If you could peel back six or seven decades, what would life in Pleasanton be like?
You don’t need to rely only on your imagination for this time-travel, thanks to a special gift from a group who grew up in Pleasanton. Fourteen of the original 38 members of Amador Valley High School Class of 1946 gathered for their 60th class reunion this fall, bringing with them a document entitled “A Walk Through Pleasanton, Circa 1930-46.” This group memoir was presented to the Amador-Livermore Valley Historical Society by Bill Trimingham, former student body president of AVHS and current editor of the group project, assisted by Harriet Nilson Causey and Ruth Lee Boyd Cook.
Of the 38 teenagers who graduated in 1946, 11 had been together since their first-grade class a dozen years earlier, so it is not surprising that the survivors are particularly close. Some of the class members still live in Pleasanton or Northern California, but others traveled quite a distance to attend the reunion. Trimingham drove down from his home in Seattle. Alyce Quaglia Feeney, who flew in from where she now lives in Louisville, Ky., observed, “It seems so crowded here now .I liked it better when it was just open fields and what have youñ-there was a dairy farm over here and vineyards over there, and you just had more room. Now there’s no room: Too squeezed up!”
Bob Morrow, who now lives in Austin, made his first trip back to Pleasanton in 60 years. He had transferred to Amador as a junior and recalled, “When my family was transferred up here, I was upset, because we’d gone to a large high school in Long Beach, California, where I was involved in track and field, and they didn’t have that here then. I was disappointed at first, but once we started going to school, I thought it was great living here.” Like many of his male schoolmates, Morrow enlisted in the military, then attended college. For most of his career, he was living in Saudi Arabia.
Thirteen of the 38 classmates spent an afternoon at Museum On Main, recording their memories as part of the museum’s ongoing local history project. Those privileged to hear their recollections might be envious of the era in which this group grew up in the very small town of Pleasanton.
“We knew everybody,” Trimingham said. “We knew their grandparents, we knew the dog and cat.”
“I think living in a small town such as Pleasanton, where we all knew each other and where we were sort of kept in line by the town in general, in some respects, was a great advantage,” said Harriet Nilson Causey. “There was so much kindness and thoughtfulness in the town, and they supported us in all our endeavors, and that carried through the rest of life in the last 60 years. It gave you a sort of background of confidence and the ability to get along wherever you were. I have great fondness for Pleasanton.”
That background of confidence helped Causey when she was a Navy wife, traveling to many places for more than 20 years before moving to Groveland in Tuolumne County.
A bygone era
There were only two schools in town in the 1930s and ’40s: Pleasanton Grammar School, a three-story stucco building serving kindergarten through eighth grade on the hill at Abbie and Second streets (where Amador Valley Adult and Community Education offices and Village Continuation High School classrooms are now) and Amador Valley High School, a two-story building that included the current theater on Santa Rita Road.Between those two campuses, Main Street looked very different, as described in “A Walk Through Pleasanton.” With no freeways nor shopping malls, Pleasanton’s downtown had to supply virtually all the residents’ needs. As children, members of the Class of 1946 were familiar with the town’s last blacksmith shop (at the corner of Main and St. John streets) and the winery (further west on St. John Street). A striking faÁade at the southwest corner of Main and Division streets was the livery stable, painted in a checkerboard design, with paint provided by the Ralston Purina Feed Co., whose packaging featured the same red-and-white pattern. Housed inside that building was the water wagon to keep the dust down.
“By the time we graduated, most of the streets were paved,” said Causey, “but when we were little, the side streets were dirt.”
For recreation, there was the Roxie Theater, Al Johnson’s Pool Hall, and Nevin’s Pavilion–all located on the west side of Main Street, between St. John and Angela streets.
“When the epic movie “Gone with the Wind” was released in 1939, the Grammar school scheduled all of its upper classes to get out of class to see the special showings of the movie–a very progressive act for those days!” noted the group memoir, which also mentioned the Sunday matinees at the Roxie, including “serials.” These were short, 15-minute adventure films that would continue the story every week for perhaps 15 episodes. Titles were such as ‘The Clutching Hand” or “Flash Gordon.” At the end of each episode, the hero would be facing almost certain demise, and it titillated you to come again the next Sunday to see how he got out of it! (He always did.)”
At Main Street and Rose Avenue was a pool hall (where Pastime Pool Parlor still exists). Although alcohol was served, minors were allowed in to play pool or watch older men play cards. South of the pool hall stood Nevin’s Pavilion, which was the site of dances and also used as a roller-skating rink. The Class of 1946 did without a gymnasium during their high school years, so basketball practice also was held in Nevin’s Pavilion.
Families could buy clothing, hardware, appliances, furniture, fabric, gasoline, groceries, lumber, livestock feed and even live baby chicks right on Main Street. They could use the services of barber and beauty shops, garage-machinery repair shops, doctors’ offices, a drug store, shoe repair and shoe-shine places, laundry facilities, bakeries, restaurants, a dime store and a saloon. There was a Chrysler-Plymouth agency on the south end of Main Street where families could buy new cars. Another shop even specialized in fishing flies.
Despite all these shopping opportunities downtown, housewives did not have to leave home to get most of their household needs. Pleasanton had three dairies, and door-to-door delivery was available for their milk and other products. Vegetables, meat, blocks of ice, and even cases of soft drinks were sold door-to-door, according to the group memoir.
“Mr. Delucchi had a whistle on his truck muffler,” remembered Trimingham, “and he would toot it when he was making his rounds with fresh vegetables.”
As idyllic as small-town life may sound, Pleasanton was not exempt from the impact of World War II. The reunion participants were only in eighth grade when they heard the news on the radio of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Dec. 19, 1941 edition of “The Caballero,” the student newspaper of Pleasanton Grammar School, includes a report of the town’s first wartime blackout: “Pleasanton had its first blackout recently. Planes were reported over this area. The blackout was a total blackout in every respect. It lasted for about two hours.”
That blackout was the first of many ways the lives of the Class of 1946 would be affected by the war.
Trimingham, who was the editor of that grammar school paper, was one of the volunteers for lookout duty to watch for enemy aircraft.
“There was no radar yet, so a 24-hour-per-day lookout post was fashioned on the roof of the racetrack grandstand by the Ground Observer Corps of the Army Air Forces, IV Fighter Command,” he said. “Volunteers for the Ground Observer Corps, young and old, would sign up for four-hour shifts, and we would climb up and sit in a little shack atop the grandstand, watching the sky for planes.”
Any aircraft spotted would be reported by telephone from many such posts, and unauthorized planes would be quickly investigated by military interceptors. Perhaps this early volunteer role helped Trimingham decide to enlist in the service the spring of his senior year, after early graduation.
Population explosion
Although Pleasanton was not bombed, its residents were rocked by another kind of explosion: population. The small town of 2,000, surrounded by agricultural land, suddenly became a destination for 60,000 sailors on leave from three Navy bases built three miles north of town. Beside Camp Parks Naval Hospital, there was Camp Shoemake overseas replacement depot and a Seabees base. Just east was Livermore Naval Air Station, and from 1942-44, hundreds of pilots practiced their first take-offs and landings.“In my family’s case, we didn’t lock our doors,” remembered Betty Shanks Davilla. “One morning, we came down to the living room and saw a sailor’s hat on the couch. I guess he decided to leave–nobody saw him–but left his signature behind. Another time, someone came in and was lighting matches up the stairs–but I guess he decided this wasn’t the place for him.”
The daughter of the town doctor, Davilla was senior class president. She went on to UC Berkeley, but, she said, “I fell in love with a rancher.”
She still lives on the ranch between here and Castro Valley and makes frequent visits back to Pleasanton.
A glance through the 1946 Amador Valley High School yearbook shows the usual range of classes and activities–athletics, drama, music, clubs–but the graduates of 60 years ago also participated in War Bond sales, scrap metal collection competitions and other war-related activities. So many teachers were drafted for military duty that former teachers came out of retirement to fill the void. Causey remembers with awe one teacher named Emma Hawkins.
“She had to have been in her 70s. Chemistry, physics, biology–anything in the sciences she taught us. And one vacation she climbed Half Dome [in Yosemite].”
A changing workforce
The draft had also taken away the men who normally harvested local crops, so high school students went out to the fields to pick them.“It was mandatory,” recalled Elaine Secada Koopman. “You had to go unless you had a note from a doctor excusing you.”
“My father dropped me off on his way to work and picked me up on his way home,” said Edith Andersen, who had come to this country from her native Denmark and now lives in Albany. “I was in the field for a good eight hours. Lugs had to be filled to the top, not halfway, and we had to carry them.”
Teachers were sent out to supervise the student crop-pickers–a challenging role.
“Miss Hawkins used to go out in the field with us and try to maintain order with a bunch of unruly kids throwing tomatoes,” Trimingham said.
Causey recalled being paid 11 cents per 50-pound lug of tomatoes.
Most families did not have much money in those days, and many of the students worked part-time. Sacramento resident Emily Alves Rhodes in those days was not only girls’ basketball captain, she also was the one who every Wednesday folded the Pleasanton Times for delivery. Alyce Quaglia Feeney worked at the Roxie Theater as usher, cashier, and candy-counter salesperson. Trimingham worked in local gas stations when the price of gasoline was 17 cents per gallon, and oil cost 22 cents per quart.
“When we first got married, we didn’t have very much money,” Koopman said, “and we’d go out and pick walnuts so we could go to the movies.”
One panel member recalled the benefit of a small-town telephone system. “Winnie was the nighttime operator,” Causey said. “I’d ask her to send any calls for me to the place where I was babysitting.”
Causey still can remember her telephone number: 157.
The fire department was all volunteers, summoned by a siren atop the fire station on Railroad Avenue (soon to be the site of a fine arts center).
“My husband was a volunteer firefighter for 19 years,” said Koopman, now a resident of Murphys, Calif. “He’d always have his boots inside his pants [at bedtime], and he had it so he could jump out of bed and into his clothes and he’d be on his way. I always ran ahead to open the door because I was afraid he’d go through it.”
The police department consisted of the chief and one other officer, but soon, classmates recalled that there was a shore patrol member on every corner “to help keep order when the town was filled with sailors.”
The war halted the county fair, the racetrack, and professional sports, but even the war did not stop Hollywood, and one class member had the chance to appear in a movie.
“I was walking home from school on day by the old Rose Hotel [where Round Table Pizza is now}, and these two men came out and asked me if I’d be interested in being in a movie,” said Ruth Lee “Cookie” Boyd Cook, a high school yell-leader who thought they were just giving her a line. However, the men contacted her parents for permission, and she began her first job for pay.
“When they shot the movie “It Ain’t Hay” with Abbott & Costello, they didn’t bring the main stars up–they used stand-ins for those guys–and they used me for the little girl, as her stand-in. I dressed like she did and I had one really big shot where I was in a wagon and a train was coming. The wagon was on a turntable, and just as the train came, the turntable spun the wagon, so it looked like it had been hit.”
Currently a resident of Hathaway Pines in Calaveras County, Cook was recently given a copy of the movie as a gift from her daughter, who had tracked it down.
Pleasanton’s lasting impression
Although Amador’s Class of 1946 has scattered throughout Northern California and into eight other states, they still feel a genuine fondness for Pleasanton and the benefits it gave them.For Charles Palmer, Pleasanton introduced him to his future career. “Confucius made the statement, ‘If you find a job you like, you’ll never work a day in your life.’ Well, for me that was horse-racing, and I found it right here at the racetrack.”
Now a resident of Rail Road Flat in Calaveras County, Palmer served in the Merchant Marine, starting in his junior year, and later returned to serve as director of racing for the Alameda County Fair in 1999, replacing his mentor, Everett Nevin, who held that post for more than 60 years until his death at age 92.
“I think this was a wonderful place to grow up and also to raise our children here, because you knew everyone, and we looked out for each other and I think that’s so special,” said Norma Robey Scruggs, who married her classmate Robert Scruggs, a longtime Pleasanton educator (now deceased). Norma currently lives in Alamo, but all three of their children also attended Amador.
Rosemary Jones Westfall agrees that “knowing everybody,” was the best part of Pleasanton, “and I’ve lived here all my life.” Alice Butler Athenour, who has moved back to Pleasanton after many years in Sonoma, echoes the sentiment: “I think this is a wonderful place to live and grow up.”
“In high school, there were 160 students in the entire school,” Andersen said. “We knew all the students ahead of us. When we got to be seniors, we knew all the students below us. We were all friends and it was very nice. We’re lucky to have grown up in a small town.”
CAPTIONS: I will be glad to help with those, once you have decided what of the scanned-in material (and photos taken by Lani the day of the panel) you want to use. We can give photo credits to Bill Trimingham and Harriet Nilson Causey for the material they loaned us.
REUNION BONUS: FORMER TEACHER RETURNS
A surprise for many of the members of the Class of 1946 at their 60th reunion was the chance to visit with their former seventh-grade teacher, Harold Garden, whose son brought him all the way from Riverbank, Calif. to attend the gathering at Museum On Main.“I began teaching seventh grade in 1940,” Garden told his former pupils, joking, “I’m surprised at how old everyone looks while I remain the same.”
Just out of college when he began teaching, Garden told his 78-year-old former students, “You were the best class in the world. All my classes since that time have been measured against you. . . and they all failed!”
Garden went on to become a school administrator in Oakland before he retired. He still sends Christmas and birthday greeting cards to some of the Class of 1946.
MEMBERS OF AMADOR’S CLASS OF 1946
Asterisk denotes reunion participant; double asterisk indicates deceased.
Lawrence Allen William Joslin**
Edith Andersen* William Kaufmann**
Alice Butler Athenour* Elaine Secada Koopmann*
Frank J. Bonde Donald Lanini*
Yvonne Grimm Brittsan Robert Morrow*
Raymond Bush** Lucy Ann Tonelli Nunes**
T. Robert Byington Charles Palmer*
Isabel Silva Cattalini Nona Mae Nebel Porter
Harriet Nilson Causey* Maxine Crossland Regalia
Adeline Cienfuegos Emily Alves Rhodes*
Robert Coito** Robert Scruggs**
Ruth Lee Boyd Cook* Norma Robey Scruggs*
Betty Shanks Davilla* Mary Reasoner Shawnesey**
Millie Fields Davis Dorothy Shotwell**
Alyce Quaglia Feeney* Alethea Silva Stalling
Carl Frudden Ruth Koopmann Taylor
Arnold Guasco William E. Trimingham*
Albert “Skip” Haight** Eugene Vargas**
Olen Hollon Varla Watts**
Betty Lee Huested** Rosemary Jones Westfall*
MY, HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED! For their 55th class reunion in 2001, the Class of 1946 compiled the following comparisons: [NOTE ñ Jeb photocopied this chart, if there’s room] # # #
