by Donna Swagerty Shreve
In 1955 my parents had started plans to buy their first house. They bought an empty lot across from Dent Elementary School in Escalon. They met with an architect and had made the blue prints for the house. Dad was principal/superintendant of the K-8 elementary school but a better job became available in another town.
Dad was offered the job of principal at Montezuma School in Stockton, California. Dad accepted the new higher paying job and the family got set to move. The lot and plans were sold and now Dad and Mom needed to find a new house for us in Stockton. The first thing they did was research the various school districts. Montezuma was independent at this time but it was known that they would soon be a part of the large Stockton Unified district.
After checking out the Stockton area, they decided they wanted to be in Lincoln Unified School District for their three current with one more pending children. Lincoln Village was building new houses and expanding. The first two sections were completed and the third section was part way finished. After checking out the several house plans, my parents chose a house just completed on Calhoun Way. This would be the first time they would own a house because up to now they had always rented. Calhoun Way ended at Belmont and anything west of Belmont was open field. For several years a sign promised a pool was coming soon. To us kids, it seemed many years before that happened. Benjamin Holt Drive ended at the west end of Swenson Park Golf Course. A dirt road went from the end of Benjamin Holt Drive out to the Delta farmland and where the Bracerros were housed. We could hear the workers on Sunday when they entertained themselves with cockfights.
Our new home came with an empty lot and house. Fences and landscaping was up to each homeowner. Uncle Ronnie lived with us at this time and he helped Dad put up the side and back fences. Dad brought in good loam and fertilizer and planted the front and back lawn from seed. Many of our neighbors put in sod but my parents were economizing. Our first morning in the house, we watched a large jack rabbit hop across our backyard. Our backyard was dirt and the houses behind us had not been built yet. There were two empty streets to Sheridan Way, which were finished as was Benjamin Holt.
Mom tacked up sheets on our window so we could have some privacy. Our new home needed to be furnished and Mom decided early American would be the cheapest way to go with the decorating. I remember Grandma Pearl coming to Stockton from Escalon to help Mom sew the curtains. Mom bought a bunch of unbleached muslem and trimmed the drapes with dark brown ruffles.
Plenty of love and hard work was put into this house. Dad built a louver patio roof to cover the flat blocks in a criss-cross pattern patio. A flower border contained seasonal flowers and even had sweet peas climbing up the back fence until Mom realized she was desperately allergic to them. We bought a magnolia tree for Dad for his birthday. We tended to be quite practical with gifts and Dad’s reward was to dig a big hole to put the tree in. In the far northwest corner Dad built a large sand box that soon had to have a nighttime cover as the neighborhood cats used it as a cat box. We bagged up the beautiful white sand from Asilomar in enough bags to fill the large sand box. That would so illegal now days.
Our first summer after the lawn was put in and growing, Dad went to war with the gophers. There was many a pitched battle where he tried a variety of methods to get rid of them. Dad was stubborn and finally prevailed but it did provide entertainment for us kids. On one occasion I remember him putting a hose down one hole and then he waited with a club by another hole anticipating the gophers escape from the flooded underground dwelling. I got to turn on the water but I don’t remember him being successful with that method.
Dad and Uncle Ronnie had brought in special loam and had graded the yard so it would drain from the back yard to the front area to the gutter for proper run off. To take advantage of this drainage system, Dad went to the Port of Stockton nursery known for their excellent roses. The special prized roses were planted along our western property line and flourished.
The neighbors tended to be in a similar stage in their life with young children and a new house. We had plenty of children to play with and I ended up with a very busy babysitting business. Our summer evenings were spent playing Red Rover, Capture the Flag, Hide and Go Seek, Mother May I, Simon Says and Freeze Tag until our parents finally called us in. Our neighbors were able to chat and a lot of outdoor time ended up in our large front yards. Helping us spend time out front was the lack of automatic garage door openers. Parents were forced to get out of the car to open the garage door by hand. We did have a neighbor across the street who had the first “automatic garage door opener.” When the man of the house came home from work, he would honk and his wife would rush out and open the garage door for him.
Wives stayed home for the most part. We were close enough to the local schools where many kids came home for lunch. Mom was there to greet us after school. Being the oldest, I was often asked to ride my bike to the store, Village Oaks market. I was given cash and I had to bring home the change. Our family only had one car and Mom remained stranded until Dad came home from work. As Dad got promoted, he had the perk of a school use only car. By that time I was driving and Mom was thrilled as I could be the chauffer. My younger siblings needed transportation to a variety of activities. Mom still needed to take care of the youngest.
It took awhile for the streets around us to fill up with new houses. One could hear the hammering and pounding during the day. Porta-potties were placed up and down the new streets. Grant, our youngest sibling, was given glasses in fourth or fifth grade and he hated them. He conveniently “lost” them and the best guess was that he had thrown them down one of the porta-potties. He never admitted to such an act but Dad and Mom realized buying him another pair was wasted effort.
When the final streets were completed, the ice-cream truck arrived. His music filled the neighborhood and attracted many customers on a hot summer day. However, the music would wake some children from their afternoon naps and maybe a few mothers also. My mother was part of a group of stay at home mothers who petitioned the ice cream man to turn off his music during the afternoon or they would boycott his services. The neighborhood mothers prevailed. He then just used a bell in our neighborhood.
When the new street behind us was completed, we had a new set of neighbors. One such neighbor became quite entertaining. They were a family of four. The two young children were known to go out the front door minus any clothes. Neighbors took to lending them underwear. It turns out no one in that family enjoyed wearing clothes. In the backyard a free standing outdoor plastic pool dominated the yard. It was large enough to have a ladder up to a short slide into the pool. The family hosted many pool parties.
We were too old to play with their children so we were never invited. However, their parties became quite entertaining as we would gather around a few knot holes in the back shared fence and watch the nudists play. What amazed us was that many of the guests wore swimsuits even though the hosts did not. Our father became suspicious when he noticed a group of us plus some neighbor kids crowded around the knotholes. Standing in our living room he was able to lift up enough to see what we were watching with such great interest. Our fun game had ended.
Some of our neighbor hood kids had nicknames. One little guy was a true Dennis the Menace type. His name was “Randy-Go-Home”. Garage doors would suddenly close up and down the street. I always wondered what happened to Randy as he was also a problem when he hit the schools.
We all knew each other and who belonged and who did not. Our next door neighbors were out of town one week and we were all to look after their house. Two strange guys appeared one evening and were snooping around the house. Some neighbor quickly called the police who arrived rapidly to investigate. Several neighbors had seen the guys and I got to be one of the people who were interviewed by the policemen. I had seen them on my way back from a babysitting job. I described one of the suspicious characters as a short guy. The policeman followed up with how short. I was now a sophomore in high school and had grown to 5 feet 10 inches. In my world anyone shorter that I was, I considered short. I had to tell the police man who was about five feet eight that the guy in question was his size. The policeman winced. The two strangers had not been caught but also were never seen again in the area. We did watch out for each other.
We also knew each other’s business. As I got older I heard the gossip of why certain couples had gotten a divorce. We shared information among ourselves. We had a nurse diagonally across the street. Her wisdom came in handy to the mothers raising their children. I was the oldest of four so I had great credentials for babysitting. An older couple welcomed in some the neighborhood children for special attention.
My older brother, Brian, was the first beneficiary of their caring and support. The Youngs became a great escape from the hustle of our large family. As Brian grew, he became a big help to the Youngs by chopping wood for their fires and even driving them out of town on occasion. Later, Grant the younger brother took his place. The Youngs had had a daughter and she had died very early. They “adopted” various children throughout the years to help fill that void. Our family helped the Youngs when Mrs. Young was dying. We took care of her at our new home on Dwight Way until she had to be taken to the hospital for her final week.
Neighbors came and went. When a new neighbor arrived my mother would bake them one of her famous pies and deliver them as a welcome present their first night. Neighbors could be counted on to provide car pools, babysitting and other support. On many a trip to a swim meet, my parents would take along the three children from next door who were of similar ages to the four of us. All seven of us would crowd into the back of station wagon without seatbelts. Heads would turn when all nine of us would trail into a restaurant for a meal.
After ten years my parents had an opportunity to purchase a larger home. They went from 1,200 square feet to 3,200 square feet. I was going off to college but there just wasn’t the room Mom and Dad wanted for entertaining and separate bedrooms for the remaining kids. The house now had to be readied for sale. After the house had been emptied and moved to the new house, Dad returned on three different nights to refurbish the wooden floors. After a long day at work, he would sand, buff and varnish the flours three times. We found out later that the new people put in wall-to-wall carpet! That incident taught me not to fix up a house for the new people but do the fixing up for myself or sell it as it.
On occasion I pass by this house and remember fond memories. Over the years the house has been sold over and over. Sometimes we approve of the changes and some times we don’t. We have to remember it is not our home any more but someone else’s to make fond memories of their own.
2141 words
5/8/18
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 