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Published on 01/25/1999 All articles from this issue

A special treat - the butter clabber, sprinkled with sugar

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Ruth Clifford Sherrer's family hailed from Alabama and Texas and first came to California in 1906, just two weeks before the San Francisco Earthquake.

Her grandfather, Higley Williams, worked on the trolley cars in the "Cow Barn" in San Francisco and purchased his home in Los Altos in 1914 as a weekend retreat. Later, he became a full-time Los Altos resident. Ruth lived in Los Altos from 1921 to 1944. Her parents' home was adjacent to her grandparent's home on Yerba Santa , off of Los Altos Avenue.

Sherrer shared the following account with Don McDonald during a 1998 interview from her Washington home.

My grandmother cooked on a kerosene stove until a gas line was put in during the 1930s. The only heat in the house was from the fireplace in the living room. Lighting was from kerosene lamps until we had an electric line installed.

Telephones had party lines, and sometimes everyone listened to get caught up on all the goings-on in town. Our first radio was a battery-powered thing that you could hear only through earphones. We would all sit around and listen in amazement.

Mr. George supplied us with milk. My grandmother would churn butter from the cream that topped the milk. One of our fondest dishes was the butter-covered clabber sprinkled with sugar. Mr. Watkins sold vanilla extract to my grandmother, and she would mix it with fruit powder to make cold drinks.

My grandfather's house had a one-hole outhouse, with the old Sears Catalog handy nearby. At my parents' house, since we had a large family, we had a two-holer outhouse. We were the only ones with such luxury, so that was the talk of the neighborhood.

When I first went to Los Altos Grammar School, I was terrified of the toilets that flushed when you sat down on the seat. Since I had never experienced water in toilets or flushing toilets, it seemed to me that the water came in with such a roar. I was sure I'd go right down into the toilet with the water. A dreadful experience. I wouldn't use those toilets, but waited until I walked home, finding safety along the way, under a pepper tree.

My grandmother loved to fish. In July and August, she would rent a cabin in Santa Cruz on the bluff overlooking the river. We would visit there for a few days - a special treat. Grandmother loved seafood, so whenever she took eggs from our chickens to San Francisco to sell, she'd come home with sacks of oysters and whole crabs, plus good old San Francisco sourdough bread.

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