Aptos Was Idyllic: A Kid's Eye View of Aptos, California in the 40'S and 50'S

By Dr. David Glass

Aptos in the fifties was idyllic in every respect.
Dr. Ramon Cortines, Teacher, Aptos School, Nationally Known Educator

I dont think Ive ever been to Aptos.
Authors best friend in high school, a lifelong resident of Felton (12 miles from Aptos)

Your dad is SO funny.
Soccer mom to authors daughter, also a soccer mom

Dirty Dave [authors camp nickname] is the best storyteller we know.
First Baptist, Seaside kids to their parents

Mr. Glass? . . . Trite!
Mr. Tuohey, Cabrillo College English Prof, commenting on authors writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469177120

Dr. David Glass

(The Rev. Dr.) Dave Glass has two home villages. His well-received previous book, Aptos was Idyllic, chronicles his childhood where his mother’s family resided. He then spent his teen years in the Felton area, where his father’s family has lived since the 1860s. This book provides a detailed and whimsical description of Felton half a century ago, with colorful, previously unpublished memories of up to 100 years ago and earlier

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Dr. David Glass.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012903865

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-7711-3

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-7710-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-7712-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Cement Boat and Bay View Hotel pictures courtesy of the California Historical Society. Used by permission.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Cypresses, Cauliflower, And Crypts

Our Beach

The Hill

A Kids’ Eye View Of The Village

A Kid’s Eye View Of The Village, Part Ii

Let’s Go Throw Rocks

From The Village Back Up To Lower Ledyard Acres

When We Could Still Shoot

The Creek

Aptos Union School

On The Other Side Of The Village

Our Former And Fading Farm

Fun Times For Fishermen

Hot Times On The Hill And In The Village

Fund-Raising, Free Soda, And Freedom To Roam

To Boldly Go… To The Old Mill And Beyond

This book is dedicated to…

• Grandpa Ledyard, who had the vision and foresight to purchase property in Aptos, making it possible for our family to enjoy life there decades later, . . .

• My parents, grandmother, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers, and all the local characters who inhabit these stories and who enriched our mid-twentieth century Aptos experiences, . . .

• Any and all of you who may purchase this book, in multiple copies, and get others to do so. I’m literally stuck in Lodi, and can’t afford to move back to Aptos for my Golden Years.

With apologies to…

• Anyone who reads this book and notices factual errors, or who has a different perspective on the time and place. Any errors of fact are my responsibility, but this is a book of reminiscences, and my memory is pretty good. Very little careful research was done. I gave up precise academic research for good upon completion of my doctoral dissertation. Deal with it.

FORWARD (BY AN APTOS SCHOOL TEACHER)

MY CAREER IN public education has taken me to many different places, with many different challenges and rewards. I have always looked back fondly, though, to where I started, as the sixth grade teacher at Aptos Union School, in a small community on Monterey Bay near Santa Cruz. Aptos, some fifty-odd years ago, really was, as I’ve been quoted, idyllic, a place of great natural beauty, quaint village charm, and wonderful local residents, students, and colleagues.

When David Glass contacted me about writing a forward to a book about Aptos in the middle of the last century, memories came back of that long-ago time. I knew David back then as a student, and as a member of an extended family to whom I became very close. His cousin John was one of my sixth graders, and John’s older brother Cory was a great friend. Both of them appear in the book, as do some of my fellow teachers from that era.

The book is filled with David’s remembrances, Aptos as experienced by a child and preadolescent many years ago, but is intended to be more than a personal memoir. It also describes the local characters of the time, and the geography and sociology of the place. It is an often funny, whimsical account of what it was like to come of age in a time very different from today.

It has been said to the point of redundancy that California has been in the vanguard of change in America, and Santa Cruz County has seen more change than many other areas in the past several decades. This book, without any pretensions to great sociological import, is an easy-to-read, enjoyable excursion back to an Aptos very different from the upscale golf and beach resort of today, and should be of interest to current and former Aptosers and Santa Cruzans, and to many others. Happy reading!

Dr. Ramon Cortines

Teacher, Aptos Union School, 1956-59

Former Superintendent, San Francisco and Pasadena School Districts

Former Chancellor, New York City Schools

Former Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education

Former Superintendent, Los Angeles School District (Retired, May 2011)

CYPRESSES, CAULIFLOWER, AND CRYPTS

THESE DAYS THE freeway exit to get to Aptos village on the Santa Cruz side is called State Park Drive. If you head for the bay, you reach Seacliff Beach State Park. If you go toward the hills, you reach Soquel Drive. The big shopping center anchored by Safeway is on the east side of the road, and there is a large motel and a modern Catholic church on the left. One the north side of Soquel Drive is a Wells Fargo Bank, with a Southern Baptist Church behind it, and a number of businesses all the way down to the railroad trestle and the bridge over the creek which mark the entrance to Aptos village itself.

How different it is from what it was like in the forties and early fifties, which should be no surprise to anyone. It will take more than one of these essays to picture the area in those days, but I’ll begin with the narrow road which led from the freeway (which was completed circa 1949 or 1950) to what was then known as The Old Highway.

As one left the freeway to reach Aptos, one had to turn from the center median (with no exit lane) across the two lanes of Santa Cruz-bound traffic (no clover leaf intersection or overpass in those days). You would immediately find yourself on a narrow lane overhung on both sides by lines of mature cypress trees, all the way to the stop sign (sign, not light) at the Old Highway. It was at this point in our family excursions that Mom would almost invariably proclaim, Home again, home again, jiggety jog, and we kids in the back seat would answer in unison, And here we are, back in the fog! The cypress trees formed a beautiful canopy, which on a very foggy evening would give us the impression of being in the beginning stages of a rainstorm, as the fog condensed on the trees, who shared their watery bounty in the form of large droplets spattering all over the car.

One the right side of the road, we could look through the trees to a huge field where Safeway and the shopping center now stand, which was where crops of sugar beets and cauliflower were grown. It was a beautiful sight from where we lived on top of the hill on the other side of the highway, so beautiful that in later years Grandpa Ledyard fought with all his then-waning influence to prevent the shopping center from being developed, to preserve the view and the property values of his beloved Ledyard Acres. It was also something of a charming anachronism when viewed through the cypresses, because the field was harvested using huge draft horses pulling wagons. Often, in season, we would have to slow way down to follow those horses which were pulling wagons heavily laden with cauliflower or beets beginning their journey to the Spreckles plant near Salinas.

My sister Kathy was known in the family as the one with a world-class sweet tooth, even though we all usually felt sugar-deprived except when Grandma Glass would bring us candy on her weekly overnight visits. We all still remember when Kathy first became aware of the horse-drawn wagons carrying their soon-to-be-processed cargo. Somebody asked what they were hauling, and Dad replied, Sugar beets. Out of the back seat came a loud, sing-song, cry of exhilaration: SUgar BEETs???! For years thereafter, whenever we were travelling and we saw that particular crop, Mom and Dad would ring out, SUgar BEETs!!!

With regard to the cauliflower, we generally didn’t get very excited about it, since it is a vegetable usually not anywhere near to the top ten favorite edibles on any kid’s list. It did provide, though, an illustration of the old proverb, Stolen fruit tastes sweeter, because sometimes when the crop was ready for harvest, some of us would cross the highway on the way into Aptos, pinch off some of that whitish stuff