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I was born in Auburn, California, on March 30, 1912. My parents were
James Budden Davidson and Annie Laurie Johnson Davidson. Since my father
was working in the middle of Nevada at Strepto Copper Smelter at that
time, my mother went home to her mother's in Auburn, California for my
birth. Shortly afterward, she took me back to McGill, Nevada, where she
and my father were living in a house owned by the smelter company--it
was called a "company house."
When the company closed a few months later, we moved to Alameda, California,
where my father found work as a train conductor. But in May, 1913, we
moved again. This time it was to Middle Stewieke, Nova Scotia. My dad
went to work for his father in his cabinetmaking business. My brother,
Eugene, was born there on September 4, 1913. I was only 18 months old
and my mother told a story about me at this age. My grandfather thought
that it was cute when I would pick up my bowl of porridge and place it
upside down on my head where it became a mess in my hair, so he would
frequently encourage me to do this.
My mother didn't like living in Canada so far away from her family, so
when the smelter opened up again in Nevada in 1914, our family moved back
there. My earliest memory dates from this time. I was about three ears
old and was lookingout a window with my friend, Virginia, for Santa Claus.
It was snowing and the bright lights of the town sparkled through the
snow. In later years when I was about 16 I corresponded with this girl.
In 1916, the copper smelter closed down again. My mother has said that
all the families had to just walk out of their company houses with what
they could carry and close the doors behind them. We traveled by train
back to Alameda where my father got work in the Bethelehem shipyards.
We lived on Madison Avenue.
In 1917, I started school at Lincoln School in Alameda. The school building
was two stories, brown, with shiplap board siding. I do ot remember much
about my kindergarten clas. My first grade teacher was Mrs. Bearclaw.
I always thought that this was a strange name, so that is why I remember
it. California was one of the first states to provide a free grammar school
education--pencils, paper, crayons, books and all supplies were given
to the students as they needed them.
In 1918, we all got the flu in the great influenza epidemic. My grandmother
came down in Auburn to take care of us. We had been wearing masks whenever
we went out, but we got sick anyway.
When I started second grade, on the first day my mother and a neighbor
drove me to the school and let me out of the car at the front door of
the school. By the time they turned the care around and went by again,
I was standing at the corner waiting to be picked up because I didn't
want to go in. In 1919, my family moved to 1712 High Street. By that time
I had two younger brothers, Eugene and David, and a little sister, Thelma.
My mother would often send me out with the two oldest to take the streetcar
to church. There I was a 7-year-old supervising kids who were only six
and three, out in public! The High Street Bridge was within a few blocks
of our house. My brother and the other neighborhood boys would sit on
the bridge and ride up on it when it opened up in the middle for the boats
to go under it. My mother didn't like this idea, so she started looking
for another place to live that was more rural.
So in 1920 we arranged to move to the Elmhurst district in Oakland. This
was the "country" at that time--there were no sidewalks and the streets
were just being paved. There were no streetlights on our street, but down
on the main street, there were gaslights. At dusk, a man would go along
and light them for the night. Then they were extinguished in the morning.
When the movers loaded up our furniture and we left for the new house,
we had to take the streetcar into Oakland and transfer to another car
going south to the Elmhurst area. Then we had to walk six blocks to the
house. We all carriedsome of our smaller belongings. I remember that I
carried a suitcase that kept bouncing off my legs as I walked. When we
arrived at the house, the previous people were still living there, so
we had to put all of our things on the back porch until the house was
vacant for us. We slept that night on the porch and the next day we all
took the train to Auburn from the 16th Street Depot in Oakland to spend
the summer with my grandmother, as we did every summer.
That fall I started third grade at Elmhurst Grammar School in Oakland.
We had recess between classes and played typical playground games--jacks,
jump rope, ball. Girls dressed in cotton gingham dreses or skirts and
blouses, The bathroom at this school was very different. A large, long
bucket was at one end. It filled with water, tipped down and this water
ran along a trough and flushed several toilets that were in a row of cubicles.
Our main transportation besides walking was the trolley that ran from
Oakland to Hayward. Their power was from a big "car barn" at 96th Avenue
and East 14th Street which generated the electricity for the trolleys.
We would go there and look into the windows at the running machinery.
On Saturdays, we would walk ten blocks to the Granada Theater for the
movie matinee. It cost 10 cents for admission and we had another 5 cents
for an ice cream cone. Sometimes the whole family would see a movie in
the evening.
My mother and father decided to divorce around 1923. My mother went to
her mother's in Auburn with her four children to start the divorce. Then
she got a house on a fruit ranch in Newcastle and got work in the orchard
thinning trees and packing fruit. While she was working in the packing
shed, I would put together the wooden boxes. I would slide the side slats
of wood into a frame, nail on the bottom boards, and then turn it and
nail up the rest. I also helped pack the fruit. Newcastle was the headquarters
for the California Fruit Exchange, and all fruit going out of California
was hipped from there.
Our house had no gas or electricity. We had a big coal stove in the kitchen
and coal oil lamps. Water was pulled up 80 feet from a well in the backyard.
We took baths in a galvanized tub in the kitchen because water had to
be heated on the stove for our baths. This was really different from the
way we had been used to living at our house in Oakland.
The school that I went to in Newcastle was called Rock Spring School
and had only one room. All eight grades were together with one teacher.
I was the only student in the sixth grade, and mysister and oldest brother
were in the same room with me. It was a school for the workers on the
ranches, and we walked quite a ways to get there. There were four other
white children besides us, and the rest of the students were Oriental.
The school had outhouses for the bathrooms--one for the boys and one for
the girls. For our physical education class, I wore black pleated bloomers
and a white blouse with a black tie. We pumped water from the school well
into a bucket and then put the bucket into the classroom with a dipper.
Everyone drank from the same dipper!
My brother and I often were sent to walk the 2 or 3 miles into Newcastle
to buy groceries. If we were hungry on the way home, we would eat the
bread. I even had to walk all the way to Auburn (about 7 miles) to go
to the dentist. Sometimes I hitchhiked, and once I was given a ride in
a big touring car by somemen in black suits and black hats. In later years
I thought that they must have been gangsters or bootleggers that were
around because of Prohibition.
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