"Early History of the San Fernando Valley Oral History Project" MRS. JULIANA GENSLEY (TOWNSEND) ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW

Los Angeles and the Early San Fernando Valley March 18, 1984 Interview conducted by Almarie Clifford-Robinson, CSUN Student Interview transcribed by Jennie Kogak, Grant Project Typist CSUN, Department of History and University Library's Urban Archives Center California State University, Northridge 18111 Nordhoff Street Northridge, California 91330-8329 [Final Transcription - June 1995]

[PDF Version - September 2003]

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MRS. JULIANA GENSLEY (TOWNSEND) ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW INTRODUCTION Juliana Gensley was born on February 2, 1910 in Los Angeles, California. She is the eldest of three children who grew up in the city of Los Angeles on Ocean View and Parkeet streets, one block north of Westlake Park, now MacArthur Park. this was a fashionable area of town where all of her neighbors were homeowners except for one house. Although she recalls the neighbors as being friendly to these "renters" there seemed to be a social distinction towards them that was apparent to her at a young age. Most of the children in her area had been born in California and their fathers were people in managerial positions. One neighbor was the manager of the Los Angeles Soap Company, another the owner of the Perfection Bakery, and her own father was a patent attorney. Mr. Townsend arrived in California in 1882 and as a young man, drove a stage coach. He would take young Juliana up into the Glendale Hills to teach her how to drive a buggy. These people were not considered the "blue bloods" or what she called the old, old, old, families in the area. This name meant you probably had your roots in Spanish surnames. This name meant you probably had your roots in California for a long, long time. Behind their house, up on the hill overlooking Westlake Park, was a wild flower field where the children would play. This marked the end of the buildings and streets at that time. To Juliana's parents, the children were the most important thing. Her parents were the neighborhood favorites and always ready for a gathering or a party. The attitude towards discipline varied with the different families but in her family the children did not get away with being just plain rotten. They had to go out and cut a switch adequate to the offense. Concerning accidents, they had to clean up the mess, replace whatever they could and pay for it with their allowance. Juliana's mother was very interested in education and studied with Maria Montessori. Being a school teacher herself, Mrs. Townsend would go from school to school and screen Juliana's prospective teachers. Consequently, she had lovely teachers and lovely classes all the way through her school years. Her education started in a Montessori school at age two and then transferred to kindergarten at the East 7th Street School across town from her home. She traveled by street car and remembers the conductors being very friendly, calling all the children by name, and always stopping at the most convenient places to let them off. They would purchase car books each month at half the regular five cent price roundtrip fare. At this price everyone rode the streetcar. Besides, there were no school buses. One special memory Juliana had while attending kindergarten was of being rescued from a flood by men in huge hay wagons. The water was all the way up to the hubcaps of these wagons and the men lifted each child into the wagon to remove them from the path of the flood. In second grade, she attended a public school, close to home, and was taught most of her subjects out of fourth grade textbooks on an individual basis. The following year, she attended Kumnox Academy, an exclusive private school, and by seven years old she was in the fourth grade. She attended Virgil Jr.

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High and graduated from Los Angeles High at fifteen. Los Angeles High was a very affluent, academic school geared towards the college bound student. This high school, as well as others, had a student body made up from all different nationalities and backgrounds. There were no real distinctions made because the students were too concerned with their academic achievements. When early graduates of L.A. High wanted to take a special class, like Greek, which was only offered there and they would get in. Poly Technique Manual Arts, Lincoln, and Jefferson High were geared towards the manual arts or technology. Some of the clothing styles during Juliana's high school years, between 1923 and 1926, consisted of "plus-fores" or golf pants for the boys along with argyle socks and flat caps on top. In the Eastern U.S. boys wore knickers until they were eighteen, but here in California they were wearing long pants all through high school. The girls wore dresses straight up and down with no waists. Their skirts were pleated and worn with straight sweaters, often in the earth tones. She vividly described a favorite teacher's dress of a soft, muted, dusty-rose color, straight from shoulder to length. It was a coatdress with buttons down the entire front and beautifully embroidered button holes. Hairstyles, for girls, were called "pineapple bobs." This was a short, layered in back look with fluffy sides, bangs, and slicked down in the back. In Juliana's family they were not too keen on cutting hair so she wore hers long and coiled on the sides. In fact, the principle of her high school called her mother to suggest not sending her daughter to school with curls because this gave her a too obvious little girl look. This style of short hair came in during the war era of the 1920s. John Hal Jr. was a cartoonist for the New Yorker who drew a lot of cartoons of women with this style of short hair and shorter skirts. By the time she was leaving the public schools everyone was worrying about the boys wearing mohawks and the girls wearing stacked hair doos. Men, the age of her father, wore stiff, white collars, heavily starched, with a place for collar buttons. Her father always wore a "Freeham tie" along with a grey or blue suit, a vest, and a derby hat. This style of derby hat saved his life when he was about to get off a train that had not completely stopped. He fell down and it protected his head from being cracked open, somewhat like a crash helmet. After that incident, he never wore another style. Other fashionable styles of hats were the Fedora, Porkpie, and the Howard, many made of felt. On the 13th of May everyone put their felt hats away and took out their straw hats. Panama's were very expensive, so if most people wore the straw "campaign" hats. The Valley farmers wore straw hats for protection from the sun and the Stetson's were worn by people in government service, such as rangers. By the 1930s hats were "out" in L.A. Juliana felt that men and women shared equally with the family in those days. Some women worked at a profession but it was O.K. to be just a housewife. Doors seemed to open to her, as a woman, in the working world and she felt men might have had a harder time. One of Juliana's historical memories was when her parents took her to see Woodrow Wilson campaigning for re-election at the old Shrine Auditorium, then a big flat room with folding chairs. The crowd was very enthusiastic and all for Woodrow Wilson, They felt he had kept them out of war and was a great peacemaker. She remembers Armistice Day when all the whistles blew to say the war was over along with songs such as "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" and "Keep the Fire Burning." People

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would play these songs on the piano with sheet music then, and her father could play by ear. Ladies drove electric cars which were cleaner than the gasoline cars driven by men. These electric cars did not have steering wheels but tillers and each had a glass vase for flowers. They did not hold many people and usually had a drivers seat in front with the passenger seats for two in back. Neither of Juliana's parents drove cars. Juliana remembers the Valley terrain back before the 1920s. One memory was when her foster grandfather would pile her family into his Model T Ford and drive them out along the San Fernando Road, through the canyon, to a pear orchard in Little Rock. This was a dirt road lined on both sides with eucalyptus trees and the trip took hours while only going about twenty miles per hour. Little Rock was the original name for Pear Blossom. This area was all pear orchards then and the name changed when they built the new school and named it Pear Blossom. Most of the area was farming land and Juliana remembers some family friends of her parents named Sharp who bought a little ranch in the San Fernando Valley to raise goats. They had six children and used the milk to feed their children. The neighborhood population began to increase as did complaints about the goats. This worried Mrs. Sharp and when she asked her husband what they were going to do, he said, "The Lord will provide." The Sharp family got an offer to trade their farm for one on Signal Hill and within two weeks after the trade, the Sharps struck oil and the Lord provided for the rest of their lives! The last she heard the oil was still being pumped out of the Signal Hill well. Mr. Townsend, the first patent attorney in L.A., had the opportunity to meet a variety of very creative people around the area at that time. They would come into his office from all walks of life to get patents for their inventions. He was the attorney for the oil magnet, E.L. Doheny, when Doheny was just a penniless Irishman. The thing they all had in common was that they had very creative minds. There was a man named Repkee who invented a wonderful machine to make pans by simply passing a piece of sheet metal through. The machine would clamp down to make a cookie pan or a baking pan or any type of pan one needed. He invented this machine at the time of the Depression, and even though it was an absolutely marvelous machine, nobody could afford to buy it. During the Depression, her family all worked for each other. The older children saw to it that their younger brothers and sisters had the same opportunities available to them as they were growing up. For diversion they would spend a lot of time hiking up in Eatons Canyon which is now damned up. Juliana met her husband through his sister who was a member of her outdoor club group. The Townsend family lived in the smallest house in an affluent neighborhood full of very elegant homes. Oriental rugs were popular as were beaded portieres that separated the dining areas and were made by taking eucalyptus pods and stringing them with beads. On the stair cases were beautiful wooden-laced woodworks and high windows of stained glass. The living room was for grown ups and children were not allowed to play there. Most homes had a front hall leading into the living room, dining room, back to the kitchen behind the bedrooms and were either Victorian or turn-of-the-century Victorian. The Townsend's home was a style called a "Bungalow of the Green Type" which was very modern for that

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time. In fact, this style originated in California. To make it even more unique, the house was full of inventions that the inventors would pay her father for his services with. They had a special type of garage door. A door with a bookcase on top of it, a desk in the middle, and an open out compartment to store photographs and documents. Her father wrote a patent on sliding doors that slid into the walls as well as beds that could disappear into the walls under the closets to form a sitting room during the day. Her bedroom was like this. Juliana's fondest memory was of a trip she took with her father on the train to Fresno in 1914. Children under age five could ride free. Mr. Townsend was meeting with the head of the Sunmaid Raisin Company to discuss the patent for the little girl on the raisin box. She was especially impressed with the dining car on the train and remembers having a wonderful meal consisting of ham and eggs. On arrival in Fresno, they went to the packing house and Juliana was given a piece of jump rope to jump while her father did his business. On completing the patent, they caught the train back to Los Angeles. This was her connection with the patent on the picture of the little girl on the box of Sunmaid Raisins we still see today.

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Interviewee: Mrs. Juliana Gensley [G] Interviewer: Almarie Clifford-Robinson, CSUN Student [C] Date: March 18, 1984 Subject: Los Angeles and the Early San Fernando Valley [Tape 1, Side A] [Note: Music begins this tape, and goes from 000-052. The music continues as background for the beginning of the interview.] C: The following interview with Juliana Gensley was conducted on March 18th, 1984 by

Almarie Clifford-Robinson for the Calabasas Historical Society. G: Got here in 1882. He had the experience of driving a stage when he was a young man. I

just...see, we were driving a stage, my father was a stage driver. And when you were asking about vacations, yeah, we went to Hawaii, we went to Yosemite. We did a lot of hiking. My experience in that was like his. Young people in those days, that's ... you went hiking or horse back riding...

C: The outdoors? G: Yes, ah-huh. And when I was a little girl...of course, when I was born my father was older and

he wanted me to know what it was like...how he could drive horses, so he rented a buggy at a livery stable out in Glendale and drove up into the Glendale hills and he was showing how he would guide the horses when he was a stage coach driver and all that, so I had that kind of experience.

C: Where were you born? G: I was born in the city of Los Angeles at the corner of Ocean View and Park View streets, one

block north of Westlake Park, and that's now McArthur Park, and it was a very fashionable area at the time, and the only social distinctions that I can remember...everybody in our area owned their own homes except there was one house that people could rent and the renters were not quite the social class of the people that owned their houses, but...as a small child, I picked this up. If you were a renter, you weren't quite, quite there. But we were very nice to renter's children, but they rotated, but the people that owned their home, those children knew each other and we were the "in group."

C: The established...

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G: We were the established ... C: ...Californians. Do you think that attitude still holds today? G: Oh, I don't know because there's so many more people that have been born in California since

that time, but ... C: But even now, it's an oddity to be a native Californian. If your a native Californian,

there's always this wide-eyed look. What's that? What's that ... G: There's still quite a lot of them. Well...not really where I lived because most of the children that

I knew had been born there and were native Californians. It was a very nice little area and the...All right, my father was an attorney. We had the manager of The Los Angeles Silk Company, the owner of the Perfection Bakery. This kind of thing. These were people in managerial positions. They were...they weren't the "blue bloods," you might say. They weren't the old, old, old families, but they were the old, old families. [Laughs] We were ...

C: Who were the blue bloods that you remember? G: Well, they would be the ones that went back to...well at that time their families had been in

California over a hundred years, and they would be...they would have a Spanish surnames. They would be the ones that went back ...

C: Do you remember anyone in particular? Any names when you were young? G: Not particularly. You see, now, we talk about Latin surnames as though they were "wetbacks"

or something like that. Not so in those days. Latin surnames meant that you probably had your roots in California for a long, long time, so...and we were talking earlier about integration with my husband and he was talking about Lincoln High School, which was the high school he went to, but I went to Los Angeles High School, and at that time you went to the high school that offered the program you wanted.

We talk about magnet schools now. Well, they didn't talk about magnet schools, but if you

wanted an academic program, and you were college-bound you went to Los Angeles High School. And there was a geographical area that was supposed to go to Los Angeles High School, but you could live anywhere and tell them that you wanted to study Greek, and then you could go to Los Angeles High School because it was the only high school that taught Greek. And so, people who had graduated from Los Angeles High School back in the 80's, say, and wanted their grandchildren to go to Los Angeles High School, those grandchildren would say they wanted to study Greek and then they were transported over there, or maybe they had their Chrysler convertibles or...the very wealthy families, but Los Angeles High School was the academic high school.

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And then, if you were going into engineering or technology of that sort, you went to Polytechnic High School. And if you wanted to go...well, Manual Arts was what it said, Manual Arts High School, that was...that was mostly a terminal program. You get through high school and you had a trade or a skill or something like that that was marketable.

And then Lincoln High School was over on the east side, and I think it would be more like

Manual Arts High School. If you're speaking about Manual Arts, Lincoln and Jefferson, and they would be...they would offer comparable programs, and this was another part of the city that they did...But in all of these, as far as racial mix went, we were used to having people of all different nationalities and backgrounds and we just never thought anything about it. I think...I haven't the faintest idea what percentage of what there was, but there were always people of all different kinds of backgrounds and there was never any distinction about it.

Possibly because we were at the academic high school and everybody that was there was

really education oriented. You didn't have anybody that was cooling their heels in the classroom just waiting to get out because we all knew we weren't going to get out. We were headed for college and we had to get that kind of schooling...or our world would fall apart. What would you do?

C: So the transportation was more or less up to the individual families in their school?

Any type of school? G: No. No, we took the streetcars and we had car books and... C: Car books? G: Car books. Yeah, they were little...little booklets like this and each little ticket was worth two

and-a-half cents, so it was a half fare...you see, the regular fare was five cents on a car, but you could go to school and back for a nickel because you had these little car books and they had a month's transportation and you bought them a month at a time, and lets see...If you bought them for a dollar, that's right, and there were twenty days in a month because you wouldn't be going to school weekends and they weren't any good on weekends, and that was it. Two and-a-half cents a ticket. And that was your transportation to school. And with a deal like that, everybody rode the streetcars.

C: Sure... G: There were no school buses, but that was how you got there. C: What do you remember about the clothing the kids wore? G: Well, I'll tell you, the clothing was very much what you see in that book. I... That was about

what they wore. I remember that the senior boys wore "Plus-Fours." My husband was talking about knickers. All right. They...we did have...wait, the seniors had cords...and what was it the juniors wore? I don't remember what the other boys wore, but anyway, "Plus-Fours" with

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argyle socks were very, very fashionable, they were golf pants. And we didn't think of them as being short pants, they were golf pants, and then you had the little flat caps like this. And the dresses were very much like that. Just really straight up and down.

C: No waist? G: No waist, oh, no. Oh, no! In fact, I remember one of my friend's mother had dresses that she

felt were really very beautiful and she had big bosoms and a really tight waist and a full skirt and it was very odd. Very odd that she wore this kind of thing. I knew it was something like...

C: Because the style was just the opposite... G: Yes, absolutely. C: ...tight at the top, no waist... G: It was absolutely square all the way down. C: Did you feel that came from any kind of woman's movement? G: No. No, not at all. In fact, it... As long as I can remember, in our family and in every family

that I knew, women and men shared an equal part of the responsibility for the family. And many of woman I knew had careers and that was all right, but then many of them stayed home and their home was their career and it was...it was no big deal. And I would say if anything throughout my lifetime, probably I had more opportunities given to me than some of the fellows that I knew. The fellows often had a much harder, much more difficult time.

C: Why do you suppose that was? G: Well, now let's see... [pauses] I don't know. Doors just seemed to open for me. They really

did. Wherever I went, I just seemed to have very good fortune. It was really neat. C: You know, like during the war period when woman started to do a lot of men's jobs.... G: Now which war are you talking about? C: The First World War. G: The First World War... C: From that point when woman were working on an equal basis with men, from then, did

you notice about difference in the attitude between woman taking what was considered a male job before?

G: You have to have remember that at that time I was very small child and ...

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C: So you were going up ... G: I think you were asking if my husband remembered any political figure. I remember my parents

taking me to see Woodrow Wilson. He was talking at the Shrine Auditorium. Not the Shrine Auditorium that exists now, but the one that...the one that preceded that and it burned down and then they rebuilt into the present Shrine Auditorium. And this other one, it just had a lot of...it was a big flat room with...it almost seems to me as that was folding chairs, I don't know... Anyway, I remember that I was seated on my father's shoulders and I saw the President of the United States, it was Woodrow Wilson, and he was at that time campaigning for reelection, so you could see that was one of my very early, early memories. And I remember my brother was there and it was one of these things about who gets to sit longest on daddy's shoulders. Do I get there or does my brother get there? But we did see the president, so ...

C: Was there a lot excitement ... G: Oh, yes, uh-huh. And the crowd was very enthusiastic about it and they were all for Woodrow

Wilson, and they thought that he kept us out of war and, of course, he was the great peacemaker at that time. So...I have those in memory as a small child. And then I remember Armistice Day when all of us...and everybody was so excited and so thrilled that the war was over. I can remember some of the songs. I remember "It's a Long Way to Tiperary" and "There's a Silver Lining Through the Dark Clouds Shining." "Keep the Home Fires Burning." That was the name of the song. I remember...

C: And did you listen to the radio? G: No. At that time we didn't have a radio, but we had friends that played the piano and they got

sheet music of all of these popular songs and played the piano, and we had a piano in our house too. Daddy played by ear, and so some of the songs... No, the radio came much later into our lives. The first radio in our house was a little Christmas set

that my brother built. My brother is a little bit younger than I am. You're asking about early memories. My very first memory goes back when I was about two

years old, because I remember my father's mother, and she died when I was two, so it goes clear back to then.

C: Wow. G: Uh-huh. So ... C: What year was that? G: She died in 1912. And I was born in 1910. And she was a delightful, elegant, very happy

memories of her. Very nice person.

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So we were...let's see, we lived in an affluent neighborhood. We were the smallest house in the affluent neighborhood, but we had the best mother and the best father and everybody could come over to our house any time and play, and they were always welcome, and mother always had things in the cupboard, so if anybody wanted refreshments, it was there, you know. We could have...we could around twice and have a party, it was just a neat experience.

C: How many children? G: There were three of us and I'm the oldest. C: Was that small considering the time? A small family? Medium family? G: It was medium because we had other families that were about three. We had two-only

children. And let's see...one of my friends was an only child because her father had died and so her mother was raising her alone. And the other one, I guess the family had split up and this little boy lived with his grandmother. And we always...the kids were protective toward him. But everybody else had brothers and sisters and that really was about it. I mean that was....I can think of any number of families with three children in them. And if it wasn't three, it was two. And there were a couple with four children, but...there were just a lot of children. We had a lot of fun which I would...and our...at that time our house was up here on this hill, it was over looking Westlake Park, but right behind our house, it was all wildflower fields. That was the end of the building. This was the end of the streets and so it was just beautiful and wild and I suppose that's how I came to love nature which has carried over to now.

Now if you want some of the early things about this area. If you want, ask me things about that,

why I have things about this area that I could also tell about. C: Sure. I was going to ask you one thing before we went from there. G: Yes. C: What was the attitude on discipline towards children then? G: It varied with families. Now, our parents were...we knew that to our parents, the children were

the most important thing and they loved us very much, but also we knew that there were certain standards and if we made a mistake, they were understanding about the mistake and we would rectify the mistake, but if we were just plain being mean, then we were told to go out and cut a switch. And we had to go out and cut a little switch out and bring it back to us, and it would have to be a switch that they felt...that we felt would adequately punish us for being rotten. And then they would do the three switches with the little switch that we had cut, and then that took care of that.

So we didn't get away with being mean or ugly or hateful or anything like that. But if we

accidentally dropped a vase or something like that, that was very sad, but what you did, you know, something like that, you would first of all...you'd have to clean up your mess. And

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secondly, if it was possible to replace it, then you would take your allowance or something and replace it the best you could and make whatever was the appropriate restitution. But we didn't get away with just being rotten. The retribution was quick.

C: How about in school? G: In school, I had lovely teachers and lovely classes all the way through. And that is very

remarkable because I don't know anybody else, except that my mother had an interesting little thing...she was very interested in education and she studied at the normal school, and she was...

[Telephone interruption. A short break in interview.]

G: Okay. All right. Ask me a question and then we'll go on from there. C: Let's see, we were talking about ... G: Discipline. C: Oh, yes. G: Yes. C: The discipline in schools... G: By this school... C: Your talking about how nice... G: Everything...all the children were nice to teachers and the teachers were nice to the children. C: Always? G: They were always ... C: They were always? G: They were always...very, but ... C: Oh, wow. I wish I had had ... G: But the thing was this: that my mother was very interested in education and she would know that

I was going to be promoted into a second grade... or another grade. She would go around and visit ahead of time, and apparently she screened the teachers this way so if there was a teacher that she felt wasn't going to give me the best kind of an education or something like that, she'd transfer me out of school. She put me in private school, she put me in another public school that

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I was eligible for, and I ended up always, always having the nicest teachers and having just a beautiful time. It was a good learning experience.

C: How many different schools did you attend? G: Well, let's see, I went to...Well, I started out in preschool in the Montessori School, which was

really neat. I loved it. C: What age? G: Two. C: Two? G: Uh-huh. And I was in that until I was...must have been four and-a-half because I went in

September and my mother knew of a really good teacher over at the East 7th Street School, which was way over on the East Side and so I went over to that school by streetcar and had a wonderful experience, but I do remember that that was . . .

there were a terrible flood that year and they came in big hay-wagons and the water was up to

the hubcaps of these big hay...the wheels were like this...you know, and the water was like from the Los Angeles River and the kindergarten...we were on porch of the kindergarten when these big men came and lifted us off the porch of the kindergarten into the big hay wagons and rescued all the kindergarten children. I suppose all the children in school, but I remember this experience and then drove us to...out of the path of the flood. And I don't know how my parents picked me up. My parents found me...Well, of course, I knew my telephone number so I suppose when I got to a safe place, why, we simply telephoned my parents and they came and picked me up, but...

C: How they got there, you still don't know. G: I still don't know. I don't remember that part. But I...I very definite...I have this vivid memory

of the hay-wagons and the men lifting us off the porch of the kindergarten up into the hay-wagons, and the water up to the hubcaps of the hay-wagon.

So I was there until February because we had semesters. Then I went to a public school near

my house and they put me in second grade there, which was really neat because I had a wonderful teacher there who got fourth-grade readers for me and let me sit over in a corner and read to my heart's content and...she was working with all the other kids that were having a hard time. And then we would have a little time together and I'd discuss what I'd read and I was given stories about Norse mythology and about Thor and Freya and Odin, and really neat stories. I loved them. And then the same way with math. The other kids would be doing something with math and she'd give me some math and we have a little conference. And so she just totally individualized the program for me all the way through. But I was lousy at mat weaving. The other kids had their little mat project down and theirs were all coming out so

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pretty. Mine was all wrong. But it...you know, it didn't really matter. I had a good second grade.

So then the following year, my mother again must have looked at the person and she put me in

private school the next year. So I went from the really poverty stricken East Side to the public school, to an exclusive private school where I was put in the third grade, and that was a really nice experience. The school was small and again it was an individualized type of program and it was just great and I loved it. And then from there, that private school merged with another private school, so in fourth grade I went over to this other private school and I was then seven and I was in the fourth grade and so it would go that way, but my mother was always...once the semester hit looking around to see, "Well, who is she going to have next." "Well, if I like the teacher she goes, if I didn't like that teacher she goes to a different school," so it went on like that.

And yet, I did go to a junior high school. I went to Virgil Junior High School and had ... C: Where was that? G: This was the corner of...it's still there...corner of Vermont and First, I think, in Los Angeles.

And, of course, at that time it was...oh, the private school I went to was Commnoc School, Comack Academy, and that was really a very good experience. So I was there in the 7th and 8th grades at Virgil Junior High, and then Comack was only maybe two blocks from Virgil Junior High and I went there for the 9th grade and then I went to the L.A. High School in the 10th grade. And my experience at L.A. High was really very, very nice and I graduated before I was sixteen. I was still fifteen when I graduated from L.A. High.

C: So did you get to take part in any of the social activities being so young? G: Everything I wanted to. Now people say, well, what do you do about dating. Well, actually,

the other kids were talking about dating. I really wasn't that much interested in it. And when I became interested in dating when I was about fourteen, and, of course, by that time I was high school, I dated people that were my age. They were fourteen. I met them outside. They were not my classmates. They were other people about my size and that had outside activities and we did a lot of hiking. We hiked up on the Millard Canyon, we hiked in the Eaton's Canyon, some of places we hiked to are now...there's a dam in Eaton's Canyon. It's a reservoir. And the places where I hiked...way down under the water and we hiked up the Mountain Bough, and just had a lot of wonderful outdoor life. And then on the weekends, my foster grandfather, he wasn't really a relation, but he was the nearest I had to a grandparent at that time, he had a very lovely beach house down in Ocean Park. And we went down most of the weekends there. And we met kids on the sand and had a lot of fun that way.

So, when I dated, I dated...and the way I met my husband, I was a leader of Woodcraft

Ranger Girls and his sister was in my tribe and she went home and talked about this leader that she had, which by that time I was in college. No, I had graduated from college, so he wanted so to meet this girl his sister was always talking about so...so it was very nice.

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C: What do you remember about...Let me turn the tape over. [End Tape 1, Side A] [Begin Tape 1, Side B] G: ...She didn't throw her weight around or anything like that, but she just was aware... C: How did she... did she become so knowledgeable about education? G: Well, she was a teacher too. C: Okay. G: She had a Montessori school for...Well, my parents were very much interested in Montessori,

and [was] trained in Montessori, so she had this educational background and she knew what she wanted to have happen for her kids and...She set it up that way.

C: That's great. G: She just did. And my father backed her up and everything. That was one thing about our

family life, that we all worked for each other. And you were asking about the Depression. Both in my husband's family and in my family, the families worked together. The older ones...he was the oldest boy in his family. I was oldest child in my family. We saw to it that our younger brothers and sisters had the opportunities to go ahead. It wasn't luxurious. We didn't have anything fancy. When we were first...incidentally, he was coming over to pick me up. I'd been...I was teaching in Riverside on the day of the earthquake and I had to ride into Pasadena, and he was coming over to Pasadena to pick me up when the earthquake happened, and I was sitting in this room in Pasadena...in those days, lamp shades had long...were like this, and we were sitting there and I saw these fringes...

C: ...Doing the hula. [Laughs] G: Doing the hula, yep. And three of us were sitting in that room at that time and we said "That hit

hard, very hard somewhere." And we all agreed to that. Now this was in Pasadena. Of course, it was down at Long Beach that it happened. But we'd been through enough earthquakes so that we knew that that was disastrous.

C: Growing up in the area, you're used to the occasional earthquake. G: Yeah, that's right, uh-huh.

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C: And this was the... G: I lived through the Santa Barbara earthquake and that, again, that hit hard up in Santa Barbara,

but didn't touch...it was just a tremor where we were living, but we'd gotten the feel of it so that if it was hard someplace, you'd know that that was a hard one someplace.

C: I was going to ask you about high school, the styles, the clothing. G: Oh, the clothing. C: What was...what was "in?" G: Oh, what was "in?" Do I still have my high school year book? Well, of course, that wouldn't go

in on the tape, but...all right, pleated skirts were in. Sweaters...lots of sweaters that came right straight down. They were not form-fitting sweaters. They were baggy sweaters. We thought the skirts were very short, but as I look at these pictures in here, the skirts weren't really that much different ...

C: How short were they? G: About what I'm wearing today. C: The knee? G: About the knee...and it wasn't...it was my second year in college where they suddenly changed

over and had longer skirt and defined waists and "jewel" collars, I remember. When I was going through high school...

C: This was about what time? G: Well, I graduated from high school in Winter '26, so that would be February '26 or January

1926. And the earth tones were more of...the subdued colors were more desirable. I remember my favorite teacher and she had a dress with a color called "Barbara Rosewood," and it was just a lovely soft... well, I guess, rose color, but a muted rose color.

C: "Dusty rose?" G: "Dusty Rose"...yeah, dusty rose. And it was absolutely straight from her shoulders down to

here. It...dusty color coat dress because it buttoned all the way down the front, but it had just a lovely embroidered pattern all the way down and all around the button holes it was embroidered. It was just the most beautiful dress and she was the most beautiful teacher... I can see it right now. It was a lovely dress that she was wearing, about 1925.

C: And the hair styles?

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G: All right. The hair styles were "pineapple bob," only that wasn't what I wore. I wore my hair in braids and then it was...

C: [Garbled.] G: No...well, they were coiled this way. So it was like this with two coils over my ears. C: Like Princess Lea in Star Wars except... G: Yeah, that was it. Exactly! That's how I wore my hair. I wore long curls right up to my first

year in high school and the vice-principle called my mother and told her that, "You really don't want to send your daughter to school with those long curls," so...

C: Why not? G: Well, it gave me a "little girl" look... C: And you were already young... G: I was...I was...in high...yeah, I was young. I was young to be in high school and it was...just set

me apart a little too much. C: So there were definitions in age styles... G: Yes. C: ...when you reached a certain age, you changed your... G: Yeah, that's right. C: You don't want to be labeled. G: And in the East at that time...I remember that was a friend that came out from the East, a

boy...and in the East, boys wore knee...they wore knickers until they were eighteen, and at eighteen you immediately went into long. Out here, you went into long pants in high school, and that's what...or I guess in 8th grade because this is what John was talking about, that the kids out here were wearing the long pants. And so it was the same with girls. You did not wear hair... you didn't wear hair the wear your wearing it...

C: No. G: When you got to high school, something happened to your hair. Now most the kids wore

pineapple bobs, which meant that it was...what do you call it? C: Layered?

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G: I guess it's layered back here, and then you had it...it was fluffy out here and laying back here

like this. But...and the back part was all...But in my family, we weren't too keen about cutting hair, so instead my mother did it in braids and I wound it around here and I wore it that way, and I got on very well, I think...and there were other people that wore long hair too, but they had it coiled or...

C: Where do you suppose that short hair came in from? G: It came in during the war. It came in about 1920 or something like that. John Hal Jr. was a

cartoonist for the New Yorker, and he drew a lot of cartoons of girls wearing hair that way and the short skirts and so forth. So it was one of the styles that...I've seen hair go up and down so much, and when I started teaching college, I...when I left the public schools, the thing everybody was worrying about then were the boys wearing mohawks and the girls wearing stacked hair doo's...

C: Beehives? G: Yeah, uh-huh. Way up there like this. And by the time I left college, "What's a mohawk?"

"What's a stacked hair?" Now that people know what mohawks are, but they don't what a stacked hair doo's are now.

C: Well, I don't know... G: Maybe...do you think they know what stacked are? C: Yes... G: Well, I've seen hair go up and down...and my hair's gone up and down, up and down, so... C: Isn't that amazing? The skirts and the hair, the skirts and the hair... G: Yeah... C: How about the men's clothing? What do you remember about their styles back then? G: Well, now, if you're talking about people at the age of my father, my father wore a stiff white

collar, very heavily starched and it was held to the collar of his shirt...the collar of his shirt was a little collar like this and then it had a place for collar buttons and the stiff collars was on that and he always wore a foreign-hand tie, and he always had... he always had gray suits and blue suits, and so he would never wear the same collar twice and, of course, he always wore his vest, and he wore a derby hat as long as he lived, because it had saved his life once. He had...he was wearing it and... I think he got off a train or something like and he thought the train was stopping, but it hadn't slowed down that much, and he fell and it protected his head. And, of course, now we know that that particular shape was very protective and they're required on

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construction sites and all that sort of thing, but he would not wear any other kind of a hat because he said that it had really saved his life. And I'm sure it did. And it would be like your motorcycle helmet or anything like that.

C: So this was a Derby hat... G: Yeah. A bowler hat, uh-huh. C: I never thought of that. Someone wearing a hat for protection. I always thought it was

a style... G: Well, now, there were a lot of other styles, and I was testing my grandchildren, I said, "What's a

Porkpie? What's a Fedora? What is..." What is the name of that...Homburg, and these were all men's hat styles. They were felt hats and they were ...blocked in different styles. There were a few others too. I have...what do they call a straw...and on the 13th of May, everybody put away...all the men put away their felt hats and took out their straw hats and then the straw hats had different styles. There were the...what is the proper name for it...but then the Panamas were very, very expensive. And so if you had one your were really up their, but most of them wore these little hats that you see for campaigns. And those are the ones that they called "skimmers," but that wasn't the proper name. There was another name for it too.

And then, of course, there was the farmer's straw hat, that was a hat like this, for protection for

shade, and the sombreros...Oh, and the Stetsons, yes, Stetsons and those were worn by people in the government service like park rangers and people like that. I think they still wear...I think their dress is still Stetson. So there was a great variety in men's hats, but by the time I got married, those were...hats for men were out, at least in California...in our part of California. And in the all the years that I've before married to John, he bought a hat one time because he was going to San Francisco and in San Francisco they wore hats. In Los Angeles you didn't. So he went up to San Francisco and came back...

C: When was this? G: Maybe it was in the 40's...I don't know. Anyway, he... C: So hats were out in L.A.? G: Yeah...well, hats were out in Los Angeles for men in the 30's too. When I first met John they

were out. But it was my father, I remember his generation, and all of his variety of hats, but my father wore only the one kind, the bowler hat because it had saved his life, and...

C: What kind of people did you see around L.A.? Did you see the rancho...hands, or was

there a variety of... G: Well, you see my father was a patent attorney, so people would come into his office from all

different works of life...walks of life. They were all very creative people that had invented

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things. Now you've heard of E.L. Doheny, the oil magnet? Well, when he was a penniless Irishman, he came in and my father was his patent attorney for a while. And my father wrote patents...he was the first patent attorney in Los Angeles, at least that's what I've been told. And so, he met all of these inventive people and some of them would come in from farms and some of them would come in from the industrial areas, so we really saw people in overalls and we saw people in suits, and we saw people in all variety of things because that's what daddy's clients were and...the thing that they had in common was that they had very creative inventive minds. And my father had that kind of mind too, and they were...they really...so we had a chance to meet a lot of interesting people.

C: Do you remember any of the inventions? Any of the people. Anything that still

stuck... G: All right. There was a man named Mr. Ruptkey (Sp?) that invented a wonderful machine to

make pans and they'd take...sheet metal would go through and then this machine clamped down and it would make a bread pan or a cookie pan or baking pan, anything like that. It was all by folding it over. It was really wonderful, but he invented it just at the time of the Depression. And while it was an absolutely marvelous machine, nobody could afford to buy it. [Laughs.]

C: Oh, no! G: But, I was so impressed with that because it did so many things and of course it eliminated a lot

of hand labor. Oh, another thing, this is something you would know about. You've seen...you've bought

Sunmaid raisins and you know there's a little girl on the front. She's the "Sunmaid." All right. My father wrote the copyright for that Sunmaid. And I remember he was going up to Fresno to meet with the man that was the head of the Sunmaid raisins and talk about this copyright, and because I was less than five years old, he could take me along and it wasn't going to cost anything and I had the advantage of having this wonderful ride up to Fresno. And we got on at night on the train and then we went up to Fresno and got off the next morning. It took us all night to get up to Fresno [Laughs.} now. And, before we got to Fresno, we had breakfast in the dining car and we had ham and eggs. I was really impressed with this dining car.

C: The trains are so beautiful... G: The train was marvelous. Yes. And so then we got off in Fresno and we went over to the

packing house. My father had his business with the man and...so what did he do with me? Well, there was a piece of rope that they had there in the packing house. My father said, "You know, just give her a piece of rope and she'll jump rope." And so they gave me a piece of rope and I jumped rope up and down the loading platform in the packing house. All the time that they were... perfectly happy. And when my father said I was going to jump rope. "Neat. I loved to jump rope!" So I just jumped rope up and down and up and down and up and down and after a while my father's business, and we went back and we got the train and went back to Los Angeles. But that was...

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C: What a memory! G: ...my connection was the copyright on the Sunmaid raisin package. C: Do you remember any of the farming and cattle raising and that kind of stuff going on

back then? G: Yes. Well, definitely. Now, this would be a memory of the Valley that went back probably

before 1920. But my...this foster grandfather gave my parents a pear orchard in Little Rock. It was a five-acre pear orchard and to go there...neither my mother or my father ever drove so this foster grandfather would load us all in his Model-T Ford and we would go out along San Fernando Road and now my husband has asked me do I remember where San Fernando Road was. Well, I remember San Fernando Road when it was a dirt road and had eucalyptus trees on both sides, and it went up that side of the Valley. And then when you go out through a canyon...and get up to Little Rock. And I don't know whether you know where Little Rock is. You know where Palmdale is? Name of canyon going toward Palmdale is what?

C: Yes. G: And...all right. Little Rock is not very far from Palmdale. Have you ever heard of

Pearblossom? No? C: Yes. Yes. I've been through Pearblossom. G. All right. All right. Little Rock was the original little town in there. And it had pear orchards all

through it, and so when they built the new school...the new school, which would be maybe about 1925, they named that school Pearblossom. I remember the old Little Rock School, which was...I could even draw you a sketch of how it looked. But those were all pear orchards there, and so we went up frequently there, but we went through the San Fernando Valley on San Fernando Road when it was a dirt road, and it was a long trip and it took us hours and hours and hours to get up there. I think we went twenty miles an hour or something like that. And it was...it was all farming country.

Oh, I have another good farm story, if you're interested in farming? C: Yes. Yes. G: All right. My parents had friends whose name was Sharp, and they had a large family of

children. I think they had about six children...yeah, six children, four boys and two girls and so they bought a little ranch...one of these little ranches out in San Fernando Valley, acreage. And they were going to make their living out there, and they had some goats...and milked the goats and goat milk was very good for the children. More and more people moved in and they objected to the goats and Mrs. Sharp was so worried and she said, "What are we going to do?" And her husband said, "The Lord sent us out here to San Fernando Valley and the Lord will

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provide, and even if these neighbors don't want...to get rid of us because of our goats...we don't want to get rid of the goats and the Lord will provide." Well, it turned out that somebody came out and wanted to trade a place in Signal Hill for this ranch out in the San Fernando Valley. So the Sharp's traded. And they went down to Signal Hill...to this ranch in Signal Hill, and within a couple of weeks they struck oil. And the Lord provided an income for the rest of their lives. [Laughter.]

C: Wow! G: Isn't that a neat San Fernando Valley story? C: That's something. G: Yeah. That must have happened right around 1950 or '60, something like that. C: Wow! G: The last I heard they still had...the oil was still being pumped out of their Signal Hill place. C: So you were mentioning something about the pioneers attitude towards people moving

into the area? G: Well, as long as I can remember, Californians really were very friendly and we always

welcomed people from out of state. We got used to enjoying all kinds of people. We didn't bother where they came from. And this was my parents attitude and this is the way that we were brought up and a stranger was a stranger for not more than five minutes...And in Los Angeles, it was a very friendly city and...The streetcar conductors all knew us by name. They would know where I was, you know...I'd make the same trips back and forth alone, as a small child...

C: That was... G: ...and they'd know where I was going to get off and we'd chat with each other and they'd

always stop at the right place. In fact, they would...The street jogged a little bit and we knew which side of the jog was more convenient for me so they stopped the car where it was more convenient for me to get off there...at the regular car stop nobody would think anything of that. And I remember my mother's friends, all the ladies would drive electric cars. The men drove gasoline car, but the ladies drove electric cars.

C: Why was that? G: I don't know. It's just the way it was. I don't know. C: They didn't go as fast?

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G: They were... C: They were messy? G: Well, that was one thing. There was absolutely no fumes or anything like that with them, and

they were all fitted up with little cut glass vases so that you'd always put flowers in your little electric car. And they didn't have a steering wheel. They had something more like a tiller...

C: Yeah ... G: ...and they didn't hold as many people. There was the driver's seat and then there was a seat

for two passengers back here. And then, I can't remember how...how if folded, but there was some kind of a folding seat so you could fold it up and sit beside the driver if you really...if you wanted four people in there you could do it, but otherwise that was folded out of the way. If I thought hard enough, I'd probably...probably went down on its knees like this and put it up against the front of it, but usually, when I was going anywhere in an electric car, why there was the driver, which was not either of my parents, and then probably mother and I would sit in the back or maybe my mother, my brother and I would sit in the back seat and...I don't remember that little jump seat... but I do remember they always had flowers in cut glass vases in the electric cars. It was just a lady's car, that's all.

C: What were some of the materials and oh, maybe house furnishings and things like that

available in the area at that time? G: Well, as I was saying, I lived in an affluent neighborhood, so there were some very elegant

homes there. Oriental rugs were the thing that everybody had; oriental rugs. I remember beaded portieres were...if you wanted to separate...for instance, here we have a living/dining room thing, but if you wanted to separate the dining area, then you'd have the beaded portieres hanging down. And they were made by taking eucalyptus pods...string a little eucalyptus pod to a bead, a little round glass bead, another two beads and then another eucalyptus pod and so on and so forth all the way up. And then...so you'd have this beaded portiere that would separate parts of the house.

On the staircases they had some really beautiful woodwork. They had little dowels with little

beads and another little dowel and this would be blond, so you'd come down the stairs and you could look through this kind of wooden lace and see who was downstairs. [Laughs.] And there was a lot of stain glass was used. For instance, these high windows that we have around here, they had high windows, but those would all be the stained glass panes, and the...usually the living room was usually for the grownups and that was set aside. And the children would play in the [garbled]. And, let's see...and you usually go into a front entryway and then there'd be a hall and your living room would be over here and your dining room would be behind that, and then the kitchen would be behind that. And then the stairs would come here and go up to the upstairs bedrooms and...

A number of houses in that area were "Victorian/Victorian," and then a number of them were

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Turn-of-the-Century, which was a little more modern and ours was a bungalow, the "Green and Green" type, which was very, very modern. It was not the Victorian, it was not...it was a...Do you know what a "Green and Green" bungalow is? Well, it was a California...it originated in California...a very famous California style. And my house was just full of inventions because sometimes these inventors to pay my father off, would pay with an invention.

C: That's great. G: So we had...One inventor installed a special kind of a garage door. It was not an automatically

controlled garage door, but it was a garage door that had some things in it. We had a door that had a book case on the top of it, a desk in the middle, and an open-out compartment so you could you store photographs and documents in the bottom. This was all in a door, you know, you could open the door...

C: Like you’re sitting at the desk and someone opens the door for you. G: Yeah. But the whole thing functioned very nicely. We had sliding doors because my father had

written a patent on sliding doors and the sliding doors were in all different parts of the house... C: Those were odd then? Sliding doors were odd? G: Well...Oh, yeah, they were invented then, in this period ... well, I don't know whether sliding

doors per se were odd, but sliding doors that disappeared into a wall were inventions. The wall would be like this and the door would go in the middle of it and then we'd pull it with special kinds of hardware.

We had all kinds of folding beds. And then we had beds that came down out of the wall and

we had beds that would slide into the wall and then you go around the end and there's a door and you go up two steps and you had a little closet on top over the bed compartments, so you had your bed and your closet and you could get the bed completely out of the...out of the room. This was...my bed room was like this, so you had a sitting room out here. The desk and everything like that, but at night, you'd pull your bed out from under the closet and sleep on it.

C: What a space saver! G: Yeah, it was. All sorts of little things like that. And lots of window space! This much window

space, maybe more than that you have in this room. And my parents...and that was very modern. That was...that was...I think that must have been a part of the "Green and Green." We had windows on four sides of the living room and then on the other wall, that was where the rest of the house...now we got to the rest of the house, but it was...it was really very delightful and exciting.

My husband was talking about...he didn't know how long it took to get go Hawaii. Well, when

we went to Hawaii, it was in 1924, it took seven days on the Calawaii and it was a wonderful trip. I just loved it. And then, of course, we were amazed when a couple of years later when

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they had another ship that got over there in five days. Five days. It took us seven. And now, of course, you fly to Hawaii and almost meet yourself coming back...

C: Right. It just a few hours. G: Yes, it's so quick. C: I'm running out of tape though. G: Well, yes. Probably that's about as much as you needed [Note: Music ends interview.] [End of Interview]