If you’ve been wondering what it was like growing up in Pleasanton in the 1950s, Donna McMillion has an answer for you – her new book.
The purely volunteer work includes interviews with 38 people, most of them in their 70s, who grew up in those happy years. She conducted all the interviews and then Lauren de Vore and Dan Sapone wrote them in the first person to keep the same format throughout Cruising Down Memory Lane, Stories of Pleasanton in the 1950s.
Donna, who lived on Mohr Avenue when she was surrounded by tomato and cucumber fields (I know I picked them there when I was a teenager), likes to describe riding her horse down Santa Rita Road to Amador Valley High, to go swimming. Later, banker and city councilman Bob Philcox (also in his book) led efforts to ban horses on Main Street and remove the railings to tie them up. The people she interviewed grew up during those years, while my bride and I came here with our families in 1959 and 1958. We went to school with many of these people but have no memories of the 1950s. Similarly, when we saw a musical celebrating the Summer of Love in 1967 – we had no idea what was going on in San Francisco when we lived in the peaceful suburbs of Pleasanton – it was the same for the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s , from which we learned visiting the museum in Memphis where Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Jim Georgis (right) and hunting friends

For those who know a little about Pleasanton history, the book is full of familiar names: Jorgensen, Takens, Gerton, Trimmingham, Krause, Lund, Georgis Shanks, and the Orloff and Hansen diary families. This is a sample.
Pleasanton Police Commissioner Walt McCloud recounted: “…One time we were down on the south end of town and a guy ran by the street (now Sunol Boulevard) and me and the sheriff’s car pulled up. and the guy had landed in the ditch halfway. And we talked to him and he gets up and runs up the bank and jumps into the sewage pond. So we stand there and everyone gets excited and yells, “He’s going to drown!” So we tell our sheriff’s deputy, “That’s going to be your job, you know that pond is in the county.” So he throws off his duty belt and runs up the embankment and jumps almost waist-deep into the sewage pond and saves the guy. What a hero! “
“And then he puts this foul-smelling person in his car and takes him to Santa Rita. And he’s so proud that he saved that guy and told the Santa Rita boys that he saved that guy from drowning in the sewage pond. And then one of the Santa Rita watch commanders tells him he’s a stupid so-and-so because that pond is within the city limits!”
The Pleasanton Senior Center now stands on this site.

The Takens children (Bob, Bruce and Winnie), whose father founded and owned Meadowlark Diary, wrote: “…there were many life lessons too. Dad said something like, “There are two guys standing against a wall over there, and there’s a broom between them. Which one will you hire? You hire the guy who sees the broom and picks it up and starts sweeping. You don’t want the other one because you have to tell them what to do.” And he’d say, “Let that rotten sweat out, get that rotten sweat out of you,” or “If you’re cold, you should better get to work and work the chill out of you.”

The city preserved the adobe diary on Foothill Road, where the original diary operated as a drive-thru facility. The cows grazed in the field that is now the Laguna Oaks subdivision. The family brought the cattle to the Tracy area and opened the ever-popular Neal Street drive-thru with its famous soft serve.

Chief Walt McCloud’s squad car
As I look through the names, I think of the Edgren dealership that is now the strip center that houses Vic’s, or longtime high school principal Neal Sweeney, or the Georgis family and my classmate Jacki Fiorio Del Duco, whose father owned the Market and butcher ran business (he looked after much of the cattle sold at the county fair) which is now Valley Plumbing Supply on Neal Street.

There’s Ray and Angie Calija, and the Jorgensens (Andy, retired artistic director of Pleasanton and Tom) and Hal Shanks, son of Dr. Harold Shanks who was our GP with a practice that is now an art studio.

For those who want to learn more about the families that helped create the Pleasanton we see today, check it out.

The book is available for pre-order at the Towne Center, and an opening reception is scheduled for May 7 from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Veteran’s Hall. Once the printing costs are covered, proceeds from the book go to Amador Valley High’s journalism program.

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The post Trying ahead to studying extra about Pleasanton within the Fifties | Tim Speak | Tim Hunt appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

As the 1950s wound down, the proliferation of mass-produced, heavily marketed light lagers took an increasing toll on America’s—and San Francisco’s—small brewers. But a number of local establishments still proudly featured Anchor’s signature product, in particular the Crystal Palace Market between Market and Mission at 8th Street. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it was a “sprawling, pungent, cheap and exotic carnival of delicatessen and delicacy.”

During the 1940s and 50s, Austrian Joseph Erdelatz served Anchor Steam and hot dogs at his bar in the southeast corner of this vast, colorful marketplace. Locals called it the “Steam Beer Parlor,” scarcely imagining its pivotal role in Anchor’s or its beer’s survival. For had it not been for the Crystal Palace, there might never have been an Old Spaghetti Factory, and without the Old Spaghetti Factory and its charismatic owner, Fred Kuh, there might be no Anchor Steam Beer today. Fritz Maytag, who tells the story better than anyone, shared it with me a few years ago:

Ah, Fred. A man of good taste. He had lived in Chicago and been to the Sieben’s Brewery, where I later bought our bottling line. They were the last brewery in America to have a restaurant in the brewery, a little Bier stube. And when he came to San Francisco for a visit, on the way into town from the airport, the very first thing his friend did was take him for a visit to the crystal Palace Market, sort of the equivalent of today’s farmers’ market. He recognized it immediately as similar to the great traditions of good food in Europe. Then his friend took him to the taproom at the crystal Palace Market, where they served Anchor steam on draught. Fred told me that he vowed that day, in the bar, drinking Anchor steam, that he would move to San Francisco, open a restaurant, and serve only Anchor steam Beer on draught.

And Fred Kuh served, on draught, Anchor Steam Beer only, all the years he was open. He had bottled beers, but no other beer on draught ever. And it was a booming place with young people. It was a target for the brewers. Imagine all the salespeople from Budweiser, Coors, and Miller, who would call on Fred at the Old Spaghetti Factory and tell him that he couldn’t possibly survive as a business if he didn’t have their beer on draught. And he told them all to go jump in the lake.

Fred Kuh had made good on his vow.

__________________________________

Reprinted with permission from The Anchor Brewing Story: America’s First Craft Brewery & San Francisco’s Original Anchor Steam Beer by David Burkhart, foreword by Fritz Maytag, published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

The post The Mannequin for America’s Trendy Craft Beer Growth? Contained in the Small-Brewer Scene in Nineteen Fifties San Francisco ‹ Literary Hub appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

As the 1950s wound down, the proliferation of mass-produced, heavily marketed light lagers took an increasing toll on America’s—and San Francisco’s—small brewers. But a number of local establishments still proudly featured Anchor’s signature product, in particular the Crystal Palace Market between Market and Mission at 8th Street. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it was a “sprawling, pungent, cheap and exotic carnival of delicatessen and delicacy.”

During the 1940s and 50s, Austrian Joseph Erdelatz served Anchor Steam and hot dogs at his bar in the southeast corner of this vast, colorful marketplace. Locals called it the “Steam Beer Parlor,” scarcely imagining its pivotal role in Anchor’s or its beer’s survival. For had it not been for the Crystal Palace, there might never have been an Old Spaghetti Factory, and without the Old Spaghetti Factory and its charismatic owner, Fred Kuh, there might be no Anchor Steam Beer today. Fritz Maytag, who tells the story better than anyone, shared it with me a few years ago:

Ah, Fred. A man of good taste. He had lived in Chicago and been to the Sieben’s Brewery, where I later bought our bottling line. They were the last brewery in America to have a restaurant in the brewery, a little Bier stube. And when he came to San Francisco for a visit, on the way into town from the airport, the very first thing his friend did was take him for a visit to the crystal Palace Market, sort of the equivalent of today’s farmers’ market. He recognized it immediately as similar to the great traditions of good food in Europe. Then his friend took him to the taproom at the crystal Palace Market, where they served Anchor steam on draught. Fred told me that he vowed that day, in the bar, drinking Anchor steam, that he would move to San Francisco, open a restaurant, and serve only Anchor steam Beer on draught.

And Fred Kuh served, on draught, Anchor Steam Beer only, all the years he was open. He had bottled beers, but no other beer on draught ever. And it was a booming place with young people. It was a target for the brewers. Imagine all the salespeople from Budweiser, Coors, and Miller, who would call on Fred at the Old Spaghetti Factory and tell him that he couldn’t possibly survive as a business if he didn’t have their beer on draught. And he told them all to go jump in the lake.

Fred Kuh had made good on his vow.

__________________________________

Reprinted with permission from The Anchor Brewing Story: America’s First Craft Brewery & San Francisco’s Original Anchor Steam Beer by David Burkhart, foreword by Fritz Maytag, published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

The post The Mannequin for America’s Trendy Craft Beer Growth? Contained in the Small-Brewer Scene in Nineteen Fifties San Francisco ‹ Literary Hub appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.