The Argus from Fremont, California • Page 69

delivery wagon. When he came to Pleasanton and bought some milk cows, he hauled our creamery milk to the railroad station by horse and wagon. That was 1931." "I didn't know that," laughs Elsie, who was born in Switzerland. She first met Fred at a 1941 Swiss Park dance in Ripon, where her family immigrated to a dairy community. When she moved to Livermore to a duplex, Fred was her milk deliveryman.

The Holdener family dairy grew to a milk processing plant to service home delivery routes in Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin and Sunol. In 1951, Fred, Sr. sold the routes and continued to produce milk on his own and rented land on the old Livermore-Pleasanton Highway. In five years, he could see changes and controls in the milk production so the family opened the Holdener Drive-In Dairy in back of the old family home on Stanley Boulevard. Every few days, regular town and country customers drove in for milk pasteurized and homogenized on the farm whole milk, low-fat, nonfat, chocolate, whipping cream and buttermilk.

Fresh eggs were available from nearby ranches. It was 1965 before a son, Carl, moved the herd, mostly Holsteins, to a 200-acre ranch near Tracy and began trucking milk in insulated tankers to the processing plant. About a year ago, with hay selling for $100 a ton, Carl decided it was more profitable to sell the entire herd and order milk from farther down the valley. At 85, Fred, Sr. is retired but still lives in the old family farmhouse in front of the drive-in.

His son Fred and wife Elsie try to hang onto five acres of the old pasture to preserve a dairy atmosphere and the feeling of open spaces. But next door where cows once grazed is the Livermore Memorial Hospital and Medical Center with acres of asphalt parking lots. Elsie is very blonde, blue-eyed and rosy-cheeked like a billboard milk drinker. She speaks for both she and Fred when asked if they intend to stay in the milk business. "Yes, it's our life.

We thank God we have our health and can work." Her fiery intent was announced this summer to the Livermore Council when she went up-to-bat to move the drive-in's free standing sign to a right angle to the highway so the traffic could see it. The council's in- terpretation'of a city beautification plan was that the sign stay parallel to Stanley. In two days Elsie collected 900 customer signatures for her position. But for the next generation of blond and blue-eyed Holdeners are other and more modern lifestyles. The There was a day when cows roamed where the Hub stands, and milk was delivered by Bauhofer horse and Holdener truck (below) four, however, worked in the drive-in through high school as have ten regular parttime students for the last 17 years.

Fred Robert, a graduate of Davis as a mechanical engineer now works at the Livermore Lab. Janet and Karen, an elementary teacher and a bank teller, were married in a double wedding this summer. The reception for 800 people required two Swiss orchestras. Linda just graduated from Granada High. THE BAUHOFERS Three generations of the Bauhofer family operate the Cloverdale Creamery, a historical landmark on Fremont Boulevard since 1938 when it was built in the middle of a cherry and apricot orchard.

Bill Bauhofer, Sr. proudly shows the pictorial history of the business he, his brother Joe and son Bill, Jr. manage and own. Frieda and Marlene Bauhofer, respective wives of Bill, Sr. and Bill, Jr.

manage the old-fashioned ice cream fountain. Bookkeeping is done by Lil Wipfli, a sister, and Elly Roche, a cousin. Maybe a dozen more family members have had a hand in running the place at one time or another. "Put them all through school," says Bill, "and there have been Bauhofers in the Fremont schools for the last 50 years. "It all began with my father, a young immigrant from the Uri district of Switzerland in 1906." Bill, Sr.

shows an old-time photo of his father with a horse and milk delivery wagon. "Golden Eagle Swiss Dairy" printed, on the side was the business in Alameda that grew to eight horses and four milk routes, finally sold to Bordens. In 1921 the family bought in with the Innes Dairy on the 130-acre Chadbourne Ranch that later became the Williams Ranch in Fremont. This picture on the Bauhofers' office walls shows the family, a herd of black and white Holstein cows and the old carriage house that folks now recognize as a landmark at the Fremont Hub. "Used to be our bunkhouse," says Bill, "which makes us celebrities like Helen Wills who learned to play tennis on that ranch." That first year the Bauhofers started Washington Township's first pasteurizing plant.

Another picture shows the creamery when Highway 17 went past the front door. Truckers and vacationers heading for Santa Cruz bought 700 to 800 ice cones a day. Out the back door went dozens of milk trucks for home delivery seven days a week to the township. Five routes still deliver to part of the Fremont Unified Schools, hospitals, resthomes, restaurants and some home delivery as far as South Hayward. Bill, Sr.

gives a lot of reasons why the business is far from the way it used to be when customers picked their dairymen for the amount of cream on top of the bottles of milk. He does point to the fact that milk drinkers have increased in great numbers in other countries such as China and Japan. If such a binge hits America, however, he predicts a milk shortage. "On vacation," he says, "we drove 4,000 miles through Idaho, Montana and up into Canada and we didn't see all that many dairy farms." Like all old-time farmers, Bill likes to expound on the subject in rather a "it serves them right" manner to the officials who contributed to diminishing milk cows in California because of price 'California milk is priced lower than almost any state in the nation," he says. But the fact remains that the dairy business is another once-important industry that has moved away from today's Alameda County.

Where does milk come from? From cartons in the freezers in the supermarkets. Cows? Cows are in Texas. it's a new day for milk, dairies, the Holdeners. I The Doily Review, Hoyward, Argut, Fremont-Newark, Tri.Volley Herald, li.ermore-Plewonlon-Dublii the The cows are replaced by machines Sunday, September 18, 1977.