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Published on 01/18/1999 All articles from this issue

In early Los Altos, fire carts, grasshoppers and poison oak

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Voice of the Past

Olive Swete Spencer's parents met aboard a ship traveling from England, which arrived at Ellis Island in 1893. They eventually arrived in Los Altos in 1920, when her father went to work at the Durst family prune and apricot orchard. Olive shared the following account with Laura Cline, during a 1998 interview at her Mountain View home.

There were only around 200 people here when we arrived. One time, when I was just 8 years old, I saw that the Durst house was on fire. I ran and told my mother, and she ran up and told Mrs. Durst. They called Mr. Woodworth, who was the fireman at that time. He had a two-wheeled cart he pulled with his car. He came right away. Somehow he got a ladder. The house was very tall, and he got up and put the fire out. I always felt that I saved the Durst's house. It's still there now, on Pepper Drive.

There were a lot of vacant lots around town. There was nothing on San Antonio Road.

When my brother, John, was in the second or third grade, he went around to the vacant lots and found a lot of grasshoppers. He put them in a box and took them to school and let them out in the room. They were jumping all over everywhere. All the kids came in and the little girls screeched and hollered. The teacher was so angry. She found out who did it, and she made my brother go around the room and pick up all the little grasshoppers. I think he had to stay after school for a week. I thought that was so funny.

My mother and father eventually bought a home on Third Street. There were two houses across the street and one on the corner of State and Third. That's all. The Rockholds lived on Second Street, and they had cows and they used to put all those cows all around on the vacant lots.

My good friend, Alta Brinton, who lives in Palo Alto now, lived across the street in one of the two houses. The Pinto Family lived in the other house. Alta and I were coming home from school one day. Harry Pinto, who was in our class at school, was walking behind us, and he was talking away.

Right in the middle of one of the vacant lots was a great big bunch of poison oak.

Harry said, "Oh, I'm not afraid of poison oak. I've never had poison oak." We didn't see him after that for about three weeks. He got it, and he must have really suffered. Alta's mother saw him and said he looked like a pumpkin.

- Courtesy of Donna Shoemaker and the Oral History Program of History House of Los Altos.