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Published on 03/15/1999 All articles from this issue

Local policing in the 1940s: Weekly visits by the sheriff visits weekly

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Voice of the Past

Barbara Collins Callison's memories of Los Altos begin in the summer of 1940. Her first home in Los Altos was on a half acre on San Antonio Road between Pepper Drive and Lyell Street. She attended Los Altos Grammar School from second grade and Mountain View High School. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and later earned a master's degree and a doctorate degree in science education.

The following memories are from Callison's book, "Growing up in Los Altos," which she wrote for her children so they would have a permanent record of what life in the Santa Clara Valley was like for her during her childhood.

Callison now lives on San Luis Street in Los Altos. She is an active competitor in Master's swimming, running and biking.

Dad was a chemist working in South San Francisco. To get to work, he took the local train that came through at 7:12 in the morning and returned at 6:20 in the evening. I used to enjoy walking to the train depot to meet my father in the evening. We would walk home, talking all the way.

Los Altos did not have a police force in the l940s. The Santa Clara County provided a sheriff who circulated through town once a week. If my parents went on a vacation for a week or two, they notified the sheriff's office, who then sent an officer by to check the house and property. Crime was rare. People respected each other's property. I never had a lock on my bicycle and never had a bicycle stolen. Most people did not lock their doors. It wasn't necessary.

Around 1945 we moved to a beautiful old home at 339 San Antonio Road, owned by Dr. Brown, the local veterinarian It was sold to Bill Powell Realty in 1962, as zoning changed from residential to commercial, and San Antonio Road was to become a busy four-lane road. Eckert Realty now occupies the site where our home stood.

My first job was at Clint's Creamery at First and Lyell streets. If you look at the corner part of Los Altos Hardware, you can still visualize the frostie cone that originally dominated the roof of Clint's Creamery. It has since been painted into a garden scene. Clint's made all their own ice cream, which was then hand-packed and weighed. I became a real soda jerk, scooping out ice cream into cones or quart containers, making frosties, milkshakes and sodas. Clint's was packed with customers on hot summer nights. I can still picture a line going out the door at 10 o'clock at night, and we never closed until the last customer was served.

- Adapted by Donna Shoemaker and History House of Los Altos.