Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • Page 11

hO 0 EDDD(D)IRDAIL vol cxxxm- OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, SUNDAY, JULY 14, 1940 NO. 14 Communist -sponsored publication, if letterheads of that publication are authentic. Irvine's name is included in a printed sponsors' list supporting a drive for funds made by the publication. It must be said that Irvine has denied giving authorization for use of his name on the printed letterheads and has told friends that he only helped out the Communist cause by giving a small donation of cash. The inclusion of his name on the sponsor list was a gatuitous gesture which was not expected, so the story goes.

Irvine has been the spearhead of a recent move to unite major factions of the Democratic party in Alameda County and has the assistance of Heber J. Brown, Ray Colliver and others. He carries the backing of Labor's Non-Partisan League in his present Assembly campaign as he did last year when he was an unsuccessful candidate for director of the East Bay Municipal Utility District, and two years ago when he was defeated at the primary election as a candidate for the State Senate. The league recently renewed its "complete and unqualified of the policies and activities" of Lewis while at the same time it announced opposition to appropriations for defense. settled down in an attempt to occupy the same place at the same time with our car.

Then the got busy putting out the fire with the help of the porter. Opera Company Wrecked The road was narrow at Cape Horn and the tracks ran so close to the precipice that we could look out of the window straight down to where the Truckee River wound along the valley like a silver ribbon. We dared not venture out as, being strangers in the land, it seemed we should meet disaster if we did. Porters and brakemen came running through asking for linen and doctors. Women gave petticoats out of their valises and we learned that the engineer had jumped and been mercifully killed while the fireman had stayed at his post and been frightfully scalded and was suffering.

The Alice Oats Opera Company was on that train and when we had been eased out of the car on the rocky side, away from the precipice, we all edged to a siding and this company improvised a show. There was singing and story telling, and Alice Oats sang "The Last Rose of Summer" for us. Several hours later a rescue locomotive came from Sacramento and on ittwas my father, whom we were coming to join. He had chartered the engine and in all the excitement had not forgotten to buy a huge Bartlett pear which he dug out of his overcoat pocket when the embraces were over. Eventually the mess was cleaned up and we reached that Oakland Mole of which I started to tell you.

It was at the end of a long trestle and we went aboard a ferry boat that was a joy. After the hot, close, odiferous air of the car the Bay breeze was heavenly. The sidewheels churned and away we went. Goat Island intrigued this, then, eight- "His real name was not Joe. It was Johnny Williams and his friends called him It was a nickname to which he answered.

His pockmarked face was not caused by small-pox but by a blast in a mine when he was a young man. (Someone else told us it was caused by vitriol thrown in his face). I don't think anyone living today knew 'Birdie' Williams as well as I did. He lived in our house in Sacramento with his birds and trained white mice. That was during the early 1880's.

Does anyone remember the time, years ago, when on a Sunday, he walked the tightwire from the Cliff House to Seal Rock? He used a pole and walked out all right, but was afraid to come back. He stood there trying to get up nerve for the return journey. Then rain fell and he got soaking wet. Add this to the picture! He wore tights which he had dyed himself and the dye started to run all over his body. A lifeboat had to be brought out to rescue him from the rocks.

'Birdie' was not a bit disturbed about his return. He answered: 'The people seen me walk out or how else did I get Papers and posters, he reminded, advertised him tcwalk on a rope to the rock and said nothing about his walking back. He had something there! When I asked why the thrilling lifeboat rescue had not been advertised, he asked: 'Well, didn't they get two thrills instead of one? The bloomin' bloaters got plenty for their harf Later I met 'Birdie's' nephew in New York. He had a flock of trained cockatoos and was playing what was still left of vaudeville. 'Birdie' was surevsome card.

And maybe that is where we shall leave him, 'some card' who entertained and insulted his audiences a rugged individualist whose best friends were birds and mice." Sidelight On 'Our Mary' In his book of reminiscences "My Ten Years in the Studios," George Arliss mentions his friendship for the lale Mary Anderson who lived near his English country home, close to Crippy Norton. Miss Anderson, or Madame de Navarro, resided in a hamlet called Broadway "which long has been known as one of the prettiest of English villages." She and Arliss were old friends and he' was one of his fling at Hollywood. He had been down, there for eight years without making anyap-preciable dent in the movie business until ht was cast in the role of an exasperated judge in a romantic comedy called "My Favorite Wife" with Gary Grant and Irene Dunne. His performance won him all manner of encomium, but death had other plans and before Bates could cash in on his new fame he had taken his final curtain call. A Rededication Contra Costa historians are pleased to record the recent dedication of a new marker for the site of the old Union Academy, between Danville and Alamo.

It was a simple ceremony that was held by the roadside. A monument cf rustic wood, with hand-carved lettering, now stands a considerable improvement over the weatherbeaten signboard formerly designating the spot where the early Contra Costa school once stood. The wording of the new monument is simple, merely pointing out that it is the site of the Union Academy, 1859, and that the trustees were Robert 'Love, Silas Stone and John M. Jones. The new sign was put there through the efforts of the Danville Improvement which sponsored the dedication.

Mrs. lone Booth, secretary Of the Contra Costa Development and Forrest Routt, superintendent of Martinez Junior and High Schools, were speakers. In the 1860's, Routf pointed out when the West was still rough and ready, such subjects as Latin and Greek, piano music and similar arts were being offered at the Union Academy, with varying prices per month, depending on what the student wanted his stay there to include. While the school no doubt could handls more students in its accommodations for boarding students residing there were limited to facilities for "12 students six males and six females." Appropriately present at the dedication, which incidentally was directed by Mrs. S.

H. Johnson, were five grandchildren residing in San Ramon Valley, descendants of the Academy boardpf trustees. They included Mr3. James Root chairman of he committee which secured the new marker; Mrs. Flora Jones, Mrs; Anita Wing Mrs.

Jeajmette Bunco and Chester Love, Reading autobi 9 OVERNOR CULBERT L. OLSON lambasted the tar out of the "mercenary and reactionary corporate interests" one day last week, and a few hours later was lolling at his ease in a private car placed at his disposal by the president of the Western Pacific Railroad for the trip back to the Democratic National Convention. The Governor's speech, in which he at tacked what he called the dictatorship of capital in the American system of government, was made at Treasure Island before a large group of the California delegates to the convention. Prior to the speech, acting as chairman of the delegation, Olson had named himself as the California representative on the party's platform and resolutions committee, and also named himsejf chairman of the California committee to notify the Presidential nominee in the absence of J. Stitt Wilson.

Selection of a Democratic National committeeman for California was delayed until the delegates reach Chicago, but there was a well-defined movement to hand this plum also to the Governor. In short, Olson's control over the California delegation to the National Convention just about reached the absolute before the train ever left the Oakland yards. Nor was this the end of the triumphal ride to glory according to deep-laid plans which will blossom forth this week if the Governor's luck holds. Word has been carefully spread about that Olson is available timber for the Vice-Presidential nomination. If the startling news is accepted in the proper places by the proper people, the groundwork has been laid for one of those "spontaneous" movements which will rush him to the front.

If the news doesn't take, the movement will naturally be permitted to die. The Governor was careful to leave the gate open to the nomination when he was quizzed about it at Salt Lake City en route to the convention. "That is something some of these Western people have been talking about," he told reporters. "Whether or not I become a candidate would depend a lot on the logic of the thing when and if it comes up." Speaking of logic reminds me that Richard Olson, son and former secretary to the Governor, was also a passenger in the private car en route to the convention and was expected to make some important connections with regard to his appointment to a top-ranking Federal position. If father can make the Vice-Presidential nomination, son should be able to snare a judgeship.

The 'Old Spirit' That indefinable essence which is called the Old Spirit of San Francisco was not so localized as to warrant the title. When it existed it was, in fact, the Spirit of California. It evinced itself more intepsively in those places where the pioneer ways and psychology survived with a vitality dependent on the living pioneers and the unchanged environments, but in the metropolis that Old Spirit gained force by numbers arid impressed larger numbers. Also the anomally of small-town manners and charming primitiveness gained prominence from its very oddity and contrast to the surroundings and the expectations. Call it general friendliness and freedom from conventions and you might have found an even more immediate welcome in Sonora, or Placerville, or Auburn, or a dozen small towns in the Mother Lode district.

Call it generosity and trustfulness and you might have found causes to doubt its reality iri the big city by the Golden Gate, for politics were pretty bad and political bosses rotten. The idealism that conceived Blackie and a warmly human Barbary Coast does not bring conviction to those who lived contemporaneously with the Bosses of Third Street. Withal and notwithstanding, San Francisco was picturesque and lovable. Its hills and cable cars, its cobblestone streets where they were not planked, and the wooden sidewalks with overhanging sheds, like sideless snowrsheds, its serrated skyline, buildings of one wry, two story and five story giving endless variety, and the gorgeously dressed women and carelessly integumented men, set the place as one apart. Millionaires stood shoulder to shoulder at ornate bars to drink with poor men, and no sense of superiority or inferiority was felt on either side or permitted to spoil friendships that were born when all were potentially millionaires and all were presently poor.

Old-Time Pullmans Coming from the East, the traveler detrained" at the Oakland Mole. He had entered the West at Omaha and from there had changed several times from the Union Pacific to the Central Pacific Railroad and from the Central to the Southern Pacific. The cars were of wood and the Pullmans inconvenient but ornate. Such carved wood panels, such inlays and perflings and plate glass mirrors would cost a fortune now. But they were stuffy and stank of the coal-oil lamps.

In the right-hand corner either way if you faced the doors was a stove the baked clay sort that looked like earthen balls about the size of barrels with flaring Iron tops and bases. Against the side wall just back of this stove was a bin for wood and on the other angle beside the door another bin for coal. In the Winter the fuel was piled on generously and the roaring fire vied with the draught but the heat won and the air was more comfortable to the body and worse for the lungs. In case of collisions, and they did occur, the stove was invariably overturned and, the car promptly caught fire. I recall, when as a boy coming to Calif ornia, we were bumped by a freight car which had broken its couplings and bit us Just at the, then, curve on Cape Horn.

The thing seemed devoid of violence but it was potent The Pullman in which we were, tilted up at one end, gently and with deliberation The stove immediately toppled over on its side and the coals were spread over the floor. Then there was a crunching and screeching as the car settled down. The end that had been raised Just, splintered and seemed to mingle its frayed end with the splinters and brake-wheel of the car ahead, which having also been tilted upward )' 'year-old boy. In another fifteen minutes we were entering a V-shaped mole and saw before us a heterogenious, ramshackle building of weatherbeaten timbers and boards atop of which was a funny square tower with a clock. How dear to me that ramshackle building and that tower with its clock became crowd surged through not overclean passage ways to the street and here we were besieged by yelling, crowding, violent men who shouted the names of hotels, transfer companies, and newspapers in our ears and tried with force to grab our luggage.

It was a veritable fight to escape them but we did and took a cab to the Baldwin Hotel. Rohnerville Landmarks Burn Last week a fire took away a part of old Rohnerville, erasing landmarks and causing sorrow to those who knew the city when it was young. Among such is my friend W.N.S. of Eureka, who recalls that the place, in the '80s and '90s, boasted about the best trade of any small city in the Northern part of the State. It was the center of trade, says W.N.S., for the Trinity mining district, and every day saw pack trains and six- or eight-horse mountain teams drawing one or two large freighters that supplied the mountaineers with their provisions as well as bringing their wool and other products to market.

There was no end of fine trading places in the town. Rohnerville was a thriving center when "Fortuna" was unthought of. The community now bearing the Fortuna name was a small hamlet carrying the name of Springville, and Loleta was not Loleta at all. It was Swau-gers. When Rohnerville was going its best the horsemen of the lower part of Humboldt and the Trinity breeders built the fine mile track that lured the racing fans over a period of years.

The county fairs were held there, and hundreds yes, thousands-T-of people gathered each year to see the fine standard-bred horses of that era vie for supremacy. There is nothing left of the track excepting a portion of the fence that once enclosed it and if you know just where to look you can see where the track was once located. In the years that Rohrnervilje was at the height of its importance there was a newspaper published there. Overland horse stages stopped at the town on their way from Eureka to the end of the railroad in Sonoma County. The arrival of the stages, was a great event, just as the pony express and cross-country stages meant so much before the transcontinental railroads were built 'Great Tightrope Fete' Surely "Joe the Bird wherever he may be today, would be surprised to learn how many person remember his little show, scarred face, and sometimes impertinent manners.

The Knave is receiving dozens of letters, some from" people now far removed "from California who remember Joe. and consider him in the light of an Institution. At the risk of being accused of 'overdoing a subject we include the latest for it comes from one who was an intimate of the bird man and offers interesting sidelights. Frank Raymond cf Oakland tcib me: ography of John H. Braly (pronounced Braw-.

ley), one of the principals of the Academy, Mrs. Jones repeated his descriptions of the valley on his arrival there with a new bride. Braly took over principalship of the Academy shortly after his wedding at Edenvale. Citing how his wife helped him in his job, Braly wrote that "she ate not'the bread of idleness." Huge locust trees still standing near the marker were set out for the Academy by Nathaniel Jones, first sheriff of Contra Costa County and a brother of Trus-. tee Jones.

They were brought, from his ranch near, Lafayette, Locust Grove, California's First Theater I wonder how many who go down Monterey way stop in at the old theater, which was the first in California, take! look at the wooden "curtain" which is there and wonder it was not useful in protecting actors against missiles hurled by the audience, Ons man who recently took a long look and mad notes on, the same Is Dallas Wood of Palo Alto and I am passing along soroeof his impressions: "When Sailor jack Swan, up from JNIazatlan cn the Soledad, jumped ship at Monterey in IS 13 and went into the baking business, he had to idea of becoming an historical character. It; saved his money, bought land at Scott and Pacific Streets, and there built his boarding houm and saloon for saihjrs. Soldiers stationed at th presidio wanted entertainment, and decided produce a play. They borrowed the main rocn of Swan's establishment, and, with the aid tallow candles and whale oil drips for fA-f lights, produced 'Putnam of the Lion, Son 1776 Seats in the crude establishment for tl. amateur play sold for as high as $5.

Other pi were soon staged, and traveling companies vl mately stopped at Monterey to make use Swan's Since the State took over building In 1909 as an' historic landmark, thespians of Monterey have organized selves as of the Gold Ooast, for ducing dramatic entertainment on the the far end of the old saloon. One of the tions laid down by the State is that only reminiscent of the Jack Swan days given there. Among those presented 1 Community troupers are The Streets 'East Lynne, Ten Nights in a I Tatters, the Pet of Squatters' Gu' Ibsen's 'Doll's The i maintained in much the style tl salooning days with bar and ances. Although boxes and gallery seats for the theater r' days, tenches have her great admirers'. The passage written before her death reads: "When I look at 'Mamie' now, she is so little changed that I cannot be-' lieve it is fifty odd years since 1 first saw her at the Lyceum Theater when I used to sit in front night after night because she was the greatest actress and the most magnificent creature I had ever seen.

Just how great an actress she was I cannot say; but 1 do know that she took London by storm and was able to hold her own with all the English actresses then playing. The fact that she left the stage when she was 30 and still is so vividly remembered by all old theatergqers seems to me to prove that she was an actress of great charm and ability. She and Dame Madge Kendal were close friends, and although Mamfe is very unlike Madge, she has certain characteristics common to both. They both loved the stage and loved to talk about Mary Anderson loves the stage no less, tut there is a part of her that is devoted to music; she has met all the great musical artistes of her day, and I have sometimes suspected that she would rather have been a great operatic star than a great actress. Madge Kendal passed away in 1935, but Mary Anderson still enjoys every moment of her life in Broadway." Since those lines were written, Mary Anderson has joined Madge Kendal.

No Holiday for Death Death certainly isn't taking a holiday so far as Hollywood is concerned and scarcely a week elapses without news of some prime favorite, chiefly, in the comedy line, keeping his rendezvous with Mr. Brink. Now it' is Ben Turpin' and Granville Bates, both of whom came out of old comedy school fostered by the Essa-nay Studios and Mack Sennett Turpiri, of course, had had his day. was 71 'and had traded for many years on his crossed eyes, ac quired while playing the grotesque role of Happy Hooligan in his days of his life was spent resisting the attentions of well-meaning oculists who did not appreciate the fact that they were his bread and butter. Neither" did Mack Sennett; in the beginning.

There is a legend that Sennett when he discovered the type of comedian his Keystone Kop chief, the late Ford" Sterling, iired went hysterical, I Later. Turpin was getting a policy for $100,000 from Lloyds to insure his eyes remaining crossed. He was a New Orleans boy who joined SarasT. Jacks burlesque company as a south. He toured vaudeville for, 11 years and then went to Hollywood.

Granville Bates, who started as an Essanay screen actor, about on the str-i fr a groat irrr.y yc--3 I I 1 1) Unit Rule The unit rule, that device which permits the boss of a group of delegates to deliver the entire bloc of votes regardless of minority differences of opinion, will come in handy to stifle a few possible sour notes yi California's Olson-managed maneuvers. One of the last-minute surprises was the appointment of Mrs. Elizabeth Graham of Oakland as an alternate delegate to replace J. Stitt Wilson, who could not make the trip because of illness. The delegation was elected on the basis of being pledged to a third term for Roosevelt.

But Mrs. Graham is a stanch supporter and worker for United States Senator Sheridan Downey, and Downey has been openly hostile not only to a third term but also the the President on sf yeraF occasions. To make the situation a little more intriguing, Mrs. Graham appointed as her alternate Heber J. Brown, Oakland attorney, who Has been active in the defense of S.R.A.

employees accused of Communist sympathies during the recent Legislative investigation here. Olson has talked about purging the S.R.A. of those influences. How 'Mrs. Graham will meet the Downey issue and at the same time ride along with Governor Olson should be one of the interesting sidelights of the convention.

There is another pair which can hardly be expected to be harmonious with the Olson-led third-termers. Patrick William McDonough of Oakland and Mrs. Frank P. Deering of San Francisco were top-ranking members of the ticket pledged to Garner for President They are on the California delega- tfon now only because there were two vacancies in the Roosevelt ticket which had to be filled. But the unit rule will cover upthese divergent opinions under the strong control of the Olson domination.

Light and Shadows Something new in legislative campaigning in Alameda County are the neon-lighted signs being used by Gordon F. Irvine, Democratic candidate for the Assembly from the Fourteenth District Those I have seen are mostly red, and they have attracted enough attention to cause number of inquiries about the candidate they advertise. Irvine, as a member of the Railroad Brotherhoods, has been active in-Labor's Non-' Partisan League, which is one of the organiza-, Hons headed by John L. Lewis of CIO, fame. He has also displayed inore than a passing 'y Interest in the fortunes of People's.