:11:30] just the houses on the actual park properties.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, but although you go down the gate, all the way down.

  Drayton:                           Oh, I didn't even know there was another house down there.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Have you been down to the end of the valley?

  Drayton:                           Yeah, I've been ... Well, I've been to the beach, and I've been to Bill ... Bill Oswald lives in, I guess, Bettencourt's old house, or one of the Bettencourt's old house. He works for the park service. And then there is the old-

  Mr. Silva:                          There's a house with a kind of a-

  Drayton:                           The Spanish-

  Mr. Silva:                          On the left.

  Drayton:                           ... revival, right. That's just-

  Mr. Silva:                          We've got ours in there too. A barn. That's where Virgil Hollis lives.

  Drayton:                           Oh, I did. I must have seen it.

  Mrs. Silva:                         He doesn't live there. I think he ...

  Mr. Silva:                          His daughter lives there.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Some relative. Maybe that ... I don't know. Is Oswald someone that works for the ...

  Drayton:                           Bill Oswald works at Park Service. Yeah. He lives in Bettencourt's old house. And [00:12:00] then I get ... I remember. And then the Martins were right across-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Across the road.

  Drayton:                           And I guess that place was torn down.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes.

  Drayton:                           Or burned down.

  Mr. Silva:                          And that's down at the bottom, though. But this is before you get there.

  Drayton:                           Oh! Oh, okay. Oh, I see.

  Mrs. Silva:                         You know where Laura's is?

  Drayton:                           Yes.

  Mrs. Silva:                         All right.

  Mr. Silva:                          The next place.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The next place past Laura's.

  Drayton:                           Oh! And that was another Bettencourt place.

  Mrs. Silva:                         [00:12:30] That was another Bettencourt, but that was not Bettencourt before. That was Siqueiros before.

  Mr. Silva:                          Then there was [Rainey 00:12:37].

  Mrs. Silva:                         I know, but Siqueiros was the original, and then Rainey.

  Mr. Silva:                          He was the owner.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Siqueros was the owner, and they had the dairy business there. And then they left, and Rainey bought it. He was an Irish fellow. He bought it, and then he sold. And that's when Bettencourts went in.

  Drayton:                           Siqueros-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Siqueros.

  Drayton:                           ... built that house. I guess, built the Spanish-

  Mrs. Silva:                         [00:13:00] No. No, no. Bettencourts just built that Spanish house. That hasn't-

  Drayton:                           Oh.

  Mrs. Silva:                         That isn't too old.

  Drayton:                           Oh, I thought ... I think Roy was thinking the Bettencourts-

  Mrs. Silva:                         They built the house.

  Drayton:                           Step-father.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, but see we've been here much longer than Laura.

  Drayton:                           Right. Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. No. Bettencourts, they built that house themselves. That's maybe 20 years ago or so.

  Drayton:                           Yeah, it's not that old.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The old house that you see by that one is the one that was one of the original houses that was there.

  Drayton:                           So did your grandparents ever talk at all, or even your dad, talk about Portugal? I mean, the [00:13:30] sort of the immigrant experience?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. You'd hear different parts of the country where different ones lived, and how they'd go to visit this one, and go and visit that one. And-

  Drayton:                           Oh, when they were here, you mean?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           Did people have a tendency to sort of stick together based on their island origins? I mean, whether they were from ...

  Mr. Silva:                          Well, they don't [crosstalk 00:13:47].

  Mrs. Silva:                         They kind of do. They still, I think, kind of do.

  Mr. Silva:                          They always kid each other about different islands. It's, "That island is no good" or something.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, we kind of ... We stay together. Like we have a lot of ... a group from San Miguel, and they're [00:14:00] more up in the Petaluma area. And then, of course, those are the ones that have come over recently. But before, I mean, it was just all mixed. Nobody thought anything of it. Down there you knew the difference was there. They did have a different accent when they spoke. I mean, their accent was different.

  Mr. Silva:                          [Disheras 00:14:16] have an accent, too. They kind of drag a little bit.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. They all have kind of a little ... It's like you're from here ... You hear the south, and all the difference. Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Thank goodness for differences.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           It makes life a little more interesting. And your [00:14:30] dad was from what island?

  Mrs. Silva:                         He was from Pico.

  Drayton:                           Pico. And you're?

  Mr. Silva:                          St. George.

  Drayton:                           St. George, which is the biggest ... Is that the largest island?

  Mr. Silva:                          That's the smallest.

  Drayton:                           The smallest. Okay. I knew there was something-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, Pico's smaller than St. George.

  Drayton:                           ... particular about it.

  Mr. Silva:                          I don't think so.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           And then your mother's people were from?

  Mrs. Silva:                         They were from St. George.

  Drayton:                           St. George.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           And there was never any-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, no.

  Drayton:                           ... kidding relation about that.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, no. That didn't mean anything. You have the nicknames and stuff like that, but that was nothing.

  Drayton:                           Why did your father come over here? Your father's family.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, it was just my dad that [00:15:00] came over. His folks, family, all stayed there.

  Drayton:                           Ah!

  Mrs. Silva:                         He'd hopped ship to come over for a better living.

  Drayton:                           Was that partly because of the ... because they were military service? That they ... 'Cause I know a lot of men left Portugal-

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know.

  Drayton:                           ... because they were forced into the service.

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know. I don't know. That, I couldn't say. All I know is that he jumped, got on a ship. And then when he got to San Francisco, he jumped ship to get here. And then later on, he went back and came back in legally.

  Drayton:                           He [00:15:30] did visit then?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           He did go back.

  Mrs. Silva:                         He did go back.

  Mr. Silva:                          My father worked his way over on the ship, too, and he got off at San Francisco. And he went and drive horses in San Francisco.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Ah!

  Mr. Silva:                          A Teamster. A real Teamster.

  Drayton:                           Sure. And then he moved down to Santa Clara eventually?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, Mayfield. And we wound up in Fresno. And God, we were traveling all over the country.

  Drayton:                           You found a good home, a good area to take root in.

                                             And so this ... Am I understanding correctly that this piece of property right here was never a dairy ranch? Only [00:16:00] across the street?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. Only across the street.

  Drayton:                           Oh, that's interesting. So that's why you were saying you didn't know exactly how your-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. I don't know.

  Drayton:                           Because they had a truck garden, but that would have been for their own use.

  Mr. Silva:                          [crosstalk 00:16:06].

  Mrs. Silva:                         Right. But we had a little shed back there.

  Mr. Silva:                          He spaded all this, the three acres here. He'd spaded all this ground up through here, right where I am.

  Drayton:                           And just raised vegetables-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah [crosstalk 00:16:19].

  Drayton:                           ... for the family?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I think they had ... We remember having a cow.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And chickens. And, you know, that type of thing.

  Drayton:                           Yeah, because you have no barn on this property.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, we did have.

  Drayton:                           Oh, you did?

  Mrs. Silva:                         We did have. Yeah, just a small barn. Not too small, but they had a pretty good-sized barn. you [00:16:30] know. And-

  Drayton:                           Because this ... This, even for the time, is a nice little house. I mean it's not a shanty or anything.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, no.

  Drayton:                           It's a very substantial house.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, we've kept it up. It's kept up inside. The only ... She's remodeled the bathroom and the kitchen, but other than that it's still the old [crosstalk 00:16:47].

  Drayton:                           You know, as long as we're talking about the house, I know we're kind of skipping around here, but I am very interested in what you call vernacular architecture. As a matter of fact, I've done studies on houses of that type. But just so I understand, this is ... I just [00:17:00] looked at it real briefly going by, but is it a two-room deep house, or a four or a-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, it's five. There is a two, three bedrooms and a living room.

  Drayton:                           Is there a central hall or not?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, just the little entrance-

  Mr. Silva:                          No. Just a little entrance.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... between the living room and the two bedrooms, there's a little narrow hall.

  Drayton:                           Do you mind doing a real quick plan? Just because it looks like a traditional house type that was found a lot in California. And I'm just curious of how it's broken up inside.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, this is the kitchen here, as you go-

  Drayton:                           As you walk in the front door.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The front door, let's say that's [00:17:30] over here. Yeah, and that's the living room. You walk into the living room. It's a pretty good size. And then there's a door here. And then this is the little entrance hall. And then this entrance hall you go over here to one bedroom, and you're down to the next bedroom.

  Drayton:                           Oh!

  Mrs. Silva:                         And then you'd go into the kitchen.

  Drayton:                           That's very interesting.

  Mr. Silva:                          Those two bedrooms are on the same row.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They are on the same row. The door opens. Well, they're right next to one another. The door opens-

  Drayton:                           Yeah. They're off a little hallway.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. And then there's the kitchen. And then off the kitchen [00:18:00] is the ... The other bedroom is off of the kitchen. You go from the kitchen into that. And then there's a little space here where you go into the bathroom.

  Drayton:                           And then what's the R? The-

  Mrs. Silva:                         This is a kitchen. The kitchen is a big kitchen. I'll take you over and show it to you.

  Drayton:                           Yeah, I'd ... At the end, that'd be terrific, because ... Well, what's interesting to me is it looks there's been a lot of changes. This is set up inside very different than houses that look like that that were built here, [00:18:30] say, by Irish, Irish-American, Anglo-American immigrants. But I'm just curious if this is more of a Portuguese way of dividing space.

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know. I can remember the bathroom. At one time the bathroom was a bedroom.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. Well, see because bathrooms are ... That's-

  Mrs. Silva:                         But that would have made four bedrooms in the place. But I understand they added pieces onto it.

  Mr. Silva:                          That bathroom was added on.

  Mrs. Silva:                         That was added on.

  Drayton:                           And then how many children in your mother's family? How many sisters and brothers did she have?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Let's see. One ... Frank-

  Mr. Silva:                          Jack.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Jack, May, [00:19:00] Dora, my mother, and Clara. Six. It was six.

  Drayton:                           And then your dad had brothers probably, sisters that were left.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, he had brothers and sisters in Portugal, yes.

  Drayton:                           And they never came over?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, his brother did.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Two brothers came over here. Two brothers came. They both passed away over here, so ...

  Drayton:                           And then your ... And in terms of your family, you had how many brothers and sisters?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I have two sisters. We're just three girls.

  Drayton:                           Three girls. Okay, great. And then you have how many children yourself?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I have three. I have two girls and a boy.

  Drayton:                           I sound like the census taker, don't I?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Two girls and a boy.

  Drayton:                           [00:19:30] Just kind of get the sense of the continuity of generations.

                                             Well, the talk ... Before we talk about, you know, the dairying over there, and families in the Tennessee Valley, and what ... I'm just curious a little bit more about Portuguese customs. Like, for example, did families here ever go to Chamaritas?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yes. That's all you looked forward to. I mean we were kids, and we just couldn't wait for the time to come when there'd be a dance and we could go to.

  Drayton:                           And where were those dances be held?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Sausalito.

  Drayton:                           Sausalito. Would they be in a hall then?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. We had a hall.

  Drayton:                           They didn't go house to house like they used to in the old ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, years ago, I guess, they went to house to house and had parties. Like when they butchered pigs and all, they'd go to different houses and have a party, but I just remember going down to the hall.

                                             [00:20:00] We had the hall up on Filbert Street, and then they built a new one down on Caledonia. And then there was one in Novata and one in Petaluma, and we used to go from one to the other.

  Drayton:                           And what would be the occasion for having a Chamarrita?

  Mrs. Silva:                         It was the Holy Ghost, the feast of the Holy Ghost.

  Drayton:                           Only in conjunction with the Holy Ghost?

  Mrs. Silva:                         With the Holy Ghost. Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Drayton:                           So would that [00:20:30] be on a specific night of the-

  Mrs. Silva:                         A specific Sunday of the year. It's Holy Ghost Sunday.

  Drayton:                           So the Chamarrita [crosstalk 00:20:35] itself would be on Saturday night maybe, or Friday night? Or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, it was always on a Sunday.

  Drayton:                           Oh, the dance was on a Sunday, too.

  Mrs. Silva:                         So you danced on Saturday, and you danced on Sunday also, all day long.

  Drayton:                           And what was a ... I mean, describe a Chamarrita.

  Mr. Silva:                          A square dance like.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It was kind of a square dance type of thing.

  Drayton:                           And someone would call it?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Call it, yeah. They'd call it while they were dancing.

  Drayton:                           And did they do ... also do, interspersed with Portuguese dances, did they also have American dances-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           ... and popular dances?

  Mrs. Silva:                         [00:21:00] You had modern dances. Yeah, you had the American dance in between. Years ago they didn't but, you know, in the last ...

  Mr. Silva:                          It changes.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... 40 years, it's ... you change between the two.

  Drayton:                           And are the older dances still hanging on, or are they changing and they're only done kind of as a sort of symbolic throwback to the past or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, I think people enjoy doing them. They enjoy it. It's like people that go square dancing. You enjoy it, and you like to see it done. And if it's done good, I mean, it's a pretty dance.

  Drayton:                           [00:21:30] Yes, it is. I've seen it done. And I'm just trying to think.

                                             And in terms of ... I guess one custom that maybe didn't hang on in this area was ... I'm going to say this probably incorrectly: [foreign 00:21:43] is the Day of the Kings?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah, Dia de Reis. No, we ... Years ago they did have it. We used to have it 'cause we'd go down to the hall, and they'd have special breads and stuff made for it. But then that has gone by the wayside. I haven't [00:22:00] heard anything on that for years and years.

  Drayton:                           Well, I guess ... I'm just speculating here, but the little I know about it, it was based on a tradition similar to, say, Halloween or something, where you'd go door to door. Or like the Mexican tradition of the-

  Mrs. Silva:                         [foreign 00:22:15].

  Drayton:                           Yeah. Going house to house. And I guess once that sort of stopped [crosstalk 00:22:20].

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, I think that was introduced ... In the valleys, I think they do have [crosstalk 00:22:23] around here.

  Mr. Silva:                          No, Fred. They used to go. Who was it?

  Mrs. Silva:                         [inaudible 00:22:27].

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah. They'd go [00:22:30] from door to door.

  Drayton:                           And would they sing?

  Mr. Silva:                          Sing. And I know my brother-in-laws were in it. They made their own ... They used to play the flute, and they had made their own drums out of goat skin. It was quite an interesting-

  Drayton:                           And would they wear costumes? Or was there any kind of-

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Drayton:                           ... little play? It was just singing?

  Mr. Silva:                          Just singing, going from house to house.

  Drayton:                           And would the people at the houses give you something, or just listen?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, no. They had food. You had food at every house. Whenever there's anything at a house there's always food and wine.

  Mr. Silva:                          They did that on New Year's Eve, too. [foreign 00:22:59].

  Drayton:                           Oh! And [00:23:00] I've heard this from a couple of other people, but I'd just like to get it again from you. Just tell me briefly the reason for the Holy Ghost.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, [inaudible 00:23:14]. It was they had the big famine and drought. And Queen Isabella had been praying for relief from the famine. And then all of a sudden the ships came in laden with the breads and-

  Mr. Silva:                          [00:23:30] Food.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And food.

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And that's when they started celebrating the Holy Ghost.

  Drayton:                           Aha! Okay, now that's interesting. Because I had heard from ... And this may also all be true, that something about the miracle of the roses, of her apron?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. Yeah. She opened her ... Her husband was a real mean man. He wasn't a very nice ... And he wouldn't let her go give food to the poor, so she was going to, with a lot of food in her apron to take to the poor. And she met him, [00:24:00] and he said, "What have you got there?" And she says, "Nothing." And she opened it up and it was a bouquet of roses. And that's where the roses come in for the ... you always see the ... There's always a girl that carries a bouquet of red roses.

  Drayton:                           And that's symbolic of ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, that's Saint Isabella.

  Drayton:                           And then the dove itself that the queen carries ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, the dove flew in, and was in the church. Now how that come about, I don't know.

  Drayton:                           Oh, actually, during [crosstalk 00:24:25]. The story is that during Isabella-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, there was a dove that flew. And now, [00:24:30] as it is, when they have the Holy Ghost celebrations they take ... Usually some little girl is carrying a dove in a fancy little basket, and then they turn her loose and she flies off. Either she flies back-

  Mr. Silva:                          It's a homing pigeon.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It's a homing pigeon. She goes back to where she came from, but they always turn one loose at the parades.

  Drayton:                           Was that ... I assume, is that symbolic of Noah-

  Mrs. Silva:                         And peace.

  Drayton:                           ... and the flood?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. Oh, yes. It's symbolic of peace and it's an omen.

  Drayton:                           It's a really lovely custom. It's so nice to hear that it's being continued, and really-

  Mrs. Silva:                         It definitely is.

  Drayton:                           ... passionately, not just kind of.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           But it [00:25:00] appears that every-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           ... Portuguese community really is keeping that up.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They're keeping that up.

  Drayton:                           This was a valley, again, of what? Five households, six households. I assume ... Did you consider yourselves part of Tennessee Valley here?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           So-

  Mrs. Silva:                         We were Tennessee Valley.

  Drayton:                           And so you-

  Mrs. Silva:                         And the ... yeah, we lived dairy there. And then those other two houses. Now they had no dairies. They were just-

  Drayton:                           Oh!

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... people who lived there.

  Mr. Silva:                          Next door.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Next door here.

  Drayton:                           Oh!

  Mrs. Silva:                         On the other side. There's two houses.

  Drayton:                           I was assuming this was somehow part of your property.

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Drayton:                           Who lives there?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, their ... By the name of [Nayan and Giddings 00:25:30], [00:25:30] but they've been there for over 30 years too.

  Drayton:                           But let's say ... Let's go back to the '20s or, you know, during that-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Okay. Well then, it was-

  Drayton:                           Would they have been Portuguese or not?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. They were all Portuguese people that owned the two places. And eventually they sold to different people.

  Drayton:                           Right. And what were the names of the folks back then, do you know?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Diaz and Cardosa.

  Drayton:                           Cardosa. But they didn't dairy, obviously.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, no. No, they just lived there.

  Mr. Silva:                          It was there before Cardosa.

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know the [00:26:00] woman's name. He got the place from her when she died-

  Mr. Silva:                          I know.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... but I don't know her name.

  Mr. Silva:                          And he didn't get in there for too long.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, he didn't. But he inherited it. But as to Lise, what her name, I ... Maria. God, I don't know what her name was. I remember seeing a little old lady, but I don't remember what her name was.

                                             And this Cardosa bought it from her, and then the other people ... There were two other families that bought the other white house. But now, the one that's there now, Giddins, her mother and grandmother brought the place [00:26:30] and they've been there ... Let's see. Kathy's 40. They've been there 45 years.

                                             And then next-door, she's been there 35 years. So they've just stayed kind of in a little clump.

  Drayton:                           How much land do you have here? How many acres?

  Mr. Silva:                          Three.

  Drayton:                           Three? And that's all your family ever had?

  Mrs. Silva:                         That's all.

  Drayton:                           Three acres?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Drayton:                           Oh, that's interesting 'cause you have a very lovely house here. You'd expecting, you know, 100 acres to go back.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           And then [00:27:00] how big was the dairy ranch across the street, the Borges's, that your dad ran?

  Mr. Silva:                          I don't know. It goes all those hills up, or there's all those houses up there, close to Marin.

  Drayton:                           A couple of hundred acres, or?

  Mr. Silva:                          I'd say close to that, somewheres, yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The stock ran the ... Well, it down and met the fence that met the Bettencourt's and the Martin's cattle down there.

  Mr. Silva:                          And all the way ahead here where you stopped there by Laura's, on the right. The ranch went all the way to that fence there.

  Drayton:                           So it's pretty extensive.

  Mr. Silva:                          [00:27:30] Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Maybe, I would say, one of the largest.

                                             You know, as a little valley, did you folks think of yourself as a unit, as an entity? Therefore, did you socialize together and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           ... have parties together, or help one another out and parties.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, we'd always help one another out, and all the .... It wasn't too big of a partying group between us.

  Drayton:                           Well, what I mean by parties, I didn't mean-

  Mrs. Silva:                         There was too much to do. Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          Too busy for parties.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Too busy, I think, yeah. There was no time for things like that.

  Drayton:                           But you know, I ... Of course, this probably goes back even before your time, this [00:28:00] sort of traditional rural life of the barn-raising or the threshing, or something, where people get together and work together communally. Do you remember any kinds of events like that?

  Mr. Silva:                          Not here.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Not really. I mean, if we got in a bind, we could go get the neighbor to come and help. But usually everyone took care of their own problems.

  Mr. Silva:                          In the valley, they did that. Picked corn together and neighbors.

  Mrs. Silva:                         But not here.

  Mr. Silva:                          But here, they never had that much, and mostly dairy, and-

  Drayton:                           Dairy's really consuming, isn't it?

  Mr. Silva:                          You don't ... [00:28:30] Everybody don't come and milk your cows because, you know.

  Drayton:                           Yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          They don't know what cow to milk, or ...

  Drayton:                           Well, you know, it's interesting because over at the [Alina 00:28:37] Valley, I was talking to the [Tecsheros 00:28:39]. I don't know if you-

  Mrs. Silva:                         The [Tesheros 00:28:41].

  Drayton:                           Well, there's two. There's Tesheros, and there's Tecsheros.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah..

  Drayton:                           And this was Irene and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Molly?

  Drayton:                           Oh, gosh. What's her name?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Molly.

  Drayton:                           'Cause ... No. Was it? Well, they had nicknames, and so I was ... Anyway.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           And they were saying that, sort of contrary to other sorts of patterns, agricultural patterns, they were a world in and of [00:29:00] themselves. I mean-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, they were very much-

  Drayton:                           They were really self-sufficient.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           It was just-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Down there, definitely. That one, back there. 'Cause I mean, you were ... There was no town.

  Drayton:                           Really isolated, really insular.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Sure. And they still are.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. Well, when you think how long it takes you to get up that road, one.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, God. It's terrible. Forget it.

  Drayton:                           Well, it actually ... It's helped to preserve that land though.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, I suppose so. But jeez, I wouldn't want to travel that route everyday.

  Drayton:                           No. No, I certainly wouldn't, either. But thankfully that hopefully keeps commuters from trying to move in there.

  Mr. Silva:                          [00:29:30] That's, basically, in front of the old house there, the ground that's in front of the house there. I put that old rock in there myself.

  Drayton:                           In front of what house?

  Mr. Silva:                          The house down there. See, that house has got a yard in front of it.

  Drayton:                           Okay, I'm not sure. Which house, I meant.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The daughter's house.

  Drayton:                           Oh! Oh! I'm sorry. Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Mr. Silva:                          It's got a white space in there. I put a lot of rock in there because it was just a trail. Of course now, there's a gate there. And I hauled a rock in there so that the school bus could come up there and turn around.

  Drayton:                           Yeah, I was thinking [00:30:00] that that obviously had been changed. Because what's interesting is the way that that house faces. Rather than facing the road, which is kind of traditional pattern, it faces the trees or something. Because usually houses would face the little country road.

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know if that one is that way. But there is. The front room windows faces the road.

  Drayton:                           Is that a single wall house, or is it traditional frame?

  Mr. Silva:                          Frame. It's got an inside wall and an outside. T and G. [00:30:30] Redwood T and G. Redwood.

  Drayton:                           And did your family ... Did your grandparents build that, or did they have it built?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. From what I gather, they built it.

  Drayton:                           They built it themselves.

  Mrs. Silva:                         My grandfather's brother and he built it.

  Drayton:                           Oh, that's interesting. That's what would be curious to see if there's any sort of retention of the ... I mean, lots of times, not to prattle on too long about this, but lots of times people will move from one place to another, whether it's Ireland, America, or Portuguese. And they'll build a house that may look like their neighbors, but inside they preserve older ways-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Older ways.

  Drayton:                           ... of breaking up the space.

  Mrs. Silva:                         [00:31:00] I don't know.

  Drayton:                           So that's why, when you drew this pattern it was interesting, because [crosstalk 00:31:03] that I've been into.

                                             So the dairy ... Let's see. Before we talk about ... The Martins. Tell me a little bit about the Martins, 'cause they strike me as being a little enigmatic or something. I don't know if that's ...

  Mr. Silva:                          Well, they were a partner down in the dairy with the ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         Bettencourts.

  Mr. Silva:                          Bettencourts.

  Drayton:                           And they were-

  Mr. Silva:                          There was a house down, the last house. I think they tore it down. Did they?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. That part just-

  Drayton:                           Well, one was burned down, I guess.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Martins was burned, and they-

  Mr. Silva:                          There was was two across the street. [00:31:30] Across our little ... There's a little alley that goes up the hill, clear up the top, and down almost ... Well, not to the ocean, because you had to walk down. And they lived in there, just across from one another.

  Drayton:                           And they were both Portuguese?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          They were both Portuguese.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They were related from the old country.

  Drayton:                           And from the Azores?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Uh-huh (affirmative). They came from the Azores, yes.

  Drayton:                           And Martin did grow hay for a while, or vetch or something.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, they used to call him the hay person. [00:32:00] And just, as you go down on the right, can you see a field up there?

  Drayton:                           Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Mr. Silva:                          Before you cross a creek, a little creek down there, there was ... They used to call it the hay presser. Hay in there, and there was a little bit down below, below the ranch, as you go down. It's a little bit now there, and not too much. You know, it's ... You can't raise too much hay in this.

  Drayton:                           Well, that was what was interesting to me, is you know, one thing that really impressed me about talking to Laura, to Mrs. Lopez, was how difficult [00:32:30] it was. I mean, this was marginal, at least for them. It was a very ... You had to bring in your water, for the most part. They had to bring in all their own feed. They only could pasture two months a year. That is rough. To be dairy farmers? Was that the way that it was for the Borgesses-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. It was all-

  Drayton:                           ... and for your-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           ... family, too?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh, yeah. You had to buy hay all the time to feed the cows.

  Drayton:                           That's incredibly expensive if you can't raise your own ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         You know, that's the way it was.

  Drayton:                           Now did you ever work on [00:33:00] the ranch across the street? I mean, did you ... 'Cause you-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           ... remember that, obviously.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Because-

  Drayton:                           You lived here, but your dad-

  Mrs. Silva:                         The dairy was over there.

  Drayton:                           ... was running it.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Was there a house across the street, too?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. There was two houses over there. There was a house for the working men, and there was a couple of other shacks for the working men. And there was storage sheds for the cooking foods and where they ... yeah, there was living quarters and all of it. They weren't the best, but they weren't too bad.

  Drayton:                           But there was never any ranch house or farmhouse?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yes. There was.

  Mr. Silva:                          A pretty nice house there.

  Drayton:                           Is that [00:33:30] still there?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           Oh, that's been torn down.

  Mr. Silva:                          They tore it down.

  Mrs. Silva:                         That ... They tore it down.

  Drayton:                           Was that ... Who lived in that house?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, that was the ones that the people that worked with my dad.

  Drayton:                           The Borgesses?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, no. The Borgesses owned the house up on the right. They owned the property. And then when my dad moved in, he came in there and set up a dairy business for a few years. And then he got out and rented it to someone else. But in 1937 my dad moved from here up to Hamilton.

  Drayton:                           Oh!

  Mrs. Silva:                         Right up by ... There was a ranch there by Hamilton field. He moved [00:34:00] up there.

                                             But up until then he'd had it, and they built ... They had built a new house on there then. This ... Well it was just what ... It was you walked into a living room, which they used as a eating area for the help, and then the kitchen. And two ... one, two bedrooms and a little bathroom, and a back porch, and that was it. And then across from that was a couple of old ... I don't ... Well I'd say sheds that had been made over into, you know, a place for the men [00:34:30] to sleep in.

  Drayton:                           And so your dad ran that dairy from what? You said '37.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, he moved in '37. He ran it. He was there before I ... I guess when I was born they already had ... He was already there.

  Drayton:                           And you were born, you told me on the phone, I think, 1915?

  Mrs. Silva:                         '16.

  Drayton:                           1916.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. So my dad was there then, in the 1910?

  Drayton:                           Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Mrs. Silva:                         So, then when I-

  Drayton:                           A good 20, 25-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           ... 27 years.

                                             And then, what do you remember of [00:35:00] the way that ranch was run? It was Grade A dairy, obviously.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. It was a Grade A dairy. That was a Grade A dairy, and you had the usual chores to do and all. He was the first dairy merit award given out by Borden's.

  Drayton:                           Ah!

  Mrs. Silva:                         Because he was selling to Borden's. And it was during the World's Fair. And we went over there to get our plaque from ... What was ... Elsie, the Borden cow. Yeah.

  Drayton:                           And [00:35:30] that's for the highest quality or [crosstalk 00:35:34].

  Mrs. Silva:                         The cleanest dairy-

  Drayton:                           The cleanest dairy.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... and nicest. Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Drayton:                           Oh.

  Mr. Silva:                          The quality of milk.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Quality of milk. He won. He was the first one that they gave out the award to.

  Drayton:                           Oh, you must've been really proud of him.

  Mrs. Silva:                         'Cause it was just starting. You know, they were just starting with Elsie the cow, basically, and all. But that was way back. Yeah.

  Drayton:                           And then he had what? Jerseys, Guernseys, Holsteins?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Mixed.

  Drayton:                           Mixed.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Mr. Silva:                          At one time they paid on butterfat. [00:36:00] The lower butterfat, the more when you got per gallon. And then it got so people didn't use butterfat anymore. So they got away from the Jerseys and the Guernseys because they were higher butterfat producers. And got into the Holsteins, and so that they'd get more milk.

                                             Whereas, nowadays they pay for everything. I mean, regardless of how much butterfat. I don't know why, but they do.

  Drayton:                           [00:36:30] I guess people began to get away from the high fat content.

  Mr. Silva:                          They use it for butter.

  Drayton:                           Well, yeah! Even when I was a little kid, we'd have ... milk delivered to the house, and they would have it in a way where you could take the cream off the top yourself, and whip your own cream, and then mix a little in-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, and make your own butter.

  Drayton:                           Right. Well-

  Mrs. Silva:                         We made our own butter and eggs.

  Mr. Silva:                          It wasn't pasteurized.

  Drayton:                           Pasteurized means it's all been mixed, so thoroughly mixed. It's [00:37:00] homogenized, but not ...

  Mr. Silva:                          Cream don't really come up anymore.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. 'Cause it's so thoroughly ...

  Mr. Silva:                          Of course, they take most of it out anyway. They leave in about 3, 2, or something. Where average milk would be around 4% or a little better, 3.9, 3.8.

  Drayton:                           And you said they had, you know, rooms for men. It sounds like it was a fairly big ranch because if you had a lot of working men, those were the milkers?

  Mrs. Silva:                         It was.

  Mr. Silva:                          Milkers.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Three, three.

  Mr. Silva:                          Then, of course, they used to milk by hand.

  Drayton:                           Right. And so, if the average was [00:37:30] one man per about 30 cows, is that right?

  Mr. Silva:                          That's about right, yeah.

  Drayton:                           So that means it sounds like you had a herd of 120 or whatever in production?

  Mrs. Silva:                         You ought to know. You milked them.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah. I milked 30 of them.

  Drayton:                           You did. You milked right over there, then?

  Mr. Silva:                          I milked down at Martins. That's what I came up-

  Drayton:                           You came up to work on the Martins place.

                                             Well, let's talk about this place. And then I want to hear more about the Martins because that's great. This is like a double my pleasure. I didn't realize you were connected to the Martins.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           That's fantastic.

                                             So across [00:38:00] the street they had about how many cows in production?

  Mr. Silva:                          I'd say we milked about 75, 80, close to 100.

  Drayton:                           So that's fairly large for that time.

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh, yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          There was only three of us milking.

  Drayton:                           Now that would be kind of small, or smallish, or even impossible, I guess. But that was pretty big for that time.

  Mr. Silva:                          Cows didn't produce like they do now. There were some cows, they're very good. But I mean, the cows nowadays, [inaudible 00:38:24].

  Drayton:                           Yeah. What time did you milk over there?

  Mr. Silva:                          I think it was 4:00.

  Drayton:                           4:00 and 4:00?

  Mr. Silva:                          I had to go get [00:38:30] the cows first up in the mountains, up in the hills.

  Drayton:                           Every day?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah. In the springtime they went up.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They get lost up in the fog.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Drayton:                           How many months of the year could those ... Could they ... I'm sorry. This is like your cold. We could have ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         That's all right. Yesterday I was in bed.

  Drayton:                           Oh! Well, I'm sorry. You could have-

  Mrs. Silva:                         That's all right.

  Drayton:                           ... called me and said, "Look, I'm not feeling good."

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, I'm all right.

  Drayton:                           My little boy's got this cold, too. And if it gets tiring, just tell me and we'll stop.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           Across the street, then, [00:39:00] they milked at 4:00 and 4:00, you think?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, about.

  Drayton:                           Which is good, kind of normal, I guess.

  Mrs. Silva:                         I thought it was earlier than that.

  Drayton:                           'Cause Laura was saying they did 2:00 and 2:00, which I thought was horrible.

  Mrs. Silva:                         But yours was 2:00.

  Mr. Silva:                          I think I got up at 3:00 to go get the cows.

  Drayton:                           You'd get up at 3:00. Yeah, what was like a typical day for you when you were working over at that ranch?

                                             And was it, by the way, was it called the Borges Ranch?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           Was it called the-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, it was Pimentel.

  Drayton:                           The Pimentel Ranch, okay.

  Mr. Silva:                          I was only there for a year, and then I went in the trucking business.

  Drayton:                           [00:39:30] Aha! Maybe that's your statement about dairy. Well, so you worked over there what year? About?

  Mrs. Silva:                         It was about '30. We were married in '38. I guess you worked over there in '36.

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Mrs. Silva:                         '35?

  Mr. Silva:                          '33 or '34.

  Mrs. Silva:                         '33 or '34, he was working there.

  Mr. Silva:                          Because I bought the truck in '35.

  Drayton:                           Well, we're going back. Gee, 50 plus years, 55 years.

                                             So you'd get up at 3:00. And then ...

  Mr. Silva:                          Go get [00:40:00] the cows, and worked practically all day. Most of the time.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They didn't have breaks like they do now.

  Mr. Silva:                          Now they milk and they go rest til milk time again.

  Drayton:                           So you milked by hand?

  Mr. Silva:                          Milked by hand.

  Drayton:                           And you were responsible for ...

  Mr. Silva:                          I had so many cows. I had all your cows. In other words, you didn't just milk in a row. You had your own cows and milk.

  Drayton:                           And you milked them in sequence of some kind?

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Drayton:                           Or not?

  Mr. Silva:                          No. Well, they came in the barn, no matter how they [00:40:30] came in. You milked them whenever, whenever you wanted. You had to milk your own cows.

  Drayton:                           And did you used to name your cows?

  Mr. Silva:                          Not names-

  Drayton:                           Not names you repeat?

                                             Well, no. I guess on smaller ranches all the cows used to get names.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. And there was a-

  Mr. Silva:                          Your father had one. Was it Rosie? It was his pet cow. She never gave us milk. It was Rosie.

  Drayton:                           [00:41:00] How many months a year could you folks pasture your cows? Was it a little bit better on that side, in terms of the grass staying up, staying greener?

  Mr. Silva:                          It wasn't too bad up on the hill, but they always ... the cows.

  Drayton:                           Regardless. They always had to supplement. And what did you feed them? Just hay or did you have silage? Did you-

  Mr. Silva:                          Hay, yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Just silage.

  Drayton:                           No silage?

  Mr. Silva:                          No silage.

  Mrs. Silva:                         We didn't have that in those days.

  Drayton:                           Green [crosstalk 00:41:27].

  Mr. Silva:                          They would mix mill feed, coconut, beet pulp [00:41:30] and brand. We used to make that up in a big trough, and push it down the middle, the cows on both sides, and scoop them up. The one that gave more milk got more feed.

  Drayton:                           Self-fulfilling prophecy, yeah? And then what happened to the calves? Did you the auction the male calves?

  Mr. Silva:                          The butchers come around and pick them up. We'd sell them to butchers.

  Drayton:                           And the females, [00:42:00] you'd keep.

  Mr. Silva:                          Sometimes. It all depends what cows they came from. We have a nephew down in the valley that's in the dairy business. Luke [Danum 00:42:12]. He milks about 190 cows.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Couldn't do that by hand. Well, I guess you could, if you had six guys or something.

  Mr. Silva:                          One guy milks all the cows.

  Drayton:                           Wow, that's incredible. Did you see the transition then, between hand-milking and machine-milking?

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           And how-

  Mr. Silva:                          We had it here. See, years [00:42:30] ago, the machine milking, you had to be real careful 'cause it would spoil the cows.

  Drayton:                           Machine milking would spoil the cows?

  Mr. Silva:                          Drawing blood if you left it alone.

  Drayton:                           Oh, right.

  Mr. Silva:                          Nowadays at ... I know my nephew down at Valley, the machine automatically kicks off when the cow's milk.

  Drayton:                           Oh, interesting.

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh, yeah. Otherwise, one guy couldn't milk all those cows.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. Yeah, you'd have to be watching them the whole time. I'm just wondering if you saw ... [00:43:00] I've assumed, and maybe incorrectly, that there was somewhat of a dramatic transition between the hand milking, which represents the old traditional way of working the land, working the cows, to the machine technology and the newer spiffier regulations and rules.

                                             And I'm just wondering if you felt that there was a difference in lifestyle-

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh, yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, there was. Yes-

  Mr. Silva:                          Well, there's a big difference on the [crosstalk 00:43:21].

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... there was a big difference.

  Mr. Silva:                          ... now. The cows come in, they go to a holding corral, [00:43:30] and there's scrapers there to wash them underneath. It just sprays the water on them.

  Drayton:                           Whereas you used to have to do that by hand? Or did you do it-

  Mr. Silva:                          I had to clean them.

  Drayton:                           ... at all?

  Mr. Silva:                          ... so they weren't full of mud, some of them, and laying out in the mud in the corrals. Then they'd go in, and they have little the little hose for every cow, so they squirt them off if they're still a little dirty, and then ... What do you call those paper towels they clean them off with?

  Mrs. Silva:                         And they need to be wiped. Every one has to be wiped off.

  Mr. Silva:                          Check it out, make sure that the milk's okay.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They weren't that careful.

  Mr. Silva:                          No, everything was [00:44:00] good. Nowadays it's, you know, you put all that milk in a big tank. And all the milk goes for the whole ... Two milkers into a big vat. And you can spoil that whole vat if there's something bad.

  Drayton:                           And so back then, you would milk into a bucket? Or into a can?

  Mr. Silva:                          Into a can.

  Drayton:                           And then you'd pour the can-

  Mrs. Silva:                         The bucket into the tank.

  Drayton:                           Into the tank.

  Mr. Silva:                          And they went through a cooler, but that's all.

  Mrs. Silva:                         But then they picked it up every day.

  Drayton:                           What was cooling ... Was electricity running the cooler? Or a generator? Or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         [00:44:30] We had an ice machine.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, it was electricity.

  Drayton:                           Because you had electricity in this valley staring when? Do you remember a time when there wasn't electricity?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I remember when I was in the 7th grade before we had electricity.

  Mr. Silva:                          At the house. But I mean, there was ... You know, at the ranch there, there was no electricity at first. As a matter of fact, your dad brought it in.

  Mrs. Silva:                         I know we put it in, and that's what I said. I was in about ... Gosh, I don't know. But what I used to think about water is, "Let's just see." We had before the water. And [00:45:00] we had electricity come in.

  Mr. Silva:                          It came in from the ranch.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes, I know it came from the ranch. But I can remember when I had girlfriends out from school, they couldn't believe that we just had coal oil lamps. And we just had the lamps sticking on the wall, and that's all the light we had. And that was about 7th and 8th grade.

  Drayton:                           They thought that was just so-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. It was something. You could-

  Drayton:                           ... remarkable.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... see your own shadows. And then [00:45:30] they all had electricity in their homes.

  Drayton:                           Was that something to be ... Was it considered sort of something you were embarrassed about? Or was it kind of charming and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. I think it was kind of embarrassing, you know.

  Drayton:                           You felt kind of backward-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           ... or whatever.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kids do that to each other, don't they?

  Drayton:                           Now it would probably be-

  Mrs. Silva:                         I always had some ... You know, I had girlfriends all the time come over and stay. But that was the old coal oil lamps.

  Drayton:                           So the ranch over there was like 90? You said about 90 cows?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Drayton:                           And then, did they have fields [00:46:00] at all? I mean, did they name their fields? Or this was [crosstalk 00:46:05].

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, they went out all over the place.

  Drayton:                           And was it ... Did they turn them loose every day? Or did they have to keep them penned up most of the year?

  Mr. Silva:                          They went out in it every day, up the hill.

  Drayton:                           Regardless. So, obviously, there had to be some grass-

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, small.

  Drayton:                           ... or some-

  Mr. Silva:                          Small corral. There would be a mud hole. If they did let them out there, they'd pick mud off.

  Drayton:                           And did you use dogs to round them up?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah. We had good dogs.

  Drayton:                           And what kind of dogs were [00:46:30] they?

  Mr. Silva:                          Shepherds.

  Drayton:                           Were they Australian, the ones [crosstalk 00:46:38].

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, I think they were called just plain Shepherds.

  Mr. Silva:                          Mixed.

  Drayton:                           Are there any stories, or any anecdotes about difficult cows, or weather, or anything that you remember that was really striking to you that you worked over there, or even that you remember? Is there anything-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. Did I say that right? I guess it was just animals to us. We didn't stop to look at things the way some people do now.

  Drayton:                           Oh, but you are. Yes you are! Absolutely.

  Mr. Silva:                          Well, milkers down at-

  Drayton:                           I just hope [00:47:00] I'm not tiring you out. I mean, all these little tedious questions to you [crosstalk 00:47:17] are actually very, very interesting to me, because you see ... I mean, this is like, if we don't get this now ... And I'm so aware of sort of creating history in a sense that ... And this is really an important part of the history [00:47:30] of this area. So we've got to be ... We have to remember that.

  Mrs. Silva:                         At one time, they did talk about putting a canal through here, as a way out from San Francisco, on the outside of the Golden Gate. But then that died.

  Drayton:                           You mean the Monticello?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, that was before. They wanted to put a canal from down here.

  Drayton:                           Oh.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Just open this all up.

  Drayton:                           And that would've just wiped you guys out completely?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, it would of, I guess. But I mean, they talked about it before the war. And they never did-

  Mr. Silva:                          So they never-

  Mrs. Silva:                         They never did do it. They'd have [00:48:00] another way out, so the freight wouldn't get trapped in.

  Mr. Silva:                          [inaudible 00:48:02].

  Drayton:                           Right.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Oh, I see. Oh, my goodness. See, I didn't know that.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And then there was a ship that ... Did they tell you about the ship that came in over there? And the anchor was still down there at Tennessee.

  Drayton:                           Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Mrs. Silva:                         You have that?

  Drayton:                           Well, go ahead. Tell me about it, because I-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, no. I don't know when it happened, but all I know is it came in there and the anchor's still there.

  Drayton:                           Did you kids ... As a child, did you go down to Tennessee Beach?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. We used to go down to Tennessee Beach.

  Drayton:                           Did you wander around freely, around-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. We walked. Oh, yeah. You could [00:48:30] walk around any place you wanted. You couldn't ... You weren't supposed to go in swimming because there was too much of an undertow. And I kind remember staying in there, going down there. And there was a kind of a nice little rock, and we'd get in there, and all of a sudden, the breakers would come up so fast they'd go right into the rock where you were. I mean, it used to come up ... It was very fast.

                                             Then we'd go over the hill there, and go over that, where the GNRA is now, and then there was another canyon down through there where they had three cabins.

  Drayton:                           Oh!

  Mr. Silva:                          Pirate's Cove.

  Drayton:                           Pirate's Cove.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It's called Pirate's Cove. And we used to stay there and go fishing from [00:49:00] there, and we used to fish all along there. The folks that my dad used to go down with the work, and then they'd go one morning, and they'd go fishing. They'd get enough fish maybe for the week. And he'd come back, and-

  Drayton:                           And what kind of fish would they catch?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Rock cod.

  Drayton:                           Rock cod.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Or link, or whatever there.

  Drayton:                           Perch.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, perch. Nothing fancy.

  Mr. Silva:                          Eel.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Eel. That was a good one.

  Drayton:                           And those cabins were just sort of like little hunting cabins?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Or did they belong to anybody in-

  Mr. Silva:                          They belonged to three guys from the city. They used to hike over the weekend.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They made the cabins there themselves.

  Mr. Silva:                          They hauled the stones on their back.

  Drayton:                           Oh, my gosh.

  Mr. Silva:                          And they filled the stone with [inaudible 00:49:22]. They were nice little cabins. They're up on the walls down there, up where the tide used to come in.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They're not there any more though.

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Drayton:                           Why do [00:49:30] they call it Pirate's Cove?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know.

  Drayton:                           Did you ever wonder as a kid? I mean, did you go looking for treasure?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, we never thought anything of it. It was just there, and we knew the ones that went down. We'd see them walking down, you know, to go down to the ... on the weekend. They'd spend their weekends there. And then, of course, the boats from-

  Mr. Silva:                          Three cabins, three different guys.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The boats coming in from Sausalito. The people would take the train up here too. [00:50:00] Where the heliport is now, it was called Manzanita at the time. They'd get off there, and they'd walk down to Tennessee Beach. Sundays, this was just a ... All kinds of people, Saturdays and Sundays, walking down to the beach.

  Drayton:                           Oh, interesting! Oh, that's fascinating. This is back in the '20s and early '30s?

  Mr. Silva:                          This was to be a main drag.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. This was-

  Drayton:                           Now, why did I have the exact opposite impression? Like I thought that it was just really isolated, and people kind of-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, no. The weekends was something else. I mean, us kids, as kids, we sold lemonade out [00:50:30] there, even. And when the lilacs were blooming, we'd sell our lilacs.

  Drayton:                           So Martin didn't ... See, I had heard, to be very frank, that ... you know, Mr. Martin had a gate across there, and wouldn't let people into Tennessee Beach.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, that was in years to come. That was later.

  Drayton:                           That was later.

  Mrs. Silva:                         That was before. That was when other people ... Before Martin ever moved in there, they used to have it.

  Drayton:                           Where the people used to go out there.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           So when Mr. Martin came in, he ... Did he close that area off then?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, you could go, and you'd have to ask for a key.

  Mr. Silva:                          The people didn't-

  Mrs. Silva:                         But people would walk down. You couldn't drive down. He'd stop [00:51:00] them from driving down, but they could walk down. I mean, he was not stopping them from walking.

  Mr. Silva:                          The people that would ... It started to die off. They-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, they started-

  Mr. Silva:                          ... started to go on the beach, and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         They started going up more toward the mountain.

  Drayton:                           Because, as the roads got better, people could go further-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Further away, right.

  Drayton:                           So how many people might go to Tennessee Beach during, let's say, the '30s on a weekend? How many people might be down there?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, probably-

  Mr. Silva:                          More than now.

  Drayton:                           More than now?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           That's interesting. That's really interesting.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Because now, we see the cars go down. But before, they used to walk.

  Drayton:                           [00:51:30] They used to walk from the-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes, from Manzanita.

  Drayton:                           That would be a-

  Mrs. Silva:                         That's a good long way.

  Drayton:                           ... three-mile walk each way.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           And these would be families or young-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, no. The older people. Just anybody. I mean, I think that that was an outing, see. Where now they, as I say, they can go to Muir Beach, or they can go up to the Russian River and stuff. Well, you can't do that now. Then they ... When the poisoned oak was pretty in red, you know, the leaves would get so pretty in red, that people ... They didn't know what it was, and they'd pick those beautiful [00:52:00] red leaves. And we'd see them going home with these little kids, and beautiful red leaves, and we'd go, "Oh, boy. By the time they get home, what a mess they'd be in."

  Drayton:                           Oh.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Oh, dear.

  Mrs. Silva:                         But-

  Drayton:                           City, city folk!

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, and they'd pick all the wildflowers. There was all kinds of wallflowers they'd go home with ... But they did that. That went on for years and years.

  Mr. Silva:                          San Francisco had no place else to go, but over here.

  Drayton:                           Well, right. Well, Tamalpais, of course, was a major, major recreation outing, and hiking clubs, and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, 'cause I used to ... I'd go to Tamalpais, and the train that they had to go up there, and [00:52:30] I hiked up there, and I'd go on the train.

  Drayton:                           What kind of wildflowers grew out there that maybe don't grow so much now?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, we used to have a lot of trilliums and irises, and wishing bells. And then there's the little jack-in-the-box, we'd call them.

  Drayton:                           Jack-in-the-pulpit?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, pulpit is that the little one? It's kind of a little purple one that ... the little one. And there was all kinds of them. Then there was the wild roses.

  Drayton:                           So was it-

  Mrs. Silva:                         There was a lot of-

  Drayton:                           ... much more flowery then than now?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. 'Cause like now, we can walk down the road [00:53:00] and there's ... I haven't seen a trillium in years, down through here, so I don't know what's become of them. There used to be all kinds of maidenhair ferns and stuff. You don't see any of that any more.

  Drayton:                           So, any particular reason why, do you think?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know. I don't know.

  Drayton:                           Just people pick them, and the seeds were taken? Or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know. I don't know. It just, over a period of years, is they just disappeared.

  Drayton:                           And how about animals? I mean, is there a ... Has there been changes in the wildlife that have been out there?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, certainly. The deer were eating up all my flowers from my [crosstalk 00:53:25].

  Drayton:                           Oh.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They just ate up our Camellia tree to nothing this week.

  Drayton:                           The deer [00:53:30] are more prevalent now?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. And at that time, they used to shoot them. You were allowed to kill them. And now that this is all reserve, so the little families are just growing, and they're just eating up everything.

  Drayton:                           Did you ever see ... Wild boars were a problem back then.

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't remember ever seeing any of those.

  Mr. Silva:                          There's a lot of raccoons.

  Drayton:                           Oh.

  Mr. Silva:                          And possum.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Jack rabbits.

  Mr. Silva:                          Not too many jack rabbits any more. I don't-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Not any more, but there was at the time. And there used to be foxes. Now and then you'd see a fox.

  Drayton:                           Coyotes at all?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Coyotes, yes.

  Mr. Silva:                          Coyotes. [00:54:00] They used to come down off the hill over here, sit down there and howl.

  Drayton:                           What was it like as a ... Just to sort of, to paint a picture for a minute to get back to ... You said you didn't have any electricity til you were 12 or 13. So let's say you're 8, 10, 5. What was it like to live out here?

  Mrs. Silva:                         There was nothing. I mean, I don't know. We just played around. We had no friends to play with. It was just our own family. We'd go over to the dairy, walk over to the dairy. And, of course, my dad never would [00:54:30] want us in the barns. He kept us out of the barns.

  Drayton:                           Because ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         Of the language the men used, and all he'd say, "That's no place for women." But we could go ... We'd go over, and we'd go hunting for eggs, or we'd walk over to some girl's house over in the valley, and we'd play with some of the kids from there. 'Cause it was nothing, at that time, to walk from here right up to the end of the valley over there, which is quite a ways, to play with some friends or something.

  Drayton:                           Just [crosstalk 00:54:55] to have something to do.

  Mrs. Silva:                         That was all you ... You went to church on Sunday. Then [00:55:00] the celebration, you had the celebrations, or you had a dance at the hall every so often. Other than that there was nothing going on. You just got used to ... You just didn't know any different, I guess. We had toys to play with, and we had dollhouses. We made a dollhouse out of a shed. And we had our own things in there. But nothing spectacular.

  Drayton:                           Were there any games that your mom or dad taught you that were like Portuguese singing games, or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. I don't remember any of those. [00:55:30] I mean-

  Drayton:                           So that the games you probably played were the same as your other friends. Hide and go seek, and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. Yeah, hide and go seek, and kick the can, and baseball. And we didn't even have football at that time. It was baseball. Not even basketball.

  Drayton:                           And then you heated that house by wood or coal, or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Wood.

  Drayton:                           Wood.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It was heated with wood. And then you got the big tubs out, and you took your bathroom ... kitchen. In the middle of the kitchen, you gotta heat it, and you got the water hot, and took your turns taking your bath.

  Drayton:                           [00:56:00] On ... Were you able to bathe more?

  Mrs. Silva:                         We had baths on Saturdays. When we took the hot bath. No, 'cause everybody was washed and clean. And then, I can remember, we finally put in the heaters and the stove to heat the water, and we got the bathtub, and then we added the bathroom.

  Mr. Silva:                          Wood stove to heat the water.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Wood stove.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. Boy, that must have been so time-consuming.

  Mrs. Silva:                         But it was ... Yeah. The bathroom and the wood floors over there. My mother had to scrub the wood floors with a brush?

  Drayton:                           Mm-hmm (affirmative). And lye?

  Mrs. Silva:                         There was no linoleum or anything. She scrubbed all our clothes by hand. And she was a fanatic on ironing. [00:56:30] Every little ruffle had to be ironed. Every piece of lace had to be ironed. She loved to iron.

  Drayton:                           I hate ironing.

  Mrs. Silva:                         As a matter of fact, she died ironing.

  Drayton:                           Oh, my [crosstalk 00:56:38].

  Mrs. Silva:                         We used to say, "You're gonna die ironing," and she says ... Oh, she used to laugh at us when she was ironing. My sister, when she had her stroke, and that was it.

  Drayton:                           Well, she died happy.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. She was ironing. Yeah. I kept telling the kids, "If grandma'd see the way some of this clothes is ironed now, she'd be turning over."

  Drayton:                           Or not ironed! I mean, [crosstalk 00:56:54].

  Mrs. Silva:                         Or not ironed, yeah. Not ironing is the thing now.

  Drayton:                           Did your mom make a lot of ... make handmade lace?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, [00:57:00] she never did make lace.

  Drayton:                           Oh!

  Mrs. Silva:                         She used to embroider, but she never made lace. I don't even remember my grandmother making lace. You know, I remember other people making lace, but I don't remember them making lace.

                                             But they baked all their own bread. And I can remember that scrubbing the clothes by hand in the day, or practically every day. And how the clothes was so white, compared to now.

  Drayton:                           Well, of course, they didn't ... I wonder how long they lasted with the lye soap that they used to-

  Mrs. Silva:                         And they ... I remember them sewing clothes and all.

  Drayton:                           And you had [00:57:30] a truck garden here.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           And so what kind of vegetables-

  Mrs. Silva:                         All the vegetables. All vegetables.

  Drayton:                           And anything that would be different from what people would raise now?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. They're the same. There's corn, there's cabbage, you know, kale, beets, carrots, all those things.

  Drayton:                           Did your mom and grandparents keep up the Portuguese food ways, and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. We still make it.

  Drayton:                           So what did you have for, say, breakfast or lunch, or dinner?

  Mrs. Silva:                         We used to always have soup for lunch. [00:58:00] And we'd always ... one kind of soup.

  Mr. Silva:                          Ah, use the [inaudible 00:58:03].

  Drayton:                           I better ... Sure.

  Mrs. Silva:                         We would ... The breakfast would be mush and eggs.

  Mr. Silva:                          And bread.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And bread. And then, at noon we had soup. The meat that they had in the soup, and bread again, and coffee. And always plenty of bread and cheese. And then at night, for years it was just fish and potatoes.

  Drayton:                           Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         With an onion gravy, and potatoes. And then, maybe [00:58:30] a rice pudding or a sable pudding, which was the big fish-eye rice pudding.

  Drayton:                           Oh, interesting. I've never even heard of that.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Oh.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And that's about what you'd get. And then I ... 'Cause I remember when we started growing up, and I can remember the first time we had Jell-O. Everybody thought that was a big joke. But it was something different. Yeah.

  Drayton:                           I'm the same. My son has still never had Jell-O.

  Mrs. Silva:                         He hasn't?

  Drayton:                           Well, 'cause that ... The sort of stuff that I grew up on, you kind of got away from, because you sort of began to appreciate the older, [00:59:00] good and natural foods. Jell-O's basically just gelatine and sugar.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Oh, gosh.

  Mr. Silva:                          They had [foreign 00:59:05]. The war-time closets behind the wood stove? Remember they ... Like a boiler? And I used to get those and put them together and make culverts for the roads.

  Drayton:                           Hunh. Oh, my goodness. What kind of barn was over there? How big of a barn was it?

  Mrs. Silva:                         There was two.

  Drayton:                           There were two barns at the Borges's?

  Mr. Silva:                          35 cows on each side in a milk barn. You know, the big hay barn.

  Drayton:                           [00:59:30] And the milk? Did you milk tail to tail or head to head? Do you remember?

  Mr. Silva:                          The cows were like this. There was a-

  Mrs. Silva:                         A driveway between the middle.

  Mr. Silva:                          That's where I used to feed them. Push the truck down and feed them hay, and push the thing down the front of them to give them feed.

  Drayton:                           And so the cows were facing each other? Did they have their tails in-

  Mr. Silva:                          Right.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They were facing each other.

  Drayton:                           Do I understand that maybe that's a slightly older tradition? Or is it sort of six of one and half a dozen of the other?

  Mr. Silva:                          No, it's different nowadays.

  Drayton:                           They ... [01:00:00] Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It depends on how the barns were made, I guess.

  Drayton:                           But you were ... Was the milker flat or flush with the cow? He wasn't on a platform.

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Drayton:                           Like there are now.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, we're even with the cows on the floor.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Sitting on a stool.

  Drayton:                           And was there a particular name for the barns at all?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           The style of barn. Did you-

  Mr. Silva:                          And like a milk barn.

  Drayton:                           Yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          Nowadays the cows, they just have a walk-through. They call it a walk-through barn. Like my nephew down there, that guy's standing up milking the cows. [01:00:30] The cows are yay-high. And the two sides, and he goes down one side. He's down the middle, and he works both sides, putting the machines on and taking them off. And eight cows on each side. He'd go out. He gets eight more.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Stupid from years ago.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. Well, I'm interested in those differences in the transitions.

  Mrs. Silva:                         There's quite a difference.

  Drayton:                           And then how about the Martins? How many ... I think we started talking about the Martins. How many cows did they run out, did you have out there? Was it as big [01:01:00] as the [Clementelles 01:01:01]?

  Mr. Silva:                          It was bigger.

  Drayton:                           Bigger. Okay. And then the Martins and Bettencourts were partners together, so they ran their dairy together.

  Mr. Silva:                          Right.

  Drayton:                           Okay. And with 120 or-

  Mr. Silva:                          No, no. I don't know, they ... probably about 100. There was four milkers there. And that's only like 100, 120.

  Drayton:                           And you worked there for what? A year, did you say?

  Mr. Silva:                          About a year.

  Drayton:                           And how many kids, or how many people in the Martin family?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Just [01:01:30] the one boy.

  Drayton:                           The one boy. And he's the one who just died? Or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           Or is he the one that's still in Loda?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Loda. And the other, the Bettencourt boy is the one that just died, from Petaluma.

  Drayton:                           Right. But the Bettencourts that lived in the-

  Mrs. Silva:                         The second group. That's him.

  Drayton:                           Is it ... There. Is that's-

  Mrs. Silva:                         There were no relation.

  Drayton:                           ... a different family. No relation?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No relation at all. No, they weren't even [crosstalk 01:01:46].

  Drayton:                           That's confusing to me.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, one of the parents was Portuguese, but the other one wasn't.

  Drayton:                           Okay.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           And then was [Cunia 01:01:52] still there when you ... Do you remember Cunia?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I do.

  Drayton:                           Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. The Cunias lived there before Lopez ever moved in there.

  Drayton:                           Right.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The Cunias were there ... [01:02:00] I always remember them 'cause those kids were raised together.

  Drayton:                           And tell me about the Cunias. Because, of course, Laura doesn't know them, and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         They were there for years. Well, they're-

  Mr. Silva:                          The two sons.

  Mrs. Silva:                         But his mother owned the place before him. And I can remember the old lady lived in the house where Laura lives. That was the old family home, then there's a ... up past the horse farm, there's another little house where the Cunias themselves built at ... or in a period of ... during the years, and they lived in the little house. And the old lady lived down [01:02:30] in the big house. And then after she died, they just stayed up at the big house. But when [Raposa 01:02:36] got it, after Cunias left, that's when he fixed the house, Laura's place, up a little bit.

  Drayton:                           Right.

  Mrs. Silva:                         But that was an original house too, where Laura is.

  Drayton:                           Is there house older than your house?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           This house here-

  Mrs. Silva:                         This house here is the oldest house in the valley.

  Drayton:                           That's what I thought. It certainly ... It looks that.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The oldest one in the valley.

  Drayton:                           So does that imply that either your family was one of the first or that it-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, my grandparents were the first in the valley.

  Drayton:                           Well, there were actually, obviously, people who were ranching [01:03:00] before that, but the houses haven't survived.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, there was no ranching before that down here. When my grandparents came, this was it.

  Drayton:                           Oh, really.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And these other places came in afterwards.

  Drayton:                           Hm. 'Cause I thought that the rancho-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           This is going back to the Mexican land grant.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. No. As far as I know, there was nothing here before.

  Drayton:                           Did you ever ... Have you any idea who your grandparents bought their land from?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Sausalito Land and Ferry Company. Which I have the original deed.

  Drayton:                           Oh, my goodness.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And [crosstalk 01:03:29].

  Drayton:                           So that's going back to Throck Mortin. That's going back [01:03:30] to ... I mean, we're going back a long way.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          They used to own all ... The Sausalito Land and Ferry owned all this property, all these hills. Clear over through Sausalito, you know, and down there.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They used to own that Silver Ranch that-

  Drayton:                           On the [crosstalk 01:03:43] other side.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It belongs to GNRA too. That's with Da Silva.

  Drayton:                           Is your land now owned by the park? Or do you still own ...

                                             On the other side, yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The other side. It owns the G&RN too. That's, [01:04:00] you know, Da Silva.

  Drayton:                           Is your land now owned by the park? Or do you still own-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, we own ours.

  Drayton:                           You still-

  Mrs. Silva:                         The park hasn't taken-

  Mr. Silva:                          The park is down below the second-

  Mrs. Silva:                         They're starting on the other side of the white house.

  Drayton:                           Right.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The other house.

  Mr. Silva:                          The two houses. And then it's on the other side of that. Over the hill and then around the back, and over.

  Drayton:                           Is there any discussion about buying your property? Or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, I don't wanna hear it.

  Drayton:                           Yeah, I know. I didn't mean to bring up a bad-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           ... topic.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. One time, when they first-

  Drayton:                           'Cause it's a real touchy-

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... started the buying, we thought sure they were going to, but then they finally left us alone. We never heard no more about it, and then they stopped [01:04:30] right there.

  Drayton:                           But some people, I think, I guess, willingly sold and others, they began to condemn the property? Or-

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah. They condemned it.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. 'Cause they wanted to keep their dairies, but-

  Mr. Silva:                          Well, they give them 99 years on their lease. And the one down there-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Battencourts.

  Mr. Silva:                          No. Where [Jaballa 01:04:48] sits. He bought a lease. I think he paid $100,000 for that, the lot and the house. Then next to the house that you were talking about?

  Drayton:                           Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Mr. Silva:                          That-

  Drayton:                           Well, the way it usually works is you get ... You don't pay [01:05:00] it. You get that much less off of what they pay you. So the people in the Aluminum Valley ended up getting millions, but then out of the millions, if they wanted a lease to lease back, then they would get 200,000 taken off, or something like that, so they actually put out money. You know, they ... But it's a real touchy issue. I understand that.

  Mr. Silva:                          The people, like the Bettencourts that work there, these later Battencourts. They sold theirs, their deal, [01:05:30] to this [Virgil Hollis 01:05:31]. I think. I think they wanted ... Some guy stopped one time, wanted to buy it, and I says, "What are they asking for it?" And he told me, "100,000. That's for 99 years." That's a lot of money.

  Drayton:                           Well, when you think about ... How has park presence ... How has that affected life here for you folks?

  Mrs. Silva:                         It hasn't bothered us any.

  Drayton:                           I mean, is it positive, negative, neutral?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. There's just no [crosstalk 01:06:00].

  Drayton:                           It doesn't appear that there's any more [01:06:00] people coming in.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. There's very few people.

  Drayton:                           Which is very surprising. That's what's so interesting to me. I got this impression this was sort of a very bucolic, quiet, dairy land. But it sounds like it was a major-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. It was a major-

  Drayton:                           ... tourist attraction.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It was. It was at one time, yeah.

  Drayton:                           Did you ever see the wreck of the Tennessee down there? I mean, other than the anchor?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, just the anchor. That's all. Remember parts, like the wooden parts that might have been from the door, but we never did know [crosstalk 01:06:25].

  Drayton:                           Yeah. And people didn't go looking for-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           ... pieces or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Things like that, no they didn't. That wasn't [01:06:30] the thing in those days.

  Drayton:                           It was so many years before. I can't remember. I think it's 1870s that that-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, that that thing happened, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was an interesting valley at one time. We used to have bootleggers.

  Drayton:                           For real! Tell me about that.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, those-

  Drayton:                           I've heard that a couple of times, and I've never followed up on it.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They were right here. They used to live up there. As a matter of fact, the house next door was a bootlegger's place.

  Drayton:                           This was during Prohibition?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. These kids used to live ... That was something. We'd go over there and watch the stuff go through the still, [01:07:00] through all those pipes and things. And then the one up the valley one, the other valley there, when they raided them, they went and they shot the stuff that did something to the liquor. And it was all made ... The boilers were all agates. You know, the marble agate?

  Drayton:                           Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Just beautiful ones.

  Mr. Silva:                          That's where the liquor comes through.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, to purify.

  Drayton:                           To purify.

  Mrs. Silva:                         So when they shot that, we had the best agates in school. 'Cause we went down, we just gathered all the agates that we could from there.

  Drayton:                           So the federal [01:07:30] agents came out, and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. They were ... Yeah, it-

  Drayton:                           Who were the guys? I'd assume they were men. Or was it a family or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           ... the bootleggers?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, this was a family that lived here. And the other one up there was ... It was just some people that renovates three houses, four houses, in there at one time.

  Mr. Silva:                          And some of these guys are still living in there.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, well I'm not mentioning any names.

  Drayton:                           Okay.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They were-

  Mr. Silva:                          Their kids are living.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Their kids are living, you know. They ... I don't know. Four houses in what we called Georgie Sally. That was a German fellow that owned that valley, but then the [01:08:00] houses didn't belong to him. I don't know who they belonged to. 'Cause I know we used to walk up there, my mother and grandmother, and friends, walked up to pick blackberries during the blackberry season. And they were up there. They were running the mill. I wasn't interfering with them any. It was why I had none of their business.

  Drayton:                           They didn't tell them ... Usually, you think of bootlegging as sort of secret, back in the woods of ... covered by brush and-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Mr. Silva:                          Everybody knew about it.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Everybody knew about it.

  Drayton:                           How were they not afraid of being-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           Foolish?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Everybody was paid off, I guess.

  Drayton:                           Brazen?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, they are brazen little bunch.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. [01:08:30] I remember the time they did that, and the fellows got away. And they came down ... At that time we had hay in this field. And they crawled down to the hay field-

  Drayton:                           Oh, you had hay right across here?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. Up there to where all those walls were. That was one little patch of hay that my dad had every year.

  Drayton:                           For the horses or something?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Probably used it ... Yeah. Whatever. And then the guy crawled through the hay and came over here, and then somebody picked him up here at our house, and away he went. And that was the end of them. You never ... not more didn't [01:09:00] see them. No, they disappeared [crosstalk 01:09:02].

                                             But this one that was next door to here, they're both ... Their families are still living in the valley. Of course, they knew their parent were bootleggers.

  Mr. Silva:                          They're not in the valley. They're in Murin.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, they're living in Murin County and Sonoma County. I mean, they're still living. But that was a pass-time to go and watch something like that going on.

  Mr. Silva:                          They always had bars and stuff wide open in Sausalito.

  Drayton:                           Oh, yeah. I'm sure. That wasn't just drinking out of shoes-

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Drayton:                           ... [01:09:30] and hidden ... Three knocks and a password.

  Mrs. Silva:                         A password, no.

  Drayton:                           Well, it's not a very popular law.

  Mr. Silva:                          This guy, in Sausalito, he had a bar there. I forget. He used to sell Singapore Slings.

  Drayton:                           Right.

  Mr. Silva:                          Everybody used to go up there. Everybody knew about it.

  Drayton:                           Mm-hmm (affirmative)? What was it like living next to the military during the war? Were there any precautions or stories or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. We had the-

  Drayton:                           They would come down here for-

  Mrs. Silva:                         They'd stay down here, you know. They had [01:10:00] this blocked off. And they had ... They stayed down in there, and then one Christmas, I was playing out with my daughter. It was in '42. They came down with the flu, but there was a lot of them that didn't have places to go, and then when Mrs. Clooney and I decided we'd fix dinner for those that couldn't. So we had our dinner, and then we went back up to her place and killed a bunch of chickens, and plucked them, and cleaned them. And then we had dinner for them.

  Drayton:                           For the army guys?

  Mrs. Silva:                         The army guys.

  Drayton:                           Aw, that's sweet.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And they came down and had dinner. And they made [01:10:30] phone calls to their parents and stuff.

  Drayton:                           Off of your phone?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. That was the one year though, and then after that they were gone. It was just that one Christmas.

  Mr. Silva:                          They were stationed down there in kind of the-

  Drayton:                           Well, where exactly?

  Mr. Silva:                          Down below, down in Tennessee. They were afraid that the Japanese were gonna come in Tennessee.

  Drayton:                           Right. So, I mean, were they like near Lopez? Or ...

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, they were all in through the valley.

  Mr. Silva:                          They had a stopover here.

  Drayton:                           What kind ... Did they have ... build like little-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, it was-

  Drayton:                           ... tents?

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... just tents.

  Drayton:                           Oh!

  Mrs. Silva:                         It was here. They were out in the open. It wasn't-

  Drayton:                           Tents in the valley.

  Mr. Silva:                          They had a whole thing, like a [01:11:00] lean-to over here.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Mr. Silva:                          They stopped the cars.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They stopped the car. You couldn't come in unless you were military, and staying down there.

  Drayton:                           Or families that-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           You had to carry id then of some sort?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, they just ... Well, I mean, they knew there wasn't that many of us that usually we were. But no outsiders were allowed in the valley.

  Drayton:                           Oh, that's interesting. Did they build any bunkers or anything-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They brought the stuff from Fort Baker around to them.

  Drayton:                           And you had to blackout, I assume?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Oh, yeah. We had the black curtains and all that.

  Drayton:                           Everybody did that, I guess.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           I mean, you're [01:11:30] not just near a military-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, everybody did.

  Drayton:                           Were you worried about that? I mean, being so close to the military installation?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, no. I don't think it bothered us. I mean, I don't remember being-

  Drayton:                           You didn't think you'd be-

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... this scared.

  Drayton:                           ... hit in a poor strike or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. Uh-uh (negative).

  Mr. Silva:                          No, I worked for the ... I'm an engineer. We built a BC station down into the city, on the side of the hill. It's still out there. It better be. But now it's underground.

  Drayton:                           A VC station?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, a lookout for-

  Drayton:                           What does VC stand for?

  Mrs. Silva:                         BC.

  Drayton:                           Oh, BC.

  Mrs. Silva:                         BC.

  Mr. Silva:                          It was a army lookout.

  Drayton:                           Ah!

  Mr. Silva:                          A big shield. And they could look, with a telescope, so they look out to [01:12:00] see if there's any ships coming.

  Drayton:                           Did you ever hear of ... 'Cause, obviously, there were during the war. There was at least one example, probably many examples, of Japanese subs coming right up to the Golden Gate. Did you-

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Drayton:                           ... hear stories about that, or-

  Mr. Silva:                          No, we had ... Yeah, I worked on those ... Fort Funston and Fort Cronkhite, from 16-inch batteries. And then we'd shoot them off at a target out there, 30 miles, [01:12:30] and they'd take the target out there, 30 miles.

  Drayton:                           Mm. That's impressive. That'd be a deterrent to-

  Mr. Silva:                          They got it all ready for when they came in.

  Drayton:                           You know, and I never asked you, when you were born, because I should probably remember that. What year were you born?

  Mr. Silva:                          1909.

  Drayton:                           1909. And where were you born? In Santa Clara? Or-

  Mr. Silva:                          Vallejo.

  Drayton:                           Vallejo. Okay. Well, you did move around a lot.

  Mrs. Silva:                         He moved around. I never moved.

  Drayton:                           You're a home girl.

  Mrs. Silva:                         I moved from here for one month.

  Mr. Silva:                          I lived in [01:13:00] a town and went to school in a town you never heard of.

  Drayton:                           'Cause it no longer exists?

  Mrs. Silva:                         It exists.

  Mr. Silva:                          It exists. We went by there the other day.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It was last week we went by there.

  Drayton:                           Oh, what's it ... what-

  Mr. Silva:                          Tranquility.

  Drayton:                           You're right. You're right! Now, I was gonna say, I bet I would. 'Cause I've traveled around a lot. And I love little towns. It just sort of ... They're so interesting. But you're right! You win!

  Mr. Silva:                          It's right next to ... about two miles from the town of San Joaquin. In San Joaquin County?

  Drayton:                           Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Mr. Silva:                          There's a town in San Joaquin. And they're about two miles apart.

  Drayton:                           And [01:13:30] I bet that was a tiny town. I mean, it was like a little village, probably.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It still is.

  Mr. Silva:                          It's small.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It still is.

  Drayton:                           There's a charm to those places. I guess they can either be deadly, or they can be kind of nurturing, good places to be raised, depending upon the people who are there, you know.

  Mrs. Silva:                         We drove by there the other day just for fun. It was kind of interesting to see. They do have a very nice school. Grammar school and high school altogether in the same area, a real nice-looking school.

  Drayton:                           And speaking of school, you went to school in Sausalito?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. I went to school [01:14:00] in Mill Valley.

  Drayton:                           In Mill Valley.

  Mrs. Silva:                         At that time, we were in the Mill Valley district.

  Drayton:                           Because now it's Sausalito.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Now that it's Sausalito, [crosstalk 01:14:06].

  Drayton:                           So was your parish then Sausalito or Mill Valley?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Part of the time it was Mill Valley. Then they pushed us to Sausalito-

  Drayton:                           Ah!

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... and then went back to Mill Valley. And now we're in Sausalito.

  Drayton:                           Oh.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Now we are the Sausalito Parish.

  Drayton:                           Okay. You can get a little schizophrenic here.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And the kids have to go to Sausalito District School, if any of them living up in here. Unless they get a special permit, they have to go to Sausalito School.

  Drayton:                           So you went by business? Or walked? Or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, we walked to the bus stop. Which was down there in the [01:14:30] Tam Valley, Tam Junction. We went to school to Homestead, and then the Old Mill and Summit. And we got there and went to 10. And then, when my sisters were in Tam, wasn't it? Let's see. I think that ... No, I think they went to Mill Valley grammar schools also. And then, when my brother got of school age, that's when they started taking him to Sausalito schools.

  Mr. Silva:                          We were in Sausalito over there for a while ... [01:15:00] school district. Then ... Yeah, we were in Mill Valley. Then we moved to Sausalito, and the AL Post Office was in Sausalito. They moved us to Mill Valley. And then they moved us back to Sausalito. We were just moving around back and forth.

  Mrs. Silva:                         But now we've been in Mill Valley for the last 40 years, I guess.

  Mr. Silva:                          That's right. The road is the divider here.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. So people on the other side of the street would be Mill Valley-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Mill Valley, and this is Sausalito.

  Drayton:                           So, were there ... Besides the Tennessee Valley, were there more of little dairy ranches, farms, out this [01:15:30] area? Or-

  Mr. Silva:                          No, it was going on to the 101, off Stinson Beach. Jim Beach-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Not in the ... Not into the other-

  Mr. Silva:                          Down near the beach, there was a couple of little places.

  Drayton:                           There still [crosstalk 01:15:40] are.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, there's nothing-

  Drayton:                           There's Green Gold.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... in the Tam Valley area though.

  Drayton:                           It was just either open land or marsh, or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah. People had-

  Drayton:                           ... little houses.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They took up with chicken ranches.

  Mr. Silva:                          There were cows.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And a couple of cows for their own use or something like that. But not to ... business part of the ...

  Drayton:                           You know, there's one question I haven't asked you, just in general, about dairy. And [01:16:00] then I'll wind this up. I don't want to keep you too long here.

                                             Water was a real problem. When we touched on that earlier, did you folks have springs across the street?

  Mr. Silva:                          All springs around here.

  Drayton:                           And were they reliable? Or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           So did you have to buy water? Like the Lopez family did for a while? Or did you always have a reliable source of water?

  Mr. Silva:                          Well, they finally ... I don't know what happened ... I had to water in from [Lurin 01:16:23] Avenue, across the hill, and back over the dairy. But sometimes the spring'd get low. You know the big spring up in [01:16:30] the valley there. And then other people started moving in.

  Drayton:                           So never had a problem with the dairy ranch then?

  Mr. Silva:                          No.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, because-

  Drayton:                           Because dairying uses-

  Mrs. Silva:                         We had to pay for it.

  Drayton:                           ... so much water. Was that business a pretty good business then? Did it break even, make a go? Or was it always, you know, sort of hand-to-mouth over there?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, I guess we made a go of it. They raised it. That's three kids there, and-

  Drayton:                           But I guess ... Again, I was-

  Mrs. Silva:                         You weren't-

  Drayton:                           I don't mean to be comparing, [01:17:00] but it's interesting to me because it looked as it was such a tough ... I mean, it was-

  Mr. Silva:                          Well, they-

  Drayton:                           I don't know if their land is just poor, or-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, it was poor management too.

  Drayton:                           Ah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Really, it was.

  Mr. Silva:                          She was the one [inaudible 01:17:11].

  Mrs. Silva:                         She was a worker, that poor woman. She milked cows until the day before the kid was born.

  Drayton:                           Laura? Or her mom?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Laura.

  Drayton:                           Oh, Laura. She's a hard-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, and she has-

  Drayton:                           ... worker.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... seven kids, I-

  Drayton:                           Six.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Six or seven, yeah.

  Drayton:                           Ah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes. But he was a bottle licker, and she did the work.

  Drayton:                           [01:17:30] Aha!

  Mrs. Silva:                         She worked. No woman works like that woman worked.

  Drayton:                           Not me, that's for sure.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. No-

  Drayton:                           No, thank you.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           So it wasn't just the land. It was the family.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, it was the family.

  Drayton:                           Okay. All right. That's interesting. Because from that one talk I did get the impression that-

  Mrs. Silva:                         But she'll never-

  Drayton:                           ... that things were-

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... say it.

  Drayton:                           ... awfully marginal here. I thought, "My gosh! To buy your water, buy your hay," you know. You know, always-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, you're always ... It's always a ... Even now, it's the same-

  Drayton:                           It's-

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... type of thing with the-

  Mr. Silva:                          They don't have-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Just there, they don't make that much.

  Mr. Silva:                          [01:18:00] They don't have city water down there. You know, I don't know how she bought water.

  Mrs. Silva:                         The water came in on the tanks. And that's when a couple of years [inaudible 01:18:06]. They had water come in by the tank.

  Drayton:                           They just [crosstalk 01:18:10] didn't have enough water.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         It came in by tanks. They went and got a milk can, there's ... I remember they had trouble with their water.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. And then the water, there's so much mineral in it, that I guess the pipes get all-

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah. Yeah-

  Drayton:                           ... corroded and just-

  Mr. Silva:                          They all ... All the spring water does that.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. I guess so.

  Mr. Silva:                          All of it. But when the plastic pipe came out, [01:18:30] I took care of that. No more.

  Drayton:                           Right. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about, in terms of just your life here, dairy ranching, the dairy ranches in general, that would be good to pass on to posterity?

  Mrs. Silva:                         No. I want you to know that it was just a slow-pacing life [crosstalk 01:18:53].

  Drayton:                           But do you look back on that with fond memories? Or sort of like it was boring? Or, you know, how do sum it up?

  Mrs. Silva:                         [01:19:00] No. No, I don't. I mean, we didn't know any different. Now, it's altogether different, yes. Because now it ... You know, if I was to go do it now, I don't think I'd like it. I wouldn't want it at all.

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh, nobody would do it now.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           Well, because we're so-

  Mr. Silva:                          'Cause we're different.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. We're so used to TV [crosstalk 01:19:18] and radio, and VCR [crosstalk 01:19:19] and a fast pace of life-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yes, it's ... That's right.

  Drayton:                           ... that's maybe killing us, actually.

  Mrs. Silva:                         That's right. Yeah. Because ... And what is this ... Like I, many is the time I said we used to have time to go visit the neighbors. You'd go and visit [01:19:30] and have bread and coffee or something, or a glass of wine. And you'd spend a couple of hours and come home and everything got done!

  Mr. Silva:                          Like Pedreaux.

  Drayton:                           Oh!

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, that took a lot of ... card-playing and all, but-

  Drayton:                           It's a great game.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... now there's no time for anything. There's no time for any of that any more, and yet we have all these appliances and all, and-

  Drayton:                           Well, because we don't allow ourselves-

  Mrs. Silva:                         The time.

  Drayton:                           ... the time. 'Cause our life is so ... Well, anyway.

  Mrs. Silva:                         So fast. Yeah, I guess [01:20:00] it's not the same.

  Mr. Silva:                          We didn't have TV at that time.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, if we didn't have TV, we'd have time.

  Drayton:                           Well, because then you'd play Pedreaux. You'd-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Ah! That's one thing I never liked, is cards. My mother was a great card player, but not me.

  Drayton:                           A lot of card playing then was a good way to pass the time?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, I guess they did. Yes, they used to play a lot of cards.

  Drayton:                           Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And I know when they had fights, and the wrestling matches, my dad used to like to go to those, and occasionally-

  Drayton:                           Did people leave this area very often? Or was it pretty hard, [01:20:30] with the dairy ranch-

  Mrs. Silva:                         You didn't go out.

  Drayton:                           ... and you kind of-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, you didn't go out.

  Drayton:                           You just ... Did they stay there 365 days a year?

  Mrs. Silva:                         A year, right.

  Drayton:                           No vacations?

  Mrs. Silva:                         There's no such thing as vacations. Unless you were sick, and usually if you were sick, you got up and milked the cows anyway. There was just no way out. It was just-

  Mr. Silva:                          Hello.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... one of those things.

  Mr. Silva:                          No, she's not.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. Well-

  Mr. Silva:                          I don't know. Call later. All right. Bye.

  Drayton:                           Anyway, was there anything you wanted to add Mr. Silva? Anything about the Martins, [01:21:00] or the Bettencourts, or ... Is there anything-

  Mr. Silva:                          No. I think-

  Drayton:                           You obviously left during.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, I went ... In '35, I went ... I bought a truck and I went trucking.

  Drayton:                           I think that's probably a statement about what you thought about dairying, hunh?

  Mr. Silva:                          Then I went to army engineers, and-

  Drayton:                           'Cause an 8-hour day sure beats the heck out of a 12- or 14-hour day, hunh?

  Mr. Silva:                          And I traveled up and down the coast, putting in BC stations, radar stations.

  Mrs. Silva:                         He was [inaudible 01:21:28].

  Mr. Silva:                          20, 24 some ... I worked [01:21:30] as high as 24 hours a day-

  Drayton:                           oh.

  Mr. Silva:                          With Uncle Sam. And I've got nothing for it, just a [inaudible 01:21:35]. 62.50 every two weeks!

  Mrs. Silva:                         That's about back then. Now that 62.50, you can't even go to the grocery store one time with that.

  Drayton:                           No, exactly. That's a good average bill at a grocery store.

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah. Every time we'd work. Especially when we were working at a ... building a fort, pouring concrete-

  Drayton:                           You helped build Fort Cronkhite? No. Fort-

  Mr. Silva:                          For sure.

  Drayton:                           You did?

  Mr. Silva:                          Fort Funston, Fort Cronkhite and-

  Drayton:                           [01:22:00] You know, they had a reunion of all the guys who had worked at Fort Cronkhite. I'll have to fink on you and tell them about you, because Marine Headlands, they are really trying to pull people together, the old ... the guys who ... or women, who were stationed out there who were somehow connected. So you [crosstalk 01:22:19] helped build it. That's pretty amazing.

  Mrs. Silva:                         And all the guns up?

  Mr. Silva:                          I put ... Yeah. We took the guns up. They came in the shipyard. And all shitty, gray, and a bunch of [inaudible 01:22:29] [01:22:30] carry all the tires or frames, you know, that would carry all the dirt [inaudible 01:22:34]. And they had two or three of those made up to set the barrels on them, one barrel at a time. The barrels weighed about 139 or 149 tons a piece!

  Drayton:                           Wow.

  Mr. Silva:                          And they had to brace that up, and we brought them. Sausalito had to put braces underneath those overpasses, you know, when we went over?

  Drayton:                           Mm-hmm (affirmative). Just to make them ... Just to [01:23:00] make them stronger.

  Mr. Silva:                          It's up at Fort Cronkhite, when we poured the first guns, where the guns sets in. And we had to pour that all at one time, and I worked there. The guy was up there with a flashlight, telling me I wasn't wearing a [inaudible 01:23:19], telling me where I could stand, on a rock or what.

  Mrs. Silva:                         They did. I got to go and see that, and that was the most beautiful thing inside. All that tiles.

  Drayton:                           Inside [01:23:30] the-

  Mrs. Silva:                         Inside where the guns were.

  Drayton:                           Ah!

  Mrs. Silva:                         It was just gorgeous.

  Drayton:                           Before they got-

  Mrs. Silva:                         They never-

  Drayton:                           ... vandalized.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... even used them. They built the thing. I don't know if it's ... what's happened.

  Mr. Silva:                          No. We didn't have to use them.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Well, we didn't have to-

  Drayton:                           Thank goodness.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... use them, but I mean ... Yeah. But I mean-

  Mr. Silva:                          Dismantled the guns. I'm not sure.

  Drayton:                           Well-

  Mrs. Silva:                         But I mean that the building was underground as well. But all this fancy mosaic tiles and stuff-

  Drayton:                           Mosaic tiles underground.

  Mrs. Silva:                         Yeah, well, it was all designed and-

  Drayton:                           How interesting.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... all. But it wasn't mosaic. Maybe it was just tiles.

  Drayton:                           Yeah, but I know ... No.

  Mrs. Silva:                         But they were all designed-

  Drayton:                           How [crosstalk 01:23:57] interesting. I haven't heard that. Now, there's a military ... [01:24:00] One of the park rangers is the ... In fact, he was the Assistant Chief of Interpretation. His love is military history. So he knows all of this but, I mean, that's kind of extraordinary, that they would make-

  Mr. Silva:                          I know all-

  Drayton:                           ... so much effort for the-

  Mrs. Silva:                         I remember going-

  Drayton:                           ... tile?

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... in there and seeing that ... All this designed tile [crosstalk 01:24:16].

  Mr. Silva:                          Well, it's-

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know which one it was or anything.

  Mr. Silva:                          What the hell do they call that stuff? It's not plywood. It's ... Oh, boy. Big sheet.

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't know. All I know is I couldn't believe that they'd have something [01:24:30] like that inside.

  Mr. Silva:                          Use that inside of the plywood, so that the cement was like glass when they went in and tore it down. Well ...

  Drayton:                           Yeah. I've never been through those.

  Mr. Silva:                          It's not formica. It's something else. Yeah, I think so.

  Drayton:                           You never lived over ... You weren't stationed there though, 'cause you always lived here.

  Mr. Silva:                          No, I worked-

  Mrs. Silva:                         He was a civilian worker.

  Mr. Silva:                          I was.

  Mrs. Silva:                         So you didn't work [inaudible 01:24:53].

  Mr. Silva:                          I worked. Like I said, we worked 23 hours. And I worked ... They had a big sign at the foot of the hill. [01:25:00] We worked Sundays. I was supposed to work Saturdays, but we weren't supposed to work Sundays. But anyhow, we worked 11 hours a day. And it had a big sign of [Dojo 01:25:14], of Hitler, and there was three. Oh, and the Italian guy.

  Drayton:                           Mussolini.

  Mr. Silva:                          And anybody that didn't show up for work got his name on that list.

  Drayton:                           You know, was there [01:25:30] still ranching going on in Cronkhite?

  Mr. Silva:                          Oh, yeah.

  Drayton:                           Were the Silva family still over there?

  Mrs. Silva:                         Uh-huh (affirmative).

  Drayton:                           Now they're not related to you though.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No.

  Drayton:                           No, no, no. It was just like [crosstalk 01:25:38] Smith, you know.

  Mr. Silva:                          I used to haul hay in [inaudible 01:25:40].

  Drayton:                           To the Silvas? As part of your jobs, as for the army or-

  Mr. Silva:                          When I was trucking.

  Drayton:                           Oh, when you were trucking? Were there other ranchers in there? Or just the Silvas.

  Mr. Silva:                          Just the Silvas. They had two ranches. But I mean, the one that was built, Fort Cronkhite, was part of the dairy there. Well, what did they call the cows that weren't giving, they were drying out or something. [01:26:00] And then down the other [inaudible 01:26:03], the dairy, there was two places.

  Drayton:                           But it was run by the same family. And where was their house? Where was the main headquarters of it?

  Mr. Silva:                          Well, down where their last dairy was.

  Drayton:                           Is that on the lagoon then?

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Drayton:                           Ah! Now I thought that there was, like in the Gerbode Valley, there wasn't a ranch up in there?

  Mrs. Silva:                         I don't think so. They were the only ones that had the ranch. I know maybe they may have names for them that we didn't know.

  Mr. Silva:                          Like I said, two ranches. The same place-

  Mrs. Silva:                         One was down, and then the other one you go up the hill to get to.

  Mr. Silva:                          [01:26:30] The top of the Fort Baker, there was a guy up there that had a few cows. That was Martin. Another guy by the name of Martin, but he wasn't related to this one.

  Drayton:                           Were the Silvas ... Are there any of their descendants around? Do you know?

  Mr. Silva:                          I don't think so. They had a-

  Mrs. Silva:                         The wife just died.

  Mr. Silva:                          They had a clothing store in Sausalito. It was called Sam [inaudible 01:26:51].

  Drayton:                           So after he sold out, or his property was taken, or whatever-

  Mr. Silva:                          It was Sam.

  Drayton:                           ... then he went down into Sausalito.

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, he had the store [01:27:00] in Sausalito. He always had that, and he-

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah.

  Mrs. Silva:                         ... still had the dairy. He ran the two places. Of course, they had people working for them, you know, that was it.

  Drayton:                           Yeah. Was that a pretty big place out there? Or-

  Mr. Silva:                          Yeah, a dairy [inaudible 01:27:10].

  Drayton:                           And they had the same sort of mix of cows, and things like that. Oh, that's interesting.

  Mr. Silva:                          They used to get his head in the vat of my freight car. And I used to haul a freight from Sausalito, about a freight car. Oh, [inaudible 01:27:24] look to the ranch. That was a job.

  Drayton:                           [01:27:30] Okay. I better let you guys-

  Mrs. Silva:                         No, wouldn't you like a cup of coffee while you're doing ...

 

Soldiers at Ft Barry with Ranch in Background

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA-3984

---

"Guard duty, I think. Because they have that big cyclone fence along the top of the area. Kept them on the inside. But they had a lot of soldiers down there during the war. We were down in the other ranch there, and we had to put sheets over the top of the window so they couldn't see the light."- Laura Lopes

 

• Laura Lopes

  
  

  Laura Lopes discuss California dairy ranching in Tennesse Valley during the 1930's
  Audio Transcript

  Drayton:          It's November 28, 1988. This is Karana Harrison Drayton and I'm going to be interviewing Mrs. Laura Lopes, regarding her family's history and ranching dairying history of the Tennessee Valley for the National Park Service.

              Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3. Testing. It's working. As I know you know, this is an interview for the National Park Service. What we are interested in doing is knowing, collecting, a history and information about dairy ranching in the Tennessee Valley. This interview will help us compile a history for the rangers for programs and things like that. That's the intended use of the material.

              I want to ask you now if it's okay to tape this interview?

  Lopes: Oh, sure.

  Drayton:          Good. I always like to do that on tape.

  Lopes: It's okay. I'm honest. [Laughter]

  Drayton:          Well, we are too. That's the nice thing about the Park Service, you know you're dealing with people that are hopefully good. First, just tell me a little bit about yourself, Mrs. Lopes, and your family, and what brought you to the Tennessee Valley.

  Lopes: Well, we moved from, we sold the ranch, we were in Arcata, up in Humboldt.

  Drayton:          Oh, way up there.

  Lopes: Yeah, we were up there and they sold the ranch, so we had no place to go. So my brother-in-law, Rapozo was married to my husband's sister. We had to leave after 30 days. We had to leave the ranch.

  Drayton:          So you didn't own that ranch. You were tenants?

  Lopes: I haven't owned any property ever. So, we left up there and talked to his brother-in-law. His brother-in-law says well, why don't you come down here? You'll be closer to us and then you can start, you know, go ahead with your business. So we brought 23 cows, two horses, and our equipment, and we moved up to the ... Bayview Dairy. It's way up on the hill there from the valley.

  Drayton:          Okay.

  Lopes: They tore the barns down. They had the 4-H horse ranch in there for a while. And we were in there for six years.

  Drayton:          This would be what year? Just so I have some sense of time. Even around what year?

  Lopes: Got junk mail ... put together ... we moved here in 1941 because the place up there was too small.

  Drayton:          So you went to Bayview about 1935 or so?

  Lopes: '37.

  Drayton:          '37. And then you came, okay.

  Lopes: And then we came down here in '41. Then we had a lease for the Sequoia Ranch, which is the ranch down below. We had a lease there for five years, and then they sold the ranch. We had to move. So we didn't have any place to go. They only gave us 90 days. So this place was all rundown.

  Drayton:          This place here?

  Lopes: Right, this here was all run down.

  Drayton:          This had been the Cunha's?

  Lopes: Yeah, the Cunha’s ranch.

  Drayton:          And how did they spell that name, just so-

  Lopes: C-U-N-H-A.

  Drayton:          Okay.

  Lopes: [Cough] Excuse me. So then my brother-in-law Rapozo, had bought this place during the war because he was a rancher with the dairy and they took that property over for a munition gun during the war. So he had to sell. So he didn't have any place to take the cows after, when he had left, he didn't know where to go. So he came and he got in touch with the owners, I guess, whoever had this place, and he bought the ranch for $25,000. And it was 392 acres. So then he told my husband he says ... we didn't have any place to go because the place had been sold and they only gave us 90 days to get out. Where are we gonna go? So my brother-in-law says well, I'll rebuild, I'll build you a barn, and we'll build the place up so you can live and sell milk in the city. If you want, but you'll have to help to pay me for so much, it was $400 a month to rent. So I can help to pay the expenses.

              So we went to work and started remodeling this place. And my husband says, well, I don't want this damn house down there underneath those trees. There's a corner down there and a piece of cement. The house was down there. And it was only the four rooms: the two bedrooms, the kitchen and the dining room, and then the back there was a bathroom. And then a porch and then this pantry. So at that time, we had five children. No, we had four. Mary, Gloria, Rosie, Sonny. And yeah, it was four that we had. Because I had the other one after I was here.

              So we started building up this place. So he built that barn, that walkthrough barn, for the cows.

  Drayton:          The one that's now used for boarding ... the Miwok Stables?

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          That's a large barn. That's a fairly large-

  Lopes: Not the great big barn. Just the small ones down below.

  Drayton:          Got it.

  Lopes: It took 12 cows on each side. And then we had a big milk tank in there. The milk went into this big tank. At first it went into cans, and we used to take the cans out to the station. Then they decided they wanted the milk in the tank, so we had to buy a tank …

  Drayton:          Yeah, and we'll talk about the whole process of dairying later. But your maiden name is what?

  Lopes: My maiden name is Laura Pedro.

  Drayton:          Pedro. Is your family Portuguese then? And then Mr. Lopes was also Portuguese?

  Lopes: Yes.

  Drayton:          And then tell me just a little bit about both your families. They came from the Azores or-

  Lopes: Oh yes. My mother and father came from the Azores.

  Drayton:          And what island? Do you remember?

  Lopes: Yeah, they came from, my father was from North Grande [Norte Grande on São Jorge Island] and my mother was from [inaudible] which is St. George [São Jorge Island]. And they both came here. They met here and they got married in 1909. I was born 1909. They got married in 1907 because it was about three years before I was born. And they stayed over in Pleasanton and Tassajara, Concord, over in that neck of the woods.

              And then my uncle was up in Eureka, my mother's brother, so then they went up there. And my father didn't have any work. So he went back to the old country and he stayed back there for three months. But he left me and my mother in Eureka. Then he came back. He went across to Samoa-

  Drayton:          Samoa?

  Lopes: Samoa, yeah.

  Drayton:          How interesting.

  Lopes: And there was a little dairy there. I think it was 16 or 18 cows.

  Drayton:          Samoa is a little town in California. You don't mean the island of Samoa?

  Lopes: Oh, no. Samoa across from Eureka. They have a lumber company.

  Drayton:          Oh that's right. Sure.

  Lopes: So he started the dairy there. He took over the dairy from this man. And then afterwards, he bought the cows, and then afterwards he bought the property. Until he went on and passed on. My mother couldn't run the business that well, so she let it go, you know, and built a home in Samoa. But my father used to deliver the milk for the different people that worked in Samoa, a big … Hammond Lumber Company mill. And he was [inaudible] and that’s where he made his living.

  Drayton:          So dairying has obviously been in your family and in your blood.

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          Were your parents or your dad, was he a dairyer in the Azores or is that a trade he learned here?

  Lopes: A trade that he learned here. Because there they have one or two cows [crosstalk] no.

  Drayton:          Not a big dairy ranch.

  Lopes: No, the island is not that big.

  Drayton:          And why did they leave? Did they ever talk about that?

  Lopes: Well, there was no work. Nothing to do. And no money. And you have a family, and they have to eat. And you can't just live on fish and raise a pig once a year for lard and for meat. It was a poor country so they came to California when the Gold Rush was on.

  Drayton:          The first Portuguese.

  Lopes: My father-in-law came to this country during ... he was up in Forbestown up there by Marysville someplace, I don't know if there's a Forbestown up there. And that's where my father-in-law, he was a night watchman for the gold mines. Then he came out here and he went back and married my mother-in-law and brought her here. And she was the only daughter. He brought her here and she had a baby and the baby died. And then she had my husband. But she was always homesick and always heartbroken and cried her eyes out and didn't eat and nothing. Went to the doctor, the doctor says well, if you want your wife to live, you have to go back to her home.

  Drayton:          How interesting. She was dying of heartbreak.

  Lopes: My husband was six-years-old then. So they headed back to the Azores. They stayed there all the time. My father-in-law never came back. But when my husband was 18, my father-in-law pushed him over the boat in a big barrel and shipped him out. When he gets out on the ocean, they get him out. They paid him to get him out of the country. Because when they're 18 years old, they have to go for service [Mandatory conscription in Portugal until 2004].

  Drayton:          That's right, that's right.

  Lopes: They have to go to service, and my husband didn't want to. Said he was born here and-

  Drayton:          He was an American citizen, technically.

  Lopes: Yeah. He was. So he wanted to come back to the United States, so he came back to the United States and married me.

  Drayton:          That's fascinating. And his first name is?

  Lopes: Manuel.

  Drayton:          Manuel. And so then from the Azores at 18, he came back to California then?

  Lopes: Yeah. He came back to California.

  Drayton:          To this area or-

  Lopes: No, he came to Marysville where his aunt was. His father's sister. It kinda came at that time, there was a lot of gold mines up there in that neck of the woods. So they went up in there. They went up there and then his aunt's husband died. And then they came down to Crows Landing and bought a little dairy down there. And they started a dairy, and my husband was there then. And he went into business for himself with his uncle, who also had come in from the old country. And then finally he went and worked in Sacramento for ... Mr. Sosa had a dairy there, [inaudible] through the cows. And then I don't know what happened, I think they foreclosed him or something, and they started to travel. It was my husband and this man and his wife and two kids and a cousin. They all went up, Redding and Weed, way up in that country to see if they could find someplace to buy out or rent a place to start a dairy. They couldn't find anything.

              So, then they came to Arcata. And my father happened to be sitting in the coffee shop, and my husband came in, and he said he was looking for work. And at that time, I guess my father didn't have any men or this man was ready to go away, so then my father hired him. He went to work for us. Then after he worked for us, I don't know, about a year, then we got married.

  Drayton:          He was the milker, then?

  Lopes: Yeah, he was a milker. He used to milk the cows, and then my father would deliver the milk into Samoa.

  Drayton:          You must have stayed up there for a few years, then, before you came down here?

  Lopes: Yeah, we stayed up there for, I don't know, at least four or five years.

  Drayton:          Working on your family's dairy, then?

  Lopes: No, we started a little dairy of our own in Arcata. Because my father owed us $500 for back pay … back wages. And then he gave us three cows for that $500. We went and started a dairy. We used to raise calves and trade three calves for a little cow that was ready to have a calf. That's the way we started our dairy. So we had to raise three cows when we left up there.

  Drayton:          And there are a lot of Portuguese up there as I recall. In that area. Because I know I've seen Portuguese halls. And what kind of cows did you have up there?

  Lopes: We had mixed cows. We had mostly Jerseys because they give a lot of butter. And there, when you send your milk to the creamery, you have to have butter fat. And the Holsteins, their milk is watery. There's not much fat in it.

  Drayton:          But they give a lot of milk or something.

  Lopes: Yeah, they give a lot of milk, but it doesn't help. Because the Jerseys is what they want for the butter fat. So we had mostly Jerseys and Guernseys. And we came here, then we started shipping to Marin Dell.

  Drayton:          And so you came down, let me see, about '37 you said, bought a piece of property up there. Then came to this piece of property in '41. But you were co-owning or tenants in a sense for your uncle, is that right?

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          And tell me a little bit about the Cunhas. Had the Cunhas left by then? Were they the original property owners here or were [crosstalk]

  Lopes: His parents were the ones that were here before.

  Drayton:          Right. And they were Portuguese, you said that. Was there anybody that went back before them that you can remember them talking about, or were the Cunhas the first property owners right here, other than-

  Lopes: I don't know. I came from up there, it's kinda hard to know what was ... but I know that the Lewises and Jones were the first ones down at the end of the road there.

  Drayton:          So let me get a sense of the property owners. This is just sort of a rough ... let's just say 1941 because of course, things are constantly changing. Here you guys are, okay. And you pronounce your name Lopes or lopes?

  Lopes: Lopes.

  Drayton:          Lopes.

  Lopes: But they spell it with a Z half of the time. Doesn't make any difference.

  Drayton:          This is so ironic, but my checker at my local market in Petaluma is, and I'm gonna say her name wrong, Marine, is her first name, Giacomini?

  Lopes: Giacomini.

  Drayton:          Giacomini. They live in Petaluma and have, I guess, have a little dairy in Penngrove or some kind of ranch.

  Lopes: You’re talking about [“George Gianecchini”? inaudible]

  Drayton:          Yeah, it's just kind of a hard name. But anyway, they used to live down there.

  Lopes: Yeah, they used to be down there and then they were here with the Sables later.

  Drayton:          Yeah, and I'm gonna talk to him, hopefully, this week. Okay, here's Tennessee Valley Road. I don't have a real good sense of geography here, but where were people? I know there's a ranch down here and this was, there's a big ranch, now it's the park office. Who lived there in the '40s when you first came here? There, that direction, as you walk down the road, there's still a big place on the left. I'm gonna say it's a sort of Spanish-style house-

  Lopes: Oh, that's Bettencourts.

  Drayton:          The Bettencourts. Okay. And then I know that there were two places down here. Do you know where the Oswalds live? [crosstalk]

  Lopes: The Borges were down there.

  Drayton:          Were they kind of across from each other? There were two dairies across from each other, there were the Lewises and the Martins or something like that?

  Lopes: No, there were just Lewis and Martin down below, down this other way. But this is down this way, where the school is, that used to be a dairy in there. That used to be the Pimentel's dairy.

  Drayton:          And then the Silvas were that way.

  Lopes: Yeah. Well, the Silvas, that new house, is it blue?

  Drayton:          Yes, it's a beautiful blue house. Is that where the Silvas live, in that house?

  Lopes: No, it was [inaudible] back further, they built another house back further. But that house was their mother and father's house. And then the dairy was across the road, down over towards the school.

  Drayton:          And that's been torn down or-

  Lopes: And after the Pimentels left, the Borges took over. And they had a dairy in there. They sold milk. I think it was a Jersey dairy milk that they sold. And then a few Oak Valley, I don't know who-

  Drayton:          But let's just think about Tennessee Valley for a minute, because I know that's specifically Park Service. The Martins were down here, where Bill Oswald is? Whose house or dairy ranch was it where Bill Oswald is, the park ranger that lives down there?

  Lopes: That was Lewises and Jones and then-

  Drayton:          Three of them owned it together?

  Lopes: Lewises and Jones. They had a big wholesale house in San Francisco.

  Drayton:          Oh, so it wasn't like a family-owned dairy.

  Lopes: No, no.

  Drayton:          Okay.

  Lopes: And then they used to bring in whiskey and stuff to the valley there through-

  Drayton:          During Prohibition?

  Lopes: Yeah. And then the Martins moved in. The Martins and Bettencourts lived there. And they were in there for quite a few-

  Drayton:          Oh, the Bettencourts moved up here too-

  Lopes: Yeah, they weren't relatives.

  Drayton:          Oh, another Bettencourt. That's interesting.

  Lopes: In fact, the boy just died here a week ago. The Bettencourt boy that was way down at the end. He was ... they lived in that house where the ranger is.

  Drayton:          Right. That's what I was trying to get at. And then there's a place across from the ranger, Bill, that's burned down. Part tore down, or something.

  Lopes: No, it's burned down because that was where the Martins lived. Martins lived in that house and then Bettencourts lived [crosstalk]

  Drayton:          Got it. And then were there any other ranches or farms?

  Lopes: No.

  Drayton:          That was just four places in the Tennessee Valley. And then the Pimentels up here, let's say. And was there another did you say ... well, the Silvas bought out the Pimentels. She's a Pimentel.

  Lopes: She's a Pimentel. So it was her father and mother that had the dairy there.

  Drayton:          Okay, well that gives me sort of a lay of the land. And tell me, before we talk about dairying, tell me a little bit about the Portuguese traditions. Because, you know, you were brought up probably speaking Portuguese, I would think.

  Lopes: Oh, yeah, I speak it, write it, and read it. In fact, I got Portuguese papers coming in every week.

  Drayton:          So then you must have gone to some kind of Portuguese school, like they often have Saturdays. How did you learn to read in Portuguese?

  Lopes: Well, I just learned.

  Drayton:          Just did?

  Lopes: Just picked it up. My mother didn't know how to read or write. So, she'd get letters and then I'd try to study them, from one to the other, and I picked up quite a bit. And then my husband and I went together, he didn't know how to write in American either.

  Drayton:          That's right, because of course he grew up in the school in the Azores...

  Lopes: Yeah, he only had a couple years of school that was all. He didn't have that much schooling. He's a very poor writer anyway, and reader.

  Drayton:          You became the scholar of the family?

  Lopes: Well, not necessarily, but I was the oldest one of eight children.

  Drayton:          Eight children in your family.

  Lopes: Yeah. So you know, the oldest one always gets a little more attention than the other ones. The other ones don't care. But I was always close to my mother and father and always tried to, you know, to go along. And we talked in Portuguese all the time at home. In fact, when I went to school, I didn't know how to speak a bit of English.

  Drayton:          School up there in Arcata? Right.

  Lopes: Mm-hmm [Affirmative] I went in Samoa. Samoa school.

  Drayton:          There were probably a lot of other children in that situation. A lot of other Portuguese children.

  Lopes: Yeah, there were.

  Drayton:          So what kinds of traditions were retained? That's always an interesting question in immigration. What part of the homeland or the culture is sort of left behind and what's brought with you? For example, I know that you had festas [Festivals] and you had [inaudible] and things. And I'm just wondering, both up in Arcata and down here, what Portuguese traditions were kept up?

  Lopes: They're all kept up. Wherever there's Portuguese, it's kept up. Seven Sundays after Easter is the Holy Ghost celebration.

  Drayton:          For every community? Or just certain communities? Because I know they have Holy Ghost parades at different times in California.

  Lopes: I know they do, but that one day is the real one.

  Drayton:          Okay.

  Lopes: In fact, the Fado [Urban Portuguese folk music gathering] in Sausalito, had it on the same day. And it was kind of rough because some wanted to be here and some wanted to be there. So they finally got together and then one [inaudible] Sunday and the other one takes the other Sunday. So, they used to have a big parade there in Sausalito with the cattle, and then they had a slaughterhouse in east Sausalito there. And they bring in the cattle on Thursday and then kill them on Friday. So then Saturday they would cut them and then cook them for Sunday. They have the auction on Saturday.

  Drayton:          What happens at the auction? I've heard about that. Is that where they're auctioning the bread or are they auctioning food or ...

  Lopes: No, they just auction the cattle that they're given. Whatever's given.

  Drayton:          To raise money for The Hall [Portuguese cultural center]?

  Lopes: For The Hall, for the Holy Ghost.

  Drayton:          And you all here in Tennessee Valley, you would go to Sausalito?

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          But you might go to Novato? [crosstalk]

  Lopes: Oh yeah, we went to Novato. Of course, when it was both the same day, we would go to Sausalito. We wouldn't go to Novato. But then when they started changing, then the queen [Chosen girls were crowned queen during the Holy Ghost festival to honor Queen Isabel] from Sausalito would go to Novato. Then the Novato [Queen] would come to Sausalito. And they still do. They still come back and forth. And they go around, oh I don't know, started around March. They go around to the different dairies, and whatever you want to donate, you donate. You want to donate money, some donate cows, some donate the goat, some sheep, whatever they want. They donate to that and then, just before the auction which is on a Saturday, maybe a week before the fiesta, they have the auction and they bring all that cattle in. Not anymore, because now with all this promotion of all the people living here, now they’ll really bring just one calf, or two calves and put them in the corral. You bid on it, and then you give it back. Sometimes a calf will bring $3,000.

  Drayton:          Because the whole point is you're raising money for the event. I mean, a calf-

  Lopes: You're donating to the event.

  Drayton:          Is it considered high prestige or good luck or whatever to be in a position to be able to donate and-

  Lopes: Yes, it is.

  Drayton:          It probably looks good or it's just a good thing for you?

  Lopes: Well my husband ... you'll think this is crazy, but this is what happened. We were always been short of water in this valley. It's been a mess, this valley. Since [inaudible] came in and put those ponds in, it helped. It helped some of the dairies. But we had to buy water from Sausalito to feed our cows. It was so dry. But my husband had a cow. She had in her bag … she had a blue bag. The bag, half of it fell off. She was up in the pasture, he had her way back over on the other side of the hill there, almost into Oak Valley. And there was a spring up there. And he says, we'll put this cow up there, and if I get enough water, if the spring gets enough water for the cows to drink, he says I'll go donate it to the Holy Ghost. And I'll be darned if it didn't. In time. It took maybe a month or so, and there was plenty of water after that. So he donated that cow to the Holy Ghost.

              And there's stuff like that. You make a promise and then give whatever you promise.

  Drayton:          I've heard many interesting and nice anecdotes like that from the Portuguese families that live in Olema Valley. Talk about somebody being saved and promising animals and things like that.

              Tell me just a little bit about what's going on in the Holy Ghost. It's commemorating Queen Isabella?

  Lopes: Yes, it's Queen Isabel.

  Drayton:          And she gave food to the poor or something?

  Lopes: Yes, she gave the poor and she was going with an apron full of bread and the king says, what you got in there? She said, I have roses. And she opened it up and it was roses. So you know, it's miracles. Younger people don't believe those things. But us older people, we do. It's okay.

  Drayton:          Those are important beliefs and traditions to keep up. Were any of your girls ever chosen to be the queen?

  Lopes: Yes.

  Drayton:          They were? And you do it here by draw, too?

  Lopes: Yes. Rose was queen. She was queen and it was on Mother's Day, and it was her eighteenth birthday. All at once.

  Drayton:          I bet you were proud.

  Lopes: And then there was another, younger girl. The one that was down here with the daughter. She was a little queen.

  Drayton:          So they have a queen and then a-

  Lopes: Little queen.

  Drayton:          A little queen. And what do they call that in Portuguese? Is there a word for it?

  Lopes: [foreign language]

  Drayton:          Okay. And the father of the queen, as the king, he goes in front of the procession or something?

  Lopes: They do. But it's the one that draws the name. Like my husband didn't draw the name, it was another man that was here with us. He was milking cows for us. He got the crown, but he didn't have any kids, so he gave it to my husband, and my husband took Rosie and Lorraine, the small queen. It was quite a big deal because we couldn't hardly afford it, but we never missed that money.

  Drayton:          What kind of money do you have to put out? Does the queen's-

  Lopes: You have to put up for the dress-

  Drayton:          You have to buy a dress or make it or-

  Lopes: Or have it made. And then the cape has to be, also. Either rented or borrowed or made up. Most of the people make their own capes. But I borrowed mine from Mrs. Diaz. And Rosie wore that crown. And then for Lorraine, I had to have a cape made for her.

  Drayton:          But then they'll keep these things.

  Lopes: Yeah, they'll keep it or send it back to the old country. They need it back there because they're poor. So, we send it back there.

  Drayton:          Oh, how nice. So then the queen leads the procession down the street? Is that it? To the church?

  Lopes: To the church. And back down again to The Hall. And then when she gets to The Hall, she lets the pigeon go.

  Drayton:          The pigeon? Oh, I don't know about that. What does that mean?

  Lopes: The dove. The dove.

  Drayton:          Is it like the dove of peace, or [crosstalk]

  Lopes: They let it go. And keep it. I guess they put it in a nylon stocking, so she won't move or flutter or anything. And she goes free. Goes to church, [inaudible] church, and then when they get to The Hall, they let her go.

  Drayton:          The queen lets the dove go? The queen has been carrying the dove, then.

  Lopes: Well, one of the maids carries it.

  Drayton:          Oh, that's interesting. What a lovely tradition. And then there's a big feast on that Sunday? And food is given away, isn't that right?

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          Or at least it used to be. Sopas?

  Lopes: Well, I make the sopas and the meat for- [Recording cuts out]

  Drayton:          Real quickly. Was that a real honor for your family, then, that year?

  Lopes: It was.

  Drayton:          Was that the only time your girls were ever in the Holy Ghost-

  Lopes: Well, they were in the parades a lot of the times.

  Drayton:          As attendants or something.

  Lopes: Yes, as attendants. That was all.

  Drayton:          Now, in this little valley with four families or so, and then families up there that were Portuguese, was there a strong sense of sort of a community tradition here? Did you think of yourselves as kind of a community here in Tennessee Valley, or did you...

  Lopes: Well, we were all friends. We saw each other. We would talk or as far as visiting and running back and forth to each other’s houses, we never did. But Dorothy, she was born and raised in that valley there, and she was very close to Mrs. Cunha. Younger Cunha, not the older one. The older one was more high class or something. I don't know. But then when the son and daughter-in-law came along, they use to communicate quite a bit, and visit all the time. Mrs. Cunha and Dorothy and her family.

  Drayton:          I was wondering if there were kind of in the old tradition, like work parties or barn raisings. Did you regularly go over to your neighbors to help them in any way?

  Lopes: Not here, but up in Humboldt we did. We helped each other out. When it was hay season, my husband would go [inaudible] and get rid of all the hay in the barns. But down here, no, because all the hay was brought in trailers and trucks. They didn't really [inaudible] at all. They did before we ever came. They used to hay down there.

  Drayton:          The Cunhas did, I think. Yeah.

  Lopes: And Martins did too because they had that hay-press field up in there.

  Drayton:          Hay-press means what? That that's where it was pressed together, baled?

  Lopes: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

  Drayton:          Okay.

  Lopes: Yeah, they had a hay-press come in and bale the hay. But the valley was always so full of fog that the hay was always wet and cold and used to get moldy.

  Drayton:          What was it like to be a dairy farmer here? I'm almost getting a sense that it was pretty marginal, pretty difficult. You weren't able to raise your own hay.

  Lopes: No.

  Drayton:          And you had to buy water for a while. It seems like it was probably-

  Lopes: It was very hard going.

  Drayton:          Unlike say the Olema Valley or along the coast, which is pretty rich land and they have all that nice pasture. How did you feed your cows, then? Did they pasture at all?

  Lopes: Yeah, they pastured.

  Drayton:          And did you have green chop [Machine-harvested feed]?

  Lopes: No, we just had … the cows would go out in the morning and go out at night. And we got [inaudible] We could pasture maybe for two months, and that was all.

  Drayton:          Two months.

  Lopes: The rest had to be all boughten hay.

  Drayton:          So that's expensive.

  Lopes: Yes, it is.

  Drayton:          Very expensive. And so then what other kinds of ... this was a Grade A dairy here. You were selling your milk to Marin Dell [Marin Dairymen’s Milk Co.]

  Lopes: Yeah, and then after Marin Dell we went to Borden's. Of course Borden's needed us to sell out because they wouldn't come after the milk any more.

  Drayton:          So they used to come in ... in the earlier days, you would take your milk out to the highway in cans or something?

  Lopes: Yeah, in cans. [crosstalk] They had a station there. Get these 10-gallon cans, fill it with milk, and leave them up there. Leave them there and then take the empty ones back. Because a truck would bring the empty ones and put them there, then take our full cans, and we brought our empty cans back to fill for the next day.

  Drayton:          So in the early '40s, what was like a typical day here at this dairy ranch?

  Lopes: It was very hard because-

  Drayton:          You got up at ... was your first milking at 4:00 [AM] for example?

  Lopes: No, we used to start at 2:00 in the morning. 2:00 in the morning and 2:00 in the afternoon.

  Drayton:          Oh my goodness.

  Lopes: To take the milk, we had to have it out there by 6:00 at night.

  Drayton:          Oh my goodness. Whew.

  Lopes: And when the truck came in, it also had to be ready by 7:00. We always had it before that, so it got a chance to cool.

  Drayton:          That's even worse. I mean, 4:00 a.m., you can sort of sleep at night.

  Lopes: Well, you get used to it. It doesn't mean that much.

  Drayton:          Now, did you get up at that time too, or did you have hired hands, hired milkers?

  Lopes: Well, at first, we didn’t have any hired ... We had one hired milker, that was all, and then my husband did the other man's work. And then of course, I would wash up the equipment, and if I had to go out and get the cows, bring the cows in. In the springtime, you have to go way up in the hills to gather them up.

  Drayton:          So you would be out there with a lantern.

  Lopes: Yeah-

  Drayton:          In the middle of the night.

  Lopes: We take the truck and drive up in there [crosstalk] I used to get up sometimes at 2:00 [AM] and go milk.

  Drayton:          Now, you were already using ... you weren't hand-milking anymore by then.

  Lopes: No, when we moved from down there, we had the machines then.

  Drayton:          Did you hand-milk up here at Bayview?

  Lopes: Yes, we did.

  Drayton:          Hand milked. And you milked yourself, then.

  Lopes: Yeah. I milked and my husband milked. We had one hired man too.

  Drayton:          And then how many cows did you have down here, when you had your ranch here?

  Lopes: Here, we had 93. But down there, we only had, I think it was 53.

  Drayton:          Isn't that partly the difference between hand-milking and machine-milking? Because there's only so much you can do by hand.

  Lopes: Well, when you milk by hand, a man is supposed to milk 30 cows.

  Drayton:          That's a lot. That is a lot. That's more than I thought. So if you had two or three extra hands, you could milk-

  Lopes: Yeah, you could milk them. A lot of times the damn electricity would go out and we'd have to-

  Drayton:          Go back to the old...

  Lopes: Had to milk them.

  Drayton:          And here, you had Jerseys and Holsteins?

  Lopes: We had mostly Holsteins because here, they want the milk to be just a certain level. It gets up past four and five, they don't want the milk.

  Drayton:          Four and five buttermilk content?

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          See, I don't [crosstalk]

  Lopes: They don't want it that strong. They want it down, you know, lower test on the milk. Because they have to break it down if it gets too high. So then we had maybe a third of them were Jerseys and Guernseys. The others were all Holsteins.

  Drayton:          So you would mix the milk? You wouldn't keep it separate.

  Lopes: Oh, no. It just all goes in to the tank. That big tank that we had out there.

  Drayton:          And so it was drawn off into the tank, and did the tank-

  Lopes: Came down off of the cooler into the tank, and then the truck would come in and pump it out of the tank into their tank and take it away.

  Drayton:          And how was your barn set up? I probably could figure it out by looking at it, but were you milking head-to-head or tail-to-tail?

  Lopes: It was tail-to-tail.

  Drayton:          Tail-to-tail. Okay.

  Lopes: You came in like this and faced that way.

  Drayton:          And would the milkers be on the same level? I guess there's something called a California milk barn where the milkers were up-

  Lopes: No, that's after we got rid of dairy, then they started making those platform dairies.

  Drayton:          Regulation and stuff?

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          That's a newer tradition.

  Lopes: Yeah. That's newer stuff. Ours was just a flat barn. And we kept the machines, and then you turn the cows, every two cows, plug it in, the milk one cow on one side and the other cow on the other side. Go back and get the other two cows.

  Drayton:          Did you, in the old tradition, did you name your cows? Did you continue to have names for cows?

  Lopes: No, because there were so many of them. My husband gave the kids each a cow. And they named them. One was [inaudible] and the other was Betty, and you know, I don't know. Whatever. It was really something else. But my two oldest girls always liked to milk, but then Rose never liked to milk. She finished school, she went on to San Francisco and worked at the telephone company. That was the way [inaudible] and my son, he didn't want any part of the dairy either. But he took care of the calves and the hospital barn, stuff like that.

  Drayton:          So that reminds me of a question. You have a house here that used to be down further, and then your husband moved it up here. Then you had your milking barn, you had your tank house, did you call it that? The little … where the tank was, was that just part of the barn or-

  Lopes: It's that room that's next to the barn there.

  Drayton:          Yeah. Right. And then what other outbuildings did you have?

  Lopes: We had … the calf shed was over on this side, which they have horses in now. Called that the calf shed, we kept the calves in there. Raised the calves there.

  Drayton:          But those would be just the female calves, right? The male calves, did you take them to auction, or ...

  Lopes: We'd raise one or two calves for ourselves. My husband would castrate them and raise them for us. As steers.

  Drayton:          As bulls.

  Lopes: Yeah. And we had the horses in this one barn that's still standing right here.

  Drayton:          Oh, you had your own horses.

  Lopes: Yeah, we had three horses. My husband had one horse that he, only him, rode. And then we had another one the hired man could ride. And then we had one that was a plow horse, plow the garden. And then pick a sled up, to fix all the fences because those fences all had to be fixed because Sam Silva had property next to us, which goes down into that … Cronkhite [Fort]… [inaudible] could be dairy in there. And his cattle would come over sometimes.

  Drayton:          Break through your fence.

  Lopes: Break through our fence. And ours went over there too. And when we had cattle, we had this range across the street that belonged to the Borges, and then Allen Olds bought it. And then he sold it, I guess to the government, I don't know. We had a bull, a white-faced bull we used to put with the heifers in the springtime. And that bull was over the Wheelwright's property. Way over there, Green Gulch. And we didn't know where the bull was. We looked for him, finally found him. They had pitchforked him with these awful sores. You know, pitchfork, tried to chase him away, I guess.

  Drayton:          Yeah. Because they weren't tagged in any way? They didn't know whose it was?

  Lopes: One ear was split and the other ear had a V in it. We had brands, but I don't know, they were kind of weird people.

  Drayton:          Oh, so they weren't really helpful in trying to...

  Lopes: No, they weren't helpful at all.

  Drayton:          That's too bad.

  Lopes: None of these dairymen were thoughtful in any way at all.

  Drayton:          That's interesting. Why? Was it particular to this area, or is that just the way dairies ...

  Lopes: I guess that's the way they were. They just didn't care to be sociable with anybody.

  Drayton:          You know, that's interesting to me because I heard the same thing over in the Olema Valley. You see, the little I know about farming or even coal mining is that people work together, help each other out. But this very nice family over in the Olema Valley were saying that it wasn't that they didn't like their neighbors, their world was just on their ranch.

  Lopes: On the ranch, yes.

  Drayton:          And it was partly because of the schedule of dairying. They milk at 4:00 [AM] and 4:00 [PM]. And they would see their neighbors at church and [crosstalk]

  Lopes: The Tiexeiras over there.

  Drayton:          Yes, the Tiexeiras.

  Lopes: My oldest daughter married a Tiexeira.

  Drayton:          Texeira [?] or Tiexeira? Because it's two separate families.

  Lopes: Not the one that's in trouble now. It's the other Tiexeira. They spell their name different.

  Drayton:          With a T-

  Lopes: T-I-E-X. That's the one my daughter married, the oldest. Married one of the boys. He got killed in an automobile accident. Yeah, I know-

  Drayton:          So in terms of this valley, that's the way it was? People just kind of stuck to themselves?

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          That's interesting. And did you ever wonder about that? Did you ever think these people weren't very friendly, or was it just ...

  Lopes: We just didn't pay any attention to it. Just figured, well, that's the way they want to be, forget it.

  Drayton:          But was that the way it was up in Arcata?

  Lopes: No. Up there, we get together quite a bit and have parties.

  Drayton:          What changed? What's the reason for that?

  Lopes: I don't know. People are very kind or have a different attitude to life than up there in the country.

  Drayton:          I'm just trying to think if there's some explanation. Like what kind of parties would you have up there? Were you talking about chamaritas [Type of Portuguese music and dance]?

  Lopes: Well, if it's a birthday party we'd get together and make sandwiches and call and have the sandwiches and coffee and you know, play violin and mandolin, and dance.

  Drayton:          And that's of course, it's ... oh dear. Let's see, the mandolin is called, I should know this, a guitarra? Am I saying that right?

  Lopes: No, the guitarra is the viola.

  Drayton:          And then the viola … beautiful music. [crosstalk]

  Lopes: And the mandolin is very pretty too.

  Drayton:          But those sorts of traditions didn't go on here, like you didn't have house or kitchen dances or chamaritas down here?

  Lopes: No, we didn't have any of that.

  Drayton:          Too bad. [Chuckles]

  Lopes: We missed it.

  Drayton:          Three Kings Day? Did you do a procession of some kind? Did that tradition hang on?

  Lopes: Not with the Portuguese people.

  Drayton:          The Three Kings wasn't celebrated?

  Lopes: Not for the...

  Drayton:          El Dia de los Reyes? No?

  Lopes: You were thinking about January the fifth, that's-

  Drayton:          Epiphany?

  Lopes: Yeah. Up there, they used to go from door-to-door singing. Down here, they never did.

  Drayton:          So in terms of Portuguese traditions, what held on in this area was Holy Ghost.

  Lopes: And that was it.

  Drayton:          That was it. That's interesting.

              So did you name your fields here, as dairy farmers often do? No? You called this a ranch, too, didn't you. And did your ranch have a name, other than Lopes Ranch?

  Lopes: No, the Cunha Ranch. It's always been the Cunha Ranch.

  Drayton:          Cunha Ranch.

  Lopes: It's always been the Cunha Ranch. Rapozo came in, but then [inaudible]

  Drayton:          Did your children all work as milkers? Did they help out?

  Lopes: They helped out, yes. They cleaned the corrals on Saturdays and Sundays. Cleaned corrals and helped with the hay and everything.

  Drayton:          But they didn't have to, like children from a slightly earlier time, they didn't have to get up and milk before they went to school.

  Lopes: Oh, no.

  Drayton:          That's lucky.

  Lopes: They used to have to clean the barns and stuff like that before they did anything else. My son had to go out and feed the calves before he went to school. The bus used to come down and get him. He had to be ready.

  Drayton:          You know, you said earlier you walked down to the Tennessee Valley. And do you remember stories about the land here? Did people still talk about the wreck of the Tennessee at all? Was that a story that kind of-

  Lopes: Nobody talked about it.

  Drayton:          Did you even know what it was? Could you see the ruins out there?

  Lopes: No.

  Drayton:          No. Oh.

  Lopes: Because Mr. Martin, I don't know what he had in his mind. He wouldn't let anybody go down the beach. He thought they were stealing his wood. And there was a bridge there across ... there was no roads here before the war, there was no roads here-

  Drayton:          There was no road down the Tennessee Valley.

  Lopes: There was a road, but in the winter time, you got stuck three or four times before you got out of the valley. And a lot of times, we went to take the milk and we had to have the tow car come and pull us out of the mud. But there was a bridge down there and he had put some kind of a lock over the top of it, but you couldn't get over it unless the lock was taken off.

              Ben Hartville was the cop, and he wanted to go down to the beach. So he drove down. But this was after the war already. Drove down there and when he went to come out, it was locked. He couldn't come out.

  Drayton:          Oh, he had his car down there.

  Lopes: He had his car down there. So he was getting ready to shoot the padlock because he was a cop. Then finally Mr. Martin came and let him go by. And, my kids couldn't go down the beach unless Rosemary Martin or one of the kids were with her.

  Drayton:          That was their property?

  Lopes: I don't know. They had rent of that property, the house was there, and they thought it was theirs, I don't know.

  Drayton:          So you never did go down to the beach on regular outings.

  Lopes: No, the kids did. They went a couple times because they went with one of the Martins and [inaudible] In fact, I never did go down the beach before the Martins. This has only been since they put the Park Service in there is the only times I've been down there.

  Drayton:          Interesting. Gosh.

  Lopes: And I used to go down once in a while and visit Mrs. Martin's mother because she was pretty old. I'd go down there once in a while and visit her.

  Drayton:          And she was Portuguese?

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          And you'd talk about [crosstalk] You'd never been to Portugal yourself.

  Lopes: Oh, no.

  Drayton:          To the Azores.

  Lopes: My daughter's been there. Three years ago, she went to the Azores. I've never been there. I have no desire to go.

  Drayton:          Well, your life has been here. As ranchers in the '40s, what was it like living next to an active army base during the height of the war?

  Lopes: It was okay. They had soldiers down there at the beach during the war.

  Drayton:          Doing what? Drills or just guard duty?

  Lopes: Guard duty, I think. Because they have that big cyclone fence along the top of the area. Kept them on the inside. But they had a lot of soldiers down there during the war. We were down in the other ranch there, and we had to put sheets over the top of the window so they couldn't see the light.

  Drayton:          Yeah, blackout.

  Lopes: During the war. Blackout. And then they had a place up here on the hill where they used to stay and used to come down, come to our house sometimes. And of course the kids, they enjoyed the soldiers. You felt sorry for them.

  Drayton:          They were just young kids themselves probably.

  Lopes: Yeah. And then my husband used to give them wine to drink. [Chuckles] It was really nice. Kids enjoyed the soldiers.

  Drayton:          So there was never any tensions about or fears that you were gonna be bombed or anything like that?

  Lopes: No, we always felt safe.

  Drayton:          Safer being next to them rather than ... and the Silvas, was there still ranching going on in the Gerbode Valley? Even when Fort Cronkhite was there? What were the ranchers over there?

  Lopes: It was just Sam Silva. He was the only one that had the ranch in there. Had it in there for many, many years.

  Drayton:          And is that Silva related at all to Manuel Silva? No? Just a different...

  Lopes: Well, there's a lot of Silvas.

  Drayton:          Yeah, it's sort of like Smith, I guess, for English or something.

              And you said you had a truck garden. You raised your own produce?

  Lopes: Yeah. Raised our potatoes and peas and fava beans and kale, cabbage. Where the paddies [Paddocks] are.

  Drayton:          Yeah, that's why it looked sort of like a garden still. It looked, I guess it's just that ...

  Lopes: When we took over the stables then, this has only been, I think, since the Park Service zoned is when they put these paddocks in here. My brother-in-law, [inaudible] I have two acres and this house to live in-

  Drayton:          As part of your agreement with the Park Service?

  Lopes: Yeah. So, my brother-in-law, I have to pay rent to my brother-in-law. So when he rented the barn ... at first, he rent just the barn, and then they asked if they could rent to make paddocks out here, and they had paddocks along here too.

  Drayton:          Boy, you'd be surrounded.

  Lopes: Yeah. I've been surrounded by horses since they started in this area, I mean, started in here. But it doesn't bother me.

  Drayton:          The flies or whatever-

  Lopes: Well the flies, I keep the windows closed and doors closed. Yesterday morning, my sister was here and there was one fly and she chased it all over. [Chuckle] Finally, they killed the damn thing.

  Drayton:          If you only have one fly, that's not too bad. But living next to any kind of animal, especially if you grew up on a dairy, you're used to certain [crosstalk]

              So as both a young girl and as a wife yourself, did you continue the Portuguese food traditions?

  Lopes: I cooked down at The Hall for about 14 years.

  Drayton:          For the festa?

  Lopes: I helped cook. I didn't cook, but I helped.

  Drayton:          You call that a fiesta or festa?

  Lopes: Festa in Portuguese. Fiesta is Mexican or Spanish or whatever.

  Drayton:          But in terms of the sorts of food you were brought up eating, what would be a typical breakfast for the farm family that was Portuguese?

  Lopes: Eggs and pancakes and cereal and beans. Once in a while, we'd have bacon. But I had to cook for the men here. We had three men at the time.

  Drayton:          So you'd have to cook at 2:00 a.m. or would they go milk first-

  Lopes: No, they'd go milk first and then come in at 8:00 and have breakfast at 8:00 and then 12:00 and then 7:00 at night. So one morning I'd have pancakes, the next morning I'd have cereal. And then I've always had beans. And then for lunch, we'd have a soup. And then meat. And at night we'd have dried fish with a gravy and potatoes.

  Drayton:          So that's the old Portuguese style of food.

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          And cooking.

  Lopes: That's the way I was brought up.

  Drayton:          So your big meal was in the middle of the day.

  Lopes: Yeah. Meat and potatoes and soup. And beans, of course. A lot of them liked the beans three times a day, but others didn't like them. We always had a pot of beans on the stove. If you think about it. [Chuckle]

  Drayton:          That's a kind of food that's geared towards heavy farm work, for one thing. It really sustains you. And then when you're not doing that kind of work, then gravy and things like that don't seem quite as necessary. Did your husband or your kids or farmers in this valley go hunting? Did they use hunting as a way to supplement meals at all? Go hunting for deer-

  Lopes: My husband didn't. But the ones down below, they did. [inaudible] Martin went hunting, up to Alaska one year. I don't know, he brought home meat, and Mr. Martin told my husband, he says it cost him $3000 a pound for the meat, counting the money that he spent to go on that trip. My husband never did hunt.

  Drayton:          So you folks didn't hunt quail or pheasant, obviously.

  Lopes: No, we didn't.

  Drayton:          I'm just wondering if over this 40, 50 years that you've been in this valley, if you've seen significant changes at all in the landscape, in the way the land looks or the wildflowers, the native plants, native animals. More cougars now, no cougars. That sort of thing.

  Lopes: No. I started working at the Meadow Club [Golf course]. I worked up there for 20 years.

  Drayton:          The where?

  Lopes: Meadow Club.

  Drayton:          Meadow Club.

  Lopes: In Fairfax. And then my husband died in 1965. Then I started working at the Ross Hospital full time.

  Drayton:          So you were commuting quite a while. And was somebody else running the dairy then? Your brother-in-law?

  Lopes: Well, when I was working at the Meadow Club, I used to come home and help get cows in, in the afternoon, because I had a switch shift, lunch and then dinner. I come in and make sure that the cows were all here for the [inaudible] My husband was already quite sick. Heart trouble and stuff like that. So I made sure that we had something to eat and the cows were all here. Because the men would go out and get a few cows, but if there were 10 or 12 left out there, they wouldn't get milked.

  Drayton:          The cows didn't come in ... you know, you often see cows following a lead cow, a belled cow. They didn't come in on their own?

  Lopes: No, not when they're out in the pasture like that.

  Drayton:          You'd think they'd want to be milked.

  Lopes: And then those flies. They bite them and they get in the brush. And you get them out of the brush, and you turn around, and they're back in it again. Take off and go back in.

  Drayton:          So did you herd them or did you use ropes? How did you get them to come on down?

  Lopes: We had dogs. Cow dogs.

  Drayton:          And what's a good cow dog? Any particular breed?

  Lopes: The Australian Shepherd is the best breed for cattle. So we always had those.

  Drayton:          And they would round them up for you.

  Lopes: Yeah, kind of round them up, bite them in the heels. [Chuckle]

  Drayton:          I always get this image of this orderly procession because I see this in Petaluma, I see the cows coming in apparently on their own, where the lead cow and all the cows are following along a trail.

  Lopes: They're not out in a big pasture, they're just close by there. Here, they're out in the pasture, we had to chase them and bring them in.

  Drayton:          So that's a whole lot of work in and of itself.

  Lopes: But then when we're just feeding hay, it's a different story because they were right here.

  Drayton:          But even when you fed them on hay, you had to supplement it with some kind of feed.

  Lopes: Yeah, we fed them feed too.

  Drayton:          But you had to buy all of that.

  Lopes: Mm-hmm [Affirmative]

  Drayton:          That would have been very expensive. It just seems like the toughest way to ranch.

  Lopes: To show you, we never made enough to pay for the hay that the cows ate this year and draw in for the next year. Went and borrowed money from the bank in Mill Valley and he says well, I see that you're losing money and you're not making it. If I were you, I'd sell the cows, and then when things picked up, go back and buy them again. My husband says, well screw you, I don't need your money. So he went someplace back in Marin and borrowed money.

              But the last year that we bought hay, my brother-in-law had to co-sign for the note to pay for the hay because we were back in bills. You know, raising six kids is not funny.

  Drayton:          No, I'm very sympathetic. Because just the little I know about dairying, if you have to buy all your feed other than the pasture, because you had 300 and such acres here. But that was basically not used for anything.

  Lopes: Just a couple months, and that was it.

  Drayton:          Gosh. And there's no way to grow any kind of sorghum or ... not sorghum, but ...

  Lopes: Couldn't even have chickens.

  Drayton:          Why?

  Lopes: Because the chickens would get around the barn and that's not sanitary.

  Drayton:          Oh, I see. I see, in terms of regulations. Did you have other animals? You had your horses, you said. Did you have pigs?

  Lopes: No.

  Drayton:          Sheep?

  Lopes: We had pigs down at the other ranch.

  Drayton:          Now when you say the other ranch, you're pointing that way. [crosstalk] Were you further down in the valley earlier?

  Lopes: Yeah, we lived down there where that Spanish-style house is.

  Drayton:          Oh, I didn't understand that. And that's where the Bettencourts-

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          You lived there before the Bettencourts? [crosstalk] Oh that's right, I'm sorry, you said that. You were down there for a couple of years-

  Lopes: Six years.

  Drayton:          So now I'm getting myself confused. You were up there, Bayview, in '37. You moved down there in '41. And then you moved here about 1947. Around then?

  Lopes: [inaudible] We moved to Tennessee Valley, February 1941 with a lease of five years. And then November 8th of '47, we moved to Rapozo’s [Cunha] Ranch.

  Drayton:          Okay. And Rapozo’s Ranch was here. In '48, oh.

  Lopes: '47.

  Drayton:          '47.

  Drayton:          You're the person that doing most of the talking. I just wanna make sure I don't wear you out, wear out my welcome.

  Lopes: I'm okay.

  Drayton:          That lady, she kept me talking forever and ever. Okay, so down there ... so we have the straight, the place that became the [Betancourt's 00:00:26] they moved in after you did. They bought it ... did the Pozos own? [00:00:30] No, who owned that land? Because you didn't own the-

  Lopes: [Sequeras 00:00:33]

  Drayton:          Sequeras, okay.

  Lopes: Yeah, and they bought it.

  Drayton:          And you were just their tenants? Or were they also down there?

  Lopes: No, we had to move up because the father-in-law built that Spanish style house, and then we had to move out of the other house that was next door to it.

  Drayton:          Is that house still down there then?

  Lopes: No, they've torn it down.

  Drayton:          And what kind of barn did you have down there, milking barn?

  Lopes: Well they had a barn that, [00:01:00] I think it took 30 cows.

  Drayton:          30. 15 and 15? Tail to tail again?

  Lopes: No, they were head to head.

  Drayton:          Head to head, okay.

  Lopes: See all those buildings that are down there now, they're all new buildings. He would've built after he bought the place down below.

  Drayton:          Now is there a preference for milking tail to tail or head to head? Did your family have a preference for the way you milked? Is there an easier way?

  Lopes: No.

  Drayton:          Okay. Well because this, [00:01:30] I think you said that this barn up here was tail to tail.

  Lopes: Yeah, and the other one was head to head.

  Drayton:          So six of one and half a dozen of the other?

  Lopes: Yeah, because the other one was an older building you know, that's the way they had built it.

  Drayton:          Right. And those buildings down there, like the barn was built about what year? Did you have any idea?

  Lopes: Well they would have built ... I have no idea.

  Drayton:          When did Dean Witter come in? This is something I should know and I don't know.

  Lopes: Well I don't know when he came in, I'm sorry.

  Drayton:          That was the insurance company and [00:02:00] they bought up some of the land?

  Lopes: They bought all that property below, mm-hmm (affirmative). That caretaker, or the ranger.

  Drayton:          Yeah, Bill, right. Where the Martins and Betancourt-

  Lopes: Used to be.

  Drayton:          Right.

  Lopes: They used to be great big barns in there and they tore those all out. Dean Witter did that all.

  Drayton:          Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Lopes: Then he put that really big pond way down there at the end of the road, he put that [00:02:30] in and he put one up in the [inaudible 00:02:33] field.

  Drayton:          Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Lopes: And I don't know if there's another one back in the valley there, above the ranch there where they have the office, and that is a big valley back up in through there, I think they built another.

  Drayton:          Is there a name to that valley?

  Lopes: I don't think so.

  Drayton:          Okay, I was wondering if you had local names for things.

  Lopes: No, we [00:03:00] didn't. This Oak Valley, I didn't know it was Oak Valley til the government took over.

  Drayton:          Did you call this the Tennessee Valley? Did you refer to this?

  Lopes: I always called it Tennessee.

  Drayton:          And did you ever hear the term Indian Cove? I guess Gene was thinking that long, long ago, probably before the record of Tennessee that was called Indian Cove and then it became Tennessee Cove.

  Lopes: Yeah. It was a pirate cove over [00:03:30] the hill there someplace, all the way there. I don't know anything about it. See, we didn't go down there.

  Drayton:          Well that's just it, I'm getting the sense that ... partly because of your neighbors but also probably just the rigors of your schedule. I mean you didn't hae much spare time it sounds like.

  Lopes: Everybody was kinda pushed away from each other. Not social.

  Drayton:          That's so-

  Lopes: Well you'll find that to be, you go anywhere and nobody's sociable, everybody's [00:04:00] to themselves.

  Drayton:          That's true. That's certainly, I have even seen that in my life. When I was a kid you went calling on Sundays. I mean, calling and much more visiting back and forth. Now we all have our TVs and videos and just sort of ...

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          You know, [inaudible 00:04:19] is that how you say it?

  Lopes: [Marincello 00:04:22]

  Drayton:          Marincello came in and they were right across the street from you I guess. You were obviously here at that time, what was that like? To have this [00:04:30] potential bedroom community, whole new suburban community possibly going in across the street?

  Lopes: Well this is a picture of the town that he was gonna build over the hill.

  Drayton:          Uh-huh.

              Did you guys try to fight that?

  Lopes: Well some people came and tried to fight it. We didn't care as far as ... and this was in 1985, [00:05:00] my husband died in '86. So at that time already, the stables were already here. But they were privately owned then.

  Drayton:          Mm-hmm (affirmative). So there was not brouhaha from local ranchers about Marincello going in?

  Lopes: They were trying to fight it, you know, they were very upset with my brother-in-law because he had sold the property.

  Drayton:          Oh, it was your brother-in-law's property?

  Lopes: Yeah, and he had [00:05:30] sold it. Because he wanted, Marincello wanted to come in through that tunnel they have over there in Cronkite, and they said no, if it's going to come over the highway, the 101, forget it. So then we decided to come in through Tennessee Valley and go up the hill and build his city up there. Then he made great big pillars down here at the end of the road. I haven't got any pictures of it.

  Drayton:          Yeah, I've seen pictures of that. In fact, I guess the park service tore them down?

  Lopes: [00:06:00] Yeah, they [crosstalk 00:06:01]

  Drayton:          Because actually that was probably a mistake. They should've been left up as sort of a memory or a historic marker.

  Lopes: You can see where he had put a lot of cement along there and-

  Drayton:          Flowers and things like that, kind of a traditional gateway. And how were they as neighbors? Did you have dealings with them? Did you ever feel that was gonna close down your-

  Lopes: No. No, because they never gave us any trouble at all. Of course, [00:06:30] it didn't last too long because then the park started taking it over.

  Drayton:          Now did the park service come in and take your land through condemnation? Of course you didn't own it, it was your brother-in-law's.

  Lopes: No, I don't think the park wanted any property from my brother-in-law, I think ... [inaudible 00:06:49] is the one that bought all the property.

  Drayton:          Excuse me, who?

  Lopes: Frugue, Frogue, Frogue or Fridge, whatever, the guy that was gonna build us.

  Drayton:          Oh, so they bought out Marincello then?

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          So in [00:07:00] terms of the parks coming in, how did that change your life, or impact your life?

  Lopes: We always thought maybe that they would make us move, that's all that worried us. They would chase us out. But then my brother-in-law, you know, he's pretty well, shrewd, a shrewd operator and he has attorneys in San Rafael, [inaudible 00:07:22] was the attorney for him. I don't know, they made [00:07:30] the agreement that if I want to stay here that he would rent it back. And then there wasn't anyone was said. So I haven't had any problems so far.

  Drayton:          Mm-hmm (affirmative). So he directly sold the land.

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          He didn't have to have his land condemned or anything like that.

  Lopes: No, no. No, he sold. In fact, Oak Valley down there at the bottom, you know, you see where that flat is as you come over [00:08:00] that little bridge.

  Drayton:          Right.

  Lopes: He sold that property for three thousand dollars. I think it was 20 acres. And [Bagshaw 00:08:10] was the one that bought it and then he couldn't pay for it so he took it at, but he had sold already all of the topsoil off of it.

  Drayton:          Hmm. He was doing that just because he needed the money? Just didn't-

  Lopes: To make money I guess.

  Drayton:          Because to sell your topsoil obviously implies [00:08:30] you're not gonna try to ranch it or farm it. Well, you could run cattle I guess.

  Lopes: So topsoil from there. To make money of course.

  Drayton:          Now when you look back over your 47 years in this Valley, how do you sort of sum up your life here in Tennessee Valley? Have they been good years?

  Lopes: They've [00:09:00] been good and bad.

  Drayton:          Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Lopes: You know, it's been very foggy and cold in here. It always is foggy and cold in this valley. Probably down to the door, you go out to the end of the road, the Sun's shining bright. But you get used to it. I'm very happy here.

  Drayton:          You know, I'm surprised if there's so much fog that it didn't keep the pasture up.

  Lopes: Well they claim that this is the, the best place for cattle [00:09:30] is here.

  Drayton:          But you only pastured two months a year, whereas over in [Lima 00:09:34] they do ...

  Lopes: Well here, we had to feed the cows so they would give the milk, while over there if they gave milk, okay, if they didn't, it's okay because they only ship for creating milk, or for cheese. So if they had milk, okay, if they didn't have it ... we had to have a certain amount of milk every day. So we had to feed the cows, good feed and good hay.

  Drayton:          To keep up your production. And what [00:10:00] would a normal cow produce? What would be an average of gallons that a cow would give out?

  Lopes: They average about five gallons.

  Drayton:          Each cow?

  Lopes: A piece, yeah.

  Drayton:          Mm-hmm (affirmative). And production I guess has gone up, I guess that's one of the good things I guess about new feeds and new techniques and stuff is they're able to get-

  Lopes: Yeah, a lot of purebreds come in and they've been [semenizing 00:10:26] the cows too with [00:10:30] extra strong bulls. So they can have more milk.

  Drayton:          Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Lopes: We just went along the best we could. We'd have so many cows milking all the time.

  Drayton:          Right, you'd have dry and wet cows.

  Lopes: Well we had some dry and some milking.

  Drayton:          What would be your percentage of dry to wet cows?

  Lopes: Well we had 125 head of young stock that would come in as we bred them.

  Drayton:          And about 90 you said [00:11:00] were in production.

  Lopes: 93.

  Drayton:          That's a pretty good sized dairy ranch, particularly for 30, 40 years ago. Whereas now that would be a little smaller I guess.

  Lopes: I don't think anybody with that small dairy would survive anymore, unless they're trying to raise some animals or something and sell them. Because the animals are really a big price now.

  Drayton:          [00:11:30] Well I guess standards have also gone up in terms of safety and cleanliness and things like that. You were able to use the water here on your property?

  Lopes: Yeah, we had to keep the swings going.

  Drayton:          To clean out your barns and sterilize and things like that.

  Lopes: I was able to wash the barns because of the water, we had water for the cows.

  Drayton:          I know, dairy just demands a lot of water. Was there more water towards the middle [00:12:00] or the end of the valley? Or was it-

  Lopes: Everybody had the same problem, hardly no water at all.

  Drayton:          Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Lopes: We used to work days and days unplugging the pipes. I'll go show you what the water in this valley does to the-

  Drayton:          And I guess, I'm thinking, I'm looking over my list here, and of course we could talk more about various things but ... oh, your family was Catholic, obviously. What church would they have gone to?

  Lopes: Sausalito.

  Drayton:          Sausalito, okay.

  Lopes: Everybody on this side of the road belongs to Sausalito.

  Drayton:          Oh, I [00:12:30] see. They sort of have to, that's the parish?

  Lopes: No it's ... even the schools. Anybody that lives on this side of the road belongs to Sausalito. If you live on the other side then you can go to Mill Valley schools. That's the way they have it fixed.

  Drayton:          Okay. I'm just thinking if there's anything, I'm looking through my list here. Well one question I think I should ask you is just that you grew up in a time when you hand milked and you said that even after you moved here [00:13:00] the electricity would go out and you'd have to hand milk. I'm wondering if there was a noticeable different between the old way of hand milking, the old traditional way and the kind of life after electricity and milking machines and whatever came in.

  Lopes: Well we milked more cows.

  Drayton:          You milked more cows.

  Lopes: Yeah.

  Drayton:          But was there a different pace or rhythm to life?

  Lopes: No it was the same thing.

  Drayton:          Same hard work.

  Lopes: Cows had to be fed and the barns had to be cleaned. [00:13:30] Same thing, whatever.

  Drayton:          I'm wondering if there's anything that I haven't asked you that you want to mention or stress about what life was like here in the Tennessee Valley?

  Lopes: All I can say is that.

  Drayton:          Okay, well that is very, very helpful and I thank you very much.

  Lopes: Can i give you some more cheese or something?

  Drayton:          You know what-

 

Dairy Ranch in the Valley

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 17928

---

He mixed it with some barley,and modern vitamins and all that. Now they got Dairy Miss Millie which mixed that already in it. Brings it in, they pump it into a big cylinder, then they just open the chute and slide it to the cows.- Joe Souza

 

• Joe Souza

  
  

  Joe Souza discusses dairy ranching and Portuguese traditions in Tennessee valley
  Audio Transcript

  [00:00:00]

  Interviewer: Interview with Joseph Souza and his wife, Billy, and his daughter, Shirley Nigren at their Muir Beach home on March 31st, 1989. This is half of the recorded conversation. The other half was damaged and could not be recorded.

  However, notes were taken during that part.

  We pick up the conversation as Joe is starting to discuss the different ceremonies that the Portuguese community is involved in during the year. [00:00:30] We just finished talking about the Holy Ghost ceremony that occurs around the Easter time and subsequent to Easter, eight Sundays after Easter. We've also finished talking about life at the Slide Ranch and some of the other ranches in the area. The pertinent details are in the notes.

  [pause 00:00:49] [00:01:00]

  Joe: That's where usually you pick up more money that way. You wouldn't have to buy feed because of the [unintelligible 00:01:20] don't make that much profit. What else could I say about that? [00:01:30]

  Interviewer: Actually, I wanted to ask you about the other ceremonies too. There's the Holy Ghost--

  Joe: Festival?

  Interviewer: Yes. There's the Holy Ghost festivals, but there are other festivals during the year as well, right?

  Joe: Yes. You have the Queen's drawings in February. Gals are all single and the members choose a lot, they have these little numbers there, if your number's 10 and so your dad has to get you [00:02:00] dressed and all that to be the queen.

  Then you have to go find a couple girl friends to be your maids, but they have to be Catholic. Then you get flower girls.

  Interviewer: Do they all have to be at the one church or can they be--

  Joe: Yes, but then you'll go-- Like now you'll go to Sausalito and you go to Nevada or you go to Belem and you go to Sebastopol and then sometimes Fort Bragg, and then Benicia.

  Son: San Joaquin Valley. If you're chosen to be a queen [00:02:30] there, you start-

  Joe: Oh, yeah. About 20 of them.

  Son: -seven Sundays-- The seventh Sunday after Easter is the first one in Modesto. They are every Sunday until October.

  Interviewer: Until Pentecost?

  Son: Yes. No. Pentecost is after.

  Interviewer: August?

  Joe: It's the seventh. No, no, no.

  Son: It's the seventh Sunday after-

  Joe: That's Brother's Supper.

  Son: -Easter.

  Joe: Members.

  Son: As far as the Queen's Marching, they all intermingle with each other. Your queen comes to mine, my queen comes to your festa.

  Interviewer: Wow.

  Son: They start early and they go everywhere. [00:03:00] Here it's four weeks, five weeks. [crosstalk]

  Joe: They spend whole summers $4,000, $5,000. To clothe the kids. Apricot, [unintelligible 00:03:10] trews, purple, maroon-- beautiful. Augustine, that's in September. I've had at least 25 queens.

  Son: That's biggest one in California.

  Interviewer: Wow.

  Joe: You got Marlborough, Santa Cruz.

  Son: It goes for [00:03:30] four days.

  Interviewer: Wow.

  Son: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

  Joe: [unintelligible 00:03:32] They have a bull fight. They'll march the cows, and then they give milk, and Portuguese sweet bread to people. They've got a carnival.

  Son: Big time.

  Interviewer: There's special sweet breads too for the Holy Ghost festival too, right?

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: That's what I thought. Is one person in charge of making those or just--

  Joe: No. I guess in the old days-- Matter of fact, when I was a child in Sausalito, [00:04:00] the ladies used to bake cake. Either cake, [unintelligible 00:04:05] had an apple orchard, so all the ladies would have apple pie. We'd have apple pie with your supper. Now it's too damn many people to even begin that.

  Anyway, getting back to sweet bread, they have a bakery-- Bakery. Hell, they have three or four of them in San Jose or Santa Clara that we go there and we order 500 rolls or 1,000, whatever you want. [00:04:30] You got to order at least a day ahead of time, so you get it the same day, you bring it-- have you ever seen there eight boxes of [unintelligible 00:04:36] bread, four in each one? Well, if you pick them up today, they've made them this morning, [whistles] it'll be like a pancake. The bread will just-- You have to leave it-- Hard enough for a day anyway.

  Interviewer: They're leavened?

  Joe: Oh yes. They have, like I say, bakeries would make them.

  Interviewer: There's the Holy Ghost festival, that [00:05:00] takes place right at Easter?

  Joe: Seventh.

  Interviewer: No, that's seven?

  Joe: Seven Sundays after Easter.

  Interviewer: After Easter. Then Pentecost is separate?

  Joe: No, Pentecost is a week later I think. They had Trinity they got--

  Interviewer: There's Trinity Sunday.

  Joe: Trinity Sunday is like a week after.

  Son: Week before.

  Joe: Week before, that's right.

  Son: Trinity is the sixth Sunday after Easter. Pentecost is the seventh Sunday after Easter Sunday.

  Interviewer: Are they separate festivals are no? They're the same [crosstalk]

  Son: We don't really have [crosstalk]

  Joe: At one time, like Sausalito and Nevada used to [00:05:30] have on the week before or the week after. That got too damn much already to do, costly. You hire a band, now it'll cost you $500 just for the band.

  Interviewer: What kind of band did you have? What instruments were there?

  Joe: In the old days it was a guitar, accordion, and the violin.

  Son: And viola.

  Joe: It was mostly Portuguese Chamarrita, the dance. Now they got modern stuff.

  Son: [unintelligible 00:05:53] in Kansas City.

  Joe: Yes. Rock n' rolling.

  Interviewer: Are there traditional [00:06:00] dances that are still done though?

  Joe: Oh yes, the Chamarrita is a circle.

  Interviewer: It's a big circle dance?

  Son: Yes. [crosstalk]

  Joe: Yes. You got to learn them when they have this--

  Interviewer: No, I've never learned any [crosstalk]

  Son: You should one day [unintelligible 00:06:10] Sausalito? [crosstalk]

  Joe: Coming up 21st day.

  Interviewer: Of April?

  Joe: No, of May.

  Interviewer: Oh, Jesus. Would be great.

  Son: You should go because it's at night. [crosstalk] You'd miss the parade and that but-- The parade [00:06:30] usually leaves Caledonia at 9:00 in the morning on Sunday. What's you trip on Sunday?

  Interviewer: Oh, I'm not going to be working at the Woods' after that.

  Son: Oh that's right.

  Interviewer: I might not even be here, but I would like to go. [crosstalk]

  Joe: No, listen here, it is-- [00:07:00] Let's see. [unintelligible 00:07:03] Festa May 6th.

  Son: So Sausalito's the next week and the 14th [crosstalk]

  Interviewer: That'd be great. I'll still be around then.

  Son: 13th? You get to do one in [unintelligible 00:07:16] because Sausalito would be a lot easier. It's the 14th.

  Joe: It could be the 16th.

  Billy: It's the 14th, isn't it? [crosstalk]

  Interviewer: What was the first one that you went to?

  Joe: [00:07:30] May 14th.

  Son: Where I could remember.

  Interviewer: Really?

  Son: I was born in December, so I'm sure when I was six months old in May--

  Interviewer: They probably took you along, right?

  Son: Oh yes.

  Joe: May 14th, yes.

  Interviewer: There's the Queen's dinner and dance on Saturday.

  Joe: Right.

  Interviewer: There's the Holy Ghost auction on Saturday. Holy Ghost, it's a festa though, isn't it? It's not fiesta, it's festa.

  Son: It's festa.

  Joe: Festa.

  Interviewer: Parade, and then a state dinner Saturday.

  Joe: Yes, that's not until June 24th. That's the itinerary for the whole year, see?

  Interviewer: What's a Brother's [00:08:00] Dinner?

  Joe: It's all the members that are--

  Billy: That's what a--

  Joe: Family.

  Son: Free thank you dinner for everybody that's donated, every member free of charged.

  Joe: End of the year. Yes, it's all free.

  Interviewer: Those are about the-- Are there any other festivals throughout the year like in the winter is there anything?

  Son: Only the Holy Ghost is the big one.

  Joe: They have Portuguese clubs.

  Interviewer: All the religious events too are probably celebrated in the church. I'm just curious.

  Joe: Yes. [00:08:30]

  Son: But not as a group.

  Interviewer: Not as a group?

  Son: For the society itself, only Pentecost is the big one. They used to have a Christmas party for the kids, but there again it's like if they--

  Joe: They've give away $1,000 worth of stuff. [unintelligible 00:08:44]

  Son: You got Tonka trucks and the whole nine yards then.

  Joe: I used to go down there and put up the bells, put some bells and decorate a tree.

  Son: It's going to change. Pretty soon the tree costs $100 and you have to have them Scotchgarded, and [00:09:00] all these things that come with the change of time.

  Billy: [unintelligible 00:09:02] little kids and [crosstalk]

  Interviewer: The big thing is that there're be preparing the food because of the famine [crosstalk]

  Son: There's always the meal.

  Interviewer: In the home country.

  Joe: Yes.

  Son: Then they deliver sweet bread.

  Joe: One time we used to deliver the meat-- we got about 15 to 20 cows. We'd go to all these people that donated $2, $5, imagine going from here, you got Benicia, Napa, Moran, Helena Bay, there was blood running out of the packages. We had them wrapped early, but sometimes the bone penetrates the--

  Son: [00:09:30] That was raw, it wasn't cooked.

  Interviewer: This was after it took four or five days to get the cows to the place.

  Joe: Right. So many come out, and then eat food at the hall. They say the [unintelligible 00:09:43] the catara and all we do now-- If somebody donates they'll give them a sweet bread. It's a hell of a lot cleaner, it was a mess.

  Interviewer: How many members do you have in the Sausalito?

  Joe: About 250.

  Interviewer: That's a lot.

  Joe: I belong to the [00:10:00] Nevada, I've belonged to Pelum, I've belonged to Sebastopol.

  Son: You've belonged all over [crosstalk]

  Joe: Yes. This one here, when you die you get $200, and the one in Nevada-- No, they had a thing--

  Son: It's like a life insurance [crosstalk]

  Joe: They had a policy. That was $200.

  Billy: Just a member [unintelligible 00:10:21] in Nevada [unintelligible 00:10:23]

  Interviewer: Originally did the church in Sausalito have a cemetery with it as well?

  Joe: Had a cemetery?

  Interviewer: Had a cemetery associated with [00:10:30] it? Was it traditional for people to bury their family on the farms?

  Joe: I think Santa [crosstalk]

  Interviewer: Or was it tradition to bury in a Catholic cemetery?

  Joe: That would be back in the early 1800s. I never heard of any-- There's one in Bolinas.

  Son: Oh, our family's done all of it. That cemetery goes back a long time.

  Interviewer: All of it?

  Joe: Yes.

  Son: The [crosstalk]

  Interviewer: Oh right the hill.

  Son: Yes.

  Joe: Left hand side there.

  Interviewer: That's an oldie. That's been there for a long time.

  Joe: I was there in Bolinas [00:11:00] [crosstalk]

  Son: Everyone that we know is [crosstalk]

  Interviewer: Sure, on the right?

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: [crosstalk]

  Joe: I never heard of it. Burial sites here. My aunt's still in there [unintelligible 00:11:10]

  Interviewer: I'm just curious because I know that sometimes when families are out in the country, that it was traditional--

  Joe: Yes, maybe back in the 1780s or something like that they might've had a little--

  Interviewer: It's just one thing that I have to make sure people are aware of in case there's the likelihood that that's going to happen because that's the type of thing where-- [00:11:30] If people come across something like that then they want to know who to consult.

  If there's a likelihood of that happening I have to make them aware of it, that's all, because sometimes people are just really unaware of what they can expect. I didn't think it was very likely after, probably, 1900s.

  I have a couple of other questions. Early on in your dad's era again, and before, how much intermarriage [00:12:00] outside of people that were from the Azores was there? Was there very much intermarriage outside?

  Joe: None.

  Interviewer: None?

  Joe: No, strictly Portuguese, Portuguese, Italian, Italian.

  Interviewer: When you were little, or when your father was first here, any memories of any Native Americans in the area? Any California Indians that were working on farms, or living near farms or anything?

  Joe: None.

  Interviewer: None that you knew?

  Joe: Dad never mentioned to me anything about [00:12:30] it.

  Interviewer: Let's see.

  Son: You were going to ask him about those two buildings on the ranch.

  Interviewer: Yes. I was going to start with the ranch too. Let's see, it's right here. There's two residences. A square one and a long one. Any idea which one was the older of the two?

  Joe: Probably about the same because we lived on the left side of the land, and Malcolm lived on the right side. It's right across right where we're at. [00:13:00] In the same barns.

  Son: I thought you both lived on the left-

  Joe: What?

  Son: - and [unintelligible 00:13:02] lived on the right.

  Joe: No, no. We lived on the left, he lived on the right.

  Interviewer: This is a hay barn here?

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: Was there a milking barn or something?

  Joe: Yes. Right there. You can't see it, but it's right here.

  Interviewer: Just to the east?

  Joe: Matter of fact, the milk barn was just behind and the cow barn was inside the [unintelligible 00:13:18] and the corral was right here.

  Interviewer: A double seated privy?

  Son: Wasn't it a two seater? The outhouse.

  Joe: I think so yes. When I was little [00:13:30] I could've made a mistake [crosstalk]

  Son: I remember.

  Joe: [unintelligible 00:13:31] when I got mud all over [unintelligible 00:13:32] my pants.

  [laughter]

  Interviewer: I bet that was the last time you made that mistake.

  Joe: Did you hear about the moron who did this? It was [unintelligible 00:13:46]

  Son: I remember when Joe Sanus was there. I remember the animals were still there. It was right behind the house on the right by that pine tree.

  Joe: Pine tree, yes. Like I said, the pine tree was five-foot tall. I was there and that [unintelligible 00:13:57]

  Son: Well, the tree's still there.

  Joe: Oh yes, it's still there.

  Son: I think it's still [00:14:00] there.

  Interviewer: You were talking about the manure in the creek and other things that were going in the creek.

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: Was it real common in all these farms-- If there was a household dump, where would it be normally in relation to where the buildings were?

  Joe: I never seen that. There were always plenty of creeks [unintelligible 00:14:15] to have that disposal there.

  Interviewer: It would always be in a drainage or garbage dump? It'd always be in the drainage?

  Joe: Yes. Nothing like cans.

  Interviewer: Right, cans and bottles.

  Joe: We used to bury the cans.

  Interviewer: [00:14:30] Where did you bury them in this case? This ranch right here?

  Joe: I don't remember.

  Son: Up on the barn somewhere.

  Joe: Might've done. I always threw them in the creek [unintelligible 00:14:39] [laughter] I'd just say that I just worked there.

  Interviewer: This was all oat hay in here?

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: Then these pastures in here--

  Joe: Say right here where you're close to [unintelligible 00:14:54] Beach, we used to call it the tollgate field because the tollgate was there. Now it's got brush in there. [00:15:00] We used to plow all that, then next one up-- Everything's on the right side of the creek now.

  On the left side is all Banducci's. Then you had another little one, as soon as you go-- You got up the straight there, then you go and around and turn here, there's another little field there. Then you know where we are, with our water supply?

  Interviewer: Yes.

  Joe: We'd plow that too. Then if you're driving to the-- Before you get to the bridge you look up, it's kind of a square-like, we plowed that. Then right in front of the dairy here, right here is [00:15:30] what I was telling you about right here. We'd plow that. This and right here in front of the-- That was the extent of it. Then Pone, they would plow all this here for hay.

  Interviewer: These were all hay?

  Joe: Yes. No alfalfa because you could [unintelligible 00:15:44]

  Interviewer: How about their buildings? It looks like they had a real big barn.

  Joe: Yes, fairly big.

  Interviewer: Then, was there water--

  Joe: No bigger than ours, but-- They had a little barn, and that there is where they stored the hay, their hay barn.

  Interviewer: Is the crossing where [00:16:00] you crossed the stream, is it still there?

  Joe: Yes, but the bridge is knocked down.

  Son: It's about buried.

  Joe: This all filled in with trees and everything. You can see it, if you walk in there you'll probably see where the bridge is. Probably some pilings there.

  Interviewer: How many outbuildings were there? Was there one main house or more than one?

  Joe: No, just the main house and tool shed, an old garage, double car garage I remember.

  Interviewer: What were their first names?

  Joe: Joe Pone.

  Interviewer: And his wife?

  Son: Isabel.

  Joe: She's still alive. Isabel.

  Son: Isabel.

  Joe: She lives in Philly.

  Son: She [crosstalk]

  Interviewer: [00:16:30] I saw a label De Pone. D-E Pone.

  Joe: De Pone?

  Interviewer: Yes.

  Joe: Yes, I called them [unintelligible 00:16:36] Joe De Ponte there. De Pone, D-E P-O-N-T-E. They had one son [unintelligible 00:16:43]

  Interviewer: [unintelligible 00:16:45]

  Joe: Joe Jr. She works for City of Nevada in the streets [unintelligible 00:16:47]?

  Son: 22 years.

  Joe: 22 years, something like that.

  Interviewer: How long did they have their farm there? Do you remember when they--

  Joe: Well, he died so about--

  Interviewer: He owned the land [00:17:00] or was he running the dairy for somebody else?

  Joe: I'd say they-- one of the guy's name is Joey Jano. But I don't know if he ever bought it or if he leased it, I think he leased it. I don't think he ever bought it. Matter of fact, I know he didn't. He leased it.

  The guy who owned it was a bachelor named Joe Jano, J-A-N-O. Matter of fact, he used to live right here. You know where the Pelican is?

  Interviewer: Yes.

  Joe: Where the Stop [unintelligible 00:17:25] going right there on the corner where the cattle shoots are, he had the house right there. [00:17:30] It was Joe Jano.

  Interviewer: Across the street at the Golden Gate Dairy original-- Any idea of the original owners before?

  Joe: No because there was another guy in there named-- [unintelligible 00:17:44] name. [silence] Lunes. He was just a leaser.

  Interviewer: This in the '30s?

  Joe: Yes, [00:18:00] late '30s. Matter of fact, I think he was putting half in the hay loft where the cows were at and the hay barn, and then he--

  Interviewer: That isn't the barn that's still out there, is it?

  Joe: Yes. Anyway, he had on the sites, and he'd put too very much hay in there, the cows were in there. [noise] Broke them. It's going to kill-- about 20 cows just broke their back. All that weight come down. [00:18:30]

  Interviewer: I don't see any pastures out here for Golden Gate Dairy. Are the pastures out on the [unintelligible 00:18:39]

  Joe: Yes, the horses are out in the back.

  Interviewer: Sure. That's where they had the--

  Joe: Yes. Cattle lots.

  Interviewer: Do they have any fields of [crosstalk]

  Joe: No.

  Interviewer: They didn't have any fields of [unintelligible 00:18:47]?

  Joe: None, not sorghum, no. No fields.

  Interviewer: Wow.

  Joe: He had to buy all that hay. It was to buy feed also, like coconut meal and barley.

  Interviewer: Is the coconut meal for the oil?

  Joe: Yes. He mixed it with some barley, [00:19:00] and modern vitamins and all that. Now they got Dairy Miss Millie which mixed that already in it. Brings it in, they pump it into a big cylinder, then they just open the chute and slide it to the cows. It's all measured now. It's all scientific and computerized. Yes, really.

  Dad, he'd have a cow about two months to go, so he'd just give a little bit of that. She's not producing, you're not going to fill-- [00:19:30] Now a cow that's producing, you give her a big scoop of the feed and more hay. It was a lot of work, that's all I know.

  Interviewer: Yes, it's a lot of work.

  Joe: Seven days a week, holidays. There were no holidays.

  Interviewer: That's right. They're not going to wait. They have to be milked.

  Joe: [inaudible 00:19:47]

  Interviewer: That's right.

  Joe: Twice a day.

  Interviewer: 3:00 AM and 3:00 PM.

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: The Brazil's fields look different. How come? Just curious.

  Joe: There's between the road [00:20:00] and the creek.

  Interviewer: They look darker on this.

  Joe: Yes. They would plant beets, sugar beets for the cows.

  Interviewer: For the cows to eat?

  Joe: Yes. I used to see the old man down [unintelligible 00:20:15] he had a god darn sack, and he'd take it, and he'd be hauling along like that. What a back breaking job.

  Interviewer: This was the?

  Joe: Tony Brazil's dad and [unintelligible 00:20:26] son.

  Son: What was his first name?

  Joe: Elias.

  Son: [00:20:30] Elias.

  Joe: Elias.

  Son: Elias. E-L-I-A-S.

  Joe: E-L-I-A-S. I don't know. Like I said, he'd just be grade B, he wasn't grade A for milk, see?

  Interviewer: The only grade As were your dairy and?

  Joe: Grade A and grade B, yes.

  Interviewer: The Golden Gate Dairy ws the only grade A's?

  Joe: The ones that I recall.

  Son: Pone's was B too?

  Joe: I think so.

  Interviewer: I read somewhere that originally the dairies were producing more cheese and butter, and then later they produced more [00:21:00] milk.

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: What was the reason that they switched over, any?

  Joe: More money, I guess.

  Interviewer: It was a different way of producing a product too.

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: Seems like butter and cheese would've taken a heck of a lot more time.

  Joe: Oh yes. Making butter, hell yes. First it was by hand, then they got electric motor, then they--

  Interviewer: Did you do that at your dairy, and make butter as well? No?

  Joe: Oh, by hand, yes. Mom would mix them, sure. [crosstalk]

  Son: For home use not for [crosstalk]

  Joe: For herself.

  Interviewer: Not for commercial?

  Joe: No.

  Interviewer: How about back here on the other side [00:21:30] of the Brazil ranch, back where the big barn was. Were they growing something else on this side?

  Joe: No.

  Interviewer: That is a recorded archeological site, the storage site.

  Joe: Really?

  Interviewer: For the state park. Well, they had the forethought to do that before the state park put the residences in. There was a neat old redwood-lined well. Really deep at the mouth of the stream.

  Joe: Yes, we still get our water way up in there. You know what we'd have? Ever see a [unintelligible 00:21:57] [00:22:00] 10 pounds or whatever?

  We'd stick that in the ground, then put the pipe in there, and then put a brick and perforate it with holes so we wouldn't have any stuff going into the thing, then piped it. That's where our water came--

  Interviewer: How far up that canyon did you go? Way up?

  Joe: Bull Canyon? Yes, up through here. We'd have the spring up here, and the spring over in here.

  Interviewer: That's on the west side of the canyon.

  Joe: The silt would come in there and fill up the pipes so you'd have to go in there and dig it out. The down here a ways up on the side hill-- [00:22:30] You'd get gravity so it would run from the springs into a 500-gallon tank maybe. Then it'd run into the house and then-- For washing the barns and for home use.

  Interviewer: That supplied all the water to that particular place?

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: That's incredible.

  Joe: I was up there, we had no tank for water when I was--

  Interviewer: For storage you mean?

  Joe: No, when I wanted to take a bath I used a round tub alongside the stove.

  Interviewer: That's right.

  Joe: Friday night. [00:23:00] You're talking about having a bath, I'd get curled up in this [unintelligible 00:23:04] little thing like that. Cold as hell.

  Son: [unintelligible 00:23:07]

  Joe: No heat in the house. I bet you when I was a kid laying in the bed I had 10 blankets atop me. I couldn't even turn over, honest to God. There was no heat in the house. Dogs out in the back, always around damn fleas biting me.

  Interviewer: How many dogs did you have at the farm?

  Joe: We had about three. Cow dogs, all tied up.

  Interviewer: Cow dogs? You mean there were [00:23:30] specifically to keep the cows in line?

  Joe: Oh yes. You're damn right.

  Interviewer: what kind of dogs?

  Joe: Shepherd. You'd whistle at that dog and she'd look at those cows and do after them. We had one dog there who would separate the cows from the calf pasture. They were very smart. They knew how to separate the cows. They knew which ones were supposed to go in and which ones weren't.

  Interviewer: Which pasture was the calf pasture? Did you have one specific pasture?

  Joe: Yes. It was right over here on the right side. [00:24:00]

  Interviewer: Closer to the farm?

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: So you could keep an eye on them?

  Joe: Yes, just above.

  Interviewer: How long did they stay there before they went out with the--

  Joe: We raised them until they were about six months old and we'd turn them loose. Make it where they could eat grass or anything, but sell all the bull calves and just keep the females.

  Interviewer: How far did Brazil's property go down the road here? Looks like there's more pasture down here.

  Joe: Yes. It's the fire trail [00:24:30] there.

  Interviewer: Well, here's the road that goes up the hill now, the Deer Park Fire Road.

  Joe: Right. They were right along the timber here. Right along there some place. I don't know where.

  Son: Do you know [crosstalk]

  Joe: I remember when we were kids we'd go up and get Christmas trees. Nowadays you'd get shot in the butt. [laughs]

  Anyway, I used to go up there and get-- I'd come down with a bicycle. One time my cousin came down on a bicycle and he was going too damn fast, and man, they hit the side of the bank [smack] smashed the front of the wheell. It didn't hurt him.

  Son: You [crosstalk]

  Joe: But he smashed the God darn front of the bicycle and just came down there [unintelligible 00:25:05] We used to ride up in there.

  Interviewer: Now, right down here where the road crosses the stream, there is a concrete bridge now.

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: Just on the other side of that is a really nice old orchard.

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: Who lived there?

  Son: Is that where the [unintelligible 00:25:25] redwood is?

  Interviewer: Yes, there's three redwoods there.

  Joe: There's lots of them [00:25:30] on the right side there, the side hill there.

  Son: I remember a building there [inaudible 00:25:32]

  Interviewer: Yes, but they're way up high. I'm talking about right down by the stream.

  Son: Right down to the road?

  Interviewer: It would really help me if you knew.

  Joe: This is going too far back. I can't remember who else were there.

  [crosstalk] One of the names was Hopper, H-O-P-P-E-R.

  Son: Right past Manuel and Mary's place, about two turns up on the left.

  Joe: Past the dairy?

  Son: Right there on the road. Past their dairy. Past Manuel and Mary's house.

  Joe: [00:26:00] Yes, Brazil.

  Son: [crosstalk] Going towards Muir Woods, about two turns up right on the left side. Right there on the road.

  Joe: Where the rock bar used to be, where the CC Camp used to work?

  Son: Yes.

  Joe: I never noticed any--

  Son: There's a shed thing now. I thought those old [unintelligible 00:26:12] used to lived there.

  Interviewer: I'm thinking a little bit farther. Right before you get to the entrance to the monument, on the right hand side.

  Joe: Oh, that's up where the Chinese [unintelligible 00:26:22]

  Billy: Where all those apple trees are?

  Interviewer: Yes, that's what I'm wondering about.

  Son: Yes, there's a little bridge there.

  Joe: Yes.

  Son: There's old apple trees on the right before you get to all the bud lice.

  Joe: [00:26:30] That's where the Bates live, isn't it?

  Interviewer: No. Janette's up a little farther.

  Son: No, Janette's up a little farther.

  Joe: You mean from the bridge to the dates on the right hand side?

  Interviewer: Yes, but right after that.

  Son: This is right at the bridge.

  Interviewer: Right at the bridge.

  Son: Right at the bridge on the right.

  Interviewer: Some of those apple trees are this big around. I figured [crosstalk]

  Son: That thing [unintelligible 00:26:46] has 5,000 apples on it.

  Joe: I knew a girl, she was about my age, her name was Hopper, last name. This house is hers because there's three or four houses there, so I don't know. [00:27:00] [crosstalk]

  Interviewer: Then the next ranch would've been all the way up at the Deere's place, right?

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: Was there anything in between?

  Joe: Of more dairies, no. Brazil's the last one on the left hand side. Pones, then ours and then Golden Gate-

  Interviewer: Golden Gate.

  Joe: -Banducci's there.

  Interviewer: Banducci's. How about at the mouth of where--

  Joe: [unintelligible 00:27:16] and so was the White Gate ranch, and there's a lot along the Bliss Lagoon.

  Interviewer: How about along Green Gulch? Anything along there?

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: Was that also Portuguese as well?

  Joe: No. Yes, [00:27:30] one time.

  Interviewer: Before Will Wright bought it, of course.

  Joe: Yes, that was called Bella Beach and it was the same area. I've heard of the names, but I can't think if it was Portuguese.

  Interviewer: That's okay. If you think of it, let me know. It's not important now.

  Joe: That was a dairy there too. I know [unintelligible 00:27:49] grade B wasn't grade A. We were the first grade As in here.

  Interviewer: Did you have to petition for it? Did you have to [00:28:00] have people come down and check the product?

  Joe: I was eight years old. I don't remember stuff like that.

  Interviewer: Today, what do you have to do in order to have that?

  Joe: You have to have a contract first thing off the bat. 20 cans, 30 cans, 40 cans. They don't come cheap. It's like buying a liquor license.

  Now they're [unintelligible 00:28:18] 10 years ago you couldn't buy it unless somebody ran out of business, then you could buy the license. Same way now. If somebody sells the dairy, the guy that's going to buy it, he wants to make sure that he gets the contract. [00:28:30] Otherwise [unintelligible 00:28:30] who's he going to sell the milk to? You've got to have a contract.

  Interviewer: Do you remember early on when you were first tier people having to leave because they couldn't make it because they couldn't sell enough, or everybody seemed to be able to--

  Joe: Yes. Everybody just got by.

  Interviewer: That's good.

  Son: Well because everybody was small potatoes. There wasn't any big guy around who'd buy everybody out. There was no monopolies anywhere.

  Interviewer: That's right. What happened when Foremost bought out Marin Dell? [00:29:00]

  Joe: Just continued on.

  Interviewer: Just continued on?

  Joe: Like it was. Yes. There was no change, or we want this, we want that. It was the same.

  Interviewer: What year was that again, 19?

  Joe: Foremost, I'd say in the '50s. '55, '56 when Foremost bought out Marin Dell.

  Interviewer: When did the dairies start to close in this particular valley? [00:29:30]

  Joe: What time was all that?

  Son: [unintelligible 00:29:37] my age, 38, she was 13 when they left. 27 years.

  Joe: He's had a dairy business earlier before that out of [unintelligible 00:29:45]

  Son: 27 years. I'd say 30 years anyway. When I was little, they didn't even have milk cows anymore, they just had a couple for the house. Probably 40 years.

  Interviewer: They ran beef cattle after the dairies closed?

  Son: Yes.

  Joe: Yes. Like we did. [00:30:00]

  Son: The dairy, I remember when we went up they had a couple cows just for their own milk. They had six kids, so that's what they used it for. They had more big time stuff. Sure. I'm getting close to the big 40 so it's got [unintelligible 00:30:14]

  Interviewer: They were the first ones to close up?

  Joe: [crosstalk] The last.

  Interviewer: Well, the last ones.

  Son: Between sixth grade--

  Interviewer: Who were the first ones to close up?

  Son: They waited until [unintelligible 00:30:26]

  Joe: Let's say Banducci's.

  Son: I remember they moved in the summertime [00:30:30] because she [unintelligible 00:30:31]

  Joe: Banducci's then us, then Pones then Golden Gate.

  Interviewer: Did Golden Gate go right from being a dairy into a horse farm or was there something in between?

  Joe: No, that was it.

  Interviewer: At Slide Ranch, there was a period where after Joe left, it was bought by the Nature Conservancy. Is that correct?

  Joe: Yes.

  Interviewer: [00:31:00] Then it wasn't really used for a while and then--

  Son: I think there was just the caretaker guy living there.

  Joe: Yes, there was. Kids come out there and see the chickens and the goat and something like that. They're all excited seeing stuff like that. [unintelligible 00:31:12] Town [unintelligible 00:31:13] say that.

  Interviewer: I'm sure I have a million other questions, but I can't think of them now. I want to give you guys a break. It's been quite an evening.

  I really appreciate all the help and there's a lot of information here. I'm sure I'll have other questions.

  Joe: Glad we could help a little bit anyway.

  Interviewer: Oh, [00:31:30] I think you helped an awful lot. The picture of this is that, that this was a real active place till the '50s as far as dairy farming. Then there was a switch over.

  Joe: They had a big tavern down here. They tried to make a go of it. They tried wrestling, they tried roller rink, they tried dancing.

  Interviewer: Right down here at the beach? I heard about that, but wasn't it destroyed by a fire?

  Son: Yes. With the telephone [unintelligible 00:31:54]

  Joe: [unintelligible 00:31:54] Cabins that had-

  Son: Right there.

  Joe: -seven cabins.

  Son: Where the porta-potties are along the [unintelligible 00:32:00] [00:32:00] Seven or nine of them.

  Joe: The [unintelligible 00:32:04] come up there and moved some around.

  Son: Yes. Moved some around. [laughs]

  Interviewer: Was it called the Muir Beach Tavern?

  Joe: Yes.

  Son: Just the tavern.

  Interviewer: Who ran it?

  Joe: Dr. O' Brian. Don O'Brian.

  Interviewer: Sounds like a real lively place.

  Joe: He's a dentist.

  Son: He was a dentist, a merciless dentist.

  Interviewer: Oh, dear.

  Son: Pulled teeth without Novocaine.

  Joe: They had a bridge come right out in the middle of the sand here, great beach.

  Interviewer: Wow.

  Joe: The [unintelligible 00:32:25] come along here, [whoosh] wiped that out. Matter of fact, the pillars are right down here, [00:32:30] down in front of Jules' house. Even look down you can see the pillars there yet.

  Son: Some of the pillars are in the lagoon still sitting there.

  Joe: This beach is like a boardwalk. You walk straight out like that over the sand, then you walk down into the sand. Now you got to walk over, look further by the [unintelligible 00:32:47]

  Interviewer: Right. There was also a tavern up on Muir Woods Road too. You remember that one?

  Joe: No, but it was right there where those redwood trees are. There's four or five [unintelligible 00:32:57]

  Son: [crosstalk] About Redwood corner [unintelligible 00:32:59] Sharp, right? [00:33:00] Where the dipsy dips down.

  Interviewer: Right on the edge of the road.

  Joe: Yes. Right on the edge.

  Interviewer: I seem to remember it was called The Redwood?

  Joe: [unintelligible 00:33:04] a tavern was like a little place where you could stop.

  Son: The Redwood Rest.

  Interviewer: The Redwood Rest.

  Joe: Where you could stop and have an orange or coke and a sandwich. It was real tiny. It was like 20 by 20.

  Interviewer: Do you know who ran it?

  Joe: I never stopped there. [unintelligible 00:33:18]

  Interviewer: How about down--

  Son: Then you get home and [unintelligible 00:33:21] [laughs]

  Joe: One time I got off the bus, stopped by [unintelligible 00:33:23] Me and my cousin we were about I don't know, 11, 12 years old, I look up and I see this football. [unintelligible 00:33:32] For football, kicked my butt from here to China.

  [laughter]

  Anyway, I said, now let's get that. Let's get that football someday, we'll get off the bus and I'll-- So we got off the bus to get over there. You know where the hell it was? The top of milk cans laying sideways. Rusty and looks just like a football.

  Interviewer: Oh, bet that didn't feel good.

  Joe: We had to walk all the way down the road.

  Interviewer: Now, did you walk down the Muir Woods Road the way it is today?

  Joe: Yes. No. Well I did that day, but everybody-- we got out of the bus. [00:34:00]

  Son: She's saying was it the same road as it is today?

  Joe: Oh, yes. Exactly.

  Son: Just not a paved, that's all.

  Joe: No. It was paved. It was paved. When I got home, dad gave me hell. My cousin, man he got whipped like good. Uncle Jimbo gave Joe a spanking. Never mind. Take care of you [unintelligible 00:34:20]

  [laughter]

  If you ask for a [unintelligible 00:34:24] son, forget it.

  Billy: People were too busy trying to survive.

  Interviewer: Yes. It was a matter [00:34:30] of survival.

  Billy: It wasn't that they were [unintelligible 00:34:32]

  Joe: Now, I go pick these houses, a guy's got $5,000 worth of toys for the kids. I'm telling you. Fancy toys.

  Billy: Things were different.

  Joe: Shoot. Yes.

  Interviewer: Things are different.

  Joe: Yes. They are.

  Interviewer: Doesn't mean they're better or worse. They're just different. That's all.

  Joe: Oh, yes. I thank God that dad makes me that way. I appreciate the value of things. There's a lot of days guys have kids walk around with $20 in their pockets. I was lucky if I got 10 cents to buy a hot dog on [00:35:00] Friday at he Old Mill School, there was a little canteen there. My dad gave me a nickel or a dime. That's what it cost. I was a big shot then.

  Son: Was it time to get into the Sequoia Theater?

  Joe: Yes. Until I was a junior, cost me a dime to get into the theater. I should've been paying 25 cents when I was a high school junior, but I was small, so I used to get in free. Made sense.

  [laughter]

  Interviewer: That was a big night.

  Joe: Oh, yes.

  Interviewer: I even remember when things were like, when you go to the movies on Saturday for a nickel. [00:35:30] It's like, what happened to that?

  Son: They'd laugh in your face now.

  Billy: $6, $5.

  Shirley: Six.

  Billy: Six?

  Shirley: $6.

  Interviewer: Down near the entrance of the monument there was one other tavern. Have any recollections of that at all?

  Joe: Yes. It's still standing there.

  Interviewer: There was one right next to it too.

  Joe: Man named Mr. Montgomery owned that. It was called the Muir Woods Inn. [00:36:00] They served dinners there and soft drinks, and Redwood they call them like these guys, soda and stuff like that. [unintelligible 00:36:15] The first one I remember [unintelligible 00:36:17]

  Son: Is that the same Mrs. Montgomery that leased the inn now?

  Interviewer: Yes.

  Son: That's what I thought.

  Interviewer: Next to that one--

  Joe: Chelsea Montgomery I think her name was Chelsea Montgomery?

  Interviewer: Yes. Next to that one was a dance hall [00:36:30] called Original Joe's.

  Joe: Yes. Vaguely I remember that name. Like I said, I was doing [unintelligible 00:36:38] I was busy [unintelligible 00:36:42]

  Interviewer: Apparently they were serving liquor during the Prohibition. Underhanded. I was curious.

  Son: They didn't pass the word around too much about that place.

  Interviewer: No, it got so lively that they had to close them down on weekends because it got to be--

  Son: Too many people heard about it.

  Interviewer: Too many people heard about it. Yes. It wasn't like a speakeasy where you could keep it quiet.

  Billy: This one's pretty [00:37:00] loud down here from what Joe [unintelligible 00:37:01]

  Son: Joe, can you have somebody [unintelligible 00:37:03]

  Billy: No. Down here, the one that used to have--

  Joe: Oh, the tavern.

  Son: I remember Joe Sanas because kids could go in there too in the tavern.

  Joe: Another thing they tried was roller skates too, but they [unintelligible 00:37:12] roller skates.

  Son: Joe Sanas went in there. He was a real prankster. Always pulling something. He went riding in there on his horse one day, right inside.

  Joe: Yes.

  [laughter]

  Son: Up to the bar on his horse.

  Joe: [unintelligible 00:37:26]

  Interviewer: When did that first open up, down there at [unintelligible 00:37:29] [00:37:30]

  Joe: It was there when I was here. I don't know who the owner was then, but after we moved out of here, this Dr. O'Brian bought it. I don't know who was there before that.

  Interviewer: When was the last year it was over?

  Joe: Geez. I don't know.

  Son: I'd say between '55 and '60.

  Joe: I don't write this stuff down, so it's hard to--

  Interviewer: No, that's okay. Just the remembrance [00:38:00] is fine. Thanks. I really appreciate it.

  Son: Reckon we did pretty good, Joe.

  [00:38:06] [END OF AUDIO]

 

Cattle drive in Marin County c1920s

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35185

---

"They need somebody to round up cattle, a cowboy. To be a cowboy. And they had a large herd there. It's a big ranch. A dairy ranch, so it was a milk ranch. And they had several hundred head of cattle that they had to round up twice a day."- Werner Ottens

 

• Werner Ottens

  
  

  An Oral History interview with Werner Ottens who was a teenager who lived in the Marin headlands in the late 1940s'.
  Audio Transcript

  Conklin: Sara Conklin, and today is October 19th. I'm interviewing Mr. Werner Ottens for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's oral history program. This interview will be transcribed, edited by you, Werner, and added to the Parks reference library. Do I have your permission to conduct this interview? Werner: Yes, you do. Conklin: Okay, the first group of questions are going to center around your family history. What was or is your family's surname? Is Ottens your given name? How does that work? Werner: My last name is Ottens, that's O-double T-E-N-S. Conklin: Okay, and your father and your mother's surname. We've got probably your father's at point. Werner: We're talking about my own father now, okay? Carl Herman Ottens, and my mother's name was Paula Henrietta Ottens, Born was her last name. Conklin: And what was her name before she married her husband? Werner: Born. B-O-R-N. Conklin: B-O-R-N. Thank you. Do you have any siblings? Werner: I have a brother, Axel, younger brother and after my mother remarried to the American officer, we'll get into that, they had two more children. Concetta, who was born here at Ft. Baker. Conklin: How do you spell Concetta? Werner: C-O-N-C-E-T-T-A. And after that, they had a son named Peter. Conklin: And so you are where in the birth order, you're? Werner: I'm the oldest. Conklin: Okay. And how old are you? Werner: I'm 66. Conklin: And where were you raised? Werner: All right, I was born in Dutch Guyana, Dutch colony in South America. Conklin: And after that? Where did you live? Werner: We lived there, and my brother is a year younger than I am. I lived there until November of 1946. I was born in 1929, then until November '46 when we came to the United States. Conklin: Okay, and where did you move to in the United States? Werner: To the San Francisco Bay area. Conklin: All right, and who raised you? Werner: Well, perhaps I should shed a little light on this. My father was German, he emigrated down to Dutch Guyana, the Dutch colony, in 1925 or '26 from Germany. My mother was Dutch, her father was a ship's captain and they moved down to Dutch Guyana also, and that's where my mother and father met. They were married I think in 1926 or '27, and I was born in 1929. So we have a mixed marriage there with a German and a Dutch person living in a Dutch colony, and this created a big problem because we were doing really well, we were actually considered wealthy and May 10th, 1941, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. That night, they picked up my father and they rounded up all the Germans in the colony. There must've been about 50 or 60 of them, and there was also a large ship, a German ship that had sought refuge in the harbor as being safe from the British submarines out there in the Caribbean. So that ship was there with an entire complement of officers and men, so that night they arrested everybody, except for the women and children. That came about a week later. So they picked everybody up and we were sent to a separate concentration camp in the jungle from the men, the men were in another ... And after about six months, the Dutch authorities started to feel, perhaps we ought to get rid some of these people, because we're spending all this money, and we're feeding them, so they found a clause that said, if you're from Dutch origin, we could release you. So they released all the women and children basically of Dutch origin, but the men of course who were German were kept in concentration camp. It was quite a turnaround for us, because my mother had never worked. She was a nurse, but as I said we were well to do and the Dutch authorities confiscated everything we owned. Everything we owned. And I found out only about three years ago that, I always wondered what happened to our furniture, or the valuables that we had, and I found out they auctioned everything off. They sold everything. So we ended up, ground zero, there was nothing. And my mother went to work, and shortly thereafter ... The marriage had always been kinda rocky. I remember as a child the arguments going on, so in 1942 the U.S. Army came down there to protect the bauxite, which is aluminum ore resources that the country had, and it was the ... That country supplied perhaps 60 to 70% of all aluminum used in the free world, and so they sent the U.S. Army over there and they came in in a big way, airplanes and they built the airbase in Zandery Field. Conklin: How's that spelled? Werner: Z-A-N-D-E-R-Y. Zandery, and my mother went to work there at the USO and so on, and that's how she met my stepfather. And they were going for a while, and she had been divorced in the meantime and she had custody of us of course, and they married I think in 1945 and ultimately he was reordered back to the United States to Ft. Scott over here in the Presidio. And in November of '46, we left Suriname, Dutch Guyana, and first went to Puerto Rico, spent about two weeks there, and then shipped to New Orleans and then by train all the way to the San Francisco Bay area, and we ended up here. Conklin: And you were how old at the time? Werner: I was just 17. Conklin: That could be an entire interview with your family history, that was very interesting. Werner: Well the sad thing is, I know there was a lot of stress, a lot of problems between my own mother and my own father. The unfortunate thing is people don't realize that here, those people who were put in a concentration ... Interred, and on May 10th, 1941 did not get released until 1947. Two years after the war, and the excuse given was we had no place to send them. They had no money, they had no place to go, they had no jobs. My father stayed there, and he went back into business, he was a business man. And he did well. And I only saw him once again, it was in 1956 when he came here, when he was introduced here. But anyway, my stepfather who was a very ... He was a captain at the time. He was a very good man, accepting two grown boys and he brought us here. And the first home we really lived in was right up here at Ft. Barry. The first house, 934 on that road going up around, so we lived there for two years. Conklin: And we'll be discussing that probably pretty soon. What was the highest grade of school that you've attained. Werner: College degree. Conklin: And where did you go to college? Werner: This was after I went ... I graduated from Wayne University in Detroit with a BS in aeronautical engineering. Conklin: Okay, great. And what was your last job? Do you have your own ... I think you have your own business, right? Werner: I worked for, actually my entire professional career was spent with Pacific Telephone. I worked as an engineer for them. I lived in Michigan for a little while after I got out of the service. I went to the Korea and Korean War and all that, and I went to school after that. And when I came back out here, I tried to get a job in the aviation field, but everybody was gearing down because the Korean War was over, and they really didn't need any people. I tried to go to work for Hiller Helicopters. I'd done a lot of research on my own, inventing things, and I have some credits to certain things in the aviation world, but then nobody wanted anybody there. They laid people off, and I needed a job. So I went to work for Pacific Telephone, and I spent 27 years there. Conklin: And, okay. When did you leave the telephone company? Werner: In November of 1983. Conklin: Great, thanks. You lived in what's now called the Marin Headlands as a teenager because your father was in the U.S. Army, and what years were you there? Werner: From I think it was March 1947 through maybe into later 1949. Conklin: And what was your father's job? Werner: His job was to deactivate the gunner placements here, and also to clear the harbor of mines and submarine nets that were put in there to deter any invasion by the Japanese. He of course, did not complete the entire ... This was his work that he did, by the time ... The military reassigns people every two years or so, so his next position was under Captain Alzo. He went from here to there, we didn't go along with him, my brother and I. But during the two years that he was here, that was his work. Conklin: Okay, thanks. Please describe your family's living arrangements of your quarters? Werner: You're referring to the house up here at Ft. Barry? Conklin: Yes, could you place that in a geographic location for us? Werner: The address was 934B. They were large family dwellings that were separated ... You know, they were duplexes really. I don't know what that street is called that goes around there. The upper road, that runs behind all that. Conklin: It's either Simmons or ... So it could be Simmons or Rosenstock it seems, perhaps? Werner: I don't recall. Conklin: Oh, well. I think we can probably figure that out later. Werner: It was right above what was the parade ground, right? And as I said they were duplexes. There was a garage to one side which is now gone, it was torn down. And they were big, big houses, big, big homes. And there was right next to the road, as you drove by, there was a kitchen and a bathroom and a small ... It must've been servant's quarters, small bedroom. And then there was a large dining room and a pantry. That was all downstairs on the first level. And beautiful stairway going upstairs and there were three or four bedrooms, I don't recall exactly upstairs. There was a fireplace in the house, and there was also a large basement. And this presented me with a first in my life. I had to stoke the furnace. I had never done that before. And it was a coal furnace. The Army delivered a load of coal, every family was needed, and my dad of course, my stepfather had come from New York, so he knew all about this stuff. He'd done it all his life. Taught us how to back the fire to keep it warm during the day with the ashes. Interesting. It was a steam heat system. Conklin: So you could stoke it well enough at night that it would keep those houses warm all night long? Werner: Yeah. Well one house, each side had its own system. Conklin: Who were your- Werner: These were the officer's quarters. All along the road there, there were people that we know. Conklin: That's a perfect segue, because the next question is who were your neighbors and what was their rank? Werner: Well, I recall that the people in the next people in the next building were ... They guy was a captain, they had two little girls. And I don't know the people all along. As you realize in the military, they kept one guy come in and lived there for two years and then during the two years you were there, several people rotated out and others rotated in. We didn't know them all. Conklin: Did the children all seem to know each other? It sounds to me... Werner: No. My brother and I were really the oldest children, teenagers, living in that area. Most of the others were younger people, my step father's age, who had young children. But in April of that first year, 1947, my sister was born at Ft. Baker hospital, which is now gone. They tore that down. There's a good ... In reference to Brian Chen's book, there's a good article about that in here. And so we were there for two years, and when the military came in ... I'm regress, I'm going backwards now, in South America, I dropped out of high school. I hadn't finished, I had a year to go, to go to work at the airbase, and my step dad got me a job to work on the airbase and I worked there as an automobile mechanic. I got into the program and started working. And I had some experience with aircraft and so on, so it all added up. And so when we got back here, the first thing I had to do was finish high school. I enrolled at Mt. Tamalpais High in the valley, and the U.S. Army had a school bus, which was green, olive drab, that they drove around and picked up all the kids in the morning and took them to school and picked them up in the afternoon and brought them back, and there were most of the kids, teenagers, thereabouts were living at Ft. Cronkhite. As I said, there weren't very many teenagers. They weren't any teenagers up there where we lived. Most of them were at Ft. Cronkhite. So the bus would go around, pick them all up, pick us up, take us down to... Conklin: How did being from such a small community effect your high school's social structure? You were from a unique community probably to that high school. How did that effect you? Werner: What do you mean, the community? Conklin: You were picked up by a military school bus and dropped into a community high school. Did that have any effect on your social life? Werner: That is an interesting question because in retrospect, I did think about it at the time, yes. You realize this was right after the war, and all of the kids there were just civilian people, and we always were treated a little bit differently. Not by the faculty, but by our peers. "Oh, you guys are from the Army base." It wasn't a negative attitude, it was simply a realization that we were not living in a civilian environment. And they weren't isolating us, it was just that you always knew. For one thing, when we went to school, we had in our travels, picked up a lot of Army clothes, so it wouldn't be unusual ... Most of the kids wore blue jeans, bobby socks, loafers, and I'd be wearing a field jacket and green pants, so it carried on, it was okay. Conklin: But you had the normal interaction, girls didn't treat you differently. Werner: Oh no. Conklin: It was just that you always felt separate. Werner: It was just feeling, there were expressed sentiments by some of the kids. [crosstalk 00:19:16] As I said, it wasn't negative, it was as a matter of fact, perhaps a little envy because we had our own private school bus that brought us there, so it was kinda okay, you know. Conklin: Okay. I'd like to back up for a moment and go back to the living situation with the families on the loop. Were there things like pot luck dinners or big baby showers if someone had a baby? How tight knit was this community here? Werner: The community was not tight knit at all. There was really very ... the military has its own formal system where if a new family moves in or a new officer moves in, they would have to come over and present themselves and say, "Hi, I'm Captain so-and-so, and I'd like to introduce myself, and you are so-and-so." So these policies were adhered to. We met all the people, all our neighbors because of this arrangement that the military has, and I remember one time I was ... It was a little difficult for me to transition from the tropics to this area. I used to get very ... Well I got depressed because of the fog. I used to say, "It's foggy here 360 days a year." Only five days a year there's sunshine. And I had just come from a country where there was nothing but sunshine, see? It was a little bit depressing. I had trouble getting used to that. But of course, when you to Mill Valley, it's generally pretty clear there, so the sunshine was there all day. Conklin: As a teenager living on a remote post, what activities kept you busy? Werner: I did a lot of exploring and hiking up in the hills, and I enjoyed nature. I liked going around, climbing up. I probably knew more about these hills than anybody around, because the older folks didn't do this, and this is before the Park had taken over, so it was still an Army base, so entry was restricted to people that belonged here. And you didn't have people wandering around all over, but I did. I climbed all over the place and explored things and I knew a lot about the area at the time. Conklin: What do you think was different about the wildlife then and now? Is there any specific thing that comes to mind? Werner: Then and now? Conklin: Yeah, what do you think? Werner: I think that the wildlife has diminished considerably from what it was then. It wouldn't be unusual to ... We had a family of skunks living under the house. You heard them at night, they'd raid the garbage cans that were sitting right out in front, and there would be raccoons that were climbing the trees right outside, and occasionally a snake. So there was a lot of wildlife here at the time. I don't see much of that anymore. Of course we don't spend all that time here either. Conklin: I've heard rumors that there's some kind of large cats that have been out here. Did you ever see anything? Werner: Yes, there were. I never saw one, but I heard from other people who did see mountain lions and bobcats out here. One interesting thing, I'm not sure how this is lined up as a question, was that Baker-Barry tunnel, because that was a real eye opener. I'd never seen anything like that. As a matter of fact, I'd never seen a hill or a mountian until I came here. Because Dutch Guyana, in the tropics, the north coast of South America is totally flat, until you get about 200, 300 miles inland towards Brazil. Then we got some mild mountains. So when I came here and I saw Mt. Tamalpias this was, wow. My first mountain, you know? And the hills here were also really, God you gotta climb. You can't just walk. It was pretty funny. Conklin: Driving around in San Francisco must've been a little scary. Werner: Yes, yes. Well it was after I got my driver's license. It wasn't until I was 18. Conklin: When we first talked, you mentioned the teen club, so my question is how did it function and what activities did it provide? Werner: Okay, the military had, all the families that lived in the area and again primarily Ft. Cronkhite because there were no other teens up on the hill where we lived, they had a teenage club. The building is still there, and it had a large open area where they could set up for parties and things and there was a stage on one end. I haven't seen the building for some years, so I'm not exactly sure where it is anymore at Ft. Cronkhite. But the parents that sent up activities and things for the kids to do, there was quite an interaction going between all the teenage kids in the area. First of all, we all met on the school bus going to Mt. Tamalpais High, and a lot of them lived at Ft. Baker because the bus would go all the way down to Ft. Baker, pick up the kids there too. The teenage club had activities, I don't recall that it was every Friday night or once a month, but they also would set up things like taking all the teenagers to camping to Boulder Creek, Santa Cruz, the mountains where they would spend a week or two weeks. So we were kept pretty busy that, but this was again only on Friday nights, or in the summer time. Conklin: Okay, you talked about the movie theater and the role that it played in a teenager's life. Werner: There were no movies that ... There's a theater here, at Ft. Barry, but it wasn't in use at the time we were here. The only thing that was really in use was a bowling alley, right up the hill here. And we bowled there. We'd go bowling there sometimes, my brother and I. The movie theater that they used for both for Cronkhite and Ft. Barry was down at Ft. Baker, and we'd go down there. We didn't spend a lot of time going to the movies. Conklin: So who were your playmates? As a 17-year-old that sounds probably a little silly, but and what were your most favorite activities? Werner: Playmates were mostly kids from high school that I knew. There was also a time when some of the kids that I associated with were living at Ft. Baker. And there were a couple of guys there whose father was in the army also. Again, it was a family that had a stepson and a son, so Billy Lee and Bernie Mitchell. And they lived right there where the road comes down, that was Ft. Baker. Conklin: So would they come over to see you? Would you go see them? Werner: Yeah, we used to go see them, mostly. Conklin: Did you walk through the tunnel? Werner: I walked through the tunnel many times. Could be a scary experience because sometimes at 6:00 in the morning, you don't have a lot of people going through there, and sometimes the deer would get caught in there, and they'd get halfway in and they didn't know which way to go. If somebody comes from one side, they'd panic. They didn't know whether they could go further or would they have to go back the other way, and I have heard of people who said that they saw bobcats or mountain lions in the tunnel or right above it, so it was quite an experience. Conklin: How did life in the community change during the day when the fathers were at work? Was there any sort of a change in the feeling when it was just the moms and the kids around? Or maybe nothing? Werner: Not really. First of all, my dad was working right there at Ft. Baker, so he would come home for lunch. And but most of the time, me being a teenager, I was at school, so I wasn't there all day long. And on weekends, we'd either go to Sausalito, or go to Stinson Beach with friends. Conklin: Okay. When did you first meet the Silvas. Werner: I never met the Silvas. Mr. Silva was already a pretty old guy who owned the ranch, and the ranch was called the Marin Land and Cattle Company. Conklin: Marin Land and Cattle? Werner: Marin Land and Cattle Company, it was the official name. Mr. Silva owned it. I think it was Sam Silva, and he had a manager ... You have to understand, at that age I was now 17, going on 18, there's a transition going on from child to man, teenager, adolescent. And my interests were no longer play, but work and aviation and I liked guns. I always liked guns. And there were people living down there in that little enclave right across from the ... Not the blimp hangar. And there were quite a few people there that I associated with. Conklin: We're gonna stop the tape now and I'm gonna turn it over.

  1:45 of silence for tape switch

  Conklin: We were discussing the community down near the blimp hangar that no longer exists. And who was living there? Werner: I don't recall the names of the people. Well, there was one. Sergeant by the name of ... they were non-commissioned officer quarters. [inaudible 00:31:57] name of Tweety, and the son who was my age, Bill Tweety, the guy I bought six with, two or three, we went to school together. They always rode on the bus. All the kids rode on the bus to school. Conklin: Would that be T-W-E- Werner: T-W-E-E-T-Y. Conklin: Thank you. Werner: These people, I understand years later that they emigrated to Alaska. They took advantage of the homesteading act. They got some land and they moved over there, so they left. But this was after I had left here. But to go back to your question about the Silvas, I did meet Mr. Silva occasionally. He was an old guy, and the ranch was being run by his supervisor, his manager, by the name of Dietz. Conklin: D? Werner: D-I-E-T-Z. Dietz. I don't remember his first name. But he was living in the caretaker's house on the road, and the foundations are still there, but the building's gone. And he had a wife and two daughters. And don't forget, I'm going on 18, a very good looking kid. Little bit younger than I was, Anna Marie was one of them. They all went to high school with us also. See, the Army also picked up the people from the ranch and take the kids to school. It was good sense to do that. So they had two beautiful daughters, but I met Dietz through the people down there in the non-com quarters that I was talking about, because they all knew him, and it was a really, I understand that they had 2,000 acres. The Marin Land and Cattle Company, it was a big place. And later on when I went to work there, as a summer job, it was very nice. It was a nice place to be. Conklin: When you first began working for them, what was your work? Werner: I was hired in early '48. I don't recall, it must've been March of '48. As the job became available, they need somebody to round up cattle, a cowboy. To be a cowboy. And they had a large herd there. It's a big ranch. A dairy ranch, so it was a milk ranch. And they had several hundred head of cattle that they had to round up twice a day. Once at noon for the milking, the afternoon, and once at midnight. So yes, there I had this job to go out there on a horse. And I had never sat on a horse in my life. But they told me these are really very gentle. You can get on any of them. It didn't take me very long to catch onto that. I had three horses that I rode in rotation. One was a really big brown horse, and I learned to saddle and I learned to feed them and they had a regular stable and a little run corral where they ran. So once during the day, I don't remember the exact hour. I had to get on that horse, saddle up, get on that horse and go round up all that cattle that might be in 400 or 500 acres spread out. And you had to bring every single one of them back. So you'd go around there, and it would take an hour, two hours, three hours sometimes. And the same thing happened again at night. So I had to get on that horse, and saddle up and go out there and take a flashlight with me. And I had a dog, Butch. I remember Butch, like a long haired sheep ... Like a Collie type dog. And he'd go along, and he was really ... And you couldn't see a thing. I mean you talk about black as night, you couldn't see anything. So up and down the hills, and all I knew was which pasture they were in. And I had to go out there, and very often I'd ride for two and half hours and ... They knew, the cattle by nature drift back to where they're supposed to go to be milked, they do it. But I had to bring them all in, and then I had to wait until they put them all in the milk barn and start milking them, and then the foreman'd come out and say, "Okay, there are two missing." Here were are at 2:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning, I had to get back out there. And there were always two or three cows that hid. Yeah, they would hide. They'd find the darnedest places, and get under there, and as soon as I'd come up to round them up, they'd hide. So, and I used the flashlight and try to catch their eyes because then you'd see it. But sometimes it'd be a raccoon or I'd see a bobcat or something, or a skunk. And the horse was really wary of skunks. Every time come close they'd think, "Oh." But anyway, so it was quite a responsible job. It was a lot of fun. Get out there and ride at 3:00 in the morning and you gotta bring all the cows in. There cannot be any one left behind. This happened during the day too, but of course during the day was easy, you could see them. Night, you couldn't see them. Conklin: Do you remember how much you got paid? Werner: It wasn't a heck of a lot. Probably like $30 or $40 a month. Conklin: And this is what year? Werner: 1948. An interesting side line here is that I would be out there rounding up cattle, and if you come down from where I used to live, that road that curves down towards the main road down below, you can look up and you see a valley that's large eucalyptus trees sitting there. I was in there one time, and I saw a vehicle driving on the Army road down here, the road just before you come up to here. And they had MP patrols at night, so they were the guys in the military police. And this guy thought he'd do some target practice. It was 2:00 in the morning. And he may have seen some movement way up there where I was, and I saw the lights of the vehicle stop. And I'm sitting on the horse, looking for cows, and all of a sudden ... This is the sequence. I heard shoo, shoo. And the horse jumped both ways, and then I heard bang, bang. The guy was out there shooting at me. And you don't realize it until you think about it. The bullets get there before the sound. Conklin: Oh my God. Werner: So he was hitting pretty close to me, both sides, so I pulled out my gun and started shooting him. But then he went on. One of those things. [inaudible 00:39:28] experience. Conklin: Where did you live on the ranch in terms of the structures, where did you sleep and eat, and... Werner: There was a ... It's so sad that these buildings are gone now. I don't know when they tore them down. But there was a bunk house. As a matter of fact there were two bunk houses. One was pretty well vacant. If you drive into the ranch, the road is still there. You make a right at the end, the milking barn was on the left at the end of that road. Then the road started turning right to go back up the hill. There's a water tank up there, on the right side. I think that's still there. It's kind of overgrown. But at the end of the ... Well, the last building on that road was a very large bunk house. And they had small rooms there that the people would have. Some of these people were professional milkers, they'd done this all their lives. And Silva I think was a Portuguese, so most of the people there were Portuguese. And he would hire them I guess, go to the city and bring them in from there. But some of those people had been there for years. Anyway, I got my little room, and there was one community shower, and one little bed. Typical bunk house type arrangement except it wasn't like a barracks. There wasn't an open place where a lot of people ... Each one had their little room. And you'd have to have that because as I said, some of those people lived there for years. I had nothing to do with the milking except to bring the cattle in, and I would stand there while they were doing it. Conklin: So there was only of you. Werner: Only one of me. Conklin: One person to gather the cows. Everyone else was a milker. Werner: Right, exactly. At the lower end of the road where it first curved away from where the milking barn was, was the mess hall I guess you'd call it or chow hall or whatever they called it then, and this again was my first experience with this type of a set up, working on a ranch. And they had this old guy named Jimmy who was the cook. And Jimmy did everything. Remember Gabby Hayes? Okay? Jimmy looked just like Gabby Hayes. Old beard, little old rheumy eyes, bald. And he was a fairly good cook. You'd have steak for breakfast, steak and eggs, or pancakes, and he was a pretty good cook. The only thing that I took issue with was he wasn't too clean. You had an old guy muttering along, so that it wouldn't be uncommon to be served ... And I'd have breakfast there, or dinner. It wouldn't be uncommon to sit there and have him bring you a plate of food that was full of dirty crud along the edges that he hadn't washed well. He couldn't see. He couldn't see that well. But it was all an experience. It was all part of growing up and getting older. Conklin: Was there any dysentery or any sort of sickness any of you got? It was just- Werner: No, nobody got sick. Conklin: Interesting. Werner: But it was indeed a very interesting experience, jumping into this. And of course a lot went on with the taking care of the cattle and so on, and the Foreman Dietz was a really good person. He knew what he was doing. Conklin: In terms of the community in the bunk house, what do you think the age spread ... Do you think most people a certain age, but then there was a guy that was 80? Or how did that go age wise? Werner: There were people there, I would say the age spread was from ... I was the youngest, but I was not a milker. From the early 20s to the late 60s, maybe even older? Conklin: Where was it concentrated? Was it evenly spread through that? Werner: 40s I would say. And again, there was a fairly heavy concentration of Portuguese, and they spoke Portuguese to each other. They'd speak English too, but there were some ... Funny things would happen where they'd play tricks on each other. Conklin: Like what? Werner: Like a guy would come up to milk a cow, and you'd have a couple hundred cows in a row there. They had this thing where a head goes there, and they give them food there. So they're eating, and then the guys come in the back with their milk stool. They had machines of course, and the guy would come up to the cow and start milking, [inaudible 00:44:38] and there was a snake draped across the top of the cow. Somebody plant a snake there, and sometimes it was still alive, and he'd jump and run because he didn't like that. Conklin: Was there any ... As a Portuguese group of people were there any sort of ceremonial or interesting sort of ... I don't know how to describe it. Because they were all Portuguese heritage, were there any traditions, did they sing Portuguese songs, did they... Werner: Well yeah, they did sing Portuguese songs, and there seemed to be a heavy drift towards religion. You'd see all these Mother of Christ statues there. I remember that. Conklin: So would they all leave on Sunday and go to church together? Werner: Do you really wanna know? Conklin: Yeah. Werner: They'd all go to San Francisco to find themselves a woman. Conklin: Oh. Well that makes... Werner: I mean this was routine. Conklin: That makes a lot of sense. Werner: Hey, how are things? Come back. Remember in those days, this was down to Third and Market or Third and Mission, south of Market area. Conklin: Okay, so that was like Saturday night's activity, or was that a typical... Werner: It was weekend type. And others would ... I suspect that they rotated their days off, so that not everybody could be gone. This is a 24 operation. You had to have enough people there to milk the cows every day, twice a day. So there were always those people there. Conklin: In the evening, they had to get up again at midnight, right? Werner: Oh yes. Conklin: So was there a time in the evening where they played cards or there was a social hour? And would you guys go into each other's rooms, or how did that... Werner: No, I was not too involved with that, because don't forget my family home was right up here. And the thing is, if I wanted to have a nice, good shower, a clean shower, I'd come home and do it, because that place was not ... You know, all these old guys, they really didn't take good care of everything. They just lived there, they slept there, and I think having to get up in the middle of the night, I suppose you get used to that, but that was more disruptive than anything else to sleeping your eight hours or seven hours overnight and then getting up in the morning. But I guess they got used to that. There was a younger guy there they hired after I was there, that come from Los Angeles. He was a cattleman too, and he had this old, like from 1928 Dodge little pick up, and we drove that thing all the way to Playland at the beach, and this was still there then, and we did all the things, going around the Playland at the beach, and came back, back to work. I don't know what happened to him. Conklin: And you'd stay up until 3:00 in the morning and sleep until when? Would you get up at 6:00 for breakfast, or? Werner: Sometimes. It depended. Usually I did. At my age, it was pretty to fit in and go along with whatever went on. Conklin: And then would the bunk house be empty when they were milking and you could maybe go sleep? Werner: Yes, it would be. We had a ... The thing that as a young person, coming from a family where my mother took care of things, and everything was nice and clean, it was a little bit difficult to get adjusted to the relaxed attitude about cleanliness. But don't forget now, when the cattle comes in and they come into a holding corral, all of them, the 200 or so head, maybe more, the mud would be six or seven inches deep in there. So people all wore these high rubber boots, you had to. And they milked in those things. So and then when they're done, they walked back to the bunk house, they walk in, there was mud all over the place. And they'd leave the boots outside. You had to have that, because if even if you wore high tops the mud will get right in there. But it was lovely experience. I enjoyed it, and being somebody who enjoyed nature and being outside and seeing the land couldn't be a better job. Very often they had a truck, I'd drive it up on the hill to where the radio station is up above, Wolf Ridge, I guess? And just look out at it, look out over Sausalito, Mill Valley, but it was a good job for a kid, and I probably lasted there about three months, and then I left because one of my ... if you have any questions about this, about the ranch anymore, let me know. One of the kids I knew who was a little bit older than I was, we lived down at Ft. Baker, he got a job at Hamilton Field. And I thought, "Ah, airplanes." Conklin: So you were gone, huh. Werner: I was gone. So we drove up to Hamilton Field. I got a job, but I won't go into that. Conklin: What element of the remote location out here was depressing? And then what were the high points? Werner: The only element that was depressing out here was the weather, the fog. The ever present fog. Everything was dripping and cold. It's ironic because unless we're having a real change in climate, every time we come out here, which is probably once or twice a month anyway from Petaluma, it seems to be nice and sunny. So I remember it back then as being mostly foggy, almost all the time, and I would go out, no matter when, middle of winter what for [inaudible 00:51:17] and go swim in the ocean. And there would nobody out there of course. People kept talking about the undertow would get you and all that. I had no problems with it, I was a really strong swimmer, and I found a way to beat it, just to stay at the surface, you don't go underneath. If you go like this, it'll pull you. You stay up on top of it, you'll flow right in with the tide. So I did a lot of swimming out there. It was cold. Very cold. Conklin: And would you consider swimming one of your high points? What was the most fun? Werner: Swimming was one of my high points, and walking all around the area was really interesting. I enjoyed it. Let's not forget, there were a lot of nice girls out here. Yeah, a lot of good looking girls, and as you grow up, as you mature, you realize things that are going on. There was this family that lived at Ft. Cronkhite, they had this nice blonde girl, and maybe I shouldn't name her last name, who I kinda liked. As a matter of fact, I liked several girls in rotation in time, but anyway, we had the teenage club had a party, and we go there, and I wanted to take her home, but I had no wheels, I had no car. So the family friend was a sergeant there, he said, "I'll give you a ride." He was there too, kinda chaperone. And an old guy, must've been 60, 55 or something. Old guy, right. Conklin: Kinda old like you? Werner: He was gray. And I said, "Oh, okay." And then I thought, "Now why is he dropping me off first?" Conklin: Old and smart. Werner: Huh? Conklin: He was an old and smart guy. Werner: No, no, no. He had something going with this girl. Conklin: Oh dear. Werner: And she was what, all of 16? 17? The eyes open up. You begin to learn. Anyway, there were several other young women, high school girls that I liked and we got to know each other and so on. And mostly that lived down below there, in NCO quarters. It was a really lovely place to grow up, to live and to mature so to speak. Because from there on then, I got the job at Hamilton Field, and shortly thereafter my dad had got reassigned, he went to the canals and the whole family moved except for my brother and I, we stayed here. Not here on the base, but we lived in Richmond there for awhile. Conklin: When you were living in the Silva Ranch and working, did you have much contact with the soldiers that were stationed out here? You were a unique position because you bridged both worlds, but did generally the ranch people have much contact with the soldiers? Werner: No. They had no contact whatsoever. It was like the ranch was kinda like an enclave, it was its own world. And don't forget these people were mostly I would say, I think they were Portuguese, right? So they stuck together. They could talk to each other much more easily. The soldiers were always in transition. They would come, they would go and so on. As a teenager who lived here, I had both. See I could talk to those people and get along with them and work with them, but I could also come back and se my friends at the teenage club, those people there. We had a real good time. Conklin: Did the Portuguese people speak Portuguese with each other mostly? Werner: Yes, yes. Conklin: And then they turned to you and speak English? Werner: Yes. It was an education. The whole thing, in the two years, was probably one of the most, greatest educational experiences that I had other than the formal education from high school and graduating, about life. You could write a book about it. It's really, really neat. Conklin: Did you see, while you were living out here, some of the gun drills? Any of the gun practice firings? Werner: No. As far as I know, none of the guns were fired after we moved in here. They were in the process of dismantling the batteries. I don't think that they actually removed ... They may have removed some of the guns during that time, but I don't think they actually removed them, cut them up, until after we had gone. What did happen, and the first thing that they had to do was remove the submarine netting across the Golden Gate, and- Conklin: Do you remember any tricky stories about that? With your father? Werner: Yes, I do. My dad was very deeply involved with that, that was his job. He had an office down at Ft. Baker, and they'd go up, there were a couple of mine laying ships out there at the base where the sewage plant is, en route to Sausalito. Down below there, there was a long pier that jutted out and they had a couple of those ships out there, and they'd go out in the Bay with those things, and they'd have to haul ... There was machinery of course. They had to haul the nets back in. And I remember distinctly my dad coming home one night really shook up. He said what had happened, as they pulled the things in, a strong load, heavy load, the things are heavy. Apparently one of the cables snapped and the cable went back and hit one of the guys, cut him right in half. Yeah. Conklin: That happens to tow boat operators. Werner: I suppose. Conklin: It does, the cables break. Werner: It's a problem. But I think that he more ... As far as I know, he probably completed that phase up there, deactivation here. And then he got all involved in the other Battery's up here, Wallace and so on. But as I said, I don't think the guns were removed during our time there. Conklin: Did he bring crabs home? Apparently while they were out, they'd go crabbing occasionally and they'd eat the crabs and some of the fish for people? You know. Werner: No, I don't think so. Conklin: Brian Chen talks about it in his book. Werner: Oh, did he? I don't think so. Conklin: Do you wanna summarize ... You've been summarizing your experience. Are there any, well for the next two minutes that we have left, do you have any... Werner: Well, there are some things that, first of all, I think it's very commendable that [inaudible 00:59:04] are restoring some of the barracks at Cronkhite. Conklin: How do you spell Cresci? Werner: Cresci? C-R-E-S-C-I. Some of the, I don't recall what that, when you look out over the top of the hill there from the mountain side, look out over the ocean, there is a big rock. Blue Rock? Conklin: We call it Bird Rock. Werner: Bird Rock, yeah, it's all white at the bottom. Okay, there used to be a bridge across, a catwalk that you could get to. And all the way, there's a smaller rock further out too. There used to be a catwalk out there. You could get across there, but the thing was really deteriorating. They worried that the thing would get weighed and collapse under you. But I'd go all over the area there. Conklin: Did you go to the lighthouse much? Werner: Yes, we did. Yeah. Conklin: Did you get to know the keepers? Werner: No, did not. No. One thing I wanted to note is that it's very difficult to realize what the area around where we lived, that whole road, looked like then, because the trees have grown up and grown perhaps 50 to 60 to 100 feet taller. You could look out over the trees anytime. Now, the houses are ... I flew by there yesterday, they're sitting all amongst the trees. Trees have grown so tall, right on the other side of the wall, the stone wall in front of the houses, used to be small eucalyptus trees. Now the things are about 60, 70 feet tall, maybe even taller. Time goes on. Conklin: Well, thank you very much. This has been a really wonderful interview. It's been very nice listening to your stories. Thank you very much. Werner: You're welcome.

 

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