Drayton: ... Tennessee Valley Road, regarding your long tenancy in the Tennessee Valley, and their life there as dairy ranchers.
[00:00:30] Being interviewed and have it not on tape, but as I think I said to you on the phone, this is an interview to collect history about the Tennessee Valley, obviously in general, and in particular about your family's involvement with dairy ranching here. And this information will be used for park interpretive programs.
I don't know if I said this to you on the phone or not, but right now over in the Marin Headlands, they do lots of tours about the military history, but they know precious little about the ranching history, which is actually longer. And so, we're trying to make up for that a little bit [00:01:00] by having a couple of oral history interviews with folks. I transcribe it, or at least index it, and that information goes back out to park interpreters. So, hopefully they can include that ...
Mrs. Silva: [crosstalk 00:01:10] that information a couple times to different ones that went by here, but they never did bother.
Drayton: Yeah, well, [crosstalk 00:01:18] they get busy, or they're interested, but they haven't been trained in how to ...
Mrs. Silva: Well, then this part doesn't interest them any.
Drayton: Which is surprising to me.
Well, anyway, now I should get you guys ... If you don't mind, I'm going to [00:01:30] ask you to scoot forward a little bit. I should move this closer to you. Or else I hear my big voice, and you're way off in the background. Theoretically, no one cares about me.
First of all, just tell me a little bit ... I guess we'll start with you, because your maiden name was Pimento?
Mrs. Silva: Pimentel.
Drayton: Pimentel. Okay. And you've been in the valley how long?
Mrs. Silva: I was born in that front house. And my mother was born in that front house. So that's ... Let's see, she died at 92. And the house was built in [00:02:00] 1878. I think that's it, 1878. My grandparents built the house.
Drayton: My goodness. And so your grandparents ...
Mrs. Silva: So there's five generations in that house that have been born in that house.
Drayton: That's fantastic.
And then your daughter's continuing to live in now.
Mrs. Silva: My daughter lives there and her ... Well, her children ... They're living there, but they're not married or anything. But that's-
Mr. Silva: [inaudible 00:02:21].
Mrs. Silva: Well, the fifth generation. Yeah. 'Cause her kids were born ... Well, I had mine, of course. My mother and [00:02:30] all them were born right in the house. And then when we got married, we moved in there and I had my daughter, but it was in the hospital, but then I came right back to the house.
And my daughter was the same thing. She had hers, and then she moved in because we moved over here. And now her kids are living there.
Drayton: And then you, Mr. Silva, you're from this area, too?
Mr. Silva: No, I came over in '32.
Drayton: From Portugal?
Mr. Silva: No.
Drayton: No. Oh, [00:03:00] Silva. I was thinking ...
Mr. Silva: Santa Clara.
Drayton: From Santa Clara. And is your family also ... I assume both of your families are from the Azores originally?
Mr. Silva: Yes, mine. Uh-huh (affirmative). [inaudible 00:03:10].
Drayton: And was your family a dairy ranching family in Santa Clara then?
Mr. Silva: Yeah, many years ago, when we moved to Fresno. Then I came over here. I was 20 years old, I guess. My godfather had a dairy down at the bottom of the last ranch down there. Martin.
Drayton: Oh, you're a Martin? [00:03:30] Oh! Or related to the Martins.
Mr. Silva: Yeah. Well, he was my godfather.
Drayton: Oh. Well, Godfather, right. Oh, interesting.
Mr. Silva: Martin and Bettencourt. They had a partner. Matter of fact, his son lives in Lodi now. And Bettencourt's son just passed away.
Mrs. Silva: Last week.
Drayton: I heard that. I heard that from Laura, Mrs. Lopez.
And Bettencourt would be spelled ... 'Cause I was writing that down with Mrs. Lopez's interview. I assume it's B-E-T-T-E-N-
Mr. Silva: C-O-U-R-T.
Drayton: ... C-O-U-R-T? Okay. And Martin, just the way it sounds?
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: All right. And, of course, [00:04:00] I know how to spell your name.
And Pimentel? P-I-M-
Mrs. Silva: P-I-M-E-N-T-E-L.
Drayton: Right. Okay. I got that.
Let's concentrate on your family for a little while. What brought the Pimentels to this area?
Mrs. Silva: Well, my grandparents, their name was Seamas.
Drayton: You want to spell that for me?
Mrs. Silva: S-E-A-M-A-S. Guillermo was my grandfather's name, Seamas. Well, he came from the old country. And his brother, I believe, came from the old country about the same time.
Then how they happened to buy this property or anything, that I don't know. 'Cause [00:04:30] all I know is ... All I can remember is my grandfather. I can't remember, you know. But the house was there. Oh, I can remember that house because I was raised there, too. And we had an orchard out in front here. Of course, as things went on, that disappeared. And, let's see ...
Drayton: Had they been dairyers at all in the Azores?
Mrs. Silva: I don't know.
Drayton: 'Cause I know that land is ...
Mrs. Silva: I don't know. I don't know what they did. I think my dad was a whaler.
Drayton: Of course, that's makes lots of sense.
Mrs. Silva: And I don't know what [00:05:00] my grandfather did back there. I don't have any idea what he ...
Mr. Silva: That's about all they could do back then.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, that's all I ...
Drayton: Did they come to America via Boston, Massachusetts-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: Rhode Island, or just come direct immigration?
Mrs. Silva: No, my dad came into San Francisco somehow or other.
Drayton: Oh, so your dad ... Wait a minute. I'm getting confused.
Mrs. Silva: My dad came from ...
Drayton: Your dad-
Mrs. Silva: He came from the Azores.
Drayton: ... was from the Azores.
Mrs. Silva: And he was a whaler over there. And then he ... Well, when he met my mother and ...
Drayton: And it's your mother's family [00:05:30] that ...
Mrs. Silva: That owns this-
Drayton: Got it.
Mrs. Silva: ... this place. It was my mother's family that owned this.
Drayton: Right. So your ... So just to make sure I get all these names right because I know this will show up on the tape. Just so I'm following along here.
Your paternal grandparents were Shames or -
Mrs. Silva: Seamas.
Drayton: Seaman.
Mrs. Silva: S-E-A-M-A-S.
Drayton: And then your mother's ...
Mr. Silva: [inaudible 00:05:52].
Drayton: Can you [inaudible 00:05:54].
Mrs. Silva: My mother's name was Seamas.
Drayton: Seamas.
Mrs. Silva: Before she married my dad, [00:06:00] which was Pimentel.
Drayton: Okay. So your dad's family came from the Azores.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, so did my grandparents. All of them had come from the Azores.
Drayton: Ah! But your mother was born here.
Mrs. Silva: Yes.
Drayton: Your father was born in the Azores.
Mrs. Silva: Yes.
Drayton: All right.
Mrs. Silva: My mother was born there. Okay. And my father was born in the Azores and he came over here. And I don't know what year he came. I do have papers somewhere showing what year he came in.
And then they settled here. And at that time then the dairy business had started. Because I still don't know, to this day, I don't remember, other than seeing my grandfather [00:06:30] work in the gardens out here, vegetable garden and things like that. I don't know how they made a living before that. I have no idea. Because then I can ...
Then my dad moved in over here at the dairy.
Drayton: There was a dairy across the road, right?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, that's where my dad was.
Drayton: And that was ... Oh, that was the Seamas?
Mrs. Silva: No. No, no, no. That was [Borges 00:06:48]-
Drayton: The Borges.
Mrs. Silva: ... owned the place, but my dad rented that place for, what was it, how many years?
Mr. Silva: Oh, he was there for ...
Mrs. Silva: About 40 years.
Drayton: Oh, I see.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, he-
Drayton: And that's how your parents met?
Mrs. Silva: I guess. I don't know.
Drayton: They were [00:07:00] neighbors.
Mrs. Silva: No. I don't know how they met.
Mr. Silva: A tide used to come into where the school is now. And we used to have hay come in on barges, and they used to ... Tugboats would be out there, and they'd tie it to a big Eucalyptus tree. I think it's still there.
Drayton: Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Silva: And then they'd unload the hay there.
Drayton: And that's silted in now, is that it?
Mrs. Silva: That's where all this flat, all these houses are.
Drayton: Oh, they filled it all in.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, that's all filled in.
Mr. Silva: All these trees out here. I used to plant potatoes in those trees. See they'd grow along the road there.
Drayton: You've seen a lot of changes around here.
Mr. Silva: Oh, God.
Drayton: Yeah.
Mr. Silva: [00:07:30] You know, there-
Drayton: Some not too good.
Mrs. Silva: No.
Mr. Silva: Some is not so good.
Drayton: Sure. So then this was a working dairy ranch from, should I say 1878 on or-
Mrs. Silva: No. No because ...
Drayton: If the house was built in '78, or was the-
Mrs. Silva: Yes.
Drayton: ... house here ...
Mrs. Silva: No, they built the place themselves, and I guess they added on. That's all I can ... As I said, that's all I can say because I don't know anything back beyond that ... is I don't know how they made their living. And it was just ... I don't know. I have no idea.
Drayton: Did your-
Mrs. Silva: They supported themselves. And I don't [00:08:00] know. My grandfather never worked. I mean, I was five years old or something when he died, but he never worked. I mean, he worked, yes, around here, they get all their own ...
Drayton: Hire at [crosstalk 00:08:10].
Mrs. Silva: They had their own gardens and everything. And I guess I don't remember him ever working out. And then other than that ... And my dad had the dairy there and, of course, he worked there all those years on the dairy. And he'd walk back over, go across. There was no willow trees there or anything, so [crosstalk 00:08:28].
Mr. Silva: There was a street right across the road.
Mrs. Silva: There was a road right across.
Drayton: [00:08:30] This Tennessee Valley Road did exist, although it was probably not paved until ...
Mrs. Silva: No, it wasn't paved.
Mr. Silva: I used to-
Drayton: But it was the road that did go up into-
Mrs. Silva: Yes, that did go-
Drayton: ... the other-
Mrs. Silva: ... to the other valley. Yes-
Drayton: ... the other Martin and Bettencourt.
Mrs. Silva: Right. It's the same road.
Drayton: And [Cunias 00:08:41].
Mr. Silva: I drove the horses here. It's a great ... this road here, from the ... That was all the milk down over the ... First it was right off of the highway, when it got to the highway. And then they moved the platform from there, and then put it over across where ...
Mrs. Silva: Where the heliport is now.
Mr. Silva: Richardson Bay Bridge. Right here, on the corner there.
Mrs. Silva: Where the [00:09:00] heliport-
Drayton: You were selling to [Marin Dell 00:09:03]?
Mrs. Silva: To Marin Dell.
Mr. Silva: Dairy Delivery.
Mrs. Silva: Dairy Delivery at the time. My dad first started with Dairy Delivery, and then ...
Mr. Silva: Marin Dell wasn't existing yet.
Mrs. Silva: No, it was Dairy Delivery to begin with. And then it was Marin Dell.
Mr. Silva: Later in years.
Drayton: Now your dad came from Portugal. Your mother was born here.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: Portuguese was obviously your father's first language.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: Did your mother also speak Portuguese?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yes. I'm sure. We all did.
Drayton: And were you brought up speaking Portuguese?
Mrs. Silva: Yes. Uh-huh (affirmative).
Drayton: So was there a strong tendency [00:09:30] to retain Portuguese customs and traditions and Christmas?
Mrs. Silva: Yes, some parts. Yes. We still do. We still belong to the Portuguese lodges and things like that. Oh, yeah.
Drayton: I'm curious because there does seem to be some difference between what traditions were held onto here in this area, versus. Say, up in more rural areas. So like what of the old traditions were kept up, and what were sort of ...
Mrs. Silva: No, we still go by our old traditions.
Drayton: The Holy Ghost, I assume?
Mrs. Silva: The Holy Ghost-
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: ... yes. And then ... Yeah, there ... [00:10:00] times, too, I mean.
Mr. Silva: I belong to a Portuguese Lodge. So our seal, which has the Holy Ghost every year. I was president for 16 years.
Drayton: Oh, my goodness. Did you ever have a daughter that was a queen?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yes. Uh-huh (affirmative). I had my daughter. I was queen three times. My daughter was queen once. My granddaughter was queen twice. So we've had ... We've been very involved.
Drayton: Yeah. It [crosstalk 00:10:26] adds up too.
Mrs. Silva: This year hasn't been as bad, but [00:10:30] when the girls were old enough, you know, they wouldn't to be queen or anything. They were kind of ... You didn't have to worry about getting the kids dressed to go in the parades and things like that. You kind of backed away from it.
You didn't actually back away from it, but you didn't get involved in that part of it.
Drayton: Right. It's like, "Okay. Somebody else's turn."
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, let somebody else worry about it.
Drayton: And I'm interested because all of the families, apparently, here in this valley were Portuguese, Portuguese-American.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: And I'm curious if the language that you would use to talk to one another, would you talk to each other in English or Portuguese, or both?
Mrs. Silva: [00:11:00] It would depend on who you were talking to. If we were talking to Martin, then of course we talked in Portuguese. Then we got into ...
Mr. Silva: The kids going to school.
Mrs. Silva: The kids going to school. And also then when we got away from the Portuguese and we spoke English.
Mr. Silva: There was one down below there, just before where ... I don't know if you've been down, the last house on the left.
Drayton: Yeah. Where Bill Oswald lives now.
Mr. Silva: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Drayton: That was Bettencourt's house?
Mrs. Silva: Yes, Hollis.
Mr. Silva: Virgil Hollis.
Drayton: Virgil Hollis.
Mrs. Silva: He's the ex-superintendent of schools here in Marin.
Drayton: Oh. I just know [00:11:30] just the houses on the actual park properties.
Mr. Silva: Yeah, but although you go down the gate, all the way down.
Drayton: Oh, I didn't even know there was another house down there.
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: Have you been down to the end of the valley?
Drayton: Yeah, I've been ... Well, I've been to the beach, and I've been to Bill ... Bill Oswald lives in, I guess, Bettencourt's old house, or one of the Bettencourt's old house. He works for the park service. And then there is the old-
Mr. Silva: There's a house with a kind of a-
Drayton: The Spanish-
Mr. Silva: On the left.
Drayton: ... revival, right. That's just-
Mr. Silva: We've got ours in there too. A barn. That's where Virgil Hollis lives.
Drayton: Oh, I did. I must have seen it.
Mrs. Silva: He doesn't live there. I think he ...
Mr. Silva: His daughter lives there.
Mrs. Silva: Some relative. Maybe that ... I don't know. Is Oswald someone that works for the ...
Drayton: Bill Oswald works at Park Service. Yeah. He lives in Bettencourt's old house. And [00:12:00] then I get ... I remember. And then the Martins were right across-
Mrs. Silva: Across the road.
Drayton: And I guess that place was torn down.
Mrs. Silva: Yes.
Drayton: Or burned down.
Mr. Silva: And that's down at the bottom, though. But this is before you get there.
Drayton: Oh! Oh, okay. Oh, I see.
Mrs. Silva: You know where Laura's is?
Drayton: Yes.
Mrs. Silva: All right.
Mr. Silva: The next place.
Mrs. Silva: The next place past Laura's.
Drayton: Oh! And that was another Bettencourt place.
Mrs. Silva: [00:12:30] That was another Bettencourt, but that was not Bettencourt before. That was Siqueiros before.
Mr. Silva: Then there was [Rainey 00:12:37].
Mrs. Silva: I know, but Siqueiros was the original, and then Rainey.
Mr. Silva: He was the owner.
Mrs. Silva: Siqueros was the owner, and they had the dairy business there. And then they left, and Rainey bought it. He was an Irish fellow. He bought it, and then he sold. And that's when Bettencourts went in.
Drayton: Siqueros-
Mrs. Silva: Siqueros.
Drayton: ... built that house. I guess, built the Spanish-
Mrs. Silva: [00:13:00] No. No, no. Bettencourts just built that Spanish house. That hasn't-
Drayton: Oh.
Mrs. Silva: That isn't too old.
Drayton: Oh, I thought ... I think Roy was thinking the Bettencourts-
Mrs. Silva: They built the house.
Drayton: Step-father.
Mrs. Silva: No, but see we've been here much longer than Laura.
Drayton: Right. Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. No. Bettencourts, they built that house themselves. That's maybe 20 years ago or so.
Drayton: Yeah, it's not that old.
Mrs. Silva: The old house that you see by that one is the one that was one of the original houses that was there.
Drayton: So did your grandparents ever talk at all, or even your dad, talk about Portugal? I mean, the [00:13:30] sort of the immigrant experience?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. You'd hear different parts of the country where different ones lived, and how they'd go to visit this one, and go and visit that one. And-
Drayton: Oh, when they were here, you mean?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: Did people have a tendency to sort of stick together based on their island origins? I mean, whether they were from ...
Mr. Silva: Well, they don't [crosstalk 00:13:47].
Mrs. Silva: They kind of do. They still, I think, kind of do.
Mr. Silva: They always kid each other about different islands. It's, "That island is no good" or something.
Mrs. Silva: No, we kind of ... We stay together. Like we have a lot of ... a group from San Miguel, and they're [00:14:00] more up in the Petaluma area. And then, of course, those are the ones that have come over recently. But before, I mean, it was just all mixed. Nobody thought anything of it. Down there you knew the difference was there. They did have a different accent when they spoke. I mean, their accent was different.
Mr. Silva: [Disheras 00:14:16] have an accent, too. They kind of drag a little bit.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. They all have kind of a little ... It's like you're from here ... You hear the south, and all the difference. Yeah.
Drayton: Thank goodness for differences.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: It makes life a little more interesting. And your [00:14:30] dad was from what island?
Mrs. Silva: He was from Pico.
Drayton: Pico. And you're?
Mr. Silva: St. George.
Drayton: St. George, which is the biggest ... Is that the largest island?
Mr. Silva: That's the smallest.
Drayton: The smallest. Okay. I knew there was something-
Mrs. Silva: No, Pico's smaller than St. George.
Drayton: ... particular about it.
Mr. Silva: I don't think so.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: And then your mother's people were from?
Mrs. Silva: They were from St. George.
Drayton: St. George.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: And there was never any-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, no.
Drayton: ... kidding relation about that.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, no. That didn't mean anything. You have the nicknames and stuff like that, but that was nothing.
Drayton: Why did your father come over here? Your father's family.
Mrs. Silva: Well, it was just my dad that [00:15:00] came over. His folks, family, all stayed there.
Drayton: Ah!
Mrs. Silva: He'd hopped ship to come over for a better living.
Drayton: Was that partly because of the ... because they were military service? That they ... 'Cause I know a lot of men left Portugal-
Mrs. Silva: I don't know.
Drayton: ... because they were forced into the service.
Mrs. Silva: I don't know. I don't know. That, I couldn't say. All I know is that he jumped, got on a ship. And then when he got to San Francisco, he jumped ship to get here. And then later on, he went back and came back in legally.
Drayton: He [00:15:30] did visit then?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: He did go back.
Mrs. Silva: He did go back.
Mr. Silva: My father worked his way over on the ship, too, and he got off at San Francisco. And he went and drive horses in San Francisco.
Mrs. Silva: Ah!
Mr. Silva: A Teamster. A real Teamster.
Drayton: Sure. And then he moved down to Santa Clara eventually?
Mr. Silva: Yeah, Mayfield. And we wound up in Fresno. And God, we were traveling all over the country.
Drayton: You found a good home, a good area to take root in.
And so this ... Am I understanding correctly that this piece of property right here was never a dairy ranch? Only [00:16:00] across the street?
Mrs. Silva: No. Only across the street.
Drayton: Oh, that's interesting. So that's why you were saying you didn't know exactly how your-
Mrs. Silva: No. I don't know.
Drayton: Because they had a truck garden, but that would have been for their own use.
Mr. Silva: [crosstalk 00:16:06].
Mrs. Silva: Right. But we had a little shed back there.
Mr. Silva: He spaded all this, the three acres here. He'd spaded all this ground up through here, right where I am.
Drayton: And just raised vegetables-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah [crosstalk 00:16:19].
Drayton: ... for the family?
Mrs. Silva: I think they had ... We remember having a cow.
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: And chickens. And, you know, that type of thing.
Drayton: Yeah, because you have no barn on this property.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, we did have.
Drayton: Oh, you did?
Mrs. Silva: We did have. Yeah, just a small barn. Not too small, but they had a pretty good-sized barn. you [00:16:30] know. And-
Drayton: Because this ... This, even for the time, is a nice little house. I mean it's not a shanty or anything.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, no.
Drayton: It's a very substantial house.
Mrs. Silva: No, we've kept it up. It's kept up inside. The only ... She's remodeled the bathroom and the kitchen, but other than that it's still the old [crosstalk 00:16:47].
Drayton: You know, as long as we're talking about the house, I know we're kind of skipping around here, but I am very interested in what you call vernacular architecture. As a matter of fact, I've done studies on houses of that type. But just so I understand, this is ... I just [00:17:00] looked at it real briefly going by, but is it a two-room deep house, or a four or a-
Mrs. Silva: No, it's five. There is a two, three bedrooms and a living room.
Drayton: Is there a central hall or not?
Mrs. Silva: No, just the little entrance-
Mr. Silva: No. Just a little entrance.
Mrs. Silva: ... between the living room and the two bedrooms, there's a little narrow hall.
Drayton: Do you mind doing a real quick plan? Just because it looks like a traditional house type that was found a lot in California. And I'm just curious of how it's broken up inside.
Mrs. Silva: Well, this is the kitchen here, as you go-
Drayton: As you walk in the front door.
Mrs. Silva: The front door, let's say that's [00:17:30] over here. Yeah, and that's the living room. You walk into the living room. It's a pretty good size. And then there's a door here. And then this is the little entrance hall. And then this entrance hall you go over here to one bedroom, and you're down to the next bedroom.
Drayton: Oh!
Mrs. Silva: And then you'd go into the kitchen.
Drayton: That's very interesting.
Mr. Silva: Those two bedrooms are on the same row.
Mrs. Silva: They are on the same row. The door opens. Well, they're right next to one another. The door opens-
Drayton: Yeah. They're off a little hallway.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. And then there's the kitchen. And then off the kitchen [00:18:00] is the ... The other bedroom is off of the kitchen. You go from the kitchen into that. And then there's a little space here where you go into the bathroom.
Drayton: And then what's the R? The-
Mrs. Silva: This is a kitchen. The kitchen is a big kitchen. I'll take you over and show it to you.
Drayton: Yeah, I'd ... At the end, that'd be terrific, because ... Well, what's interesting to me is it looks there's been a lot of changes. This is set up inside very different than houses that look like that that were built here, [00:18:30] say, by Irish, Irish-American, Anglo-American immigrants. But I'm just curious if this is more of a Portuguese way of dividing space.
Mrs. Silva: I don't know. I can remember the bathroom. At one time the bathroom was a bedroom.
Drayton: Yeah. Well, see because bathrooms are ... That's-
Mrs. Silva: But that would have made four bedrooms in the place. But I understand they added pieces onto it.
Mr. Silva: That bathroom was added on.
Mrs. Silva: That was added on.
Drayton: And then how many children in your mother's family? How many sisters and brothers did she have?
Mrs. Silva: Let's see. One ... Frank-
Mr. Silva: Jack.
Mrs. Silva: Jack, May, [00:19:00] Dora, my mother, and Clara. Six. It was six.
Drayton: And then your dad had brothers probably, sisters that were left.
Mrs. Silva: Well, he had brothers and sisters in Portugal, yes.
Drayton: And they never came over?
Mrs. Silva: Well, yeah.
Mr. Silva: Yeah, his brother did.
Mrs. Silva: Two brothers came over here. Two brothers came. They both passed away over here, so ...
Drayton: And then your ... And in terms of your family, you had how many brothers and sisters?
Mrs. Silva: I have two sisters. We're just three girls.
Drayton: Three girls. Okay, great. And then you have how many children yourself?
Mrs. Silva: I have three. I have two girls and a boy.
Drayton: I sound like the census taker, don't I?
Mrs. Silva: Two girls and a boy.
Drayton: [00:19:30] Just kind of get the sense of the continuity of generations.
Well, the talk ... Before we talk about, you know, the dairying over there, and families in the Tennessee Valley, and what ... I'm just curious a little bit more about Portuguese customs. Like, for example, did families here ever go to Chamaritas?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yes. That's all you looked forward to. I mean we were kids, and we just couldn't wait for the time to come when there'd be a dance and we could go to.
Drayton: And where were those dances be held?
Mrs. Silva: Sausalito.
Drayton: Sausalito. Would they be in a hall then?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. We had a hall.
Drayton: They didn't go house to house like they used to in the old ...
Mrs. Silva: Oh, years ago, I guess, they went to house to house and had parties. Like when they butchered pigs and all, they'd go to different houses and have a party, but I just remember going down to the hall.
[00:20:00] We had the hall up on Filbert Street, and then they built a new one down on Caledonia. And then there was one in Novata and one in Petaluma, and we used to go from one to the other.
Drayton: And what would be the occasion for having a Chamarrita?
Mrs. Silva: It was the Holy Ghost, the feast of the Holy Ghost.
Drayton: Only in conjunction with the Holy Ghost?
Mrs. Silva: With the Holy Ghost. Uh-huh (affirmative).
Drayton: So would that [00:20:30] be on a specific night of the-
Mrs. Silva: A specific Sunday of the year. It's Holy Ghost Sunday.
Drayton: So the Chamarrita [crosstalk 00:20:35] itself would be on Saturday night maybe, or Friday night? Or-
Mrs. Silva: No, it was always on a Sunday.
Drayton: Oh, the dance was on a Sunday, too.
Mrs. Silva: So you danced on Saturday, and you danced on Sunday also, all day long.
Drayton: And what was a ... I mean, describe a Chamarrita.
Mr. Silva: A square dance like.
Mrs. Silva: It was kind of a square dance type of thing.
Drayton: And someone would call it?
Mrs. Silva: Call it, yeah. They'd call it while they were dancing.
Drayton: And did they do ... also do, interspersed with Portuguese dances, did they also have American dances-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: ... and popular dances?
Mrs. Silva: [00:21:00] You had modern dances. Yeah, you had the American dance in between. Years ago they didn't but, you know, in the last ...
Mr. Silva: It changes.
Mrs. Silva: ... 40 years, it's ... you change between the two.
Drayton: And are the older dances still hanging on, or are they changing and they're only done kind of as a sort of symbolic throwback to the past or-
Mrs. Silva: No, I think people enjoy doing them. They enjoy it. It's like people that go square dancing. You enjoy it, and you like to see it done. And if it's done good, I mean, it's a pretty dance.
Drayton: [00:21:30] Yes, it is. I've seen it done. And I'm just trying to think.
And in terms of ... I guess one custom that maybe didn't hang on in this area was ... I'm going to say this probably incorrectly: [foreign 00:21:43] is the Day of the Kings?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah, Dia de Reis. No, we ... Years ago they did have it. We used to have it 'cause we'd go down to the hall, and they'd have special breads and stuff made for it. But then that has gone by the wayside. I haven't [00:22:00] heard anything on that for years and years.
Drayton: Well, I guess ... I'm just speculating here, but the little I know about it, it was based on a tradition similar to, say, Halloween or something, where you'd go door to door. Or like the Mexican tradition of the-
Mrs. Silva: [foreign 00:22:15].
Drayton: Yeah. Going house to house. And I guess once that sort of stopped [crosstalk 00:22:20].
Mrs. Silva: Well, I think that was introduced ... In the valleys, I think they do have [crosstalk 00:22:23] around here.
Mr. Silva: No, Fred. They used to go. Who was it?
Mrs. Silva: [inaudible 00:22:27].
Mr. Silva: Yeah. They'd go [00:22:30] from door to door.
Drayton: And would they sing?
Mr. Silva: Sing. And I know my brother-in-laws were in it. They made their own ... They used to play the flute, and they had made their own drums out of goat skin. It was quite an interesting-
Drayton: And would they wear costumes? Or was there any kind of-
Mr. Silva: No.
Drayton: ... little play? It was just singing?
Mr. Silva: Just singing, going from house to house.
Drayton: And would the people at the houses give you something, or just listen?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, no. They had food. You had food at every house. Whenever there's anything at a house there's always food and wine.
Mr. Silva: They did that on New Year's Eve, too. [foreign 00:22:59].
Drayton: Oh! And [00:23:00] I've heard this from a couple of other people, but I'd just like to get it again from you. Just tell me briefly the reason for the Holy Ghost.
Mrs. Silva: Well, [inaudible 00:23:14]. It was they had the big famine and drought. And Queen Isabella had been praying for relief from the famine. And then all of a sudden the ships came in laden with the breads and-
Mr. Silva: [00:23:30] Food.
Mrs. Silva: And food.
Mr. Silva: Oh.
Mrs. Silva: And that's when they started celebrating the Holy Ghost.
Drayton: Aha! Okay, now that's interesting. Because I had heard from ... And this may also all be true, that something about the miracle of the roses, of her apron?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. Yeah. She opened her ... Her husband was a real mean man. He wasn't a very nice ... And he wouldn't let her go give food to the poor, so she was going to, with a lot of food in her apron to take to the poor. And she met him, [00:24:00] and he said, "What have you got there?" And she says, "Nothing." And she opened it up and it was a bouquet of roses. And that's where the roses come in for the ... you always see the ... There's always a girl that carries a bouquet of red roses.
Drayton: And that's symbolic of ...
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, that's Saint Isabella.
Drayton: And then the dove itself that the queen carries ...
Mrs. Silva: Well, the dove flew in, and was in the church. Now how that come about, I don't know.
Drayton: Oh, actually, during [crosstalk 00:24:25]. The story is that during Isabella-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, there was a dove that flew. And now, [00:24:30] as it is, when they have the Holy Ghost celebrations they take ... Usually some little girl is carrying a dove in a fancy little basket, and then they turn her loose and she flies off. Either she flies back-
Mr. Silva: It's a homing pigeon.
Mrs. Silva: It's a homing pigeon. She goes back to where she came from, but they always turn one loose at the parades.
Drayton: Was that ... I assume, is that symbolic of Noah-
Mrs. Silva: And peace.
Drayton: ... and the flood?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. Oh, yes. It's symbolic of peace and it's an omen.
Drayton: It's a really lovely custom. It's so nice to hear that it's being continued, and really-
Mrs. Silva: It definitely is.
Drayton: ... passionately, not just kind of.
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: But it [00:25:00] appears that every-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: ... Portuguese community really is keeping that up.
Mrs. Silva: They're keeping that up.
Drayton: This was a valley, again, of what? Five households, six households. I assume ... Did you consider yourselves part of Tennessee Valley here?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: So-
Mrs. Silva: We were Tennessee Valley.
Drayton: And so you-
Mrs. Silva: And the ... yeah, we lived dairy there. And then those other two houses. Now they had no dairies. They were just-
Drayton: Oh!
Mrs. Silva: ... people who lived there.
Mr. Silva: Next door.
Mrs. Silva: Next door here.
Drayton: Oh!
Mrs. Silva: On the other side. There's two houses.
Drayton: I was assuming this was somehow part of your property.
Mr. Silva: No.
Drayton: Who lives there?
Mrs. Silva: Well, their ... By the name of [Nayan and Giddings 00:25:30], [00:25:30] but they've been there for over 30 years too.
Drayton: But let's say ... Let's go back to the '20s or, you know, during that-
Mrs. Silva: Okay. Well then, it was-
Drayton: Would they have been Portuguese or not?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. They were all Portuguese people that owned the two places. And eventually they sold to different people.
Drayton: Right. And what were the names of the folks back then, do you know?
Mrs. Silva: Diaz and Cardosa.
Drayton: Cardosa. But they didn't dairy, obviously.
Mrs. Silva: No, no. No, they just lived there.
Mr. Silva: It was there before Cardosa.
Mrs. Silva: I don't know the [00:26:00] woman's name. He got the place from her when she died-
Mr. Silva: I know.
Mrs. Silva: ... but I don't know her name.
Mr. Silva: And he didn't get in there for too long.
Mrs. Silva: No, he didn't. But he inherited it. But as to Lise, what her name, I ... Maria. God, I don't know what her name was. I remember seeing a little old lady, but I don't remember what her name was.
And this Cardosa bought it from her, and then the other people ... There were two other families that bought the other white house. But now, the one that's there now, Giddins, her mother and grandmother brought the place [00:26:30] and they've been there ... Let's see. Kathy's 40. They've been there 45 years.
And then next-door, she's been there 35 years. So they've just stayed kind of in a little clump.
Drayton: How much land do you have here? How many acres?
Mr. Silva: Three.
Drayton: Three? And that's all your family ever had?
Mrs. Silva: That's all.
Drayton: Three acres?
Mrs. Silva: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Drayton: Oh, that's interesting 'cause you have a very lovely house here. You'd expecting, you know, 100 acres to go back.
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: And then [00:27:00] how big was the dairy ranch across the street, the Borges's, that your dad ran?
Mr. Silva: I don't know. It goes all those hills up, or there's all those houses up there, close to Marin.
Drayton: A couple of hundred acres, or?
Mr. Silva: I'd say close to that, somewheres, yeah.
Mrs. Silva: The stock ran the ... Well, it down and met the fence that met the Bettencourt's and the Martin's cattle down there.
Mr. Silva: And all the way ahead here where you stopped there by Laura's, on the right. The ranch went all the way to that fence there.
Drayton: So it's pretty extensive.
Mr. Silva: [00:27:30] Yeah.
Drayton: Maybe, I would say, one of the largest.
You know, as a little valley, did you folks think of yourself as a unit, as an entity? Therefore, did you socialize together and-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: ... have parties together, or help one another out and parties.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, we'd always help one another out, and all the .... It wasn't too big of a partying group between us.
Drayton: Well, what I mean by parties, I didn't mean-
Mrs. Silva: There was too much to do. Yeah.
Drayton: Yeah.
Mr. Silva: Too busy for parties.
Mrs. Silva: Too busy, I think, yeah. There was no time for things like that.
Drayton: But you know, I ... Of course, this probably goes back even before your time, this [00:28:00] sort of traditional rural life of the barn-raising or the threshing, or something, where people get together and work together communally. Do you remember any kinds of events like that?
Mr. Silva: Not here.
Mrs. Silva: Not really. I mean, if we got in a bind, we could go get the neighbor to come and help. But usually everyone took care of their own problems.
Mr. Silva: In the valley, they did that. Picked corn together and neighbors.
Mrs. Silva: But not here.
Mr. Silva: But here, they never had that much, and mostly dairy, and-
Drayton: Dairy's really consuming, isn't it?
Mr. Silva: You don't ... [00:28:30] Everybody don't come and milk your cows because, you know.
Drayton: Yeah.
Mr. Silva: They don't know what cow to milk, or ...
Drayton: Well, you know, it's interesting because over at the [Alina 00:28:37] Valley, I was talking to the [Tecsheros 00:28:39]. I don't know if you-
Mrs. Silva: The [Tesheros 00:28:41].
Drayton: Well, there's two. There's Tesheros, and there's Tecsheros.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah..
Drayton: And this was Irene and-
Mrs. Silva: Molly?
Drayton: Oh, gosh. What's her name?
Mrs. Silva: Molly.
Drayton: 'Cause ... No. Was it? Well, they had nicknames, and so I was ... Anyway.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: And they were saying that, sort of contrary to other sorts of patterns, agricultural patterns, they were a world in and of [00:29:00] themselves. I mean-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, they were very much-
Drayton: They were really self-sufficient.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: It was just-
Mrs. Silva: Down there, definitely. That one, back there. 'Cause I mean, you were ... There was no town.
Drayton: Really isolated, really insular.
Mrs. Silva: Sure. And they still are.
Drayton: Yeah. Well, when you think how long it takes you to get up that road, one.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, God. It's terrible. Forget it.
Drayton: Well, it actually ... It's helped to preserve that land though.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, I suppose so. But jeez, I wouldn't want to travel that route everyday.
Drayton: No. No, I certainly wouldn't, either. But thankfully that hopefully keeps commuters from trying to move in there.
Mr. Silva: [00:29:30] That's, basically, in front of the old house there, the ground that's in front of the house there. I put that old rock in there myself.
Drayton: In front of what house?
Mr. Silva: The house down there. See, that house has got a yard in front of it.
Drayton: Okay, I'm not sure. Which house, I meant.
Mrs. Silva: The daughter's house.
Drayton: Oh! Oh! I'm sorry. Uh-huh (affirmative).
Mr. Silva: It's got a white space in there. I put a lot of rock in there because it was just a trail. Of course now, there's a gate there. And I hauled a rock in there so that the school bus could come up there and turn around.
Drayton: Yeah, I was thinking [00:30:00] that that obviously had been changed. Because what's interesting is the way that that house faces. Rather than facing the road, which is kind of traditional pattern, it faces the trees or something. Because usually houses would face the little country road.
Mrs. Silva: I don't know if that one is that way. But there is. The front room windows faces the road.
Drayton: Is that a single wall house, or is it traditional frame?
Mr. Silva: Frame. It's got an inside wall and an outside. T and G. [00:30:30] Redwood T and G. Redwood.
Drayton: And did your family ... Did your grandparents build that, or did they have it built?
Mrs. Silva: No. From what I gather, they built it.
Drayton: They built it themselves.
Mrs. Silva: My grandfather's brother and he built it.
Drayton: Oh, that's interesting. That's what would be curious to see if there's any sort of retention of the ... I mean, lots of times, not to prattle on too long about this, but lots of times people will move from one place to another, whether it's Ireland, America, or Portuguese. And they'll build a house that may look like their neighbors, but inside they preserve older ways-
Mrs. Silva: Older ways.
Drayton: ... of breaking up the space.
Mrs. Silva: [00:31:00] I don't know.
Drayton: So that's why, when you drew this pattern it was interesting, because [crosstalk 00:31:03] that I've been into.
So the dairy ... Let's see. Before we talk about ... The Martins. Tell me a little bit about the Martins, 'cause they strike me as being a little enigmatic or something. I don't know if that's ...
Mr. Silva: Well, they were a partner down in the dairy with the ...
Mrs. Silva: Bettencourts.
Mr. Silva: Bettencourts.
Drayton: And they were-
Mr. Silva: There was a house down, the last house. I think they tore it down. Did they?
Mrs. Silva: No. That part just-
Drayton: Well, one was burned down, I guess.
Mrs. Silva: Martins was burned, and they-
Mr. Silva: There was was two across the street. [00:31:30] Across our little ... There's a little alley that goes up the hill, clear up the top, and down almost ... Well, not to the ocean, because you had to walk down. And they lived in there, just across from one another.
Drayton: And they were both Portuguese?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Silva: They were both Portuguese.
Mrs. Silva: They were related from the old country.
Drayton: And from the Azores?
Mrs. Silva: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: Uh-huh (affirmative). They came from the Azores, yes.
Drayton: And Martin did grow hay for a while, or vetch or something.
Mr. Silva: Yeah, they used to call him the hay person. [00:32:00] And just, as you go down on the right, can you see a field up there?
Drayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mr. Silva: Before you cross a creek, a little creek down there, there was ... They used to call it the hay presser. Hay in there, and there was a little bit down below, below the ranch, as you go down. It's a little bit now there, and not too much. You know, it's ... You can't raise too much hay in this.
Drayton: Well, that was what was interesting to me, is you know, one thing that really impressed me about talking to Laura, to Mrs. Lopez, was how difficult [00:32:30] it was. I mean, this was marginal, at least for them. It was a very ... You had to bring in your water, for the most part. They had to bring in all their own feed. They only could pasture two months a year. That is rough. To be dairy farmers? Was that the way that it was for the Borgesses-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. It was all-
Drayton: ... and for your-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: ... family, too?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Silva: Oh, yeah. You had to buy hay all the time to feed the cows.
Drayton: That's incredibly expensive if you can't raise your own ...
Mrs. Silva: You know, that's the way it was.
Drayton: Now did you ever work on [00:33:00] the ranch across the street? I mean, did you ... 'Cause you-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: ... remember that, obviously.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Because-
Drayton: You lived here, but your dad-
Mrs. Silva: The dairy was over there.
Drayton: ... was running it.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: Was there a house across the street, too?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. There was two houses over there. There was a house for the working men, and there was a couple of other shacks for the working men. And there was storage sheds for the cooking foods and where they ... yeah, there was living quarters and all of it. They weren't the best, but they weren't too bad.
Drayton: But there was never any ranch house or farmhouse?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yes. There was.
Mr. Silva: A pretty nice house there.
Drayton: Is that [00:33:30] still there?
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: Oh, that's been torn down.
Mr. Silva: They tore it down.
Mrs. Silva: That ... They tore it down.
Drayton: Was that ... Who lived in that house?
Mrs. Silva: Well, that was the ones that the people that worked with my dad.
Drayton: The Borgesses?
Mrs. Silva: No, no. The Borgesses owned the house up on the right. They owned the property. And then when my dad moved in, he came in there and set up a dairy business for a few years. And then he got out and rented it to someone else. But in 1937 my dad moved from here up to Hamilton.
Drayton: Oh!
Mrs. Silva: Right up by ... There was a ranch there by Hamilton field. He moved [00:34:00] up there.
But up until then he'd had it, and they built ... They had built a new house on there then. This ... Well it was just what ... It was you walked into a living room, which they used as a eating area for the help, and then the kitchen. And two ... one, two bedrooms and a little bathroom, and a back porch, and that was it. And then across from that was a couple of old ... I don't ... Well I'd say sheds that had been made over into, you know, a place for the men [00:34:30] to sleep in.
Drayton: And so your dad ran that dairy from what? You said '37.
Mrs. Silva: Well, he moved in '37. He ran it. He was there before I ... I guess when I was born they already had ... He was already there.
Drayton: And you were born, you told me on the phone, I think, 1915?
Mrs. Silva: '16.
Drayton: 1916.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. So my dad was there then, in the 1910?
Drayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mrs. Silva: So, then when I-
Drayton: A good 20, 25-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: ... 27 years.
And then, what do you remember of [00:35:00] the way that ranch was run? It was Grade A dairy, obviously.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. It was a Grade A dairy. That was a Grade A dairy, and you had the usual chores to do and all. He was the first dairy merit award given out by Borden's.
Drayton: Ah!
Mrs. Silva: Because he was selling to Borden's. And it was during the World's Fair. And we went over there to get our plaque from ... What was ... Elsie, the Borden cow. Yeah.
Drayton: And [00:35:30] that's for the highest quality or [crosstalk 00:35:34].
Mrs. Silva: The cleanest dairy-
Drayton: The cleanest dairy.
Mrs. Silva: ... and nicest. Uh-huh (affirmative).
Drayton: Oh.
Mr. Silva: The quality of milk.
Mrs. Silva: Quality of milk. He won. He was the first one that they gave out the award to.
Drayton: Oh, you must've been really proud of him.
Mrs. Silva: 'Cause it was just starting. You know, they were just starting with Elsie the cow, basically, and all. But that was way back. Yeah.
Drayton: And then he had what? Jerseys, Guernseys, Holsteins?
Mrs. Silva: Mixed.
Drayton: Mixed.
Mrs. Silva: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Mr. Silva: At one time they paid on butterfat. [00:36:00] The lower butterfat, the more when you got per gallon. And then it got so people didn't use butterfat anymore. So they got away from the Jerseys and the Guernseys because they were higher butterfat producers. And got into the Holsteins, and so that they'd get more milk.
Whereas, nowadays they pay for everything. I mean, regardless of how much butterfat. I don't know why, but they do.
Drayton: [00:36:30] I guess people began to get away from the high fat content.
Mr. Silva: They use it for butter.
Drayton: Well, yeah! Even when I was a little kid, we'd have ... milk delivered to the house, and they would have it in a way where you could take the cream off the top yourself, and whip your own cream, and then mix a little in-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, and make your own butter.
Drayton: Right. Well-
Mrs. Silva: We made our own butter and eggs.
Mr. Silva: It wasn't pasteurized.
Drayton: Pasteurized means it's all been mixed, so thoroughly mixed. It's [00:37:00] homogenized, but not ...
Mr. Silva: Cream don't really come up anymore.
Drayton: Yeah. 'Cause it's so thoroughly ...
Mr. Silva: Of course, they take most of it out anyway. They leave in about 3, 2, or something. Where average milk would be around 4% or a little better, 3.9, 3.8.
Drayton: And you said they had, you know, rooms for men. It sounds like it was a fairly big ranch because if you had a lot of working men, those were the milkers?
Mrs. Silva: It was.
Mr. Silva: Milkers.
Mrs. Silva: Three, three.
Mr. Silva: Then, of course, they used to milk by hand.
Drayton: Right. And so, if the average was [00:37:30] one man per about 30 cows, is that right?
Mr. Silva: That's about right, yeah.
Drayton: So that means it sounds like you had a herd of 120 or whatever in production?
Mrs. Silva: You ought to know. You milked them.
Mr. Silva: Yeah. I milked 30 of them.
Drayton: You did. You milked right over there, then?
Mr. Silva: I milked down at Martins. That's what I came up-
Drayton: You came up to work on the Martins place.
Well, let's talk about this place. And then I want to hear more about the Martins because that's great. This is like a double my pleasure. I didn't realize you were connected to the Martins.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: That's fantastic.
So across [00:38:00] the street they had about how many cows in production?
Mr. Silva: I'd say we milked about 75, 80, close to 100.
Drayton: So that's fairly large for that time.
Mr. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Silva: There was only three of us milking.
Drayton: Now that would be kind of small, or smallish, or even impossible, I guess. But that was pretty big for that time.
Mr. Silva: Cows didn't produce like they do now. There were some cows, they're very good. But I mean, the cows nowadays, [inaudible 00:38:24].
Drayton: Yeah. What time did you milk over there?
Mr. Silva: I think it was 4:00.
Drayton: 4:00 and 4:00?
Mr. Silva: I had to go get [00:38:30] the cows first up in the mountains, up in the hills.
Drayton: Every day?
Mr. Silva: Yeah. In the springtime they went up.
Mrs. Silva: They get lost up in the fog.
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: How many months of the year could those ... Could they ... I'm sorry. This is like your cold. We could have ...
Mrs. Silva: That's all right. Yesterday I was in bed.
Drayton: Oh! Well, I'm sorry. You could have-
Mrs. Silva: That's all right.
Drayton: ... called me and said, "Look, I'm not feeling good."
Mrs. Silva: No, I'm all right.
Drayton: My little boy's got this cold, too. And if it gets tiring, just tell me and we'll stop.
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: Across the street, then, [00:39:00] they milked at 4:00 and 4:00, you think?
Mr. Silva: Yeah, about.
Drayton: Which is good, kind of normal, I guess.
Mrs. Silva: I thought it was earlier than that.
Drayton: 'Cause Laura was saying they did 2:00 and 2:00, which I thought was horrible.
Mrs. Silva: But yours was 2:00.
Mr. Silva: I think I got up at 3:00 to go get the cows.
Drayton: You'd get up at 3:00. Yeah, what was like a typical day for you when you were working over at that ranch?
And was it, by the way, was it called the Borges Ranch?
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: Was it called the-
Mrs. Silva: No, it was Pimentel.
Drayton: The Pimentel Ranch, okay.
Mr. Silva: I was only there for a year, and then I went in the trucking business.
Drayton: [00:39:30] Aha! Maybe that's your statement about dairy. Well, so you worked over there what year? About?
Mrs. Silva: It was about '30. We were married in '38. I guess you worked over there in '36.
Mr. Silva: No.
Mrs. Silva: '35?
Mr. Silva: '33 or '34.
Mrs. Silva: '33 or '34, he was working there.
Mr. Silva: Because I bought the truck in '35.
Drayton: Well, we're going back. Gee, 50 plus years, 55 years.
So you'd get up at 3:00. And then ...
Mr. Silva: Go get [00:40:00] the cows, and worked practically all day. Most of the time.
Mrs. Silva: They didn't have breaks like they do now.
Mr. Silva: Now they milk and they go rest til milk time again.
Drayton: So you milked by hand?
Mr. Silva: Milked by hand.
Drayton: And you were responsible for ...
Mr. Silva: I had so many cows. I had all your cows. In other words, you didn't just milk in a row. You had your own cows and milk.
Drayton: And you milked them in sequence of some kind?
Mr. Silva: No.
Drayton: Or not?
Mr. Silva: No. Well, they came in the barn, no matter how they [00:40:30] came in. You milked them whenever, whenever you wanted. You had to milk your own cows.
Drayton: And did you used to name your cows?
Mr. Silva: Not names-
Drayton: Not names you repeat?
Well, no. I guess on smaller ranches all the cows used to get names.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. And there was a-
Mr. Silva: Your father had one. Was it Rosie? It was his pet cow. She never gave us milk. It was Rosie.
Drayton: [00:41:00] How many months a year could you folks pasture your cows? Was it a little bit better on that side, in terms of the grass staying up, staying greener?
Mr. Silva: It wasn't too bad up on the hill, but they always ... the cows.
Drayton: Regardless. They always had to supplement. And what did you feed them? Just hay or did you have silage? Did you-
Mr. Silva: Hay, yeah.
Mrs. Silva: Just silage.
Drayton: No silage?
Mr. Silva: No silage.
Mrs. Silva: We didn't have that in those days.
Drayton: Green [crosstalk 00:41:27].
Mr. Silva: They would mix mill feed, coconut, beet pulp [00:41:30] and brand. We used to make that up in a big trough, and push it down the middle, the cows on both sides, and scoop them up. The one that gave more milk got more feed.
Drayton: Self-fulfilling prophecy, yeah? And then what happened to the calves? Did you the auction the male calves?
Mr. Silva: The butchers come around and pick them up. We'd sell them to butchers.
Drayton: And the females, [00:42:00] you'd keep.
Mr. Silva: Sometimes. It all depends what cows they came from. We have a nephew down in the valley that's in the dairy business. Luke [Danum 00:42:12]. He milks about 190 cows.
Mrs. Silva: Couldn't do that by hand. Well, I guess you could, if you had six guys or something.
Mr. Silva: One guy milks all the cows.
Drayton: Wow, that's incredible. Did you see the transition then, between hand-milking and machine-milking?
Mr. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: And how-
Mr. Silva: We had it here. See, years [00:42:30] ago, the machine milking, you had to be real careful 'cause it would spoil the cows.
Drayton: Machine milking would spoil the cows?
Mr. Silva: Drawing blood if you left it alone.
Drayton: Oh, right.
Mr. Silva: Nowadays at ... I know my nephew down at Valley, the machine automatically kicks off when the cow's milk.
Drayton: Oh, interesting.
Mr. Silva: Oh, yeah. Otherwise, one guy couldn't milk all those cows.
Drayton: Yeah. Yeah, you'd have to be watching them the whole time. I'm just wondering if you saw ... [00:43:00] I've assumed, and maybe incorrectly, that there was somewhat of a dramatic transition between the hand milking, which represents the old traditional way of working the land, working the cows, to the machine technology and the newer spiffier regulations and rules.
And I'm just wondering if you felt that there was a difference in lifestyle-
Mr. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, there was. Yes-
Mr. Silva: Well, there's a big difference on the [crosstalk 00:43:21].
Mrs. Silva: ... there was a big difference.
Mr. Silva: ... now. The cows come in, they go to a holding corral, [00:43:30] and there's scrapers there to wash them underneath. It just sprays the water on them.
Drayton: Whereas you used to have to do that by hand? Or did you do it-
Mr. Silva: I had to clean them.
Drayton: ... at all?
Mr. Silva: ... so they weren't full of mud, some of them, and laying out in the mud in the corrals. Then they'd go in, and they have little the little hose for every cow, so they squirt them off if they're still a little dirty, and then ... What do you call those paper towels they clean them off with?
Mrs. Silva: And they need to be wiped. Every one has to be wiped off.
Mr. Silva: Check it out, make sure that the milk's okay.
Mrs. Silva: They weren't that careful.
Mr. Silva: No, everything was [00:44:00] good. Nowadays it's, you know, you put all that milk in a big tank. And all the milk goes for the whole ... Two milkers into a big vat. And you can spoil that whole vat if there's something bad.
Drayton: And so back then, you would milk into a bucket? Or into a can?
Mr. Silva: Into a can.
Drayton: And then you'd pour the can-
Mrs. Silva: The bucket into the tank.
Drayton: Into the tank.
Mr. Silva: And they went through a cooler, but that's all.
Mrs. Silva: But then they picked it up every day.
Drayton: What was cooling ... Was electricity running the cooler? Or a generator? Or-
Mrs. Silva: [00:44:30] We had an ice machine.
Mr. Silva: Yeah, it was electricity.
Drayton: Because you had electricity in this valley staring when? Do you remember a time when there wasn't electricity?
Mrs. Silva: I remember when I was in the 7th grade before we had electricity.
Mr. Silva: At the house. But I mean, there was ... You know, at the ranch there, there was no electricity at first. As a matter of fact, your dad brought it in.
Mrs. Silva: I know we put it in, and that's what I said. I was in about ... Gosh, I don't know. But what I used to think about water is, "Let's just see." We had before the water. And [00:45:00] we had electricity come in.
Mr. Silva: It came in from the ranch.
Mrs. Silva: Yes, I know it came from the ranch. But I can remember when I had girlfriends out from school, they couldn't believe that we just had coal oil lamps. And we just had the lamps sticking on the wall, and that's all the light we had. And that was about 7th and 8th grade.
Drayton: They thought that was just so-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. It was something. You could-
Drayton: ... remarkable.
Mrs. Silva: ... see your own shadows. And then [00:45:30] they all had electricity in their homes.
Drayton: Was that something to be ... Was it considered sort of something you were embarrassed about? Or was it kind of charming and-
Mrs. Silva: No. I think it was kind of embarrassing, you know.
Drayton: You felt kind of backward-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: ... or whatever.
Mrs. Silva: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kids do that to each other, don't they?
Drayton: Now it would probably be-
Mrs. Silva: I always had some ... You know, I had girlfriends all the time come over and stay. But that was the old coal oil lamps.
Drayton: So the ranch over there was like 90? You said about 90 cows?
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: And then, did they have fields [00:46:00] at all? I mean, did they name their fields? Or this was [crosstalk 00:46:05].
Mr. Silva: Yeah, they went out all over the place.
Drayton: And was it ... Did they turn them loose every day? Or did they have to keep them penned up most of the year?
Mr. Silva: They went out in it every day, up the hill.
Drayton: Regardless. So, obviously, there had to be some grass-
Mr. Silva: Yeah, small.
Drayton: ... or some-
Mr. Silva: Small corral. There would be a mud hole. If they did let them out there, they'd pick mud off.
Drayton: And did you use dogs to round them up?
Mr. Silva: Yeah. We had good dogs.
Drayton: And what kind of dogs were [00:46:30] they?
Mr. Silva: Shepherds.
Drayton: Were they Australian, the ones [crosstalk 00:46:38].
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, I think they were called just plain Shepherds.
Mr. Silva: Mixed.
Drayton: Are there any stories, or any anecdotes about difficult cows, or weather, or anything that you remember that was really striking to you that you worked over there, or even that you remember? Is there anything-
Mrs. Silva: No. Did I say that right? I guess it was just animals to us. We didn't stop to look at things the way some people do now.
Drayton: Oh, but you are. Yes you are! Absolutely.
Mr. Silva: Well, milkers down at-
Drayton: I just hope [00:47:00] I'm not tiring you out. I mean, all these little tedious questions to you [crosstalk 00:47:17] are actually very, very interesting to me, because you see ... I mean, this is like, if we don't get this now ... And I'm so aware of sort of creating history in a sense that ... And this is really an important part of the history [00:47:30] of this area. So we've got to be ... We have to remember that.
Mrs. Silva: At one time, they did talk about putting a canal through here, as a way out from San Francisco, on the outside of the Golden Gate. But then that died.
Drayton: You mean the Monticello?
Mrs. Silva: No, that was before. They wanted to put a canal from down here.
Drayton: Oh.
Mrs. Silva: Just open this all up.
Drayton: And that would've just wiped you guys out completely?
Mrs. Silva: Well, it would of, I guess. But I mean, they talked about it before the war. And they never did-
Mr. Silva: So they never-
Mrs. Silva: They never did do it. They'd have [00:48:00] another way out, so the freight wouldn't get trapped in.
Mr. Silva: [inaudible 00:48:02].
Drayton: Right.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: Oh, I see. Oh, my goodness. See, I didn't know that.
Mrs. Silva: And then there was a ship that ... Did they tell you about the ship that came in over there? And the anchor was still down there at Tennessee.
Drayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mrs. Silva: You have that?
Drayton: Well, go ahead. Tell me about it, because I-
Mrs. Silva: Well, no. I don't know when it happened, but all I know is it came in there and the anchor's still there.
Drayton: Did you kids ... As a child, did you go down to Tennessee Beach?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. We used to go down to Tennessee Beach.
Drayton: Did you wander around freely, around-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. We walked. Oh, yeah. You could [00:48:30] walk around any place you wanted. You couldn't ... You weren't supposed to go in swimming because there was too much of an undertow. And I kind remember staying in there, going down there. And there was a kind of a nice little rock, and we'd get in there, and all of a sudden, the breakers would come up so fast they'd go right into the rock where you were. I mean, it used to come up ... It was very fast.
Then we'd go over the hill there, and go over that, where the GNRA is now, and then there was another canyon down through there where they had three cabins.
Drayton: Oh!
Mr. Silva: Pirate's Cove.
Drayton: Pirate's Cove.
Mrs. Silva: It's called Pirate's Cove. And we used to stay there and go fishing from [00:49:00] there, and we used to fish all along there. The folks that my dad used to go down with the work, and then they'd go one morning, and they'd go fishing. They'd get enough fish maybe for the week. And he'd come back, and-
Drayton: And what kind of fish would they catch?
Mrs. Silva: Rock cod.
Drayton: Rock cod.
Mrs. Silva: Or link, or whatever there.
Drayton: Perch.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, perch. Nothing fancy.
Mr. Silva: Eel.
Mrs. Silva: Eel. That was a good one.
Drayton: And those cabins were just sort of like little hunting cabins?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: Or did they belong to anybody in-
Mr. Silva: They belonged to three guys from the city. They used to hike over the weekend.
Mrs. Silva: They made the cabins there themselves.
Mr. Silva: They hauled the stones on their back.
Drayton: Oh, my gosh.
Mr. Silva: And they filled the stone with [inaudible 00:49:22]. They were nice little cabins. They're up on the walls down there, up where the tide used to come in.
Mrs. Silva: They're not there any more though.
Mr. Silva: No.
Drayton: Why do [00:49:30] they call it Pirate's Cove?
Mrs. Silva: I don't know.
Drayton: Did you ever wonder as a kid? I mean, did you go looking for treasure?
Mrs. Silva: No, we never thought anything of it. It was just there, and we knew the ones that went down. We'd see them walking down, you know, to go down to the ... on the weekend. They'd spend their weekends there. And then, of course, the boats from-
Mr. Silva: Three cabins, three different guys.
Mrs. Silva: The boats coming in from Sausalito. The people would take the train up here too. [00:50:00] Where the heliport is now, it was called Manzanita at the time. They'd get off there, and they'd walk down to Tennessee Beach. Sundays, this was just a ... All kinds of people, Saturdays and Sundays, walking down to the beach.
Drayton: Oh, interesting! Oh, that's fascinating. This is back in the '20s and early '30s?
Mr. Silva: This was to be a main drag.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. This was-
Drayton: Now, why did I have the exact opposite impression? Like I thought that it was just really isolated, and people kind of-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, no. The weekends was something else. I mean, us kids, as kids, we sold lemonade out [00:50:30] there, even. And when the lilacs were blooming, we'd sell our lilacs.
Drayton: So Martin didn't ... See, I had heard, to be very frank, that ... you know, Mr. Martin had a gate across there, and wouldn't let people into Tennessee Beach.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, that was in years to come. That was later.
Drayton: That was later.
Mrs. Silva: That was before. That was when other people ... Before Martin ever moved in there, they used to have it.
Drayton: Where the people used to go out there.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: So when Mr. Martin came in, he ... Did he close that area off then?
Mrs. Silva: No.
Mr. Silva: No.
Mrs. Silva: No, you could go, and you'd have to ask for a key.
Mr. Silva: The people didn't-
Mrs. Silva: But people would walk down. You couldn't drive down. He'd stop [00:51:00] them from driving down, but they could walk down. I mean, he was not stopping them from walking.
Mr. Silva: The people that would ... It started to die off. They-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, they started-
Mr. Silva: ... started to go on the beach, and-
Mrs. Silva: They started going up more toward the mountain.
Drayton: Because, as the roads got better, people could go further-
Mrs. Silva: Further away, right.
Drayton: So how many people might go to Tennessee Beach during, let's say, the '30s on a weekend? How many people might be down there?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, probably-
Mr. Silva: More than now.
Drayton: More than now?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: That's interesting. That's really interesting.
Mrs. Silva: Because now, we see the cars go down. But before, they used to walk.
Drayton: [00:51:30] They used to walk from the-
Mrs. Silva: Yes, from Manzanita.
Drayton: That would be a-
Mrs. Silva: That's a good long way.
Drayton: ... three-mile walk each way.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: And these would be families or young-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, no. The older people. Just anybody. I mean, I think that that was an outing, see. Where now they, as I say, they can go to Muir Beach, or they can go up to the Russian River and stuff. Well, you can't do that now. Then they ... When the poisoned oak was pretty in red, you know, the leaves would get so pretty in red, that people ... They didn't know what it was, and they'd pick those beautiful [00:52:00] red leaves. And we'd see them going home with these little kids, and beautiful red leaves, and we'd go, "Oh, boy. By the time they get home, what a mess they'd be in."
Drayton: Oh.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: Oh, dear.
Mrs. Silva: But-
Drayton: City, city folk!
Mrs. Silva: Oh, and they'd pick all the wildflowers. There was all kinds of wallflowers they'd go home with ... But they did that. That went on for years and years.
Mr. Silva: San Francisco had no place else to go, but over here.
Drayton: Well, right. Well, Tamalpais, of course, was a major, major recreation outing, and hiking clubs, and-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, 'cause I used to ... I'd go to Tamalpais, and the train that they had to go up there, and [00:52:30] I hiked up there, and I'd go on the train.
Drayton: What kind of wildflowers grew out there that maybe don't grow so much now?
Mrs. Silva: Well, we used to have a lot of trilliums and irises, and wishing bells. And then there's the little jack-in-the-box, we'd call them.
Drayton: Jack-in-the-pulpit?
Mrs. Silva: No, pulpit is that the little one? It's kind of a little purple one that ... the little one. And there was all kinds of them. Then there was the wild roses.
Drayton: So was it-
Mrs. Silva: There was a lot of-
Drayton: ... much more flowery then than now?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. 'Cause like now, we can walk down the road [00:53:00] and there's ... I haven't seen a trillium in years, down through here, so I don't know what's become of them. There used to be all kinds of maidenhair ferns and stuff. You don't see any of that any more.
Drayton: So, any particular reason why, do you think?
Mrs. Silva: I don't know. I don't know.
Drayton: Just people pick them, and the seeds were taken? Or-
Mrs. Silva: I don't know. I don't know. It just, over a period of years, is they just disappeared.
Drayton: And how about animals? I mean, is there a ... Has there been changes in the wildlife that have been out there?
Mr. Silva: Yeah, certainly. The deer were eating up all my flowers from my [crosstalk 00:53:25].
Drayton: Oh.
Mrs. Silva: They just ate up our Camellia tree to nothing this week.
Drayton: The deer [00:53:30] are more prevalent now?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. And at that time, they used to shoot them. You were allowed to kill them. And now that this is all reserve, so the little families are just growing, and they're just eating up everything.
Drayton: Did you ever see ... Wild boars were a problem back then.
Mrs. Silva: I don't remember ever seeing any of those.
Mr. Silva: There's a lot of raccoons.
Drayton: Oh.
Mr. Silva: And possum.
Mrs. Silva: Jack rabbits.
Mr. Silva: Not too many jack rabbits any more. I don't-
Mrs. Silva: Not any more, but there was at the time. And there used to be foxes. Now and then you'd see a fox.
Drayton: Coyotes at all?
Mrs. Silva: Coyotes, yes.
Mr. Silva: Coyotes. [00:54:00] They used to come down off the hill over here, sit down there and howl.
Drayton: What was it like as a ... Just to sort of, to paint a picture for a minute to get back to ... You said you didn't have any electricity til you were 12 or 13. So let's say you're 8, 10, 5. What was it like to live out here?
Mrs. Silva: There was nothing. I mean, I don't know. We just played around. We had no friends to play with. It was just our own family. We'd go over to the dairy, walk over to the dairy. And, of course, my dad never would [00:54:30] want us in the barns. He kept us out of the barns.
Drayton: Because ...
Mrs. Silva: Of the language the men used, and all he'd say, "That's no place for women." But we could go ... We'd go over, and we'd go hunting for eggs, or we'd walk over to some girl's house over in the valley, and we'd play with some of the kids from there. 'Cause it was nothing, at that time, to walk from here right up to the end of the valley over there, which is quite a ways, to play with some friends or something.
Drayton: Just [crosstalk 00:54:55] to have something to do.
Mrs. Silva: That was all you ... You went to church on Sunday. Then [00:55:00] the celebration, you had the celebrations, or you had a dance at the hall every so often. Other than that there was nothing going on. You just got used to ... You just didn't know any different, I guess. We had toys to play with, and we had dollhouses. We made a dollhouse out of a shed. And we had our own things in there. But nothing spectacular.
Drayton: Were there any games that your mom or dad taught you that were like Portuguese singing games, or-
Mrs. Silva: No. I don't remember any of those. [00:55:30] I mean-
Drayton: So that the games you probably played were the same as your other friends. Hide and go seek, and-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. Yeah, hide and go seek, and kick the can, and baseball. And we didn't even have football at that time. It was baseball. Not even basketball.
Drayton: And then you heated that house by wood or coal, or-
Mrs. Silva: Wood.
Drayton: Wood.
Mrs. Silva: It was heated with wood. And then you got the big tubs out, and you took your bathroom ... kitchen. In the middle of the kitchen, you gotta heat it, and you got the water hot, and took your turns taking your bath.
Drayton: [00:56:00] On ... Were you able to bathe more?
Mrs. Silva: We had baths on Saturdays. When we took the hot bath. No, 'cause everybody was washed and clean. And then, I can remember, we finally put in the heaters and the stove to heat the water, and we got the bathtub, and then we added the bathroom.
Mr. Silva: Wood stove to heat the water.
Mrs. Silva: Wood stove.
Drayton: Yeah. Boy, that must have been so time-consuming.
Mrs. Silva: But it was ... Yeah. The bathroom and the wood floors over there. My mother had to scrub the wood floors with a brush?
Drayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And lye?
Mrs. Silva: There was no linoleum or anything. She scrubbed all our clothes by hand. And she was a fanatic on ironing. [00:56:30] Every little ruffle had to be ironed. Every piece of lace had to be ironed. She loved to iron.
Drayton: I hate ironing.
Mrs. Silva: As a matter of fact, she died ironing.
Drayton: Oh, my [crosstalk 00:56:38].
Mrs. Silva: We used to say, "You're gonna die ironing," and she says ... Oh, she used to laugh at us when she was ironing. My sister, when she had her stroke, and that was it.
Drayton: Well, she died happy.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. She was ironing. Yeah. I kept telling the kids, "If grandma'd see the way some of this clothes is ironed now, she'd be turning over."
Drayton: Or not ironed! I mean, [crosstalk 00:56:54].
Mrs. Silva: Or not ironed, yeah. Not ironing is the thing now.
Drayton: Did your mom make a lot of ... make handmade lace?
Mrs. Silva: No, [00:57:00] she never did make lace.
Drayton: Oh!
Mrs. Silva: She used to embroider, but she never made lace. I don't even remember my grandmother making lace. You know, I remember other people making lace, but I don't remember them making lace.
But they baked all their own bread. And I can remember that scrubbing the clothes by hand in the day, or practically every day. And how the clothes was so white, compared to now.
Drayton: Well, of course, they didn't ... I wonder how long they lasted with the lye soap that they used to-
Mrs. Silva: And they ... I remember them sewing clothes and all.
Drayton: And you had [00:57:30] a truck garden here.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: And so what kind of vegetables-
Mrs. Silva: All the vegetables. All vegetables.
Drayton: And anything that would be different from what people would raise now?
Mrs. Silva: No. They're the same. There's corn, there's cabbage, you know, kale, beets, carrots, all those things.
Drayton: Did your mom and grandparents keep up the Portuguese food ways, and-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. We still make it.
Drayton: So what did you have for, say, breakfast or lunch, or dinner?
Mrs. Silva: We used to always have soup for lunch. [00:58:00] And we'd always ... one kind of soup.
Mr. Silva: Ah, use the [inaudible 00:58:03].
Drayton: I better ... Sure.
Mrs. Silva: We would ... The breakfast would be mush and eggs.
Mr. Silva: And bread.
Mrs. Silva: And bread. And then, at noon we had soup. The meat that they had in the soup, and bread again, and coffee. And always plenty of bread and cheese. And then at night, for years it was just fish and potatoes.
Drayton: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: With an onion gravy, and potatoes. And then, maybe [00:58:30] a rice pudding or a sable pudding, which was the big fish-eye rice pudding.
Drayton: Oh, interesting. I've never even heard of that.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: Oh.
Mrs. Silva: And that's about what you'd get. And then I ... 'Cause I remember when we started growing up, and I can remember the first time we had Jell-O. Everybody thought that was a big joke. But it was something different. Yeah.
Drayton: I'm the same. My son has still never had Jell-O.
Mrs. Silva: He hasn't?
Drayton: Well, 'cause that ... The sort of stuff that I grew up on, you kind of got away from, because you sort of began to appreciate the older, [00:59:00] good and natural foods. Jell-O's basically just gelatine and sugar.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: Oh, gosh.
Mr. Silva: They had [foreign 00:59:05]. The war-time closets behind the wood stove? Remember they ... Like a boiler? And I used to get those and put them together and make culverts for the roads.
Drayton: Hunh. Oh, my goodness. What kind of barn was over there? How big of a barn was it?
Mrs. Silva: There was two.
Drayton: There were two barns at the Borges's?
Mr. Silva: 35 cows on each side in a milk barn. You know, the big hay barn.
Drayton: [00:59:30] And the milk? Did you milk tail to tail or head to head? Do you remember?
Mr. Silva: The cows were like this. There was a-
Mrs. Silva: A driveway between the middle.
Mr. Silva: That's where I used to feed them. Push the truck down and feed them hay, and push the thing down the front of them to give them feed.
Drayton: And so the cows were facing each other? Did they have their tails in-
Mr. Silva: Right.
Mrs. Silva: They were facing each other.
Drayton: Do I understand that maybe that's a slightly older tradition? Or is it sort of six of one and half a dozen of the other?
Mr. Silva: No, it's different nowadays.
Drayton: They ... [01:00:00] Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: It depends on how the barns were made, I guess.
Drayton: But you were ... Was the milker flat or flush with the cow? He wasn't on a platform.
Mr. Silva: No.
Drayton: Like there are now.
Mr. Silva: Yeah, we're even with the cows on the floor.
Mrs. Silva: Sitting on a stool.
Drayton: And was there a particular name for the barns at all?
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: The style of barn. Did you-
Mr. Silva: And like a milk barn.
Drayton: Yeah.
Mr. Silva: Nowadays the cows, they just have a walk-through. They call it a walk-through barn. Like my nephew down there, that guy's standing up milking the cows. [01:00:30] The cows are yay-high. And the two sides, and he goes down one side. He's down the middle, and he works both sides, putting the machines on and taking them off. And eight cows on each side. He'd go out. He gets eight more.
Mrs. Silva: Stupid from years ago.
Drayton: Yeah. Well, I'm interested in those differences in the transitions.
Mrs. Silva: There's quite a difference.
Drayton: And then how about the Martins? How many ... I think we started talking about the Martins. How many cows did they run out, did you have out there? Was it as big [01:01:00] as the [Clementelles 01:01:01]?
Mr. Silva: It was bigger.
Drayton: Bigger. Okay. And then the Martins and Bettencourts were partners together, so they ran their dairy together.
Mr. Silva: Right.
Drayton: Okay. And with 120 or-
Mr. Silva: No, no. I don't know, they ... probably about 100. There was four milkers there. And that's only like 100, 120.
Drayton: And you worked there for what? A year, did you say?
Mr. Silva: About a year.
Drayton: And how many kids, or how many people in the Martin family?
Mrs. Silva: Just [01:01:30] the one boy.
Drayton: The one boy. And he's the one who just died? Or-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: Or is he the one that's still in Loda?
Mrs. Silva: Loda. And the other, the Bettencourt boy is the one that just died, from Petaluma.
Drayton: Right. But the Bettencourts that lived in the-
Mrs. Silva: The second group. That's him.
Drayton: Is it ... There. Is that's-
Mrs. Silva: There were no relation.
Drayton: ... a different family. No relation?
Mrs. Silva: No relation at all. No, they weren't even [crosstalk 01:01:46].
Drayton: That's confusing to me.
Mrs. Silva: Well, one of the parents was Portuguese, but the other one wasn't.
Drayton: Okay.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: And then was [Cunia 01:01:52] still there when you ... Do you remember Cunia?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I do.
Drayton: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. The Cunias lived there before Lopez ever moved in there.
Drayton: Right.
Mrs. Silva: The Cunias were there ... [01:02:00] I always remember them 'cause those kids were raised together.
Drayton: And tell me about the Cunias. Because, of course, Laura doesn't know them, and-
Mrs. Silva: They were there for years. Well, they're-
Mr. Silva: The two sons.
Mrs. Silva: But his mother owned the place before him. And I can remember the old lady lived in the house where Laura lives. That was the old family home, then there's a ... up past the horse farm, there's another little house where the Cunias themselves built at ... or in a period of ... during the years, and they lived in the little house. And the old lady lived down [01:02:30] in the big house. And then after she died, they just stayed up at the big house. But when [Raposa 01:02:36] got it, after Cunias left, that's when he fixed the house, Laura's place, up a little bit.
Drayton: Right.
Mrs. Silva: But that was an original house too, where Laura is.
Drayton: Is there house older than your house?
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: This house here-
Mrs. Silva: This house here is the oldest house in the valley.
Drayton: That's what I thought. It certainly ... It looks that.
Mrs. Silva: The oldest one in the valley.
Drayton: So does that imply that either your family was one of the first or that it-
Mrs. Silva: No, my grandparents were the first in the valley.
Drayton: Well, there were actually, obviously, people who were ranching [01:03:00] before that, but the houses haven't survived.
Mrs. Silva: No, there was no ranching before that down here. When my grandparents came, this was it.
Drayton: Oh, really.
Mrs. Silva: And these other places came in afterwards.
Drayton: Hm. 'Cause I thought that the rancho-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: This is going back to the Mexican land grant.
Mrs. Silva: No. No. As far as I know, there was nothing here before.
Drayton: Did you ever ... Have you any idea who your grandparents bought their land from?
Mrs. Silva: Sausalito Land and Ferry Company. Which I have the original deed.
Drayton: Oh, my goodness.
Mrs. Silva: And [crosstalk 01:03:29].
Drayton: So that's going back to Throck Mortin. That's going back [01:03:30] to ... I mean, we're going back a long way.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Mr. Silva: They used to own all ... The Sausalito Land and Ferry owned all this property, all these hills. Clear over through Sausalito, you know, and down there.
Mrs. Silva: They used to own that Silver Ranch that-
Drayton: On the [crosstalk 01:03:43] other side.
Mrs. Silva: It belongs to GNRA too. That's with Da Silva.
Drayton: Is your land now owned by the park? Or do you still own ...
On the other side, yeah.
Mrs. Silva: The other side. It owns the G&RN too. That's, [01:04:00] you know, Da Silva.
Drayton: Is your land now owned by the park? Or do you still own-
Mrs. Silva: No, we own ours.
Drayton: You still-
Mrs. Silva: The park hasn't taken-
Mr. Silva: The park is down below the second-
Mrs. Silva: They're starting on the other side of the white house.
Drayton: Right.
Mrs. Silva: The other house.
Mr. Silva: The two houses. And then it's on the other side of that. Over the hill and then around the back, and over.
Drayton: Is there any discussion about buying your property? Or-
Mrs. Silva: Well, I don't wanna hear it.
Drayton: Yeah, I know. I didn't mean to bring up a bad-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: ... topic.
Mrs. Silva: No. One time, when they first-
Drayton: 'Cause it's a real touchy-
Mrs. Silva: ... started the buying, we thought sure they were going to, but then they finally left us alone. We never heard no more about it, and then they stopped [01:04:30] right there.
Drayton: But some people, I think, I guess, willingly sold and others, they began to condemn the property? Or-
Mr. Silva: Yeah. They condemned it.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. 'Cause they wanted to keep their dairies, but-
Mr. Silva: Well, they give them 99 years on their lease. And the one down there-
Mrs. Silva: Battencourts.
Mr. Silva: No. Where [Jaballa 01:04:48] sits. He bought a lease. I think he paid $100,000 for that, the lot and the house. Then next to the house that you were talking about?
Drayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mr. Silva: That-
Drayton: Well, the way it usually works is you get ... You don't pay [01:05:00] it. You get that much less off of what they pay you. So the people in the Aluminum Valley ended up getting millions, but then out of the millions, if they wanted a lease to lease back, then they would get 200,000 taken off, or something like that, so they actually put out money. You know, they ... But it's a real touchy issue. I understand that.
Mr. Silva: The people, like the Bettencourts that work there, these later Battencourts. They sold theirs, their deal, [01:05:30] to this [Virgil Hollis 01:05:31]. I think. I think they wanted ... Some guy stopped one time, wanted to buy it, and I says, "What are they asking for it?" And he told me, "100,000. That's for 99 years." That's a lot of money.
Drayton: Well, when you think about ... How has park presence ... How has that affected life here for you folks?
Mrs. Silva: It hasn't bothered us any.
Drayton: I mean, is it positive, negative, neutral?
Mrs. Silva: No. There's just no [crosstalk 01:06:00].
Drayton: It doesn't appear that there's any more [01:06:00] people coming in.
Mrs. Silva: No. There's very few people.
Drayton: Which is very surprising. That's what's so interesting to me. I got this impression this was sort of a very bucolic, quiet, dairy land. But it sounds like it was a major-
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. It was a major-
Drayton: ... tourist attraction.
Mrs. Silva: It was. It was at one time, yeah.
Drayton: Did you ever see the wreck of the Tennessee down there? I mean, other than the anchor?
Mrs. Silva: No, just the anchor. That's all. Remember parts, like the wooden parts that might have been from the door, but we never did know [crosstalk 01:06:25].
Drayton: Yeah. And people didn't go looking for-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: ... pieces or-
Mrs. Silva: Things like that, no they didn't. That wasn't [01:06:30] the thing in those days.
Drayton: It was so many years before. I can't remember. I think it's 1870s that that-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, that that thing happened, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was an interesting valley at one time. We used to have bootleggers.
Drayton: For real! Tell me about that.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, those-
Drayton: I've heard that a couple of times, and I've never followed up on it.
Mrs. Silva: They were right here. They used to live up there. As a matter of fact, the house next door was a bootlegger's place.
Drayton: This was during Prohibition?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. These kids used to live ... That was something. We'd go over there and watch the stuff go through the still, [01:07:00] through all those pipes and things. And then the one up the valley one, the other valley there, when they raided them, they went and they shot the stuff that did something to the liquor. And it was all made ... The boilers were all agates. You know, the marble agate?
Drayton: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: Just beautiful ones.
Mr. Silva: That's where the liquor comes through.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, to purify.
Drayton: To purify.
Mrs. Silva: So when they shot that, we had the best agates in school. 'Cause we went down, we just gathered all the agates that we could from there.
Drayton: So the federal [01:07:30] agents came out, and-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. They were ... Yeah, it-
Drayton: Who were the guys? I'd assume they were men. Or was it a family or-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: ... the bootleggers?
Mrs. Silva: Well, this was a family that lived here. And the other one up there was ... It was just some people that renovates three houses, four houses, in there at one time.
Mr. Silva: And some of these guys are still living in there.
Mrs. Silva: Oh, well I'm not mentioning any names.
Drayton: Okay.
Mrs. Silva: They were-
Mr. Silva: Their kids are living.
Mrs. Silva: Their kids are living, you know. They ... I don't know. Four houses in what we called Georgie Sally. That was a German fellow that owned that valley, but then the [01:08:00] houses didn't belong to him. I don't know who they belonged to. 'Cause I know we used to walk up there, my mother and grandmother, and friends, walked up to pick blackberries during the blackberry season. And they were up there. They were running the mill. I wasn't interfering with them any. It was why I had none of their business.
Drayton: They didn't tell them ... Usually, you think of bootlegging as sort of secret, back in the woods of ... covered by brush and-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Mr. Silva: Everybody knew about it.
Mrs. Silva: Everybody knew about it.
Drayton: How were they not afraid of being-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: Foolish?
Mrs. Silva: Everybody was paid off, I guess.
Drayton: Brazen?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Mr. Silva: Yeah, they are brazen little bunch.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. [01:08:30] I remember the time they did that, and the fellows got away. And they came down ... At that time we had hay in this field. And they crawled down to the hay field-
Drayton: Oh, you had hay right across here?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. Up there to where all those walls were. That was one little patch of hay that my dad had every year.
Drayton: For the horses or something?
Mrs. Silva: Probably used it ... Yeah. Whatever. And then the guy crawled through the hay and came over here, and then somebody picked him up here at our house, and away he went. And that was the end of them. You never ... not more didn't [01:09:00] see them. No, they disappeared [crosstalk 01:09:02].
But this one that was next door to here, they're both ... Their families are still living in the valley. Of course, they knew their parent were bootleggers.
Mr. Silva: They're not in the valley. They're in Murin.
Mrs. Silva: Well, they're living in Murin County and Sonoma County. I mean, they're still living. But that was a pass-time to go and watch something like that going on.
Mr. Silva: They always had bars and stuff wide open in Sausalito.
Drayton: Oh, yeah. I'm sure. That wasn't just drinking out of shoes-
Mr. Silva: No.
Drayton: ... [01:09:30] and hidden ... Three knocks and a password.
Mrs. Silva: A password, no.
Drayton: Well, it's not a very popular law.
Mr. Silva: This guy, in Sausalito, he had a bar there. I forget. He used to sell Singapore Slings.
Drayton: Right.
Mr. Silva: Everybody used to go up there. Everybody knew about it.
Drayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative)? What was it like living next to the military during the war? Were there any precautions or stories or-
Mrs. Silva: No. We had the-
Drayton: They would come down here for-
Mrs. Silva: They'd stay down here, you know. They had [01:10:00] this blocked off. And they had ... They stayed down in there, and then one Christmas, I was playing out with my daughter. It was in '42. They came down with the flu, but there was a lot of them that didn't have places to go, and then when Mrs. Clooney and I decided we'd fix dinner for those that couldn't. So we had our dinner, and then we went back up to her place and killed a bunch of chickens, and plucked them, and cleaned them. And then we had dinner for them.
Drayton: For the army guys?
Mrs. Silva: The army guys.
Drayton: Aw, that's sweet.
Mrs. Silva: And they came down and had dinner. And they made [01:10:30] phone calls to their parents and stuff.
Drayton: Off of your phone?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. That was the one year though, and then after that they were gone. It was just that one Christmas.
Mr. Silva: They were stationed down there in kind of the-
Drayton: Well, where exactly?
Mr. Silva: Down below, down in Tennessee. They were afraid that the Japanese were gonna come in Tennessee.
Drayton: Right. So, I mean, were they like near Lopez? Or ...
Mrs. Silva: Well, they were all in through the valley.
Mr. Silva: They had a stopover here.
Drayton: What kind ... Did they have ... build like little-
Mrs. Silva: No, it was-
Drayton: ... tents?
Mrs. Silva: ... just tents.
Drayton: Oh!
Mrs. Silva: It was here. They were out in the open. It wasn't-
Drayton: Tents in the valley.
Mr. Silva: They had a whole thing, like a [01:11:00] lean-to over here.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Mr. Silva: They stopped the cars.
Mrs. Silva: They stopped the car. You couldn't come in unless you were military, and staying down there.
Drayton: Or families that-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: You had to carry id then of some sort?
Mrs. Silva: No, they just ... Well, I mean, they knew there wasn't that many of us that usually we were. But no outsiders were allowed in the valley.
Drayton: Oh, that's interesting. Did they build any bunkers or anything-
Mrs. Silva: No.
Mr. Silva: No.
Mrs. Silva: They brought the stuff from Fort Baker around to them.
Drayton: And you had to blackout, I assume?
Mrs. Silva: Oh, yeah. We had the black curtains and all that.
Drayton: Everybody did that, I guess.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: I mean, you're [01:11:30] not just near a military-
Mrs. Silva: No, everybody did.
Drayton: Were you worried about that? I mean, being so close to the military installation?
Mrs. Silva: No, no. I don't think it bothered us. I mean, I don't remember being-
Drayton: You didn't think you'd be-
Mrs. Silva: ... this scared.
Drayton: ... hit in a poor strike or-
Mrs. Silva: No. Uh-uh (negative).
Mr. Silva: No, I worked for the ... I'm an engineer. We built a BC station down into the city, on the side of the hill. It's still out there. It better be. But now it's underground.
Drayton: A VC station?
Mr. Silva: Yeah, a lookout for-
Drayton: What does VC stand for?
Mrs. Silva: BC.
Drayton: Oh, BC.
Mrs. Silva: BC.
Mr. Silva: It was a army lookout.
Drayton: Ah!
Mr. Silva: A big shield. And they could look, with a telescope, so they look out to [01:12:00] see if there's any ships coming.
Drayton: Did you ever hear of ... 'Cause, obviously, there were during the war. There was at least one example, probably many examples, of Japanese subs coming right up to the Golden Gate. Did you-
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: ... hear stories about that, or-
Mr. Silva: No, we had ... Yeah, I worked on those ... Fort Funston and Fort Cronkhite, from 16-inch batteries. And then we'd shoot them off at a target out there, 30 miles, [01:12:30] and they'd take the target out there, 30 miles.
Drayton: Mm. That's impressive. That'd be a deterrent to-
Mr. Silva: They got it all ready for when they came in.
Drayton: You know, and I never asked you, when you were born, because I should probably remember that. What year were you born?
Mr. Silva: 1909.
Drayton: 1909. And where were you born? In Santa Clara? Or-
Mr. Silva: Vallejo.
Drayton: Vallejo. Okay. Well, you did move around a lot.
Mrs. Silva: He moved around. I never moved.
Drayton: You're a home girl.
Mrs. Silva: I moved from here for one month.
Mr. Silva: I lived in [01:13:00] a town and went to school in a town you never heard of.
Drayton: 'Cause it no longer exists?
Mrs. Silva: It exists.
Mr. Silva: It exists. We went by there the other day.
Mrs. Silva: It was last week we went by there.
Drayton: Oh, what's it ... what-
Mr. Silva: Tranquility.
Drayton: You're right. You're right! Now, I was gonna say, I bet I would. 'Cause I've traveled around a lot. And I love little towns. It just sort of ... They're so interesting. But you're right! You win!
Mr. Silva: It's right next to ... about two miles from the town of San Joaquin. In San Joaquin County?
Drayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mr. Silva: There's a town in San Joaquin. And they're about two miles apart.
Drayton: And [01:13:30] I bet that was a tiny town. I mean, it was like a little village, probably.
Mrs. Silva: It still is.
Mr. Silva: It's small.
Mrs. Silva: It still is.
Drayton: There's a charm to those places. I guess they can either be deadly, or they can be kind of nurturing, good places to be raised, depending upon the people who are there, you know.
Mrs. Silva: We drove by there the other day just for fun. It was kind of interesting to see. They do have a very nice school. Grammar school and high school altogether in the same area, a real nice-looking school.
Drayton: And speaking of school, you went to school in Sausalito?
Mrs. Silva: No. I went to school [01:14:00] in Mill Valley.
Drayton: In Mill Valley.
Mrs. Silva: At that time, we were in the Mill Valley district.
Drayton: Because now it's Sausalito.
Mrs. Silva: Now that it's Sausalito, [crosstalk 01:14:06].
Drayton: So was your parish then Sausalito or Mill Valley?
Mrs. Silva: Part of the time it was Mill Valley. Then they pushed us to Sausalito-
Drayton: Ah!
Mrs. Silva: ... and then went back to Mill Valley. And now we're in Sausalito.
Drayton: Oh.
Mrs. Silva: Now we are the Sausalito Parish.
Drayton: Okay. You can get a little schizophrenic here.
Mrs. Silva: And the kids have to go to Sausalito District School, if any of them living up in here. Unless they get a special permit, they have to go to Sausalito School.
Drayton: So you went by business? Or walked? Or-
Mrs. Silva: Well, we walked to the bus stop. Which was down there in the [01:14:30] Tam Valley, Tam Junction. We went to school to Homestead, and then the Old Mill and Summit. And we got there and went to 10. And then, when my sisters were in Tam, wasn't it? Let's see. I think that ... No, I think they went to Mill Valley grammar schools also. And then, when my brother got of school age, that's when they started taking him to Sausalito schools.
Mr. Silva: We were in Sausalito over there for a while ... [01:15:00] school district. Then ... Yeah, we were in Mill Valley. Then we moved to Sausalito, and the AL Post Office was in Sausalito. They moved us to Mill Valley. And then they moved us back to Sausalito. We were just moving around back and forth.
Mrs. Silva: But now we've been in Mill Valley for the last 40 years, I guess.
Mr. Silva: That's right. The road is the divider here.
Drayton: Yeah. So people on the other side of the street would be Mill Valley-
Mrs. Silva: Mill Valley, and this is Sausalito.
Drayton: So, were there ... Besides the Tennessee Valley, were there more of little dairy ranches, farms, out this [01:15:30] area? Or-
Mr. Silva: No, it was going on to the 101, off Stinson Beach. Jim Beach-
Mrs. Silva: Not in the ... Not into the other-
Mr. Silva: Down near the beach, there was a couple of little places.
Drayton: There still [crosstalk 01:15:40] are.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, there's nothing-
Drayton: There's Green Gold.
Mrs. Silva: ... in the Tam Valley area though.
Drayton: It was just either open land or marsh, or-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah. People had-
Drayton: ... little houses.
Mrs. Silva: They took up with chicken ranches.
Mr. Silva: There were cows.
Mrs. Silva: And a couple of cows for their own use or something like that. But not to ... business part of the ...
Drayton: You know, there's one question I haven't asked you, just in general, about dairy. And [01:16:00] then I'll wind this up. I don't want to keep you too long here.
Water was a real problem. When we touched on that earlier, did you folks have springs across the street?
Mr. Silva: All springs around here.
Drayton: And were they reliable? Or-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: So did you have to buy water? Like the Lopez family did for a while? Or did you always have a reliable source of water?
Mr. Silva: Well, they finally ... I don't know what happened ... I had to water in from [Lurin 01:16:23] Avenue, across the hill, and back over the dairy. But sometimes the spring'd get low. You know the big spring up in [01:16:30] the valley there. And then other people started moving in.
Drayton: So never had a problem with the dairy ranch then?
Mr. Silva: No.
Mrs. Silva: No, because-
Drayton: Because dairying uses-
Mrs. Silva: We had to pay for it.
Drayton: ... so much water. Was that business a pretty good business then? Did it break even, make a go? Or was it always, you know, sort of hand-to-mouth over there?
Mrs. Silva: No, I guess we made a go of it. They raised it. That's three kids there, and-
Drayton: But I guess ... Again, I was-
Mrs. Silva: You weren't-
Drayton: I don't mean to be comparing, [01:17:00] but it's interesting to me because it looked as it was such a tough ... I mean, it was-
Mr. Silva: Well, they-
Drayton: I don't know if their land is just poor, or-
Mrs. Silva: Well, it was poor management too.
Drayton: Ah.
Mrs. Silva: Really, it was.
Mr. Silva: She was the one [inaudible 01:17:11].
Mrs. Silva: She was a worker, that poor woman. She milked cows until the day before the kid was born.
Drayton: Laura? Or her mom?
Mrs. Silva: Laura.
Drayton: Oh, Laura. She's a hard-
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, and she has-
Drayton: ... worker.
Mrs. Silva: ... seven kids, I-
Drayton: Six.
Mrs. Silva: Six or seven, yeah.
Drayton: Ah.
Mrs. Silva: Yes. But he was a bottle licker, and she did the work.
Drayton: [01:17:30] Aha!
Mrs. Silva: She worked. No woman works like that woman worked.
Drayton: Not me, that's for sure.
Mrs. Silva: No. No-
Drayton: No, thank you.
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: So it wasn't just the land. It was the family.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, it was the family.
Drayton: Okay. All right. That's interesting. Because from that one talk I did get the impression that-
Mrs. Silva: But she'll never-
Drayton: ... that things were-
Mrs. Silva: ... say it.
Drayton: ... awfully marginal here. I thought, "My gosh! To buy your water, buy your hay," you know. You know, always-
Mrs. Silva: Well, you're always ... It's always a ... Even now, it's the same-
Drayton: It's-
Mrs. Silva: ... type of thing with the-
Mr. Silva: They don't have-
Mrs. Silva: Just there, they don't make that much.
Mr. Silva: [01:18:00] They don't have city water down there. You know, I don't know how she bought water.
Mrs. Silva: The water came in on the tanks. And that's when a couple of years [inaudible 01:18:06]. They had water come in by the tank.
Drayton: They just [crosstalk 01:18:10] didn't have enough water.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: It came in by tanks. They went and got a milk can, there's ... I remember they had trouble with their water.
Drayton: Yeah. And then the water, there's so much mineral in it, that I guess the pipes get all-
Mr. Silva: Yeah. Yeah-
Drayton: ... corroded and just-
Mr. Silva: They all ... All the spring water does that.
Drayton: Yeah. I guess so.
Mr. Silva: All of it. But when the plastic pipe came out, [01:18:30] I took care of that. No more.
Drayton: Right. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about, in terms of just your life here, dairy ranching, the dairy ranches in general, that would be good to pass on to posterity?
Mrs. Silva: No. I want you to know that it was just a slow-pacing life [crosstalk 01:18:53].
Drayton: But do you look back on that with fond memories? Or sort of like it was boring? Or, you know, how do sum it up?
Mrs. Silva: [01:19:00] No. No, I don't. I mean, we didn't know any different. Now, it's altogether different, yes. Because now it ... You know, if I was to go do it now, I don't think I'd like it. I wouldn't want it at all.
Mr. Silva: Oh, nobody would do it now.
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: Well, because we're so-
Mr. Silva: 'Cause we're different.
Drayton: Yeah. We're so used to TV [crosstalk 01:19:18] and radio, and VCR [crosstalk 01:19:19] and a fast pace of life-
Mrs. Silva: Yes, it's ... That's right.
Drayton: ... that's maybe killing us, actually.
Mrs. Silva: That's right. Yeah. Because ... And what is this ... Like I, many is the time I said we used to have time to go visit the neighbors. You'd go and visit [01:19:30] and have bread and coffee or something, or a glass of wine. And you'd spend a couple of hours and come home and everything got done!
Mr. Silva: Like Pedreaux.
Drayton: Oh!
Mr. Silva: Yeah, that took a lot of ... card-playing and all, but-
Drayton: It's a great game.
Mrs. Silva: ... now there's no time for anything. There's no time for any of that any more, and yet we have all these appliances and all, and-
Drayton: Well, because we don't allow ourselves-
Mrs. Silva: The time.
Drayton: ... the time. 'Cause our life is so ... Well, anyway.
Mrs. Silva: So fast. Yeah, I guess [01:20:00] it's not the same.
Mr. Silva: We didn't have TV at that time.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, if we didn't have TV, we'd have time.
Drayton: Well, because then you'd play Pedreaux. You'd-
Mrs. Silva: Ah! That's one thing I never liked, is cards. My mother was a great card player, but not me.
Drayton: A lot of card playing then was a good way to pass the time?
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, I guess they did. Yes, they used to play a lot of cards.
Drayton: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: And I know when they had fights, and the wrestling matches, my dad used to like to go to those, and occasionally-
Drayton: Did people leave this area very often? Or was it pretty hard, [01:20:30] with the dairy ranch-
Mrs. Silva: You didn't go out.
Drayton: ... and you kind of-
Mrs. Silva: No, you didn't go out.
Drayton: You just ... Did they stay there 365 days a year?
Mrs. Silva: A year, right.
Drayton: No vacations?
Mrs. Silva: There's no such thing as vacations. Unless you were sick, and usually if you were sick, you got up and milked the cows anyway. There was just no way out. It was just-
Mr. Silva: Hello.
Mrs. Silva: ... one of those things.
Mr. Silva: No, she's not.
Drayton: Yeah. Well-
Mr. Silva: I don't know. Call later. All right. Bye.
Drayton: Anyway, was there anything you wanted to add Mr. Silva? Anything about the Martins, [01:21:00] or the Bettencourts, or ... Is there anything-
Mr. Silva: No. I think-
Drayton: You obviously left during.
Mr. Silva: Yeah, I went ... In '35, I went ... I bought a truck and I went trucking.
Drayton: I think that's probably a statement about what you thought about dairying, hunh?
Mr. Silva: Then I went to army engineers, and-
Drayton: 'Cause an 8-hour day sure beats the heck out of a 12- or 14-hour day, hunh?
Mr. Silva: And I traveled up and down the coast, putting in BC stations, radar stations.
Mrs. Silva: He was [inaudible 01:21:28].
Mr. Silva: 20, 24 some ... I worked [01:21:30] as high as 24 hours a day-
Drayton: oh.
Mr. Silva: With Uncle Sam. And I've got nothing for it, just a [inaudible 01:21:35]. 62.50 every two weeks!
Mrs. Silva: That's about back then. Now that 62.50, you can't even go to the grocery store one time with that.
Drayton: No, exactly. That's a good average bill at a grocery store.
Mr. Silva: Yeah. Every time we'd work. Especially when we were working at a ... building a fort, pouring concrete-
Drayton: You helped build Fort Cronkhite? No. Fort-
Mr. Silva: For sure.
Drayton: You did?
Mr. Silva: Fort Funston, Fort Cronkhite and-
Drayton: [01:22:00] You know, they had a reunion of all the guys who had worked at Fort Cronkhite. I'll have to fink on you and tell them about you, because Marine Headlands, they are really trying to pull people together, the old ... the guys who ... or women, who were stationed out there who were somehow connected. So you [crosstalk 01:22:19] helped build it. That's pretty amazing.
Mrs. Silva: And all the guns up?
Mr. Silva: I put ... Yeah. We took the guns up. They came in the shipyard. And all shitty, gray, and a bunch of [inaudible 01:22:29] [01:22:30] carry all the tires or frames, you know, that would carry all the dirt [inaudible 01:22:34]. And they had two or three of those made up to set the barrels on them, one barrel at a time. The barrels weighed about 139 or 149 tons a piece!
Drayton: Wow.
Mr. Silva: And they had to brace that up, and we brought them. Sausalito had to put braces underneath those overpasses, you know, when we went over?
Drayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Just to make them ... Just to [01:23:00] make them stronger.
Mr. Silva: It's up at Fort Cronkhite, when we poured the first guns, where the guns sets in. And we had to pour that all at one time, and I worked there. The guy was up there with a flashlight, telling me I wasn't wearing a [inaudible 01:23:19], telling me where I could stand, on a rock or what.
Mrs. Silva: They did. I got to go and see that, and that was the most beautiful thing inside. All that tiles.
Drayton: Inside [01:23:30] the-
Mrs. Silva: Inside where the guns were.
Drayton: Ah!
Mrs. Silva: It was just gorgeous.
Drayton: Before they got-
Mrs. Silva: They never-
Drayton: ... vandalized.
Mrs. Silva: ... even used them. They built the thing. I don't know if it's ... what's happened.
Mr. Silva: No. We didn't have to use them.
Mrs. Silva: Well, we didn't have to-
Drayton: Thank goodness.
Mrs. Silva: ... use them, but I mean ... Yeah. But I mean-
Mr. Silva: Dismantled the guns. I'm not sure.
Drayton: Well-
Mrs. Silva: But I mean that the building was underground as well. But all this fancy mosaic tiles and stuff-
Drayton: Mosaic tiles underground.
Mrs. Silva: Yeah, well, it was all designed and-
Drayton: How interesting.
Mrs. Silva: ... all. But it wasn't mosaic. Maybe it was just tiles.
Drayton: Yeah, but I know ... No.
Mrs. Silva: But they were all designed-
Drayton: How [crosstalk 01:23:57] interesting. I haven't heard that. Now, there's a military ... [01:24:00] One of the park rangers is the ... In fact, he was the Assistant Chief of Interpretation. His love is military history. So he knows all of this but, I mean, that's kind of extraordinary, that they would make-
Mr. Silva: I know all-
Drayton: ... so much effort for the-
Mrs. Silva: I remember going-
Drayton: ... tile?
Mrs. Silva: ... in there and seeing that ... All this designed tile [crosstalk 01:24:16].
Mr. Silva: Well, it's-
Mrs. Silva: I don't know which one it was or anything.
Mr. Silva: What the hell do they call that stuff? It's not plywood. It's ... Oh, boy. Big sheet.
Mrs. Silva: I don't know. All I know is I couldn't believe that they'd have something [01:24:30] like that inside.
Mr. Silva: Use that inside of the plywood, so that the cement was like glass when they went in and tore it down. Well ...
Drayton: Yeah. I've never been through those.
Mr. Silva: It's not formica. It's something else. Yeah, I think so.
Drayton: You never lived over ... You weren't stationed there though, 'cause you always lived here.
Mr. Silva: No, I worked-
Mrs. Silva: He was a civilian worker.
Mr. Silva: I was.
Mrs. Silva: So you didn't work [inaudible 01:24:53].
Mr. Silva: I worked. Like I said, we worked 23 hours. And I worked ... They had a big sign at the foot of the hill. [01:25:00] We worked Sundays. I was supposed to work Saturdays, but we weren't supposed to work Sundays. But anyhow, we worked 11 hours a day. And it had a big sign of [Dojo 01:25:14], of Hitler, and there was three. Oh, and the Italian guy.
Drayton: Mussolini.
Mr. Silva: And anybody that didn't show up for work got his name on that list.
Drayton: You know, was there [01:25:30] still ranching going on in Cronkhite?
Mr. Silva: Oh, yeah.
Drayton: Were the Silva family still over there?
Mrs. Silva: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Drayton: Now they're not related to you though.
Mrs. Silva: No.
Drayton: No, no, no. It was just like [crosstalk 01:25:38] Smith, you know.
Mr. Silva: I used to haul hay in [inaudible 01:25:40].
Drayton: To the Silvas? As part of your jobs, as for the army or-
Mr. Silva: When I was trucking.
Drayton: Oh, when you were trucking? Were there other ranchers in there? Or just the Silvas.
Mr. Silva: Just the Silvas. They had two ranches. But I mean, the one that was built, Fort Cronkhite, was part of the dairy there. Well, what did they call the cows that weren't giving, they were drying out or something. [01:26:00] And then down the other [inaudible 01:26:03], the dairy, there was two places.
Drayton: But it was run by the same family. And where was their house? Where was the main headquarters of it?
Mr. Silva: Well, down where their last dairy was.
Drayton: Is that on the lagoon then?
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Drayton: Ah! Now I thought that there was, like in the Gerbode Valley, there wasn't a ranch up in there?
Mrs. Silva: I don't think so. They were the only ones that had the ranch. I know maybe they may have names for them that we didn't know.
Mr. Silva: Like I said, two ranches. The same place-
Mrs. Silva: One was down, and then the other one you go up the hill to get to.
Mr. Silva: [01:26:30] The top of the Fort Baker, there was a guy up there that had a few cows. That was Martin. Another guy by the name of Martin, but he wasn't related to this one.
Drayton: Were the Silvas ... Are there any of their descendants around? Do you know?
Mr. Silva: I don't think so. They had a-
Mrs. Silva: The wife just died.
Mr. Silva: They had a clothing store in Sausalito. It was called Sam [inaudible 01:26:51].
Drayton: So after he sold out, or his property was taken, or whatever-
Mr. Silva: It was Sam.
Drayton: ... then he went down into Sausalito.
Mrs. Silva: No, he had the store [01:27:00] in Sausalito. He always had that, and he-
Mr. Silva: Yeah.
Mrs. Silva: ... still had the dairy. He ran the two places. Of course, they had people working for them, you know, that was it.
Drayton: Yeah. Was that a pretty big place out there? Or-
Mr. Silva: Yeah, a dairy [inaudible 01:27:10].
Drayton: And they had the same sort of mix of cows, and things like that. Oh, that's interesting.
Mr. Silva: They used to get his head in the vat of my freight car. And I used to haul a freight from Sausalito, about a freight car. Oh, [inaudible 01:27:24] look to the ranch. That was a job.
Drayton: [01:27:30] Okay. I better let you guys-
Mrs. Silva: No, wouldn't you like a cup of coffee while you're doing ...
