January 09, 2004

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Publication Date: Friday, January 09, 2004

Life over the courthouse

Life was good for Angeline Cahalan and her three children - Bernice, Clifford and Ruth - when they moved to Pleasanton in 1936.

"Judge (Charles A.) Gale had approached me with the offer of a position," wrote Angeline in 1969. "I can truly say the 13 years spent there through much of my children's grammar and all of their high school days were the happiest of my life, though it was here we struggled through World War II."

She worked for Judge Gale's law firm at 62 W. Neal but the best part for her was that the job included living quarters - a spacious four-bedroom apartment right over the offices. It was across from the old Southern Pacific Depot, and the children would count the cars on the trains as they went by.

At that time the Pleasanton Justice Court was located there also. "The court was right under my bedroom and my sister's bedroom," recalled Bernice Cahalan Crane, now 80 and living in Windsor. "The law offices were under my mother's room, the living room and my brother's room." Bernice, the oldest, was 12 when they moved, and she recalled being happy to leave Oakland for the small town of Pleasanton and the roomy apartment.

This arrangement allowed Angeline, a single mother, to be available for her children.

"If we needed something urgently after school, we could knock on her window and she could find out what the scoop was," said Bernice.

The residents of the small town also kept an eye on its children, as Bernice discovered when she checked out a copy of "Anthony Adverse" from the library; the bestseller published in 1933 was considered a bit racy at the time.

"The librarian told my mother," she recalled, "and I couldn't check anything out after that unless the librarian gave me permission."

No event was too small for the town newspaper. "The Pleasanton Times used to write if I even went to visit my aunt in Berkeley," said Bernice. "'Bernice Cahalan is visiting her aunt in Berkeley for three or four days,' it would say, and give all the details." Her marriage at St. Augustine's Catholic Church after graduating from nursing school was a big story.

Bernice also remembers the old Fiesta del Vino, held in the 1930s. "They closed Neal Street off, and the Ferris wheel was right by my window," she said. "It was hard to sleep!"

Angeline also made note of the festivals in her written memories. "Our street was closed off for dancing in the street with a platform for the band, people milling up and down the sidewalk, and my door which was right on the street was left unlocked for any of us who were scattered around, to run up for a cup of coffee or such," she wrote. "What delightful memories!"

She also found her work enjoyable. "The legal work in a small country law office is necessarily very diversified," she wrote. "Sometimes Judge Gale would have me appointed court reporter when it was impractical to wait for one from Oakland, which meant a nice addition to my income for only a couple of extra hours of work."

Bernice remembers that when a trial was held for a high school boy accused of murder, she and her friends lay with their ears pressed against her bedroom floor to listen. "We could overhear what they were saying," she said, although she does not remember the outcome of the trial.

Bernice graduated from Amador Valley High School in 1940. It was that October that the family bought its first car, a Willys-Knight, for $20, from an out-of-town secondhand car dealer who used to bring Angeline papers to notarize.

Angeline also wrote about when war was declared on Dec. 8, 1941; the following November, Cliff, only a junior in high school, told her that he wanted to enlist. Angeline asked Judge Gale for advice. "He pointed out that he would no doubt be called before he finished school anyway and by enlisting he could choose the branch of service he wished so I consented," she recalled. He enlisted before Thanksgiving in the Army Air Corps.

"Soon after Cliff enlisted, his high school teacher stopped at the office to make sure I, with Ruth, would attend the high school affair taking place that evening at the American Legion Hall when the Army Air Corps song was going to be played by the band in honor of Cliff, the first of their boys to enlist." She also recalled the "glorious wire" on Nov. 9, 1945, informing her that Clifford was safely home from the war.

However her son was killed in a crop dusting accident eight years later.

"At the time he died I was overseas in French Morocco," said Bernice, whose husband at the time was with the U.S. Government, which was building air bases in North Africa. "My mother came to stay with us for a year and she was able to visit Europe on the way home."

Angeline lived with her daughter Ruth for several years toward the end of her life, and she died in November 1985 at the age of 96. Her great-niece, Sue Cheney, had settled in Pleasanton in 1971, where her husband Leonard had opened an orthodontic practice on Cedarwood Lane. As they raised their three children - Laura, 31; Ana, 28; Alex, 24 - Sue said she often thought about her great-aunt Angeline and the family connection here, and would drive by the building often, telling the children the story of her Aunt Angeline.

"I remember her as a vibrant, intelligent woman of great faith and good humor," Sue said. In doing family research, she came across Angeline's descriptions of her years in Pleasanton and brought them, along with photographs, into the Pleasanton Weekly.

"Since my great aunt left Pleasanton the exact month I was born," she added, "I somehow feel a certain amount of fate - or just plain serendipity - in our living here."
Pie-shaped building on Neal

The building at 62 W. Neal where Angeline Cahalan worked for Judge Charles A. Gale and lived in the upstairs apartment was built in 1884 as the P.V. Wenig & Co. meat market, said historian Charles Huff. It was typical in those days for a business to have an apartment upstairs for the owners. The architecture is commercial Italianate, and its truncated pie shape is unique in Pleasanton, said Huff. It is also unusual for using masonry rather than wood. The building housed the Bank of Pleasanton later in the 19th century and in the late 1880s became a law firm when T.W. Harris, who had married into the Wenig family, opened his offices there. Charles A. Gale joined his uncle T.W. Harris in the law firm in 1900. He presided as Justice of the Peace at the Pleasanton court at this site from 1930 until his retirement in 1953, according to his obituary run in the Pleasanton Times in 1958. His nephew William H. Gale Jr. continued to practice law in the building until his retirement in 1993, and the law practice continues. Double doors on West Neal served as the entrance to the Justice Court. The upstairs has been converted into offices.

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