Notes from a Conversation with Lena Nunes Ouse and Pat Snoke

August 20, 1989

I was born in the house where I now live. I sleep in the same room where the six children were born. I was the second from the oldest, and was born in 1900. My brother, Frank, was born in 1897. My two brothers were the beginning of the family, and the end (Manuel was the youngest).

My father's name was John Noons, misspelled when he came to this country. My brother, Frank had it changed had back to Nunes. John V, Nunes was my father and my mother was Frances Oliveira Souza. My mother came to Crows Landing with friends at the age of 14 without her family. This was in the 1890's, and she worked for Helen Crow Bell. My mother came from a large family, and had come to California to seek her fortune. Both my parents came from the island of St. George in the Azores. We were probably the first Portuguese family in Gustine.

My father bought this ranch before he was married, probably about 1892. I bought the ranch from my mother in 1943. My mother was sick and I took care of her. My father had always wanted me to build a home on the ranch. Instead I just moved into my mother's house.

 I have lived in other places, but most of my life has been here on this ranch. I got married in 1927, and we lived in Ceres for a year and delivered milk on a milk route. Other than that, we have always lived in the Gustine/Newman area. We lived on M.M. Silva's ranch where my husband was a milker, then for 10 years on West Avenue before we moved back to Hunt Road.

 I started school at the age of six in Canal School. There was only one teacher and just this one big room. The teacher was Mrs. Waldon and she came to school in her horse and buggy. I graduated from Canal School but it took me nine years. I had gotten whooping cough and that was a whole year I had to be out of school. I only went one month. We all had whooping cough and that was bad.  There were no medications, and we just coughed and coughed.

 I was not in the first class at Gustine High School..maybe the second or third. The school had just been built. I took two years of Spanish. A lot of the Portuguese kids did that.

 I did not graduate from high school. I had one more year, but got engaged and I thought I didn't need any more school. I was so sorry I didn't. I had wanted to be a teacher. My friends Sally Hansen and the Bambauer girls...everyone was going to college. My dad said, “Oh, no.” Portuguese parents didn't let their girls go to college, They had to get married and settle down.

 I would have graduated in 1919 (remember I had been out of school a whole year because of whooping cough). I was in high school during World War I. We had to learn to knit. We had to knit sweaters and socks. I didn't know how to knit very well. I knit a sweater and the back of it was longer than the front...I couldn't join it. It was kind of an army grey, khaki, a real funny color to work with. When the men would come back from the army, we would have a dance. I led the march with Manuel Silva. He was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington.

 I remember the 1906 San Francisco earthquake quite well. I was standing at the gate and the sky was all smoky around the hills. My first cousin, her father was my father's brother, lived in San Francisco. They had to run out of their house and the fires took over. They left San Francisco and came here and I remember my uncle talking about it. There was another earthquake I remember and we all had to hang onto something. The water sloshed out of the water tank because it wasn't covered at that time.

 In the early days it was hard work. There were four girls and we used to milk to help my dad. My brother didn't care about milking. He'd come into the house and he liked to make cakes. He liked to cook and help my mother. He'd say, “I'll make a cake if you milk my cows.” Each one of us had three cows to milk, and we'd milk them by hand, sitting on a little box...a box the crackers came in, a wood box. The macaroni came in a long wood box. We had 12, 13, 14 cows...get a little bigger all the time. My mother helped, too. But then she had to take care of the kids, all six of us.

 I was 7 years old when Gustine got started. We shopped at M.M. Silva's store, and then next door we would go to Jimmy Holst's ice cream shop. We used to have banana splits. Gussie Petersen was the librarian in the old Park Restaurant. Gussie lived in the back of the library, and M. M. Silva lived in the back of his store. There was a bank of Italy in Gustine, and Chappell and Reutter was a store that carried everything. We ordered our orange tree from them and it still bares. They used to send to a nursery in Fresno for their plants, so my mother wanted orange and lemon trees.

I must have been about 14 when I finally knew how to drive the horse. I remember going with old Prince, the horse, and the spring board wagon. There was an extra seat so when we would go to church or somewhere, my dad would put that seat in. Otherwise it would be like a bed back there for your groceries. We would buy the sugar by the sack, big burlap sack with another sack inside. Everything was in boxes or sacks. We went to town about every two weeks. My dad went most of the time until I could drive and then I got the job.

I wrote poetry and stories about old Prince and Billy, the first horses we had. (I have a lot of poetry.) We only had one horse for the surry. The neighbor had two horses and they looked good, but we'd just go with our one horse.

We would go to church, but the priest would go out to the ranches and teach catechism because the farmers were so busy with their own lives too. He'd go to the individual houses where there were kids.

The streets had no pavement, even by the time we had the Model T. They were rough dirt, dusty and in the winter we had to be careful not to get stuck. I remember one time going to my uncle's I got stuck. We had to watch out for the big ruts. I never got stuck in Gustine, but we used to get stuck on the farm roads. You had to be careful.

I remember Prohibition, “not that we were in it”! The liquor would be locked in cellars. There would be a lookout. If someone came they didn't know, they'd warn the rest of the household. So everything could get locked away and out of there. They were scared. They knew who the cops were. They used to slip them a little money. The doors to the saloons opened out onto the street, so you'd have to walk around them. Money talked in those days, even though there wasn't much of it. It was tough.

We used to go to house dances when the wines were ready. We'd dance in the parlors, and mostly Portuguese people came to the dances. There was a Judge Dalton Hales who would have a lot to drink. He'd go out to the ranches, Silva's ranch where I lived, and he was drunk. He'd climb through the window. This I remember,.one time we were at a dance and he was mad at somebody who didn't want to dance with him. They knew he was tipsy like that and they put him outside. He wanted to come in, so he opened the window and they said, "Here he comes". Everybody was so scared.

 We used to go to the Hazel Snyder Butts' ranch to go to dances in the barn. My brother, Frank, liked Helen Snyder. They had a big barn there...real nice. Frank would pick me up and we'd go out there and have so much fun.

 Dr. Stratton was in Gustine, then Dr. Stagner. He left in 1925 and Dr. Gus came to replace him. We were vaccinated at Canal School. We all lined up with our families and got the shots.

 I acted in the Opera House. Some outsider wanted to get some girls from the high school to be in a play. It was called “The Mother-in-Law”. It was a crazy play, but it was funny. They had costumes for us and we all dressed up. There was a curtain and when they raised the curtain we were all standing there, then we would have to act out. There wasn't much talking but more acting because there was a narrator reading it out

There weren't too many of us going to high school, but they would come and pick the high school girls they wanted. The Opera House was a large building and the floor was flat, but there was a stage. I remember so well being up there.

 I didn't go too much to the shows at the Opera House, but I used to go to the tent shows...Jennings Tent Shows. They were good. They set up where Wilbur Gomes' building is today. I didn't go to the tent shows to act. They had an open tent and there was a lot of Hawaiian music. They also had quite a few Chautauquas.

 There was a pavilion where dances were held. The windows opened up and we were afraid to touch them because they might come back and hit us. People used to stand outside and look in. They were just board windows with no glass and sticks were used to hold them up. They did that in the summer time when they had the dances, and in the winter they would close them. The pavilion was big and nice with those barn windows. Those were the days..a lot of fun.

I used to play basketball in high school. The uniform was bloomers. Red serge and we had to make our own. Mrs. Bradley was at the post office. She was a snappy one. I was afraid to have a mail order made by her. We used to order our clothes from the catalog and if something wasn't just right. if I didn't make the 8 just right she was snappy and didn't care who was there.

I'm here all alone now. I work crosswords and read and crochet.