Trivia from Local History
By Don McDonald, Special to the Town Crier
Colin Peters was a caddy at the Los Altos Golf & Country Club in 1931-1932. Then, the boys were paid $1 to tote a full golf bag for 18 holes - pretty good Depression-era money.
As another benefit, the Club allowed caddies to play free on Mondays. Most of the boys played the entire18 holes with a No. 3 iron, the only club they personally owned.
• A reminder of the Great Depression appeared in a Mountain View Register-Leader article, noting that the annual Los Altos flower show planned for August 1935 had to be canceled because of the “scarcity of funds.”
• Some real estate dealers tried to have San Antonio Road renamed Los Altos Avenue in 1938, but enough citizens objected to defeat the proposal, arguing that historically Los Altos was built on land once part of the Mexican Rancho San Antonio.
• There is a historical plaque at the foot of a large deodar cedar at the parking plaza entrance on the east side of Third Street south of Main Street. It was erected by the History Museum in 1992 at a ceremony celebrating Anita Ieli’s 95th birthday. She had planted that tree in 1927 in her yard. Her bungalow was removed when the property was taken by the city for the parking plaza.
• C.W. Dow began bus service between Los Altos and Mountain View early in 1936. Three round-trips were made each morning and three each afternoon, Monday through Friday.
• In December 1925, James Griffin and John Demartini opened the Los Altos Radio Shop next door to the Los Altos Realty Co. on Main Street. The Mountain View Register-Leader reported that both young men were “proficient in radio work.” As a civic gesture, they provided a radio for dance music after the annual Los Altos Grammar School Christmas Entertainment ended.
• Los Altos area voter registration in 1938 listed 625 Republicans and 428 Democrats. This roughly 3 to 2 ratio still existed at the time of the 1952 election. However, it seems clear that Eisenhower also attracted many Democrats because local voters preferred him over Stevenson 3 to 1.
• Local Peninsula Electric Railroad service stopped in 1933, a victim of the Great Depression. Two years later, the federal Works Progress Administration helped convert the railroad’s unused power station into the Los Altos branch of the county library.
• Jack Shoup announced in early 1926 plans for the first Los Altos “moving picture theatre.” It was to occupy a 25-by-70-foot space being used for a bakery and storage in the Copeland building at First and Main.
However, conversion of this space went slowly, and the G&S Theatre didn’t open until 1927. It showed silent films for about two years.
McDonald is a member of the Los Altos History Museum Association.
