By Sue Roche
 COURTESY OF SUE ROCHE Vince Mamone, shown above, bought a lot adjacent to Filip Andrijasevich for $1,900 in 1942. The neighbors became fast friends and co-hosted barbecues. |
For 50 years the residents of Filip Road - a small, quiet neighborhood off Springer Road in Los Altos - have gathered every July 4 to share meals, stories and reminisce about past events.
The original owners of the land where 16 homes now sit had stories very similar to others who settled in the community during the middle of the last century.
The 5.5 acres that Filip Andrijasevich bought in 1935 for $5,500 was part of a large plum orchard east of Springer, and part of the original Emerson family ranch. The acreage was located in a community referred to in land advertisements in 1908 as “the loveliest place on the Peninsula.” The Andrijasevich family home still sits at the corner of Springer and Filip roads.
Andrijasevich emigrated from Makar, Yugoslavia, after he finished his duty in the Royal Army in the late 1920s. Migrating through Mexico, he ended up in Eureka and tried his luck in the logging industry. After a brief job at a metal works plant in Pittsburg, Andrijasevich ended up in Santa Clara Valley picking fruits and vegetables. When he was hired to work the orchards in Los Altos, he knew he wanted to stay.
Life in Los Altos in the 1920s and 1930s was rural, with the land a patchwork of fruit, walnut and cattle ranches. Orchards and vegetable gardens flourished on the inexpensive well water. In those days, coffee sold for 23 cents a pound and boneless beef for 25 cents a pound at the San Antonio Market.
By the end of the 1930s, five years after Andrijasevich bought land in Los Altos, change came to the area. In 1938, the original Mac’s in downtown Los Altos opened as a pool hall, and drinks were available starting at 6 a.m. Movie serials were shown at the Scout Hall at 319 First St., and the audience sat on folding chairs and paid 10 cents admission.
During the war, Andrijasevich not only worked his plum orchard, but many other plum and apricot orchards in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. The high demand for dried fruit during the war years meant that orchard workers didn’t have to pit the fruit - they left the apricots whole.
After the war ended, Rickey’s Studio Club on El Camino was in full operation and featured a gala New Year’s Eve celebration with all the trimmings. That same year, Andrijasevich had saved enough money to start construction on a house on the property he had bought 10 years earlier. The house was finished in 1946.
Vince and Anna Mamone bought a lot adjacent to Andrijasevich for $1,900 in 1942. The taxes on the property were $51.38 that year. Vince was born in Palermo, Italy, and had immigrated to San Francisco with his parents when he was 7 years old. After he married Anna, they lived in Potrero Hill and would often come down the Peninsula to pick apricots in Los Altos. In 1951, they completed construction and moved into their Los Altos house. The house faced Emerson Avenue (now Covington), which then was a country road with very few houses on it.
The Mamone family house still sits at the corner of Covington and Filip roads.
Andrijasevich and his first wife, along with their son, Ronald, co-hosted barbecues in the plum orchard with the Mamones, and as a result of the friendship, the Mamones purchased additional acreage.
Real estate began to boom in 1949, and houses in the area were selling for $8,000 to $9,000. Construction began on Rancho Shopping Center in 1951, which at the time was the first large-scale shopping center on the Peninsula.
Andrijasevich’s business sense told him that the time was right, and he sold most of his acreage to a real-estate developer who built 11 homes on a cul-de-sac named Filip Road, and three more houses on a neighboring cul-de-sac named Ronald Court. As taxes rose, Vince Mamone decided to sell his acreage to a real-estate developer who built four homes that opened up the Filip Road cul-de-sac into a road from Springer to Covington.
The Filip Road neighborhood of the 1950s had grown along with the town. Gone were the acres of plum orchards and drying and sulfur sheds with boxes of cut apricots shriveling in the sun.
The new ranch-style homes represented a new generation of families with a new vitality and new traditions.
Linda Mackin, who grew up in the Filip neighborhood and now lives in Redwood Shores, remembers decorating bikes for the July 4 kids’ parade. She said she remembers Filip Road as “a wonderful neighborhood, one that you can always come home to.”
Richard Roche, a 19-year resident, said, “Neighbors have developed strong ties and enduring friendships.”
Helen Brown said: “This isn’t the kind of neighborhood where neighbors are banging at your door to have coffee,” she said. “But you can call on anyone for help when you need it.”
Betty Hart, who has lived on Filip Road for 44 years, remembers July 4 as a time when her house and yard were filled with dozens of children.
“All the kids on the street had relatives and friends who wanted to be on Filip Road for the Fourth,” she said. “My house was always open to the kids - that’s what the day was for.”
Although many of the early residents of Filip Road are gone, their families are invited back to help celebrate the Fourth of July and wave the Stars and Stripes one more time.
