Regional Oral History Office University of California the Bancroft Library Berkeley, California an Oral History with Shirley La

Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

An Oral History with

Shirley Larkins

Interviews conducted by Don Warrin in 2012

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

*********************************

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Shirley Larkins, dated February 20, 2012. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/cite.html

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Shirley Larkins, An Oral History conducted by Don Warrin in 2012, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2013.

iii

Shirley Larkins, 2012 iv

Table of Contents—Shirley Dias Larkins

Interview: January 15, 2012

[Audiofile 1]

She talks about her grandparents, three from the island of São Jorge─Maternal grandfather Peter Silveira managed the Eagle Dairy at Strawberry Point in the 1890s─His interest in educating his children─Paternal grandfather prospected for gold, ran a small dairy in Tennessee Valley─Life on the dairy─Explains how typical dairy ranchers didn’t own the land but leased it─Maintenance of Portuguese customs─Speaks of parents’ activities

[Audiofile 2]

Life at the Headlands dairy: Father, mother, brother, herself─Her education and employment─Activities with the local Portuguese community vi

Introduction -- Shirley Larkins

In January of 2012 Lissa McKee and I sat down with Shirley Dias Larkins to talk about her life, which began on her father’s dairy at the Marin Headlands. Three of her grandparents had emigrated from the island of São Jorge in the Azores and became involved in the dairy industry of Marin beginning in the late 19th century. She speaks about the typical roles of men, women, and children in everyday life on a dairy. We learn of her grandfather’s intense interest in his children’s education, and we follow as well her own educational process and her later career.

Don Warrin, 2013

Interview 1: January 15, 2012 Begin Audiofile 1 01-15-2012.mp3

Warrin: Today is January 15, 2012, and we’re in the home of Shirley Dias Larkins and my name is Don Warrin. I’d like to ask you, first of all, your full name, Shirley Dias Larkins.

01-00:00:41 Larkins: Well, I was baptized Shirley Claire Dias, and then I married, in 1954, and picked up the name Larkins.

Warrin: And when were you born?

01-00:00:58 Larkins: November 8, 1931.

Warrin: And where?

01-00:01:03 Larkins: Well, at the time of my birth, my parents were living down in the Marin Headlands. My father was manager of the dairy that was there, and I was actually born at Cottage Hospital in San Rafael.

Warrin: I see that your family has a very long history in the Marin dairies, and I thought we might go back to the original dairy people, your grandparents. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about them. I understand that one grandmother was born here in California, but the other three came from the Azores.

01-00:01:49 Larkins: That’s correct. My maternal family had the name Silveira, S-I-L-V-E-I-R-A. My grandfather, Pedro, (Peter), came from the Azores; and my maternal grandmother—Mary Botelho was her name—she was born in Walnut Creek, in the East Bay. When her family immigrated, I don’t really know. How she and my grandfather met, I can’t really say that, either. But I think most of the socializing between families was done at the Portuguese holiday celebrations, and it’s possible she met him at one of those, which were very prevalent in the East Bay and down in the [San Joaquin] Valley. They married probably in the mid-1890s, and he obtained the job as ranch manager for Dr. Benjamin Lyford, who had property in Strawberry Point, which was part of the Reed Ranchero, I guess it would be called, that he married into, from Hilarita Reed. So Dr. Lyford had built what he called his model dairy, called Eagle Dairy, on that peninsula of Strawberry Point, and had a thriving dairy there, and my maternal grandfather was hired to manage it. So my grandmother gave birth to all of her children in the little manager’s house on that dairy, and there are pictures of it, which I can give to you for your archives.

Silveira family, circa 1910

Foreman’s house at Eagle Dairy

01-00:03:43 My paternal grandparents were both born in the Azores. My paternal grandmother, I think, was called Bibliana. I can’t remember her maiden name. And the grandfather was Manuel Dias, D-I-A-S. How they immigrated, I don’t know, other than that the family history is of whalers. I had thought they had probably landed in New Bedford; but since then, I’ve learned that San Francisco had quite a whaling industry, so it’s possible they came right to the San Francisco area, because I don’t recall any discussion in the family of anyone immigrating across the plains in the 1849 Gold Rush era, when so many people came from the East Coast to the West.

Warrin: Well, essentially, the preferred way to get to California was by sea, around Cape Horn, even those who weren’t whalemen. That’s how the bulk of the Forty-niners arrived in California from the East Coast. And it might’ve been a New Bedford whaler, because they came out here, too, at that time, and spent two or three years, sometimes, in the Pacific, before going back to New Bedford. But do you know anything more? Evidently, on the Silveira side, there was a whaler, also?

01-00:05:30 Larkins: I don’t believe so. I’ve never heard anything of that. And what brought him here, I don’t know, other than that he was a rather progressive man. I don’t

know what his education was; I don’t think it would be higher education. But he certainly wanted the best for his children, and was the type of man to always go forward, never to go back, and never to be happy with the status quo, but to always want something a little better, which is why he came from the East Bay over to this job, to Marin, which seemed very enticing to him. Because Dr. Lyford, at that time, he had tried to develop the peninsula of Tiburon into what he called Hygeia, his city of health. He also was very progressive and the type of doctor that believed in holistic medicines and proper diet and air and such, would keep people healthy. In fact, the dairy at Strawberry Point, Eagle Dairy, all the fencing was whitewashed and things were quite sanitary, because of his medical background. Although actually, Dr. Lyford himself, there’s some question as to whether he ever had a medical degree. But that’s another story.

Warrin: This Mr. Silveira, what was his first name?

01-00:07:02 Larkins: Peter.

Warrin: Peter Silveira, to be hired as the manager of a dairy ranch, he must’ve had quite a background before, when he was living in Hayward.

01-00:07:15 Larkins: It’s possible. They were not young when they married. I think my grandmother was close to thirty when she married. Well, he died at, I think, the age of sixty-five, or sixty-two, when he died. And my mother was graduating from Tam High, at the time, which was 1922. She was the fourth child. So he would’ve been in his thirties when he had his first child, probably in his early thirties, when he had his first child. I think my grandmother was probably in her late twenties when they married.

01-00:08:01 In terms of my paternal grandparents, I don’t know too much about them, except they were older. Grandfather did a lot of gold prospecting. He would leave the family and head off to Alaska or the gold fields, always looking for, I guess, a better life. They had just a small dairy in Tennessee Valley, which wasn’t that far from Strawberry Point. Whether he owned land or whether he leased land, I can’t say. But they did have a small herd of cattle, and from that they made cottage cheese. The story is that my grandmother would make cheesecakes, and at that time, my grandfather would take the ferry over to San Francisco and sell them to the big hotels. It wasn’t until the 1906 fire in San Francisco that he lost his business. He no longer had any customers because he was going to the water area, where the fire really started. My father tells the story that he can remember climbing that ridge between Tennessee Valley and Sausalito, and looking out and watching Richardson Bay— The earthquake caused a certain tsunami, and he said Richardson Bay actually drained completely, and I guess eventually, came back. But they weren’t flooded in any way. But it just, to me, would be rather phenomenal to see that

bay suddenly, the water just gushing out of it. But that was due to the earthquake.

Warrin: That would be amazing. This is the Dias?

01-00:09:51 Larkins: Correct. And that would be in Tennessee Valley, which is south of Mill Valley. It’s not in the Mill Valley city limits, but it is in an incorporated area. It’s right off of Tennessee Valley Road, which now is a main road, two-lane road going out to the beach, Tennessee Cove. He had a small piece of property there. In fact, his house is still there. When he was a child, he talks about building a barn in back of the property. And when you drive by now, you can see— Whether it’s the original barn or whether it’s been— Certainly, been refurbished. It’s now an art studio. The owner uses it as an art studio.

Warrin: Really? Sometimes we wonder, when immigrants arrive, what brought them to a particular area. You mentioned a Jim Dias, who must’ve been a relative of your grandfather, who attracted him to this area. Is that—

01-00:11:09 Larkins: It’s quite possible. Jim Dias is a big name in the Southern Marin area. He was not an uncle or a brother. I think my grandfather, Manuel Dias, was probably a cousin. There was something said, that brothers married sisters. So I don’t really know the exact connection. Jim Dias had all the property that he acquired— He started in Homestead Valley, off of Mill Valley, and expanded. It’s possible that that’s what brought Manuel Dias, my paternal grandfather, to the area to start with, was because of knowing people there—which still goes on today, where people will migrate to where they feel welcome.

Warrin: Just to go back to the Portuguese origin of three of your grandparents, what island were they from?

01-00:12:15 Larkins: Oh, they were from the Azores. In fact, I just learned recently that I’m not of Portuguese descent, which I’ve always called myself; I’m of Azorean descent. They were from the island of Saint George. I believe there are nine or eleven islands—not all of them are inhabited—about 500 miles off of Portugal. And they were a major area, because I think it was right in the shipping lanes, and so they had a lot of the old— Anyone traveling, ships needing water could get water there, fresh supplies, and that’s how the Azores survived. But the talk is that they loved salted cod. I was in Portugal a few years ago. I think it’s called Bac—

Warrin: Bacalhau.

01-00:13:07 Larkins: Bacalhau? I can remember having it as a child, where my mother would buy these two-pound blocks of salted cod and soak them for one or two days, and

squeezing out the water and freshening them, and then making a very healthy stew from this cod, with all fresh vegetables from her garden, pouring this sauce over potatoes, boiled potatoes. I just thought it was the most awful food I’d ever eaten, [laughs] as a child, but yet it’s still prized. The Portuguese would spend six months at sea, going into the North Atlantic, catching this cod, and salting it and bringing it back for their survival the rest of the year.

Warrin: Yeah, and picking up Azoreans on the way out, to fish with them. Ultimately, having Portuguese settlers up in Halifax, in Nova Scotia because of that, because that was the codfish area. And the whale ships, the first port of call would be somewhere in the Azores, for whale ships departing from New Bedford and other whaling ports. Let me mention that I’m being accompanied by Lissa McKee, who will assist with questions.

McKee: I was wondering, in following up on this connection to the Azores, if on either side of the family, you remember stories of or remember yourself, any visits from or letters from or letters to any family back in the Azores, if that connection stayed vibrant.

01-00:15:13 Larkins: Actually, it didn’t. I don’t recall any discussion. It seemed that all of the relations, the contacts were already settled here on the West Coast. There was a lot of family connection on my grandmother’s side, with her family in the East Bay, Yuba City. We didn’t go into the valley as much, as far down as Merced. But I remember the upper valley—Yuba City, especially—meeting different relatives. Cunha was one of the names. But no, I don’t recall going back. There was one—I think it was Joe Cunha—who did go to the Azores and did research the history. But unfortunately, my mother was that link, and when I was growing up, family history wasn’t really stressed or talked about that much. So I didn’t pay attention to those names, and I haven’t kept in contact with that branch of the family. We did go to a lot of family reunions that were started by that branch of the family, and I can remember going to those with my aunt. But once my mother’s sister passed away— My mother died rather young, at age sixty-five. I was only in my thirties at the time, and was raising young children, so had other things to think about. But I did go to a lot of the family reunions with my aunt, her sister, who was a maiden aunt, never married. But she kept in close contact with that family. Costa was the name. Not Cunha, Costa, C-O-S-T-A.

McKee: Well, pursuing that subject of your aunts, can you name them and tell me a little bit about them?

01-00:17:15 Larkins: Well, these would be siblings on my mother’s side. There were six children, all total. Albert was the firstborn, Armand the second. They were all about two years apart, eighteen months, two years apart. Then Angeline, my aunt, and Amelia, my mother. Then a few years later, came Alex, Alexander; and a

few years after that, came Peter. They waited all that time to name a boy after the father. Maybe they thought that was the last chance, I don’t know. They were all born on the property at Eagle Dairy, in the Strawberry Point peninsula.

McKee: Did the children, or at least the boys, work on the dairy?

01-00:18:04 Larkins: Oh, absolutely. [chuckles] That was just mandatory. They were very active. They all had to go to school. In fact, there was the little country school called Reed School, which was located on Tiburon Boulevard and Reed Boulevard, which I think is now Belveron Gardens, right at the trestle that goes over the hill to the— Not Richardson Bay, but the actual [San Francisco] Bay. It was a little one-room schoolhouse, with a teacher that my grandfather Peter didn’t think was teaching anything. So he pulled his four children out of that school, which was unheard of in those days. The school only had about eight or nine students in it. To pull four of them out really decimated the school. But he pulled some strings and even though they were in what would be called the Reed School District, he managed to get them enrolled in the Mill Valley School District, because he wanted his children to have a better education. Of course, the Strawberry Point Drive, which is now up on the hill and well- paved and very well-trafficked, at that time it was just a dirt road, right down on the bay. And of course, it flooded every time the tide came in. But he bought a little surrey for the children and a little pony, and they would take the surrey into town, over that dirt road and across—of course, it was just really, I guess, not even a two-lane road at the time; 101 wasn’t really in existence much then—across that intersection. And Blythedale was a dirt road, and [they] went up Blythedale to not the center of town, but one block above it, where a cousin, a Costa—I forget his first name—he had a creamery. At those times, the icehouse and the coal shed and a stable and a dairy was all considered one business. And he owned that business, and my grandfather Peter supplied him with the dairy products. So they had a partnership at one time. That’s where the children would park the surrey and the horse, bed the horse down for the day. Then they’d walk through town, go up the stairs to what was then Summit School, on the corner of Lovell and Summit Avenue in Mill Valley, which has since been torn down. I think it’s now actually residences. When Old Mill School was built in 1919, the Summit School was disbanded. But that was the only school in Mill Valley, up until Park School was built. That’s where they attended grammar school, and then they would be graduated into Tam High School. Or at that time, it was Tamalpais Union High School, because it was just the one high school for all of Southern Marin and Stinson Beach, and even part of West Marin—Woodacre, Fairfax. All of those students went to Tamalpais Union High School.

McKee: Were the children working, or at least the boys again, at the dairy?

01-00:21:29 Larkins: Oh, the original question. Sorry, I got distracted. Oh, yes, they had to work in the dairy, although my grandfather had hired hands that did a lot of the work, also. The boys, I think they probably had a pretty easy life, when you think of growing up. They all played musical instruments; they all had musical instruments, because that’s how they entertained themselves. And they had motorcycles. And of course, the family story is that Grandpa could— When Dr. Lyford died, his estate took a long time to be settled. And right at that time, he could’ve bought all of that Strawberry Peninsula for $46,000. But it was just cow pasture. The boys had convinced their father that he’d be throwing his money away, to put all that money into nothing but cows; it wasn’t necessary. So he didn’t buy it. I think by that time, he probably wasn’t maybe that well. Maybe he didn’t even know he had heart trouble, because he died instantly. That was in ’22, when he died. I think the Lyford estate wasn’t settled until 1929, and that’s when my grandmother sold the business and built a big house in Mill Valley and moved the family into Mill Valley.

McKee: When you say she sold the business, does it mean that they owned the cows?

01-00:23:01 Larkins: Right.

McKee: They didn’t own the land, but they owned the cows.

01-00:23:04 Larkins: That’s right. And that’s what most of the dairy ranchers, all over Marin, was that type of an arrangement, where they didn’t own the land. It’s rare that you found someone that actually could get enough capital to own land.

Warrin: Who would own the land?

01-00:23:25 Larkins: Well, it was the Lyford estate owned the land. And they sold it. I can’t say who bought it. Once my grandmother moved out of the house—this is the big what is now what they call the Audubon House on Tiburon Boulevard, the Lyford’s house—the house, I think, was leased by the new owners. Then eventually, the land was sold to what became the Harbor Cove tennis courts, tennis property, tennis complex, in the Strawberry Point peninsula—which is now quite famous. It has big tennis tournaments there with big-name tennis players. That’s what happened to that whole property. Then the part that my grandfather could’ve bought for $46,000 eventually was purchased by the Baptist seminary conference. I think that was in the forties, or maybe it was sixties, when the Baptist Church took over that property.

Warrin: As a general rule, in Southern Marin or West Marin, if the people running the dairies essentially owned the cows, who would own the land?

01-00:24:49 Larkins: It’s absentee landlords. For example, there were two Mexican land grants in the Mill Valley area. One was owned by Richardson, who married a Mexican lady. They acquired the land through marriage. The same with John Reed. John Reed had the other half of Mill Valley, that went from the peninsula all the way up half of Mill Valley proper. I think Cascade, Redwood Creek, the creek that goes through the center of Mill Valley, was the dividing line. And John Reed owned all that land over to Tiburon, and then up to San Quentin. Richardson owned the land that went as far as Willow Creek or Stinson Beach. And eventually, it was acquired by— well, Muir Woods itself. Kent acquired it for Muir Woods and turned it into a monument. Those big estates sort of went bankrupt, is what happened. They went into litigation and had different owners. I can’t really say; I haven’t made a study of it, particularly. I know Mr. Throckmorton, who was the land manager for Richardson, he had property that he turned into little— He leased little areas. He had his own little lodge right above the 2 A.M. Club, on Montford and Ethel Avenue, I think. He had what he called his hunting lodge, and had all his rich friends from San Francisco come over. Eventually, I know the Tamalpais Savings and Loan— it was the Bank of San Francisco—had all the ownership, the legal title to the land. And that’s when they decided, the trustees of the bank, decided to hold a land sale, which is what started the City of Mill Valley. That, I think, was in 1900, when that took place.

McKee: It was right after that, that then they started selling the rural lands, and some of the Portuguese started to acquire land.

Warrin: And just the beginning of subdevelopments, at that point.

McKee: Yeah, it went from the large holdings of Throckmorton to these small ranches, outside of the specific development of Mill Valley. And these ranches were finally up for sale in 1898. But on the east side, the Reed side, the ownership of the lands stayed in the hands of Reed descendants, all the way into the 1950s. Witness just the litigation over one member of the family’s death. As you said, it took years—

01-00:28:17 Larkins: Right.

McKee: —just to settle that, because there were so many Reeds saying that they would be part of the inheritance. So the ranchers at Strawberry and Tiburon, except for Pedro Silveira’s decision not to purchase the land, except for that, they really had no opportunity to ever own the lands. They were tenants all the way into the 1950s. But Pedro also sort of had a different— or it seems that the way he raised his children, he had not necessarily the goals of having his children be ranchers, anyway. Didn’t they all go to college?

01-00:29:00 Larkins: No, they didn’t. Actually, he died before he could fulfill his dream, and I think the boys weren’t interested in a higher education. He didn’t seem to stress the boys, because Albert, the firstborn, must’ve been born in the 1890s, the late 1890s. So by the time his father died in ’22, he was pretty old by that time; he was in his mid-twenties. Actually, I don’t even know if they went to high school. They stayed on the farm. How Albert occupied himself, I don’t really know. There wasn’t a lot of talk about it. Albert became the town taxi driver, for decades and decades. Al’s Taxi was a well-known name, and [he was a] very well-respected person in town. But they never really wanted to advance that much. It was really Angeline that, having gone to San Francisco Normal School, which is now San Francisco State University— And that was only at her father’s insistence. She would’ve liked to have married and settled down, but he wouldn’t let her. His firstborn was going to go to college, his firstborn daughter. But then by the time my mother came around, which was just two years later, then that was okay; it would be nice to have some grandchildren. So she was allowed to marry Louie, Louis.

Warrin: Excuse me. She went to Tamalpais High?

01-00:30:42 Larkins: Yeah. She graduated from Tamalpais High, as did Angeline and Alex and Peter, the younger ones; but not the two older ones, to my knowledge. Maybe they did. It’s possible they did; it was just never discussed. I like to think that they did.

Warrin: It’s interesting that given the lack of education on the part of the majority of people in the Azores, where the illiteracy rate was 60-, 70 percent and you didn’t normally go past four years of elementary school, that your grandfather did have this interest in education, educating his children.

01-00:31:35 Larkins: Yes, and he must’ve had it, to become the manager for Lyford’s dairy, as you mentioned earlier. He must’ve had some skills that Lyford approved of, to let him come on the property and manage it according to his specifications.

Warrin: To be literate. Was he the— No, he wasn’t the whale man. Was that the Dias?

01-00:32:02 Larkins: I can’t answer that specifically. I wouldn’t want to go on record as saying one way or the other.

McKee: Didn’t he handle just about everything, though, on that ranch? Weren’t Lyford and his wife relatively elderly?

01-00:32:20 Larkins: Oh, yes, the Lyfords had nothing to do with the dairy. They lived in San Francisco. They used the house just on the weekends. At that time, there were a lot of empty ships in San Francisco, from people that had jumped ship to go

to the gold fields. So San Francisco Bay was just littered with half-sunken ships. So he salvaged a lot of the cabins from those ships—which were nice little buildings, really—and put a floor on them. And he had several of them on that property, which he outfitted into little guest homes for guests to come and stay. One of them was his medical laboratory, where he did experiments. But he didn’t really have anything to do with the dairy. That was all my grandfather. He probably managed it to make money; that’s how he earned his salary. Then maybe he gave a small percentage to Lyford. I don’t really know that detail, but it would seem like it was equivalent to a tenant farmer—or in this case, strictly dairy, because they didn’t do any farming for hay or anything of that type.

McKee: So the reputation of Eagle Dairy being a model dairy was largely due to your grandfather.

01-00:33:50 Larkins: No, I think Lyford had already injected that idea, that’s what he wanted, and so my grandfather would operate it in that manner. Whether or not it continued that long, in terms of washing pollution into the Bay and that, I can’t say, because that was never a concern by any of the dairymen. I don’t think they thought too much about it, because after all, the bay had tidal action and you figure that tidal action takes care of that type of thing.

Warrin: In those days, people weren’t too concerned with pollution.

01-00:34:30 Larkins: No, well, there were fewer people, too. [laughs] There was less pollution, let’s put it that way.

Warrin: I’d like to take a short break here. [audiofile may stop & restart]

01-00:34:39 Larkins: Do you want to do a sound test?

Warrin: No. Okay, we’re back again. I’d like to ask about your grandparents from the Azores. How much did they retain of the old culture, in terms of language and whatever else?

01-00:35:03 Larkins: Well, my paternal grandparents were already deceased when I was born. But I suspect that they probably lived a rather frugal, old-school life. And I would suspect that Portuguese was talked in the home, but I could be wrong; I don’t really know. My father never talked much about his parents or about his siblings too much. He did keep in touch with two or three brothers, and we would see them on occasion. One brother ended up in Oregon, as a rancher. Another brother never married, but became a hired hand at all the different dairy ranches in West Marin. He was sort of the wayward bachelor. Then another brother settled in Sausalito and had a dairy in Sausalito. I think one of

his sons settled in the Tiburon area, and actually was commodore of the San Francisco Yacht Club, which is the Corinthian Island in Belvedere. But we never really kept in touch with the family.

Warrin: Excuse me, what were their names, the fellow who ran the dairy in Sausalito?

01-00:36:30 Larkins: George, I think had the dairy in Sausalito. Joe was the milker. Oh, and then George eventually is the one that moved to Oregon. Then Willie, the third one, I believe Willie died young. I don’t remember any family discussion of Willie. And the sister, Josephine, she also died young. She’s buried at Mount Olivet, as my parents are. The maternal grandparents are buried in Hayward; the paternal are in Fernwood Cemetery. And their graves are lost, because all the records were lost in a fire in the fifties. I just remember it as being up on a hill, because I used to go with my father and decorate it. But now they can’t locate it at all, because there was a lot of vandalism when that Fernwood Cemetery was sort of abandoned at one time, in terms of owner— I mean it was owned, but it wasn’t cared for. Now, it’s of course, well-tended and well- used. They’re still doing burials there, which surprised me, because I know it was mainly a crematorium. The original question? I got sidetracked. You asked me about—

Warrin: About what they retained from—

01-00:38:01 Larkins: I would say when I was growing up, the trend was not to talk Portuguese. When we would go to the Portuguese festivals down in Sausalito, the chamarritas, there was a lot of Portuguese spoken. I think it was probably prevalent in the ranch houses, that Portuguese was spoken. It wasn’t spoken in my family. My mother felt that one was in America, and you learned English and you spoke English. There wasn’t that trend towards your heritage being all-important. It was more being an American was more important. I think now that has been lost somewhat. At the same time, for the Portuguese societies to keep so active for so many decades—centuries, even—that there’s a lot of heritage still going on.

McKee: Do you think your father was capable of speaking Portuguese?

01-00:39:05 Larkins: Oh, yes, they could speak Portuguese. My mother referred to it as California Portagee, because you lose some of the words and you inflect English into some of the words.

Warrin: Yeah, there’s a term that somebody made up, called Portinglês or Port- English. It’s a mixture of the two. But your parents did keep some other aspects of Portuguese culture, in some way? Certainly, going to the festas.

01-00:40:14 Larkins: Yes, and I think that some of the dishes— She would make sopas, some of the Portuguese dishes. I think some of the cooking. Not necessarily in dress, particularly. But well, just the ranching. The dairy ranching is, I think, their family heritage that they probably originally had in the Azores, and that’s what they grew up with. The thing that was, I think, very impressive is how self-contained every little dairy farm remained. Now, my father was fortunate, in that he had dairy farms, but they were, at least his own business that he eventually had in Petaluma for five years— He raised his own hay, he grew his own pumpkins for fodder, grew his own corn for fodder, had the big silo and would grind the cornstalks to make feed for the cows. Nothing was ever thrown away. Every piece of wire was saved and utilized in some way. The farm equipment was always repaired and kept in condition. Mainly, economically, they had to do it in order to survive, because it wasn’t a lucrative business, in terms of making money and getting ahead, particularly. It wasn’t until World War II, when the subsidies came in and there was a lot of milk subsidies to obtain the products for the servicemen, that a lot of the dairymen were able to accumulate some wealth. And unfortunately, that was the time when my mother had become ill with the pregnancy of my younger brother. They were concerned for the debt that they owed, and so they sold the business, in order to pay off their debt, and they moved back to Mill Valley, and he then again became a dairy manager. Which of course, there was no money in that, other than your monthly salary.

Warrin: Yes. People have referred to these dairies, as you describe, as islands. I just wonder how that affects particularly the immigrants, their integration into the larger society, if they’re so isolated in this business.

01-00:42:50 Larkins: Well, I think that they didn’t, especially— I can remember my father, when he had the business in Petaluma, West Petaluma, hiring immigrant farmhands that would come off of the ship. Where he got them or how he got them, I don’t know, whether it was through the Immigration Department or how. But these would be illiterate immigrants from the Azores, that he would hire. I can remember one of them didn’t wear shoes. He just refused to wear shoes because he’d never had shoes on in his life.

Warrin: You didn’t tend to wear shoes in the Azores.

01-00:43:30 Larkins: No. Oh, I see. Well, then his feet had adjusted to this, and so going— I guess like the native Indians. We had a large farmhouse, which was separate, quite a ways from the actual dairy buildings. And there was this long, boarded walkway that you had to walk on to get to the actual dairy, from the house. And they lived in the house. My father had sectioned off one half of the upstairs, just for the farmhands to live. There weren’t that many, two or three at the most. But my brother and I would [chuckles] laugh so hard because on a frosty morning, we could see their big feet—and they had these enlarged

toes—walking over this frosted walkway and leaving these impressions. We thought that was so funny. It was cruel, wasn’t it? That’s sort of cruel, I guess, as a kid. But that’s the way they lived. Now, they certainly did not integrate into any kind of life. They may have gone to a chamarrita in Tomales, which was the closest area at that time and there were chamarritas there. But how they survived as young men, I can’t really say.

Warrin: I’d like to skip back, before we move on to your parents’ life, to talk a little bit about some things which you had mentioned in the Carol Steiger interview. You were talking about your grandfather Dias going over and working at Point Reyes, working at Slide Ranch. Could you talk a little bit about—

01-00:45:21 Larkins: Well, that was my father. I think my grandfather must’ve still been alive. But as a young man, he hired himself out as a farmhand to dairies in Point Reyes, and he worked for one especially in Mount Vision. He would ride his horse, by horseback, over to Point Reyes and work all week; and then he would come back on the weekend, or maybe just for the Sunday, and spend one night with his parents, and then go back again. At that time, he became friendly with Manuel Leal, who owned— He didn’t own the land. I’m sure it was leased land, because I think that whole Slide Ranch area has— I could be wrong. I don’t know the ownership of that. Eventually, it became owned by the state, because I know they put up little cabins there, which some of the leading politicians kept for their own use, until it was discovered and they had to start leasing them out now. I guess it was when the Point Reyes National Seashore came in, that discovery was made. But they’d been using it as private property all that time, when it really belonged to the state. But Slide Ranch was a going ranch, very isolated. If ever you’ve been to Slide Ranch, it’s a long, narrow dirt road, to get down to it from Highway 1, and you’re just perched on the edge of a cliff. It’s very wild land. I think Manuel Leal, at that time, was still a young man. But eventually, he had, I think, five daughters. Georgia was the older one, and I think she married Tony Brazil. one of the Tony Brazils; I think there’re probably several. But my father and Manuel Leal became friends, and so as young adults, they would capture these wild horses on the Point Reyes Peninsula and train them—or tame them, I guess is the word—and then sell them to McNear, who owned a lot of land in San Rafael. And that eventually became McNear’s brick plant. Well, the McNears, they had a thriving business in just practically everything. From there, McNear would sell these horses to ranchers throughout Sonoma County. That was one of the things he did. But he really retained a lot of knowledge of that land because going everywhere by horseback, you really notice the land a bit more than you do when you’re driving over it at fifty miles an hour, in a car.

Warrin: You had mentioned in this other interview how you took him, as an elderly person, and he was pointing out the different aspects of the land.

01-00:48:36 Larkins: He was aging. I think he probably had— Well, he had arrhythmia eventually, and he died from that, at the age of eighty-one. But he had had a hard life, a hard physical life, so that even though he kept well and kept very active— He had trained as a carpenter when he was younger. As a young man, a young adult, to try to get out of the dairy business, he trained himself to become a carpenter, and became certified by the union or recognized, whatever it is you do. Became a member of the local carpenters union. And from there, he had built a house for my mother, before they married. That’s what they moved into in 1927, in Tam Valley, on Laurel Avenue. Then they ended up owning, of course, the business in Sonoma County, and then came back to Marin County and ended up living in a home in Homestead; and that’s where my mother died, at the age of sixty-five, in 1968. So he remodeled the basement. Well, he had remodeled the house earlier, and he remodeled the basement and made an apartment for himself, and leased the top of the house for income. Then he decided he didn’t like living in a basement, so he moved to an apartment on Miller Avenue; and that’s where he was living when he started coming over to our place every day and working in my garden. He took care of my garden for me and built himself a workshop. He was quite skilled at carpentry work, and that’s how he occupied himself. So on weekends, I’d try and take him out or do something, because he was still driving around town, but he didn’t like going out on a freeway anymore. By the time he was eighty, he didn’t like that. So it was on one of those trips that we thought we’d go out to West Marin, and that’s when he was able to point out these different landmarks to me. I was amazed that he could still do that, after so many years. But he remembered where he worked on that farm at Mount Vision. Now, of course, it’s been totally dismantled. There’s absolutely nothing there. You’d never know that there was a dairy up there on the top of Mount Vision. But he remembered two gum trees. He said right beside those gum trees is where the house was. And then where the different barns were and such; he could remember all of that.

Warrin: But that was all removed; is that right?

01-00:51:28 Larkins: Oh, yes, it was all empty then. The only thing that he really still knew, which impressed me, is that we were driving along Highway 1 and he said, “Now, just around this next bend will be the Stewart Ranch.” Which of course, is still there, which is now an organic dairy, more or less, where they produce, I think, cheeses and— They don’t do any commercial milk anymore, I don’t think, other than things that are organic. And they do a lot of farming there, too. But he said, “The Stewart Ranch will be right around this next bend,” and there it was. It was well known as a big dairy at that time. And all the ranches had their identification on the entryway, by their mailboxes, by the lanes going from the road into their property, because of the different milk cooperatives that they belonged to. They would put up a sign, so you would know the dairies because of the cooperative signs, the milk cooperative signs.

Like the Petaluma Cooperative Dairy, they had their own sign. Straus Creamery has its own sign; I think they still have it out, when you go towards Napa.

McKee: Well, speaking of your own cooperatives, did your father sell to Marin Dell when—

01-00:52:52 Larkins: I think he did, when he was in Petaluma.

McKee: Because that was a collective of dairymen, largely Portuguese, who banded together to sort of deal with the economic challenges of the Depression.

01-00:53:12 Larkins: Yes. They had their own milk-producing plant and their own bottles, with Marin Dell, milk bottles. I think it was taken over by Golden State, but I’m not certain on that.

McKee: I think it was Foremost, ultimately.

01-00:53:28 Warrin: Your father seemed to have had a larger vision than dairies, to prepare himself in different ways and to have different lifetime experiences, rather than stick totally with the dairies.

01-00:53:50 Larkins: Well, I think that might’ve come from the fact that they never really owned the land. I think a lot of these dairies that are still intact, it’s because that’s what they own. Just like your mother wants to stay in her home because she owns it. She feels safe there. When you’re leasing, you’re really under somebody else’s rules.

McKee: Well, speaking of that, I believe it was Sam Silva who owned the ranch. Do you remember anything about him?

01-00:54:28 Larkins: No, just the name. I don’t really know them. He was actually a businessman in Sausalito. He had several businesses, I think. He owned a grocery store or— The name Sam Silva, that was a big name in Sausalito. How he acquired that land, I don’t really know, either. It may’ve been some kind of a cooperative, because if he was going to use it as a hunting lodge— But it was a dairy before it was a hunting lodge. And who owned it when my father was managing, I don’t— Maybe Sam— Sam Silva did own it at that time, now that I think about it.

McKee: But he didn’t really come out or, as far as you knew, have a presence out at the ranch?

01-00:55:12 Larkins: Not in terms of working; I wouldn’t think so. But I honestly was too young to really know one way or the other. But at that time, at the Marin Headlands, the Coast Guard was out there, and they had development— This is before World War II. They had a school, and that’s where my brother started school and I used to get to go and visit him in school. Because I think when my brother was in the first grade, when he was going into second grade is when we moved to Petaluma. But that’s where I would’ve started school, would’ve been the little schoolhouse, which I think is still there, in the Headlands. Then World War II came and of course, the military came in and they built the bowling alley and a lot of the barracks, which are now part of the Headlands Center for the Arts.

Warrin: I think we have to take a break and get a new tape.

Begin Audiofile 2 01-15-2012.mp3

McKee: Is there anything else you can tell us about life out at the ranch in the Headlands?

02-00:00:12 Larkins: Well, I was quite young at the time. That’s where I was born, and they moved out, I think, when I was around four or five. At that time, before we moved out, my father bought a 1936 Ford, a brand new car, and we took a trip to Canada with my aunt Angeline, the five of us in this car. Which doesn’t sound like anything now, but the cars in 1936 were very small. So when you had three adults and two children in this little Ford sedan— But we took a wonderful trip to Canada on that. Then I do remember—and this is mainly from pictures that I remember this—going to visit the Machados, that had the dairy down on the Headlands, which is now part of the— The Headlands Institute, I think, is there now. All that property was ranch buildings at one time. That’s where the Machados lived. So they were right off of the Lagoon. And we would actually wade in the Lagoon at that time, as I was little, maybe three years old, and my brother was a couple years older. And Ida Machado became my friend. We even went to grammar school together, when we finally came back to Mill Valley, years later. Or maybe it was high school.

Louis Dias at Headlands Rancy, 1930

02-00:01:48 The other thing in the family, I just remember the farmhouse. My brother and I would play out in the yard. One of our big games was catching bumblebees. There were a lot of bumblebees around, and we would take a quart jar and capture a bumblebee and shake it up, and then open the jar and let the bumblebee come out, and they would run around dizzy, until they gained their equilibrium, and off they would fly. Little things kids do to occupy themselves. But when I was tiny, I remember my mother telling me that she

would sometimes leave me with the Italian family that owned an artichoke farm, which was subleased from, I guess, Sam Silva, which was across the way from the house. That old bottom valley was in vegetables, operated by Italians. And there was an Italian lady there that would take care of me during the day, when my mother wanted to go into Mill Valley or Sausalito and shop. She was telling me this as I was older, that she always remarked on how well I slept on the days that she left me with that lady. And she asked the lady what she did or why I slept so well, and the lady said, “Oh, you’ve got to learn to put a little claret wine in her milk bottle.” [laughs] So I remember that as a story, growing up. To this day, I like red wine. In terms of the rest of the— other than going up to school at the Headlands— My brother started school there and I can remember visiting that school, which I enjoyed doing because when you’re younger, that’s a big thing, to go to school.

02-00:03:38 Then we moved to Petaluma in 1936, out in West Marin, right at the Marin- Sonoma borderline. My father leased property on two sides of— I think it was Fallon Road; I’m not sure of the road. A big dairy herd that he owned. He bought the dairy herd, but leased the land. He owned all the equipment, which is what most ranchers did. They owned all the real property and the land owners had the actual land value. They stayed there until 1941, before they came back to Mill Valley. Then he managed a ranch up on the hill, off of Panoramic Highway. There was a dairy there, which is now— It was a horse farm for years. It was the Circle Y Ranch. That was a cattle ranch, back for years. It was owned by the John Bernard family, in Mill Valley, and my father was manager of that for an absent landlord, who had it for property income. Of course, it was very profitable during the war, because of the milk subsidies, because of World War II. When the war was over, the Bernards still owned the property and the landlord gave up his lease; he didn’t want it anymore. So my father then moved to Homestead Valley and went back into carpentry work, which was his chosen profession, other than dairy ranching.

Warrin: Could you describe this interesting life on a dairy ranch? What were the activities of the men and the boys and the women and the girls?

02-00:05:50 Larkins: Well, of course, each ranch would differ, depending on what their focus was and what other little things they had. Some raised chickens, others had other little projects. But basically, it was everyday living. The cooking, at that time, a lot of it was cooking on woodstoves. So there was the gathering of the wood. You cooked with wood; you didn’t use anything else. Eventually, people turned to electricity and had electricity. There was no gas, I don’t think, out on the farms, because it was too far away. But they did have electricity and I guess most of the cooking turned to that. But when I was growing up, it was all wood stoves. I can remember as a child at the Headlands, my mother’s woodstove had like a celluloid glass liner in front of the firebox, so you could see the fire from that. I would just be fascinated; but

at the same time, it frightened me. And for years, I’ve always been sort of afraid of fire; I consider fire very dangerous, and I often wonder if it had something to do with looking through that glass window on the firebox of the stove. So usually the wife would cook for the hired hands, for everyone, for the whole family. Usually it was three meals a day, because it was heavy work, it was long hours. You’re up early; usually four in the morning, you’re up. If you have a sick cow or a cow is calving, you have to be there to assist, because it’s a valuable piece of property. Cows are very expensive and you don’t want to do anything to lose it. Of course, you become very good friends with the veterinarian, because if you had to call in a vet, this was an expensive thing to have to pay, was a vet bill. So you tried to do a lot of the doctoring of your cattle and a lot of time spent on examining the hooves. Of course, then there’s always, in terms of the barn, the cleanliness, the inspectors for sanitary conditions. Also the milk processing. At that time, it was all pasteurization, and every little dairy had its own chilling system for chilling the milk and keeping it at a certain temperature, to keep bacteria from starting before it was picked up by the cooperative creameries. We always used milk cans. I think now they have some system of probably pumping the milk right into these milk trucks. I don’t know how it’s done now. But when we were operating the dairies, it was all hand milking. You’d bring in a whole herd of cows, depending on the size of your barn. You had a cow in every stall and you’d put hay in the stanchions for the cows to eat, to keep them quiet. All hand milking, from one cow to the next. The milk went into the cooler and the little processing. There was a whole what they called the milk house, where the milk was chilled and cleaned. Then there was the cleaning, the sterilizing of the milk cans and the pails, and washing with a soda-type water that you used. Then the cleaning of the barn, releasing the cattle. That was done by hired hands and by the owner. My father did a lot of his own milking. I can remember one of my aunts from— One of my mother’s brothers had married a woman, Marie Brazil; she was from a Brazil family, one of the many branches of the Brazil family. She would always enter the state fair contest for milking, because she was a good milker and had— You could develop these huge arms, with the muscles in your arms, from hand milking. She was just so proud of winning these contests at the Sonoma fair every year.

02-00:10:16 In terms of the kitchen inside, my mother was cooking, cleaning. Maybe went shopping once a week. Always had a big vegetable garden. A lot of the food was your own food. At one time, we raised rabbits. Did a lot of canning, a lot of processing with canning. My grandmother would come up from Mill Valley and help with the canning. You processed even meat. Of course, we butchered our own cattle, and we rented a frozen storage locker, which most people did. You’d take a cow, calf, whatever, and butcher it, and maybe sell half of it to a neighbor or keep it all for yourself, and have it butchered and frozen, professionally frozen. Then you’d go down and get your pieces of meat, beef ribs or whatever you were going to fix, and have that for your

meat. You didn’t go to the grocery store and buy meat in those days; you used your own.

McKee: Where was the storage locker, do you know?

02-00:11:35 Larkins: Oh, somewhere in Petaluma. They were very common, big storage lockers. We never raised pigs. I always remember that. My father didn’t like pigs. You’d think he would’ve, because for all the pork— We had chickens, big chickens. We butchered calves for veal. But calves, of course, were a commodity, because they could grow up to become cows and become milk cows.

Warrin: About how many cows did you have?

02-00:12:04 Larkins: I can’t remember. I do remember that he had a lot of Jerseys and Guernseys, because they are higher in butterfat and I think there was more money in that. But it’s the Holsteins that give the milk and the Holsteins is what you see out here in this Silveira Dairy here, because you want to keep track of the quantity. I don’t think it was operated as professionally as it is now, where every cow is computerized and big records are kept. I know my father kept hand records, in terms of their volume and to help him determine whether a cow should be butchered or sold. But it was an expensive commodity, to own a cow, but he had quite a herd, because the barn was, I know, filled and he had to try and not have to buy feed, because that’s where you used a lot of money, was for feed.

McKee: Did you or your brother have any chores, in all of these activities?

02-00:13:14 Larkins: My brother had to work, from a young age on. At age seven he had chores to do. I didn’t remember I had a lot to do in the house, particularly. Maybe I was doing things. Certainly, the dishes and setting the table, that definitely was a chore, and maybe cleaning my room. I don’t think there was a lot of time spent on house cleaning. It was just a busy life. You were always busy, something to do. There was just never a dull moment on the house. I do remember at night, though, we always sat around the radio at nine o’clock and listened to the news at nine o’clock. That was a big thing, and that’s when we went into the main living room. We had the big family kitchen. Of course, this was a large house that we had; more so than most ranch houses. It’s still there. I was by it not too long ago. My son was visiting; we went for a drive, to show— Where I ended up going to school was up in a little one-room schoolhouse. I can’t remember what street it was on, but it was in that Two Rock area. It was called the Two Rock School. They converted the school to a home, but they kept— The school itself is the front part of the house. Still has the bell tower on it, still has the same double front doors to get into it, but then they added rooms to the back. But still the original school windows. It was a

small, little schoolhouse and had a woodstove for heat. First through sixth grade and about twenty students. That’s where I really started school.

McKee: Were you the only Portuguese family in that area, or were there others?

02-00:15:11 Larkins: Oh, no, there were others, but there were some people from the Coast Guard. By that time, the Coast Guard was starting their station in Two Rock, so we did have Coast Guard families there. This was just before the war. But I was the only one in first grade, and that was a trauma because everyone else knew what to do, and there I was, and the teacher’s busy teaching something to sixth graders. It’s a little different, it was a little harder. A lot of self-taught and peer teaching went on in that one-room schoolhouse.

Warrin: How many students were there?

02-00:15:48 Larkins: I think about twenty. Not too many.

McKee: Back for a moment to these evenings around the radio, I was wondering if your mother kept herself occupied in the evening with knitting or embroidering or any kind of craft.

02-00:16:10 Larkins: Well, she did a lot of sewing. She had a sewing machine. Certainly, she made a lot of our Christmas presents, the pajamas and that kind of thing. Used the Montgomery Ward catalog. I can remember one year getting a pair of shoes; they were eighty-eight cents. The little black Mary Janes with the little cutout shoes. She bought a whole outfit for me, including knee-highs, navy blue knee-highs, with the plaid skirt and the sweater and the white blouse. The house had the one big bathroom upstairs, in addition to whatever they had for the hired hands, and that’s where the bathtub was. A closed, old, huge bathroom. We had an electric heater up there to heat it and we’d have to heat the water on the woodstove, carry it up in a kettle, up the staircase, into the big bathroom and fill the bathtub, to get hot water, because we didn’t have the hot water system to go up there. [chuckles] So then this was an open-grilled electric heater that— Me, I was what, six, seven years old, I guess, six years old. So I was going to warm my socks for when I got out of the tub, so I put them over this heater, and of course, they caught fire. I’ll always remember that, to this day, how I lost my socks. Luckily, it didn’t start the house on fire.

Warrin: Work on a dairy ranch was very gender-oriented. Women worked in the house; men worked outside.

02-00:18:01 Larkins: Yes, that’s true.

Warrin: To what extent did the women work outside the home? What were their activities, besides cooking? Gardening?

02-00:18:13 Larkins: Yeah, they tended the vegetable garden and what little flower gardening they may have done, depending on the wife’s desires. But basically, you didn’t waste land with a lot of flowers; it was either a fruit tree or something productive. But everyone had a big vegetable garden that the wife usually took care of, and probably the chickens were done by the wife. Certainly, the cooking, making the butter. But in terms of actual working in the dairy itself— Of course, each family would’ve been different, depending on their size and their income, on what they could afford, whether or not they could afford hired hands. Then the wife may’ve played a bigger role in the dairy itself. I suspect that— in fact, we know now, the current dairies going on, like the Straus Dairy or the Giacomini Dairy, the wives are running it, where they’ve taken over the whole business. So it’s entirely different now. But in those days, it was— There was plenty of work to do in the house, when you consider the washing was done— If you were lucky, you had an old-fashioned washing machine, and maybe had the wringers on it. If not, you wrung the clothes out by hand. And hanging the clothes on a line; there was no such thing as driers. And in West Marin, there was a lot of fog, [chuckles] so things didn’t dry that quickly. But I think that the wives had more than enough to do. Plus raising babies and doing all the doctoring. Probably doctored the hired hands, too.

Warrin: What about your activities as a child? Could you go out and watch them milk?

02-00:20:11 Larkins: Yes, I had the run of the property. Spent a lot of time playing outside. I can’t recall having specific duties that I had to do outside, particularly, other than maybe collecting eggs from the henhouse. The actual milking, I didn’t do except for the fun of it, if I wanted to try it. But I didn’t actually have to milk so many cows a day; it wasn’t anything like that. Whereas my brother did. That was required. All children just have to work. And I can remember we very seldom visited people, because you were too busy to go visiting. But we did have one family by the name of Silveira, and they had grown boys. I guess it would’ve been a Sunday afternoon. The boys were there and there weren’t enough chairs for everyone to sit, so the boys were sort of sitting on the floor. These would be teenage boys, by this time. Twelve, along that age. I can remember them sitting up and two of them just fell asleep. They were that tired. This was a big occasion, to have company in your house and serve cake and coffee. I guess that’s what they served; I can’t remember what we ate. But I just couldn’t get over that, the falling asleep. But these are kids that are really working hard, plus going to school, and they’re just—

Warrin: Starting doing a milking at four or five in the morning, and then going to school.

02-00:21:52 Larkins: That’s right. And probably a long time to get to the schoolhouse, and probably had to walk. So it was a hard life, I think, for the boys; very much so. And the girls, I’m sure had to— I know I learned sewing early. But I didn’t have any specific chores that I had to do, in terms of sewing or making specific things. It was more as a fun activity thing.

McKee: Did your mother teach you any kind of traditional dishes?

02-00:22:23 Larkins: No. I didn’t have to— Other than washing dishes and setting the table and maybe peeling potatoes—and especially making applesauce; I had a lot of work to do with the applesauce—and working in the garden or having to pick fruit, pick up fruit from the ground, feeding the chickens, that kind of thing we did. But they were sort of menial, easy chores. Of course, school was a major thing. We spent a lot of time on school and getting your homework done; that was a major focus. But we didn’t have television. We did a lot of reading, and then the radio. As we got older, my brother would love to listen to Jack Armstrong and those programs that were on the radio, the serial programs. That was a big amusement.

Warrin: Would you sit around and listen to President Roosevelt, with his fireside—

02-00:23:27 Larkins: Yes, I can remember as a child, hearing that talk. That was a major issue to my folks, listening to that. It was a big focus, because that’s the one thing that they made time for, was to hear President Roosevelt speak.

McKee: Did you have horses on the ranch up in Petaluma?

02-00:23:49 Larkins: Horses? Yes, we did, but they were used mainly to inspect fences. It wasn’t riding; they were work horses. Or for plowing—although my father had a tractor. He ended up using a tractor. It was faster and more efficient than a horse. But I can remember putting the harness on the horse for plowing. But they were definitely work horses, pulling a wagon.

Warrin: Why don’t we take another short break? [audiofile stops & restarts] So Shirley, I’d like to ask you a little bit about your life, besides what we already talked about, about your life as a young person on the dairy ranch and your primary education. When you left elementary school, where did you continue your education?

02-00:25:11 Larkins: Well, everyone in Southern Marin and part of West Marin—I’m referring to San Anselmo, Fairfax, Woodacre; not Olema, I don’t think, but certainly Stinson Beach, Muir Beach; no, not Stinson, Muir Beach—went to the Mill Valley School District, and from there, to the Tamalpais Union High School District. It didn’t become Tamalpais High School until 1950, when Sir Francis

Drake School was built, off of Sir Francis Drake Avenue in San Anselmo. Then they developed what they call the Tamalpais Union High School District, and they had Tamalpais High School and Sir Francis Drake High School. Then ten years later, they had Redwood High School. And since then, they’ve developed the different special education schools, for children of— say difficult learners or hard learners. So I went to Tam High School. At that time, we were living on the dairy up on the hill, owned by the Bernards. My father was working as a carpenter, but we stayed on, renting the house on a month-to-month, from the Bernards. And there was a yellow school bus. All the schools had buses then. The Mill Valley Elementary School and then the Tamalpais High School each had their own bus systems. The elementary school had the little bus that would come up the hill and pick us up, go all the way to the Mountain Home. And they had one bus that went over the hill, into Muir Beach. There were some ranches in Muir Beach and that’s how the children got there. The Tamalpais High School also had the bus, and they had to go all the way out to Olema. I can’t define the exact schools, of whether or not we had anyone from Olema; but I do know that there was a Silveira family that lived out in Bolinas, and the Bolinas children did come to Tamalpais High School. I forget her first name, but she would drive— Mary Silveira may have been her name. She would drive the bus in to school in the morning, work in the administrative office all day long; then at three thirty, the bus would leave and she’d drive the bus home and park it in her yard, and that’s where it stayed. That’s how they provided the bus service to the West Marin area. So I went four years to Tam High, and then went to College of Marin, which when I started, it was Marin Junior College, and then it changed while I was there. The two years I was there, it changed to College of Marin. I took a business administration course. From there, in those days, if you were a female in business administration, you became a secretary. So I did become a secretary—which I liked. I really enjoyed the detail work of secretary work. I had the opportunity to apply for not a scholarship, but to apply for admission to Mills Girls School in Oakland, which to this day, I sort of regret now, as I’m older, looking back, that I didn’t do it. But I really felt insecure, to go off on my own to a big school, and I think I was afraid to, is why I never pursued it. So I did start work with a bank—the Bank of Mill Valley, which was bought out by the American Trust Company—and started in Mill Valley part- time, while I was in College of Marin; and then moved to their big office on California Street, and worked there consistently, until I became pregnant. I immediately quit work, because in those days, you didn’t work when you were pregnant; it just wasn’t done. My first child was born—that was Diane; you’ve met her—she was born in 1958. So I stayed home. Then in the meanwhile, my son was born. I stayed home for about ten years; and then was so involved with volunteer work, decided I would go back to work, and took a part-time job with the school district, just up the street. So I could walk to work, be available—the kids were still in school—and I ended up staying with the school district for thirty years.

Warrin: What did you do with the school district?

02-00:30:21 Larkins: It was all secretarial, clerical. I ended up office manager for the Mill Valley Middle School, and then eventually in the district office, as administrative secretary to the superintendent and board of trustees, and managed the office there, office management.

Warrin: So you had an interesting career.

02-00:30:41 Larkins: It was interesting, because the people were interesting to work with. It was different than, I think, commuting to just an office, where you have a lot of different types of people. The school district, everyone is well educated and well behaved, you might say. Although we went through some tumultuous times in the sixties. I started work in ’68—’65, really, part-time, and then ’68 —and went through the seventies, which were very tumultuous. Then my kids went through that bad era, you might say, where everyone wore overalls. One good thing about the dress code in those days was that you wore overalls; jeans was the way you dressed, with unkempt hair. But everyone looked the same; whereas now, they’re getting back into the designer clothes and the status symbols a little bit more. So that was the one good thing that came out of the hippie era, was the dress code. But it was pretty wild, and I don’t think the best way to go. So I feel sorry for teachers now. They have a hard job, because in the meanwhile, so many rules and regulations have come out, and so much testing and such, and so much recordkeeping. I think it’s hard for them to actually teach.

Warrin: They spend a lot more time than simply what they do in the classroom.

02-00:32:25 Larkins: Oh, teachers have always spent a lot of time. Even though they had time off during the summer, teachers always spent that time preparing for the next year, going to courses, learning. I know they traveled, but they used those travels as a learning experience, which they took into the classroom. Teaching is an art. It really is a skill, a skillful art. After that, let’s see. I retired in ’94. It was time to get out; I was sixty-two. It was about the third time the trends were returning and I thought, the third time, it’s time to get out, when you have the same problems reoccurring all over again, that you’ve lived through and still haven’t resolved—which is just part of life, possibly. And I stayed at home. Then my husband became ill, and three years after he passed away is when I moved here to Smith Ranch, independent retirement living. I haven’t regretted it. I like the community, I still have my privacy, so it’s been good. And I can still drive a car, so I’m pretty independent still.

Warrin: Could you talk a little bit about the activities over your lifetime in the Portuguese community?

02-00:33:58 Larkins: I can remember as a child, always going to the chamarritas and the different holiday celebrations they had during the year. There was always the time they had the big sopas dinner to pick the name of the queen. My family was never that involved in the association, so there was probably never a chance of me being selected as queen, because I think maybe we weren’t as generous a giver as you need to be to be put into the queen category. How that whole thing operates, I don’t really know. I never got into the organization, even though I joined the ladies arm of that organization for a while, because of my mother. I forget the name of it; they had a special name. I did belong to that and I did go to some meetings and events. But I didn’t really participate in it that much, and I think some of it was because I didn’t speak the language, even though they didn’t speak the language a lot. There was a lot of it going on, a lot of it talked in Portuguese, which I didn’t understand. I did participate a couple of years in the parades, as a little queen— Not a little queen, but it would be equivalent to a bridesmaid. But it was the name of the assistant, carrying the cape, for example, or just being the flower girl, to the side of the queen. So I did participate in a couple of those chamarritas, the annual festival. They’re held, oh, from about early May all the way up into close to September, at least through August, in the different areas. I participated both in Sausalito, Novato, and even I remember going to Petaluma; they had one out on Bodega Highway. There’s a Portuguese hall there, and I can remember marching in that one. I was probably ten at the time, eleven, twelve, around in there. Of course, then there was the big feed, the dinner, and then afterwards, followed by dancing. It was a lot of folk dancing. By that, it was mainly the Chamarita group dancing; line dancing, it would be called today. Anyone can participate in it. They served, I think, beer and wine for the men; I don’t know if they had hard liquor. But the kids, I remember the orange Nehi drink. That was a big thing, because when they had those festivals, I got to drink orange Nehi, which I thought was a pretty good treat. They lasted, the dancing; I forget what time they broke up. I think we usually left around nine o’clock, probably, at night. They would go on for two or three— Friday night and maybe Saturday night there’d be something; then Sunday would be the big day, and then that would end it. They’d maybe have cleanup.

02-00:37:21 Another thing they had was the sale of the cattle. They had an auction, and the ranchers were required to actually donate a calf or some beef, to provide the food for this feed. That was expected, them to do. I know my father did that. And they always sold the circles of bread, of the sweet bread. That was to raise money to buy the bread. They still do that today, but now the loaves are made by a commercial bakery, I think out of San Jose or Merced; somewhere from the valley or somewhere in the East Bay, not anywhere close by. And the bread is a lot airier, has a lot more air in it, more like a commercial bakery, not the thicker bread. I actually make it here at home. I have a couple of different recipes.

Warrin: The sweetbread?

02-00:38:16 Larkins: Yeah, the sweet bread, Portuguese sweetbread. It’s almost like the Jewish challah bread [pronounces it halla], or challah; I don’t know how to pronounce it. Same type bread. You make it into different loaves. Easter time, you always put the egg in it. It’s good bread, great with butter. [chuckles] In terms of what else growing up, or even my life afterwards, I still— I was always active, in school, in high school and college and as an adult, always in some kind of civic activity, either calling people to vote for a civic election or being in the community disaster plan. I’ve always done some kind of civic work; it just comes natural to me. I like doing that. So now I do it here. I haven’t gotten into volunteering so much. People say, “You don’t volunteer for the school?” It just never occurred to me; I think because I spent so many years in the school that I didn’t do that, and because I was still busy. I did take up hiking with the Sierra Club, after I retired. So I spent at least two full days a week hiking, all over Marin County. There’s hardly any place where I didn’t hike. I think I haven’t been on Big Rock Ridge, which I can look at from my window. Was one of the places I haven’t been. So I did a lot of hiking.

Warrin: After you recovered from your broken ankle, did you go hiking again?

02-00:40:06 Larkins: I tried going back and found that I couldn’t really keep up, so I had to reduce it. Then now, a lot of arthritis has set in on my feet and from the ankle. Plus the knees are giving out. The fluid in the knee joints is not as good as it once was. The doctor said one way is to not do so much walking. But even when I moved here, I always went out every day on a one- or two-hour walk. But I’ve gotten away from that and the waistline has increased accordingly.

McKee: But at least here, you get to look out over ranch land, like when you were a child.

02-00:40:48 Larkins: Yes, that’s true. That’s the first thing I noticed when I came to look at the place. It was in the fall, and when you get an east wind, you do get some of the dairy odors. I got out of the car and I smelled this odor and I thought, I know what that is. It’s nice. I said, “Well, I’m going back to my roots.”

Warrin: Okay, well, anything else to add, before we end this interview?

02-00:41:20 Larkins: No, I can’t think of anything specific I’d like to mention, that I can think of at the moment. But I appreciate you giving me this opportunity. It’s been an interesting afternoon.

Warrin: It’s been a pleasure, and on behalf of myself and Lissa, we want to thank you for the opportunity.

02-00:41:40 Larkins: You’re welcome.