Early Days of Piedmont
We moved to Piedmont in 1902, a short while before my father took his first trip to Mexico. Piedmont was then cattle country
with its golden hills upon which was raised hay for the cattle ranches on the other side of our Skyline. The big event of
the summer for us was the round-up and cattle drive whose trails wound over our hills and down into our Hayes Canyon. The
big cattle ranches were over the Mt. Diablo area of which the most famous was the Blackhawk Ranch. There was another big ranch
whose name I cannot recall who joined up and included their cattle with the Blackhawk herd for the cattle run. Both ranches
had mostly Mexican cowboys. For parades and special occasions, like the cattle drive, they had appropriate outfits. The
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Blackhawk cowboys were dressed in white shirts and jackets and pants of black velvet, with silver trimmings topped by a black
Spanish hat with a silver headband, as was traditional in the Mexican period.
The cowboys of the other ranch were clad in magenta silk shirts, brown leather jackets and pants and tan flat Spanish hats.
These Mexicans sang beautifully, pausing now and then as they prodded and pushed the steers to keep them in line with a flow
of curses that sounded musical to me, but delighted my brothers, accompanied by the skillful cracking of whips to keep the
cattle moving.
On top of our hill was an old and twisted eucalyptus tree; leaning out on its wide branches we could watch the over twelve
hundred cattle stream over the Skyline, weave in and out down the steep Thornhill grade, then pour into our narrow Hayes Canyon
with a thunderous roar. They would then file out past the cemetery and fan out into the empty fields on the outskirts of Oakland
to the slaughter houses on the edge of the Bay.
Each summer our boys scouted the ranches to find the day for the cattle drive and we never failed to be there to watch this
truly beautiful spectacle. And it was with sadness and regret that the year following the earthquake the cattle drives stopped
and we lost our greatest thrill of the year. After the earthquake, the sleepy town of Oakland, jolted awake by the earthquake,
rapidly developed into a city. And our golden hills, on which was raised the hay to supply the cattle ranches with feed for
the cattle and horses, succumbed to progress and homes and tracts crept up the hills and topped
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the Skyline.
Our Hayes Canyon was named after Captain Jack Hayes, a Texas Ranger, who bought the large Moraga land grant that enclosed
our canyon. In his autobiography, his nephew, the celebrated John Hayes Hammond, wrote several delightful pages on the holidays
with his brother spent on his uncle's ranch — the glorious and exhilirating hours roaming the hills and exploring the lush
canyons and taking part in the many activities of a great cattle ranch.
Hayes Canyon was a favorite spot with the ornithologists of the University of California. In the early days, mushroom-shaped
scrub oaks dotted the sunny hillside and, opposite, hazelnut thickets, the tall thimbleberry and thick, low-spreading blackberry
bushes clung to the shady hillside providing food and shelter for the migratory birds. And down in the secluded sunlit hollow,
law a babbling creek in which they could drink and bathe after a long flight.
Our two favorite birds were the friendly bluejay, with his swooping flight and noisy chatter, and, his contrary, the shy,
seldom glimpsed russet-backed thrush, the inimitable songster, whose full throated, fan shaped cascade of clear notes held
one spellbound at eventide.
After our return from a year in Europe in 1920, we were shocked to find our ranches were being broken up for building tracts,
roads criss-crossing our golden hills and garish tract offices vaunting the values of this ruined land. And our pretty creeks,
hidden in the canyons, in which we bathed our tired feet after long, hot walks
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in the summer heat, were dried up by the Water Company to supply the water needs of a growing city. The lovely wild plants
and shrubs fed by the creeks died out and left waste spots to haunt us, all this once natural beauty destroyed in the name
of progress.
When I was young, the business section of Oakland ran from Fourteenth Street down to the Bay where the nickel ferry awaited
us to take us to San Francisco. To go to San Francisco took an hour but, if the ferry were stranded on a mudbank at low tide,
the trip covered two hours. Then Havens Key Route replaced the nickel ferry and the Key Route Station just below us at Fortieth
Street and Piedmont Avenue was the end of the line. The dedication of the Key Route was a memorable affair. The dedication
plans included a request for our seventh and eighth grade classes to sing at the dedication. The mayor of Oakland, a couple
of prominent businessmen, and the son of Frank C. Havens, who represented him, gave the proper official speeches on acquisition
of the Key Route as a fabulous addition and a testimony to the amazing growth of Oakland. The applause for our singing had
hardly died down than the first train rumbled into the station. With lusty cheers we pelted it with our now wilted flowers,
brought for the occasion. Then the mayor, with a grand gesture, ushered us into the train for our promised reward, the first
train trip to the ferry slip, aboard the boat and across the bay to San Francisco and back. You can imagine what a great event
this was for us.
Before the Key Route was running, Frank C. Havens had given father a pass to walk out on the pier any time convenient to him.
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I am quite sure it is seven miles from the beginning of the pier to the ferry slip. He had been out several times, then he
took me with him — a great adventure. We walked on a couple of twelve inch boards between the tracks with the water rippling
against the piles under our feet. When the tracks were finished, George Sterling, his nephew, had permission to use an old
hand-car to take his friends out to the ferry slip for the picnics for which he and Carrie were famous.
Frank C. Havens, who was a New Yorker bought a large acreage taking in the hills from Claremont to Joaquin Miller Park. To
him this cattle country was barren land and as such had no appeal to him. So to beautify it he planted two million trees —
Monterey pines, several varieties of eucalyptus and cypress. We Whitakers used to hop rides on the large wagons carrying the
young trees for planting and watched the woodsmen skillfully settle them in the ground. Moreover, he rode the trails of his
domain scattering seeds for a ground cover. They sprouted and increased until, a few years later, a dark shadow was cast over
much of our golden hills. Twenty years later a tax appraiser told me bluntly, "He planted them as `land improvement' to lower
his taxes," so the legend of his love of beauty lost its glamour.
We watched this area grow. From this Scenic Avenue window, which covers the same space as the old Whitaker house. There was
a little patch of lights in Oakland, a little patch of lights in Berkeley, and a little patch of lights in Alameda. That was
all.
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Across the Bay, San Francisco was a tiny little square of lights. Look at it now, it's colossal — three bridges and a circle
of cities around the Bay.
Baum
Did you know the Havens family?
Martinez
Yes, we knew Frank and Lila Havens and their son Wickam. It was to their son that we owe the land on which this studio is
built — an exchange of a lot for a picture.
My mother died in September, 1905, leaving a gap in our lives that would be hard to fill. Two years later my father married
Alyse Hunt. We children had no objection to our father marrying again. However, the day that Alyse stepped into the house
she made it plain to all of us that she had no interest in us, would have no part in our lives, and, moreover, wished to have
as little to do with us as possible. So far as we were concerned, we reciprocated cordially and lived accordingly, a very
difficult situation for my father. So, family life in this discordant and indifferent atmosphere disintegrated rapidly. I
soon found I was isolated on the top of the hill with the youngsters and, staying another six months, I put the family in
training to get along without me and married Marty.
By the end of the year Alyse showed signs of becoming a mental case, then we understood her attempts to alienate father from
his children, a rugged experience for all of us including our poor father who had to combat and survive her insane jealousy
and unjustified suspicions.
Baum
There were two years when there was no mother.
Martinez
Yes, two years. I ran the family then.