THE HANDS CHAPTER 2 LOWELL HAND HAND FAMILY MANUSCRIPTS

REMINISCING
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CHAPTER 2

GRANDPA AHLSTROM and MOTHER MEETS FATHER

My mother (Bertha) got a job at the Chatsworth Post Office having graduated from Compton High School in 1904. Her only previous work experience had been picking berries on the farm at Florence. To keep nine children going, everyone in the family had to contribute. Bertha was the baby sitter for Charles from the day he was born and grandpa put Charles in her arms saying, "You take care of him." She also baked the bread but Grace did most of the cooking. Their mother did lots of sewing, using a treadle operated While sewing machine, which my mother later inherited. There was a garden to tend and fruit trees and much canning to do. They raised lots of berries and walnuts. Grandpa had a large hand cranked colander to tumble the walnuts so the hulls would come off. One day a man came to but walnuts but tried to get them for less by saying they were too dark colored. Grandfather gave me some of the nuts and I gobbled them up. His comment was, "He sure likes them."

Although grandpa was a rather stern man he and I hit it off OK. One day he took me to San Pedro on the Pacific Electric car. We just walked two blocks to the Watts car line and caught a car marked San Pedro. There were four tracks, two each way. The outside tracks were for local passengers and stopped frequently. The express cars ran from Los Angeles to Long Beach or to Wilmington and San Pedro. There was also the Santa Monica and Redondo Beach line, a Hollywood line, Pasadena line, Glendale/Burbank line and a Van Nuys line that wound up in San Fernando. "Red cars' ran all the way to Colton, Redlands and San Bernardino. In the down town area, the Los Angeles "Yellow cars" carried local traffic. The automobile which got you there faster, caused the Pacific Electric to cease operation and then the smog problems followed (about 1950).

Anyway, at San Pedro we had lunch and crossed the ship channel on a small passenger ferry to Terminal Island. Then we walked south to the end which was then a rocky hill occupied by sea birds (1920). Grandpa said, "This is where I got off the ship when I came from Sweden." An Emigrant Staten is still there. However, he apparently shipped out again for San Francisco before finally settling in Los Angeles. He left Sweden at the age of 16 seeking something more to do than making beer barrels. He was a good carpenter and at one time built interiors for the yellow cars. At that time the Ahlstroms lived in a small house with white picket fences at 21st and Main St. in Los Angeles. I wonder what he paid for the farm land at Florence where he built his own farm house?

About 1920, grandpa subdivided the farm into 52 lots and extended 71st Street from Holmes to Wilson Ave. At that time 71st was called San Rafel and he built a new house and smaller barn at 1919 San Rafel St. The original house was torn down and business lots fronting on Florence Ave. were sold off. Grandpa retired after many years of hard work. His first automobile was a 1914 Reo which he never learned to drive too well. It cracked the differential case and was laid up in the new barn. So he bought grandma a new Studebaker touring car with a "California To." The side curtains slid up into the top when not in use, a real improvement. Grandma learned to drive and went to it like a duck to water. she had a great time visiting her brothers and sisters and all her children. I went with her if we happened to be "down home."

The reason I was born in the old farm house is that mom had gone "down home" from McKittrick, California, an oil boom town 35 miles west of Bakersfield. She had been coerced to go to McKittrick by Mr. Tetslaf the post master at Chatsworth who had moved to McKittrick to run a larger post office. His wife provided room and board for several "girls" who worked in the post office, which afforded some protection for decent women in a boom town with loose morals. So it was that Bertha Ahlstrom met Ross Hand a decent young fellow with auburn hair who worked at the General Store owned by Mack Brown. Ross came to McKittrick from Santa Monica where he first worked at a grocery store as the "delivery boy." He delivered groceries with a horse and wagon. In that day women had no transportation so called in their orders and the store delivered what they wanted. Dad knew quite a lot about horses, having come to California with his family from a farm near Topeka, Kansas about 1902. He owned a good riding horse while at McKittrick, which he could only afford because he bought and sold horses and gained a little on each of his horse trading adventures. He made only $90.00 per month at Brown's but with a check coming from the post office too, things looked right for a more permanent arrangement. Mom and dad were married Jan. 26, 1911. The wedding was also "down home." I came along 2 years later also "down home."

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