San Joaquin County Historical Society & Museum

The Lodi Comets

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:03:26 +0000

How many women motorcyclists can you remember seeing? Not many, I'll wager. My own eyes were opened about five years ago after learning that one of my nieces motorcycled to and from classes each day while attending college in southern California. Every other motorcyclist I see nowadays seems to be female.

Lodi mayor Mabel Richey (right) honors Edith Ehrhardt (left) as “most popular and typical girl motorcycle rider” for 1953.

Actually, the historical record shows the existence of women motorcyclists for the better part of a century. And they've been riding their motorcycles here in San Joaquin County. Last week, I learned about a women's motorcycle club named the Lodi Comets, thanks to a scrapbook of theirs that a local motorcycle enthusiast has shared with me.

The book is filled with newspaper clippings and photographs, and it includes a copy of the organization's charter. According to that document, the Lodi Comets came into existence in January 1939 as an auxiliary of the all-male Lodi Motorcycle Club. The affiliate had two goals: "to promote better character and better sportsmanship." It apparently also had a third, unstated goal of promoting fun while members pursued their two major goals.

Most of the clippings are undated, so it's hard to tell precisely how tightly the Comets crowded their social agendas. However, they seem to have loaded it with dinners, dances, business meetings, game nights, "motorcycle polo," and excursions to locations within and outside California. They often socialized with men in the Lodi Motorcycle Club. In 1948, the Comets entered a float in the Grape Festival Parade, in which they placed third.

The Comets kept a clubhouse near Micke Grove Regional Park and won numerous safety awards. One of their most noted members was Edith Ehrhardt, the wife of a local police officer. In 1953, American Motorcycling honored her as that year's "most popular and typical girl motorcycle rider." Edith went on to become a poster child for Duckworth Cycle Chain, a maker of motorcycle chains, and her image appeared in publications throughout the United States.

The scrapbook ends suddenly, apparently in the 1950s. It's hard to tell from it precisely how long the Comets survived as an organization. However, the enthusiast who shared the scrapbook with me says that some of its early members are still alive.

A copy of the scrapbook can be found at the Museum, courtesy of its owner. The book stands as a delightful reminder that students of local history should brace themselves for unexpected discoveries whenever they venture into the past.

The San Joaquin County Historical Society welcomes gifts of photographs, recollections, and artifacts related to motorcycling and other sports in San Joaquin County's history.

Papa Was a Bootlegger

Charles Mariano — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:36:52 +0000

It was a Saturday night and Mama decided to pile us all into the old Plymouth and head off to the Starlight Drive-in to catch a movie. The Starlight was located right off the southbound 99 near Childs Avenue in Merced. I forget what time we made it back, but we were half asleep when Tio Boogie walked over to the car while we were parked in the driveway to tell us the news: "Papa was busted for bootlegging!"

Everyone in the family called my grandfather Augustine "Papa." He was born September 30, 1893, in Jacona, Michocan, Mexico. To me, Papa was always old. He'd be at all the family functions, eating, or sitting quietly, wearing his sweat-stained felt hat, blending into the wallpaper, almost invisible.

Sometimes I'd come home and find Papa asleep in sitting position on our living room sofa. I'd tiptoe by as quietly as possible because if I woke him up he'd jerk up angrily and cuss me out in Spanish. And if he was awake, he never smiled, he just looked at me like I was a bug. He was Mama's father, though, so I was always respectful.

The news of his bust shook our sleepy heads out of the clouds, especially Mama, whose face took on a frantic horror worthy of the spooky movie we had just seen. "Ay dios mio, what happened?" she asked, almost screaming. Right away, images of whiskey stills, organized crime, and G-Men flooded our senses. When you put the pieces together, though, such a thing happening to my harmless-looking, sixty-seven-year-old grandfather just didn't add up. Papa?

Papa looked like a homeless person as he scavenged through the alleys of Merced collecting bottles and cans in his beat-up wire cart with crooked wheels. He walked in a crouch, dressed in raggedy clothes, and wore thick Coke-bottle eyeglasses. Papa moved so slowly it took him thirty minutes to cover two city blocks.

Whatever hard living Papa may have experienced in his younger days, it had happened long before I was born. I'd heard stories from Mama or uncles and aunts that raised eyebrows, though. One was how he'd kidnapped Grandma Socorro from Mexico when she was thirteen and brought her to Merced. Other stories of his strict, sometimes violent behavior left severe resentment. When Grandma died in 1949, she made Mama promise not to bury Papa anywhere near her.

Despite whatever history he had, he was still Mama's father, and with the startling news of his arrest, the family went into panic mode. On March 23, 1961, the Merced Sun Star and the nearby Fresno Bee had front page stories on the scandal. One headline read: "Merced Man, 67, Blames Insomnia for Bootlegging." Next to the story was a picture of Papa sitting with both hands between his legs, while a detective knelt below him counting various-sized whiskey jars. Just below the picture was a small headline: "Homemade Hooch."

To say this was a total embarrassment to our family would be wrong. We were stunned, but our family was used to bad things happening, so it just added to the mix. Once the news of Papa's arrest sunk in, it became the scandalous hot topic of the week. There was something cool about having your grandfather arrested for running a whiskey still and having it splashed on the front page of the hometown newspaper. Eventually, the local police handed him over to the Feds. "Yeah," my brother said proudly, "Papa hit the big time."

Of course, we all felt bad that Papa was locked up and possibly headed to prison, especially since Mama stressed terribly over it. Maybe he was too old, or the authorities felt sorry for him because, despite the felonious nature of the crime, he was released about a week or two later. The circumstances were typically murky. Of course, Papa had to promise to give up his shady hooch operation and become an honest citizen. He was even quoted in the newspaper that he only sold the whiskey to pay his taxes.

From then on, I saw Papa in a different light. To start with, the beat-up cart and raggedy clothes were a total front. Beneath those thick eyeglasses and that slow-moving hobo exterior beat the heart of a crafty criminal. I'd watch him sitting in the living room now, all quiet and innocent, knowing he wasn't really sleeping but plotting the next big caper.

I learned many years later just how good Papa's homemade whiskey was. According to Boogie and Charlie, the whiskey he sold in pint-sized jars for two dollars a shot was the best anyone ever drank. "Even one of the cops in town came to Papa's house to buy his whiskey," Tio Boogie bragged. Papa had a ten-gallon copper cooker, barrels of mash, and a fruit press stashed behind the house.

"Papa used pickle and jelly jars, anything he could scrounge to fill with whiskey," Tio Boogie said, "He even wrote names on them like 'Tumbayaca,'" which roughly translates Knock the Indian Down. To this day, if I bring the bootlegging bust up to any older family member, they shake their head and smile. "Papa made the best stuff in town."

Toward the end, Papa was confined to a hospital bed. Mama placed his wire cart with the crooked wheels in her bedroom. I looked inside when she wasn't around to see what treasures he hauled in there. Two empty jars, a worn out picture frame, two cans of corn, an old tattered copy of a Mexican newspaper, and some rocks. The rocks, I'm sure, were to throw at the dogs in the alleys.

The big concern among some family members was knowing that he would die soon and not being able to pry Papa's secret whiskey recipe out of him. By then, stories about the quality of the hooch were legendary. Mama told me that Tio Boogie and Tio Charlie asked him for the secret over and over with a tape recorder at his bedside while he was weak and delirious, but he never gave it up. Knowing Papa, instead of revealing the secret ingredients he was probably cussing the hell out of them for trying. Papa took it with him. For some reason, I admired that.

As the decades melted away, the family's scandal of the century was almost forgotten. But every once in a while someone would bring it up during an event or gathering. Someone was always shocked and didn't believe it. Then a cousin or uncle would pull out a crumpled copy of the newspaper clipping and point out Merced's most famous bootlegging bust. The notorious crime wave we called Papa.

(Papa was buried on the other side Calvary Cemetery, far from Grandma Socorro, without a gravestone marker. Mama kept her promise.)

Charles Mariano was born and raised in Merced, California, and graduated from Merced High School in 1970. He is currently writing stories about growing up in the Central Valley for a book titled Piece Work.

Robert G. LeTourneau: Dean of Earthmoving

David Stuart — Wed, 29 May 2013 16:43:28 +0000

In an earlier posting (Feb. 8, 2012), I addressed the importance of Benjamin Holt in the history of earthmoving equipment. Another giant of the industry, Robert G. LeTourneau, also had roots in San Joaquin County. He doesn't have a prominent street in Stockton named for him and he is lesser-known. But he was no less important.

A Caterpillar 60 pulls a LeTourneau tracked telescopic scraper, ca. 1925.

In 1920, Robert G. LeTourneau (1888-1969) borrowed one thousand dollars and bought a used 1915 Holt 75 Caterpillar Tractor (like the one the Museum is now restoring), rented a Schmeiser scraper, and began grading farmlands in San Joaquin County.

In 1921, LeTourneau established a workshop in Stockton and began building and continually improving his own scrapers. For LeTourneau, "each model was a prototype; the successive model, the one that was supposed to be the 'working version,' contained enough improvements to be yet another prototype. And so it went for decades." (Randy Leffingwell, Caterpillar Dozers and Tractors, 1997)

From that little shop on Moss Avenue (now Ninth Street) west of McKinley (the old Highway 50 south entrance to Stockton), the prolific inventor received the first of his 299 patents—he is now recognized as the world's greatest inventor of earthmoving equipment. In 1929, he incorporated his business as R.G. LeTourneau, Inc.

LeTourneau completed many earthmoving projects as a contractor in the 1920s and early 1930s, including the highway from Boulder City, Nevada, to the Colorado River that enabled the building of Hoover Dam. In California, LeTourneau built the racetrack at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds, the Patterson Canal in adjacent Stanislaus County, the Lake of the Woods and Starr Bend levees near Marysville, the north approach to the Benicia railroad bridge, the Newhall Cut-off road, and the Santiago Dam in Orange County (at the time, the largest earthfill dam ever built).

When the company started to manufacture equipment for direct sale, rather than for the company's use, it outgrew its Moss Avenue workshop. In 1930, R.G. LeTourneau, Inc. moved to a new welded metal building in northeast Stockton, at the corner of East Roosevelt Street and School Avenue (between Wilson Way and Waterloo Road). Four years later, the company doubled the size of that plant and added a brick office building.

In 1935, Caterpillar Tractor Co. convinced LeTourneau to move its operations to Peoria, Illinois, near the Caterpillar plant—LeTourneau supplied many implements used by Caterpillar tractors and had a marketing agreement with Caterpillar Tractor Co.

R.G. LeTourneau, Inc. grew to become an international corporation with manufacturing plants in Toccoa, Georgia (established in 1938); Rydalmere, Australia (1941); Vicksburg, Mississippi (1942); and Longview, Texas (1946). LeTourneau was the president, chairman of the board, and chief engineer of R.G. LeTourneau, Inc. from 1929 to 1966. He also founded LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas.

Robert G. LeTourneau invented many earthmoving machines, including a number of scrapers, bulldozer blades, power control units and cable-operated machines, an electric wheel drive, and the two-wheeled Tournapull tractor. He was the first to use electric-arc welded construction and low-pressure heavy-duty rubber tires on scrapers. "A large percentage of earth-moving science and technology sprang from [LeTourneau's] mind. It grew from his fingertips and took shape under his welding torches. He often was years ahead of everyone else…." (Leffingwell, Caterpillar Dozers and Tractors)

Befitting LeTourneau's roots as an earthmoving contractor in San Joaquin County, well into his seventies he was often seen at the controls of one of his company's machines.

The Museum will present the Robert G. LeTourneau story as part of a long-term exhibition on the history of earthmoving equipment in San Joaquin County. You can now see the "preview" exhibition in the Museum's Brown-Jones Building, which includes perhaps the finest examples of LeTourneau's early equipment. If you would like to donate funds, ideas, stories, photos, or artifacts for the final exhibition, please comment or e-mail me at davidstuart@sanjoaquinhistory.org.

John McLeod: Overlooked Action Figure

Leigh Johnsen — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:53:35 +0000

Have you ever wondered where McLeod Lake, in downtown Stockton, got its name? I did. If you look at the Museum's earliest map of the Stockton area, which dates from the middle 1840s, you can see this very Scottish name right in the middle of what was then very Hispanic territory. How did this happen?

McLeod Lake, ca. 1900.

George Tinkham, the venerated early twentieth-century local historian, offers an explanation in his History of San Joaquin County (1923). He tells us that the lake got its name from a man named John McLeod. Tinkham also tells readers that McLeod was a trapper and a friend of Charles M. Weber, the founder of Stockton.

Historians Thomas Hinkley Thompson and Albert Augustus West give additional details. According to their History of San Joaquin County, California (1874), McLeod worked for the Hudson's Bay Company and in 1827 or 1828 led a trapping expedition from the Pacific Northwest into the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. In addition, they claim that McLeod and his group camped on the south side of French Camp Slough during that visit.

What else do we know about McLeod?

For one thing, he may have been a notable Canadian. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography includes an entry for a fur trader named John McLeod who was born in 1795 in the parish of Lochs, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, and arrived in Montreal, Quebec, at the age of twenty-one with a six-year contract to work for the North West Company, a fur trapping enterprise. Soon afterward, North West merged with Hudson's Bay Company, which became McLeod's employer for the next three decades.

McLeod's responsibilities included clerking, overseeing the fur trade, and exploring in the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, as well as the Northwest Territories. Over time, he gained the respect of coworkers and superiors. One report stated that McLeod had "steady habits of business and correct conduct" and described him as an "active well behaved Man of tolerable Education." It also found him proficient in the language of the Crees, with the ability to understand Chipewyan.

According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, McLeod set sail from British Columbia in 1838 on the Cadboro, a Hudson's Bay schooner, on a mission to search for company trappers lost somewhere in the Sacramento Valley. He found them with the help of Mexican officials and Russians, who were based at Bodega Bay. While there, he paused to discuss the fur trade with Ivan Antonovich Kupeianov, the Russian American Company's chief manager in Northern California.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography sees the record going silent soon afterward. In 1842, McLeod retired at the age of forty-seven and apparently returned to Britain. The date and place of his death are unknown.

So did John McLeod visit this area at least twice? Or were there, perhaps, two Hudson's Bay trappers of the same name who traveled here two separate times? Nobody seems to know.

Whatever the case, whichever person McLeod Lake honors should be seen as one of San Joaquin County's many unsung action figures. It doesn't seem inappropriate to consider the lake named after him as a monument not only to certain kinds of small, wild, valuable furry creatures once found here in abundance, but also to the wave of trappers whose presence helped blaze the path for European settlement shortly before the Gold Rush.

Museum Opens New Exhibit

The Editors — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:28:08 +0000

A new exhibit titled "Wherever There's a Fight: A History of Civil Liberties in California" has opened at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum. The traveling exhibit, rich with narrative and photographs, animates the history of civil liberties focusing on the hidden stories of unsung heroes and heroines who stood up for their rights in the face of social hostility, physical violence, and economic hardship.

Biddy Mason (1818-1891) won freedom from slavery in landmark 1856 California legal case.

"Wherever There's a Fight" is part of California Council for the Humanities' thematic program, Searching for Democracy. The exhibit is based on the Heyday Books publication Wherever There's a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California, by Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi (2009).

In both the book and the exhibit, four central themes are evident: civil liberties are essential for democracy; while civil liberties repeat over time, targeted groups change; civil liberties are in perpetual flux; and although the U.S. Constitution promises rights, every generation must fight for equality and justice to make them meaningful.

Thirteen interpretive panels of photographs and texts tell the stories of ordinary people capable of extraordinary acts, who fought violations of their civil liberties in California, reflecting the prejudices and political winds of the times.

These include Paul Robeson, who told the House Un-American Activities Committee, "You are the Un-Americans and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves." Anton Refregier's colorful murals, targeted for destruction by a 1953 Congressional inquisition but ultimately declared historically protected, depict true stories of Indians at the missions, anti-Chinese riots, and labor strikes. And in 1939, the Kern County Board of Supervisors banned John Steinbeck's instant best-seller, Grapes of Wrath, though six hundred readers had already put it on reserve.

"Banning books is so utterly hopeless and futile," says Kern County's librarian Gretchen Knief. "Ideas don't die because a book is forbidden reading."

Support for "Wherever There's a Fight" is provided by the Cal Humanities (CCH), whose thematic initiative, Searching for Democracy, is designed to animate a public conversation on the meaning of democracy today through a series of local, regional, and statewide humanities-inspired activities.

Funding is also provided by Exhibit Envoy, which provides traveling exhibits and professional services to museums throughout California.

"Wherever There's a Fight" will be on display at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum through June 16, 2013.

Ralph O. Yardley

Leigh Johnsen — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:23:05 +0000

My poor daughter. A lover of animals, she would often ask me as a child to make drawings of them for her. "Daddy," she would say, "draw me a cat." So I would grab my pencil and paper, sit down, and go to it. I don't remember her ever complaining, but her disappointment must have been great since everything I draw almost always ends up looking like either a dog or a truck.

I admire people with artistic talent, including my daughter, whose gifts have blossomed over the years. Another artist I admire is Ralph Yardley, a native Stocktonian who gained fame during the early years of the twentieth century as one of America's leading newspaper illustrators.

Title head for 1899 Stockton High School publication created by Ralph O. Yardley.

Back in 1987, Tod Ruhstaller, the chief executive officer of Stockton's Haggin Museum, put together a small, delightful book on Yardley titled Ralph O. Yardley: Stockton's Inkwell Artist Extraordinaire. The book starts with a brief biography of Yardley, who was born in 1878 to Stockton grocer John Yardley and his wife, Caroline. After graduation from local schools, Yardley junior moved to San Francisco, where he studied art at Hopkins Art Institute and Partington Art School.

Yardley started his professional career as an artist for the San Francisco Examiner. After a short stint with the San Francisco Chronicle, he moved to Hawaii and became staff artist for the Pacific Commercial Advertiser. In 1902, he returned to the mainland and for the next half-century worked for a number publications that included the San Francisco Chronicle, Bulletin, and Call; the New York Globe; Harper's Magazine; and Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. In 1922, the Stockton Record hired him as its resident artist. He stayed there for the next thirty years.

Yardley's portfolio included caricatures, special layouts, and editorial cartoons. I first learned about him through a series of cartoons he drew during the 1920s. He collectively titled them "Do You Remember?" Each installment depicted historic structures, sites, or events based on Yardley's memory and old photographs. So popular were the cartoons that they enjoyed a second run in the Stockton Record during the 1960s.

Two friends of the San Joaquin County Historical Museum were so taken with "Do You Remember?" that they faithfully cut out each daily installment, brought the cartoons together as collections, and gave them to the Museum for preservation. A collection of Yardley originals can also be found at the Haggin Museum.

All too often, we tend to exalt men and women who win battles, transform the land, or come up with inventions that help us control nature. Ralph Yardley is different. Yardley is one of many often-unsung heroes from the past who enriched the cultural life of his community through art. Stockton and San Joaquin County were better places then—and are better places now—because he lived here.

Visitors to the San Joaquin County Historical Museum can look forward to some of Yardley's art being incorporated into redesigned exhibits currently under development.

Where’s Mudville?

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:56:56 +0000

"The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day…." So begins "Casey at the Bat," the most famous poem in baseball history. It's the bottom of the ninth as the story begins, with two outs and two runners on base. Then "mighty Casey" steps up to the plate. Will he pull it off? Will the Mudville nine overcome the two-run lead of their opponents?

Not the Mudville nine: Members of the Woodbridge, California, baseball team, 1876.

Anyone who has read the poem knows the answer. But a burning question for the better part of a century has asked where Casey and his team were playing that day.

"Casey at the Bat" was written in 1888 by Ernest Lawrence Thayer under the pen name "Phin." A native of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Thayer had recently graduated from Harvard University. Among other accomplishments, he had edited the Harvard Lampoon and struck up a friendship with William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate. In 1886, Hearst had hired him as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner.

Thayer supposedly attended a number of baseball games in Stockton while working for Hearst. To many Stocktonians, his presence at the very least hints that the game took place here in San Joaquin County. Adding to the evidence are three players on the local team who shared names with counterparts in the poem and the unlikely coincidence that a game played in Stockton during the 1887 season featured someone similar to Casey and ended with the same score.

Besides, it's argued, Stockton in its early days was known as "Mudville."

Not everyone finds these arguments compelling. Across the Continent, in Holliston, Massachusetts, people see things differently, claiming their own town as the original Mudville. For evidence, they point to one of their neighborhoods known by that name since the 1850s, and they cite Irish names common to their baseball teams as well as the poem. In addition, they explain that Thayer's family not only kept a summer home just down the road in Mendon, but also owned a woolen mill about a mile away from Mudville.

So who's right? It's hard to tell. Thayer himself didn't really help matters with an assertion shortly before his death that "Casey at the Bat" had no basis in reality.

A couple weeks ago, a student in Massachusetts (yes, that Massachusetts!) sent me an e-mail. She wanted the final word: Was it Stockton or Holliston? Was she taunting me? In any case, what could I say? Call me a traitor if you will, but I ended up sharing both sides of the story. Then I admitted that I didn't know the answer.

I still don't know. But, really, how important is the location? Actually, I think it matters a lot, but not simply as a matter of local pride. To me, the argument over Mudville represents part of an important yearly ritual, one that awakens Americans each spring from a dreary winter and leads them to diamonds throughout the land in search of friendly rivalry and treasured memories.

In the end, perhaps "Casey at the Bat" tells us more about ourselves—wherever we live—than we've bothered to admit.

The author wishes to thank William Maxwell, archives manager at the Bank of Stockton, for his insights into local baseball and the poem "Casey at the Bat."

Grandma, What’s a Speakeasy?

Russ Livingston — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:51:31 +0000

Things that grandchildren of docents from the San Joaquin County Historical Museum—and other youngsters—will not do, recognize, or understand.

dialing a phone
a busy signal
a collect call
phone operators
steam engines
train whistles
train yards
the milkman

Lillian Gish, Clara Bow, Fatty Arbuckle, Jean Harlow, etc., etc., etc.
Our Gang:
Buckwheat and Stymie
Spanky really spanked
Laurel and Hardy
Martin and Lewis
movie and popcorn under a dollar
Saturday afternoon double feature with a cartoon and western serial

climbing from the back to the front seat of the car to sit between your mom and dad
lying down on the backseat of the car for a nap
lying down on the high shelf between the back seat and the rear window
getting your windshield washed and oil checked when you get gas
Ramblers, DeSotos, Studebakers, Packards, Nashes, Plymouths, Hudsons, MGTD’s
white wall tires
driving with your right arm around your girlfriend
drive-ins and “mushy roomy rooms”

black and white TV
Jimmy Durante, Mrs. Calabash
TV test patterns
Walt Disney smoking on TV
EVERYBODY smoking on TV
Perry Como
Steve Allen
Milton Berle
Heckle and Jeckle
Beanie and Cecil
Kukla, Fran, and Ollie
Soupy Sales
The Cisco Kid (Oooooh, Seees-co. Oooh Pancho…)
Reginald Van Gleason III
One of these days Alice, POW! Right in the kisser! Or, BANG ZOOM straight to the moon!
Karen! Cubby!
Why? Because we LIKE you.

walking to school
writing letters to friends
cursive
writing with a fountain pen
the ink well hole in your desk

smoking in restaurants
Fuller Brush Man
George Wallace
miscegenation
“White Only”
sit-ins
McCarthy and House Un-American Activities Committee
black lists
communists
Soviet Union, USSR
J. Edgar Hoover
Yugoslavia
every president between FDR and Clinton except Kennedy
The Korean War
the new 45 by your favorite singer
high school girls in dresses
girdles, snaps, and stockings
no shower in your house
Little Lulu and Tubby
Mutt and Jeff
Archie and Mehitabel
black dialect in kids’ books, especially “gwine”
Little Black Sambo
Bre’r Fox, Bre’r Rabbit, Bre’r Bear

taking pop bottles back to the store for 2 cents
all stores closed on Sundays
moms always wearing aprons
ALWAYS calling every adult “Mr.” or “Mrs.”
no fresh vegetables in winter (in the East/Midwest)
the sound of “Ka-CHING” on the carriage return on a manual typewriter
reel-to-reel tape recorder
floppy discs
the smell of burning leaves
camera film
Polaroid pictures
having a shelf of encyclopedias in your house
Pecos Bill smoking
Onward Christian Soldiers

Some people who read this list will think of additions, as many Museum docents already have. Please feel free to send me more entries at living101@gmail.com and I will continue to expand the list.

Russ Livingston is a retired K-8 principal and a docent at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum.

George Shima, “Potato King”

David Stuart — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:36:40 +0000

In an earlier blog, I addressed San Joaquin County's lesser-known Chinese-American "potato king," Chin Lung (January 25, 2012). Here's the story of the County's nationally known "potato king," Japanese-American George Shima.

Japanese immigrant Ushijima Seikichi, later known as George Shima, arrived in San Joaquin County in 1889 and worked his way from migrant laborer to farmer in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Shima's innovative farming techniques produced top-quality potatoes, which brought a premium price on the market. The soft peat soil was ideal for growing smooth-skinned, high-quality potatoes, and Shima perfected the sub-irrigation of the crop using narrow trenches, or "spud ditches," every thirty rows of potato plants.

Shima was a moderately successful potato farmer in the early 1900s, when he struck up an important friendship with Lee Allen Phillips, a Los Angeles attorney, financier, and Delta reclamation agent.

He and Lee Phillips…had a lot of confidence in each other. Phillips recognized Shima as the producer, the man who could grow things. Shima saw in Phillips the man who made the big deals in land, who got the backing.… [They] had a unique arrangement. Just two men, in mutual confidence, risking hundreds of thousands of dollars on the other fellow's honesty and reliability—Phillips, the dreamer, and Shima, the man who made a lot of dreams come true. (J. C. McCarthy, former superintendent of operations for Lee Phillips, Stockton Record.)

Phillips would purchase Delta land, arrange for construction of levees to reclaim a tract or island, then lease the land to Shima, who moved in crews of Asian workers to clear the tules and plant an initial grain crop. After that initial crop, potatoes were planted. Shima leased as many as fourteen thousand acres from Phillips.

George Shima (seated), with lieutenants Konkie (left) and Ito (right), ca. 1920.

By 1906, Shima was growing more potatoes than any other farmer in the world. He became famous nationally when the Stockton Record published a widely reprinted story on "the potato king."

Shima had three riverboats built in Stockton to transport his potatoes to the San Francisco Bay Area for wholesale distribution. Shima's lavish yearly entertainments for bankers, produce merchants, and journalists became legendary. He, Lee Phillips, and other capitalists financed the construction of the Stockton Hotel, the luxury hotel that still stands in downtown Stockton.

Shima first purchased—rather than leased—Delta farmland in 1910: eight hundred acres just north of the potato farm of the Chinese "potato king" Chin Lung on what is now known as the Shima Tract. A year later he bought eight hundred acres on McDonald Island, west of Stockton. His success, visibility, and these land purchases apparently contributed to the statewide agitation for the Alien Land Law, which a couple years later forbid Japanese from purchasing land and severely restricted land leasing.

Shima was a major stockholder in California Delta Farms, formed in 1912 by Lee Phillips through the merger of six Delta land companies. California Delta Farms owned 37,400 acres of Delta farmland.

In the 1920s, Shima had to dismantle his "potato empire" due to the Alien Land Laws. Shima became a leader in the fight against these laws. He was president of the national Japanese Association of America from 1908 through 1925, the most important leader for Japanese in the United States.

Shima also left a legacy of supporting students attending the University of California and Stanford University. He is memorialized in San Joaquin County by the Shima Center at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton.

The San Joaquin County Historical Museum had an exhibit on George Shima before I became executive director six years ago. We still get frequent requests from Museum visitors for directions to that prior exhibit. I hope we can again tell the Shima story in an exhibit in the near future. If you have ideas, artifacts, or photos that might be included, please e-mail me at davidstuart@sanjoaquinhistory.org.

The Rise of Mariano G. Vallejo

Leigh Johnsen — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:10:18 +0000

Most Northern Californians probably know about a community in the San Francisco Bay Area named Vallejo. They may also be aware that its name honors General Mariano G. Vallejo, an early California landowner in the Sonoma area. What many people don't know is that a connection exists between Vallejo and San Joaquin County. In fact, the County can be seen as the setting for an event that was crucial for the course of his career.

Mariano G. Vallejo late in life (ca. 1880).

Vallejo was born in 1808 to a well-placed Mexican family from Monterey, California. The son of a soldier, he spent most of his early years in the Monterey Presidio and got much of his formal schooling directly from the governor of Alta California. In 1824, he enrolled in the Presidio as a cadet. Soon afterward, the governor promoted him to the rank of corporal. Five years later—at the tender age of twenty-one—Vallejo held the post of second lieutenant in the Mexican army.

In 1829, Vallejo was given the task of subduing a rebellion among native Californians. He had under his command a contingent of more than one hundred Mexican troops. Indians from throughout the San Joaquin Valley had gathered under the leadership of Chief Estanislao, taken up arms, and dug entrenchments in or near what is currently Caswell State Park. By the time Vallejo and his soldiers arrived, Estanislao and his allies had already driven back another force of Mexican soldiers.

Analyses of the ensuing conflict differ. Some historians see Vallejo and his troops routing the Indians and forcing the survivors to take refuge in Mission San Jose. Another perspective, expressed in a previous post on this blog (December 14, 2011), sees the Native Americans victorious. Whatever the case, the bloodshed and destruction were great, and the encounter did nothing to slow the momentum of Vallejo's rise to power. In fact, later developments suggest that he actually benefited.

In 1833, Vallejo was appointed commander of the San Francisco Presidio, founded the town of Sonoma, and was granted Rancho Petaluma. One year later, he received an appointment to the highest military command in Northern California, the directorship of Colonization of the Northern Frontier. Bestowal of this authority enabled him to begin construction of the Sonoma Presidio and to form an alliance with Chief Solano of the Suisunes tribe.

By the early 1840s, Vallejo had become a key player in California politics under Mexican rule. But his fortunes declined rapidly after U.S.-backed forces declared the Bear Flag Republic in 1846. Two years later, the discovery of gold on the American River triggered a human tsunami that diluted the power of leading Californios like him and forced them to expend fortunes in defense of their land titles. In 1890, at the time of his death, Vallejo's influence had shriveled and his once-vast landholdings had dwindled to one small two-hundred-acre ranch.

Nobody can say for certain what would have happened if Vallejo hadn't led his troops into battle against Estanislao. It's probably safe to assume that the history of California and its Native Americans would have differed somewhat. I can't help wondering also whether Vallejo's ascent to power would have been quite so steady or rapid without the afterglow of notoriety he seemed to gain as a result of that encounter.