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Werner Ottens
Transcript
Conklin: Sara Conklin, and today is October 19th. I'm interviewing Mr. Werner Ottens for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's oral history program. This interview will be transcribed, edited by you, Werner, and added to the Parks reference library. Do I have your permission to conduct this interview? Werner: Yes, you do. Conklin: Okay, the first group of questions are going to center around your family history. What was or is your family's surname? Is Ottens your given name? How does that work? Werner: My last name is Ottens, that's O-double T-E-N-S. Conklin: Okay, and your father and your mother's surname. We've got probably your father's at point. Werner: We're talking about my own father now, okay? Carl Herman Ottens, and my mother's name was Paula Henrietta Ottens, Born was her last name. Conklin: And what was her name before she married her husband? Werner: Born. B-O-R-N. Conklin: B-O-R-N. Thank you. Do you have any siblings? Werner: I have a brother, Axel, younger brother and after my mother remarried to the American officer, we'll get into that, they had two more children. Concetta, who was born here at Ft. Baker. Conklin: How do you spell Concetta? Werner: C-O-N-C-E-T-T-A. And after that, they had a son named Peter. Conklin: And so you are where in the birth order, you're? Werner: I'm the oldest. Conklin: Okay. And how old are you? Werner: I'm 66. Conklin: And where were you raised? Werner: All right, I was born in Dutch Guyana, Dutch colony in South America. Conklin: And after that? Where did you live? Werner: We lived there, and my brother is a year younger than I am. I lived there until November of 1946. I was born in 1929, then until November '46 when we came to the United States. Conklin: Okay, and where did you move to in the United States? Werner: To the San Francisco Bay area. Conklin: All right, and who raised you? Werner: Well, perhaps I should shed a little light on this. My father was German, he emigrated down to Dutch Guyana, the Dutch colony, in 1925 or '26 from Germany. My mother was Dutch, her father was a ship's captain and they moved down to Dutch Guyana also, and that's where my mother and father met. They were married I think in 1926 or '27, and I was born in 1929. So we have a mixed marriage there with a German and a Dutch person living in a Dutch colony, and this created a big problem because we were doing really well, we were actually considered wealthy and May 10th, 1941, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. That night, they picked up my father and they rounded up all the Germans in the colony. There must've been about 50 or 60 of them, and there was also a large ship, a German ship that had sought refuge in the harbor as being safe from the British submarines out there in the Caribbean. So that ship was there with an entire complement of officers and men, so that night they arrested everybody, except for the women and children. That came about a week later. So they picked everybody up and we were sent to a separate concentration camp in the jungle from the men, the men were in another ... And after about six months, the Dutch authorities started to feel, perhaps we ought to get rid some of these people, because we're spending all this money, and we're feeding them, so they found a clause that said, if you're from Dutch origin, we could release you. So they released all the women and children basically of Dutch origin, but the men of course who were German were kept in concentration camp. It was quite a turnaround for us, because my mother had never worked. She was a nurse, but as I said we were well to do and the Dutch authorities confiscated everything we owned. Everything we owned. And I found out only about three years ago that, I always wondered what happened to our furniture, or the valuables that we had, and I found out they auctioned everything off. They sold everything. So we ended up, ground zero, there was nothing. And my mother went to work, and shortly thereafter ... The marriage had always been kinda rocky. I remember as a child the arguments going on, so in 1942 the U.S. Army came down there to protect the bauxite, which is aluminum ore resources that the country had, and it was the ... That country supplied perhaps 60 to 70% of all aluminum used in the free world, and so they sent the U.S. Army over there and they came in in a big way, airplanes and they built the airbase in Zandery Field. Conklin: How's that spelled? Werner: Z-A-N-D-E-R-Y. Zandery, and my mother went to work there at the USO and so on, and that's how she met my stepfather. And they were going for a while, and she had been divorced in the meantime and she had custody of us of course, and they married I think in 1945 and ultimately he was reordered back to the United States to Ft. Scott over here in the Presidio. And in November of '46, we left Suriname, Dutch Guyana, and first went to Puerto Rico, spent about two weeks there, and then shipped to New Orleans and then by train all the way to the San Francisco Bay area, and we ended up here. Conklin: And you were how old at the time? Werner: I was just 17. Conklin: That could be an entire interview with your family history, that was very interesting. Werner: Well the sad thing is, I know there was a lot of stress, a lot of problems between my own mother and my own father. The unfortunate thing is people don't realize that here, those people who were put in a concentration ... Interred, and on May 10th, 1941 did not get released until 1947. Two years after the war, and the excuse given was we had no place to send them. They had no money, they had no place to go, they had no jobs. My father stayed there, and he went back into business, he was a business man. And he did well. And I only saw him once again, it was in 1956 when he came here, when he was introduced here. But anyway, my stepfather who was a very ... He was a captain at the time. He was a very good man, accepting two grown boys and he brought us here. And the first home we really lived in was right up here at Ft. Barry. The first house, 934 on that road going up around, so we lived there for two years. Conklin: And we'll be discussing that probably pretty soon. What was the highest grade of school that you've attained. Werner: College degree. Conklin: And where did you go to college? Werner: This was after I went ... I graduated from Wayne University in Detroit with a BS in aeronautical engineering. Conklin: Okay, great. And what was your last job? Do you have your own ... I think you have your own business, right? Werner: I worked for, actually my entire professional career was spent with Pacific Telephone. I worked as an engineer for them. I lived in Michigan for a little while after I got out of the service. I went to the Korea and Korean War and all that, and I went to school after that. And when I came back out here, I tried to get a job in the aviation field, but everybody was gearing down because the Korean War was over, and they really didn't need any people. I tried to go to work for Hiller Helicopters. I'd done a lot of research on my own, inventing things, and I have some credits to certain things in the aviation world, but then nobody wanted anybody there. They laid people off, and I needed a job. So I went to work for Pacific Telephone, and I spent 27 years there. Conklin: And, okay. When did you leave the telephone company? Werner: In November of 1983. Conklin: Great, thanks. You lived in what's now called the Marin Headlands as a teenager because your father was in the U.S. Army, and what years were you there? Werner: From I think it was March 1947 through maybe into later 1949. Conklin: And what was your father's job? Werner: His job was to deactivate the gunner placements here, and also to clear the harbor of mines and submarine nets that were put in there to deter any invasion by the Japanese. He of course, did not complete the entire ... This was his work that he did, by the time ... The military reassigns people every two years or so, so his next position was under Captain Alzo. He went from here to there, we didn't go along with him, my brother and I. But during the two years that he was here, that was his work. Conklin: Okay, thanks. Please describe your family's living arrangements of your quarters? Werner: You're referring to the house up here at Ft. Barry? Conklin: Yes, could you place that in a geographic location for us? Werner: The address was 934B. They were large family dwellings that were separated ... You know, they were duplexes really. I don't know what that street is called that goes around there. The upper road, that runs behind all that. Conklin: It's either Simmons or ... So it could be Simmons or Rosenstock it seems, perhaps? Werner: I don't recall. Conklin: Oh, well. I think we can probably figure that out later. Werner: It was right above what was the parade ground, right? And as I said they were duplexes. There was a garage to one side which is now gone, it was torn down. And they were big, big houses, big, big homes. And there was right next to the road, as you drove by, there was a kitchen and a bathroom and a small ... It must've been servant's quarters, small bedroom. And then there was a large dining room and a pantry. That was all downstairs on the first level. And beautiful stairway going upstairs and there were three or four bedrooms, I don't recall exactly upstairs. There was a fireplace in the house, and there was also a large basement. And this presented me with a first in my life. I had to stoke the furnace. I had never done that before. And it was a coal furnace. The Army delivered a load of coal, every family was needed, and my dad of course, my stepfather had come from New York, so he knew all about this stuff. He'd done it all his life. Taught us how to back the fire to keep it warm during the day with the ashes. Interesting. It was a steam heat system. Conklin: So you could stoke it well enough at night that it would keep those houses warm all night long? Werner: Yeah. Well one house, each side had its own system. Conklin: Who were your- Werner: These were the officer's quarters. All along the road there, there were people that we know. Conklin: That's a perfect segue, because the next question is who were your neighbors and what was their rank? Werner: Well, I recall that the people in the next people in the next building were ... They guy was a captain, they had two little girls. And I don't know the people all along. As you realize in the military, they kept one guy come in and lived there for two years and then during the two years you were there, several people rotated out and others rotated in. We didn't know them all. Conklin: Did the children all seem to know each other? It sounds to me... Werner: No. My brother and I were really the oldest children, teenagers, living in that area. Most of the others were younger people, my step father's age, who had young children. But in April of that first year, 1947, my sister was born at Ft. Baker hospital, which is now gone. They tore that down. There's a good ... In reference to Brian Chen's book, there's a good article about that in here. And so we were there for two years, and when the military came in ... I'm regress, I'm going backwards now, in South America, I dropped out of high school. I hadn't finished, I had a year to go, to go to work at the airbase, and my step dad got me a job to work on the airbase and I worked there as an automobile mechanic. I got into the program and started working. And I had some experience with aircraft and so on, so it all added up. And so when we got back here, the first thing I had to do was finish high school. I enrolled at Mt. Tamalpais High in the valley, and the U.S. Army had a school bus, which was green, olive drab, that they drove around and picked up all the kids in the morning and took them to school and picked them up in the afternoon and brought them back, and there were most of the kids, teenagers, thereabouts were living at Ft. Cronkhite. As I said, there weren't very many teenagers. They weren't any teenagers up there where we lived. Most of them were at Ft. Cronkhite. So the bus would go around, pick them all up, pick us up, take us down to... Conklin: How did being from such a small community effect your high school's social structure? You were from a unique community probably to that high school. How did that effect you? Werner: What do you mean, the community? Conklin: You were picked up by a military school bus and dropped into a community high school. Did that have any effect on your social life? Werner: That is an interesting question because in retrospect, I did think about it at the time, yes. You realize this was right after the war, and all of the kids there were just civilian people, and we always were treated a little bit differently. Not by the faculty, but by our peers. "Oh, you guys are from the Army base." It wasn't a negative attitude, it was simply a realization that we were not living in a civilian environment. And they weren't isolating us, it was just that you always knew. For one thing, when we went to school, we had in our travels, picked up a lot of Army clothes, so it wouldn't be unusual ... Most of the kids wore blue jeans, bobby socks, loafers, and I'd be wearing a field jacket and green pants, so it carried on, it was okay. Conklin: But you had the normal interaction, girls didn't treat you differently. Werner: Oh no. Conklin: It was just that you always felt separate. Werner: It was just feeling, there were expressed sentiments by some of the kids. [crosstalk 00:19:16] As I said, it wasn't negative, it was as a matter of fact, perhaps a little envy because we had our own private school bus that brought us there, so it was kinda okay, you know. Conklin: Okay. I'd like to back up for a moment and go back to the living situation with the families on the loop. Were there things like pot luck dinners or big baby showers if someone had a baby? How tight knit was this community here? Werner: The community was not tight knit at all. There was really very ... the military has its own formal system where if a new family moves in or a new officer moves in, they would have to come over and present themselves and say, "Hi, I'm Captain so-and-so, and I'd like to introduce myself, and you are so-and-so." So these policies were adhered to. We met all the people, all our neighbors because of this arrangement that the military has, and I remember one time I was ... It was a little difficult for me to transition from the tropics to this area. I used to get very ... Well I got depressed because of the fog. I used to say, "It's foggy here 360 days a year." Only five days a year there's sunshine. And I had just come from a country where there was nothing but sunshine, see? It was a little bit depressing. I had trouble getting used to that. But of course, when you to Mill Valley, it's generally pretty clear there, so the sunshine was there all day. Conklin: As a teenager living on a remote post, what activities kept you busy? Werner: I did a lot of exploring and hiking up in the hills, and I enjoyed nature. I liked going around, climbing up. I probably knew more about these hills than anybody around, because the older folks didn't do this, and this is before the Park had taken over, so it was still an Army base, so entry was restricted to people that belonged here. And you didn't have people wandering around all over, but I did. I climbed all over the place and explored things and I knew a lot about the area at the time. Conklin: What do you think was different about the wildlife then and now? Is there any specific thing that comes to mind? Werner: Then and now? Conklin: Yeah, what do you think? Werner: I think that the wildlife has diminished considerably from what it was then. It wouldn't be unusual to ... We had a family of skunks living under the house. You heard them at night, they'd raid the garbage cans that were sitting right out in front, and there would be raccoons that were climbing the trees right outside, and occasionally a snake. So there was a lot of wildlife here at the time. I don't see much of that anymore. Of course we don't spend all that time here either. Conklin: I've heard rumors that there's some kind of large cats that have been out here. Did you ever see anything? Werner: Yes, there were. I never saw one, but I heard from other people who did see mountain lions and bobcats out here. One interesting thing, I'm not sure how this is lined up as a question, was that Baker-Barry tunnel, because that was a real eye opener. I'd never seen anything like that. As a matter of fact, I'd never seen a hill or a mountian until I came here. Because Dutch Guyana, in the tropics, the north coast of South America is totally flat, until you get about 200, 300 miles inland towards Brazil. Then we got some mild mountains. So when I came here and I saw Mt. Tamalpias this was, wow. My first mountain, you know? And the hills here were also really, God you gotta climb. You can't just walk. It was pretty funny. Conklin: Driving around in San Francisco must've been a little scary. Werner: Yes, yes. Well it was after I got my driver's license. It wasn't until I was 18. Conklin: When we first talked, you mentioned the teen club, so my question is how did it function and what activities did it provide? Werner: Okay, the military had, all the families that lived in the area and again primarily Ft. Cronkhite because there were no other teens up on the hill where we lived, they had a teenage club. The building is still there, and it had a large open area where they could set up for parties and things and there was a stage on one end. I haven't seen the building for some years, so I'm not exactly sure where it is anymore at Ft. Cronkhite. But the parents that sent up activities and things for the kids to do, there was quite an interaction going between all the teenage kids in the area. First of all, we all met on the school bus going to Mt. Tamalpais High, and a lot of them lived at Ft. Baker because the bus would go all the way down to Ft. Baker, pick up the kids there too. The teenage club had activities, I don't recall that it was every Friday night or once a month, but they also would set up things like taking all the teenagers to camping to Boulder Creek, Santa Cruz, the mountains where they would spend a week or two weeks. So we were kept pretty busy that, but this was again only on Friday nights, or in the summer time. Conklin: Okay, you talked about the movie theater and the role that it played in a teenager's life. Werner: There were no movies that ... There's a theater here, at Ft. Barry, but it wasn't in use at the time we were here. The only thing that was really in use was a bowling alley, right up the hill here. And we bowled there. We'd go bowling there sometimes, my brother and I. The movie theater that they used for both for Cronkhite and Ft. Barry was down at Ft. Baker, and we'd go down there. We didn't spend a lot of time going to the movies. Conklin: So who were your playmates? As a 17-year-old that sounds probably a little silly, but and what were your most favorite activities? Werner: Playmates were mostly kids from high school that I knew. There was also a time when some of the kids that I associated with were living at Ft. Baker. And there were a couple of guys there whose father was in the army also. Again, it was a family that had a stepson and a son, so Billy Lee and Bernie Mitchell. And they lived right there where the road comes down, that was Ft. Baker. Conklin: So would they come over to see you? Would you go see them? Werner: Yeah, we used to go see them, mostly. Conklin: Did you walk through the tunnel? Werner: I walked through the tunnel many times. Could be a scary experience because sometimes at 6:00 in the morning, you don't have a lot of people going through there, and sometimes the deer would get caught in there, and they'd get halfway in and they didn't know which way to go. If somebody comes from one side, they'd panic. They didn't know whether they could go further or would they have to go back the other way, and I have heard of people who said that they saw bobcats or mountain lions in the tunnel or right above it, so it was quite an experience. Conklin: How did life in the community change during the day when the fathers were at work? Was there any sort of a change in the feeling when it was just the moms and the kids around? Or maybe nothing? Werner: Not really. First of all, my dad was working right there at Ft. Baker, so he would come home for lunch. And but most of the time, me being a teenager, I was at school, so I wasn't there all day long. And on weekends, we'd either go to Sausalito, or go to Stinson Beach with friends. Conklin: Okay. When did you first meet the Silvas. Werner: I never met the Silvas. Mr. Silva was already a pretty old guy who owned the ranch, and the ranch was called the Marin Land and Cattle Company. Conklin: Marin Land and Cattle? Werner: Marin Land and Cattle Company, it was the official name. Mr. Silva owned it. I think it was Sam Silva, and he had a manager ... You have to understand, at that age I was now 17, going on 18, there's a transition going on from child to man, teenager, adolescent. And my interests were no longer play, but work and aviation and I liked guns. I always liked guns. And there were people living down there in that little enclave right across from the ... Not the blimp hangar. And there were quite a few people there that I associated with. Conklin: We're gonna stop the tape now and I'm gonna turn it over.
1:45 of silence for tape switch
Conklin: We were discussing the community down near the blimp hangar that no longer exists. And who was living there? Werner: I don't recall the names of the people. Well, there was one. Sergeant by the name of ... they were non-commissioned officer quarters. [inaudible 00:31:57] name of Tweety, and the son who was my age, Bill Tweety, the guy I bought six with, two or three, we went to school together. They always rode on the bus. All the kids rode on the bus to school. Conklin: Would that be T-W-E- Werner: T-W-E-E-T-Y. Conklin: Thank you. Werner: These people, I understand years later that they emigrated to Alaska. They took advantage of the homesteading act. They got some land and they moved over there, so they left. But this was after I had left here. But to go back to your question about the Silvas, I did meet Mr. Silva occasionally. He was an old guy, and the ranch was being run by his supervisor, his manager, by the name of Dietz. Conklin: D? Werner: D-I-E-T-Z. Dietz. I don't remember his first name. But he was living in the caretaker's house on the road, and the foundations are still there, but the building's gone. And he had a wife and two daughters. And don't forget, I'm going on 18, a very good looking kid. Little bit younger than I was, Anna Marie was one of them. They all went to high school with us also. See, the Army also picked up the people from the ranch and take the kids to school. It was good sense to do that. So they had two beautiful daughters, but I met Dietz through the people down there in the non-com quarters that I was talking about, because they all knew him, and it was a really, I understand that they had 2,000 acres. The Marin Land and Cattle Company, it was a big place. And later on when I went to work there, as a summer job, it was very nice. It was a nice place to be. Conklin: When you first began working for them, what was your work? Werner: I was hired in early '48. I don't recall, it must've been March of '48. As the job became available, they need somebody to round up cattle, a cowboy. To be a cowboy. And they had a large herd there. It's a big ranch. A dairy ranch, so it was a milk ranch. And they had several hundred head of cattle that they had to round up twice a day. Once at noon for the milking, the afternoon, and once at midnight. So yes, there I had this job to go out there on a horse. And I had never sat on a horse in my life. But they told me these are really very gentle. You can get on any of them. It didn't take me very long to catch onto that. I had three horses that I rode in rotation. One was a really big brown horse, and I learned to saddle and I learned to feed them and they had a regular stable and a little run corral where they ran. So once during the day, I don't remember the exact hour. I had to get on that horse, saddle up, get on that horse and go round up all that cattle that might be in 400 or 500 acres spread out. And you had to bring every single one of them back. So you'd go around there, and it would take an hour, two hours, three hours sometimes. And the same thing happened again at night. So I had to get on that horse, and saddle up and go out there and take a flashlight with me. And I had a dog, Butch. I remember Butch, like a long haired sheep ... Like a Collie type dog. And he'd go along, and he was really ... And you couldn't see a thing. I mean you talk about black as night, you couldn't see anything. So up and down the hills, and all I knew was which pasture they were in. And I had to go out there, and very often I'd ride for two and half hours and ... They knew, the cattle by nature drift back to where they're supposed to go to be milked, they do it. But I had to bring them all in, and then I had to wait until they put them all in the milk barn and start milking them, and then the foreman'd come out and say, "Okay, there are two missing." Here were are at 2:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning, I had to get back out there. And there were always two or three cows that hid. Yeah, they would hide. They'd find the darnedest places, and get under there, and as soon as I'd come up to round them up, they'd hide. So, and I used the flashlight and try to catch their eyes because then you'd see it. But sometimes it'd be a raccoon or I'd see a bobcat or something, or a skunk. And the horse was really wary of skunks. Every time come close they'd think, "Oh." But anyway, so it was quite a responsible job. It was a lot of fun. Get out there and ride at 3:00 in the morning and you gotta bring all the cows in. There cannot be any one left behind. This happened during the day too, but of course during the day was easy, you could see them. Night, you couldn't see them. Conklin: Do you remember how much you got paid? Werner: It wasn't a heck of a lot. Probably like $30 or $40 a month. Conklin: And this is what year? Werner: 1948. An interesting side line here is that I would be out there rounding up cattle, and if you come down from where I used to live, that road that curves down towards the main road down below, you can look up and you see a valley that's large eucalyptus trees sitting there. I was in there one time, and I saw a vehicle driving on the Army road down here, the road just before you come up to here. And they had MP patrols at night, so they were the guys in the military police. And this guy thought he'd do some target practice. It was 2:00 in the morning. And he may have seen some movement way up there where I was, and I saw the lights of the vehicle stop. And I'm sitting on the horse, looking for cows, and all of a sudden ... This is the sequence. I heard shoo, shoo. And the horse jumped both ways, and then I heard bang, bang. The guy was out there shooting at me. And you don't realize it until you think about it. The bullets get there before the sound. Conklin: Oh my God. Werner: So he was hitting pretty close to me, both sides, so I pulled out my gun and started shooting him. But then he went on. One of those things. [inaudible 00:39:28] experience. Conklin: Where did you live on the ranch in terms of the structures, where did you sleep and eat, and... Werner: There was a ... It's so sad that these buildings are gone now. I don't know when they tore them down. But there was a bunk house. As a matter of fact there were two bunk houses. One was pretty well vacant. If you drive into the ranch, the road is still there. You make a right at the end, the milking barn was on the left at the end of that road. Then the road started turning right to go back up the hill. There's a water tank up there, on the right side. I think that's still there. It's kind of overgrown. But at the end of the ... Well, the last building on that road was a very large bunk house. And they had small rooms there that the people would have. Some of these people were professional milkers, they'd done this all their lives. And Silva I think was a Portuguese, so most of the people there were Portuguese. And he would hire them I guess, go to the city and bring them in from there. But some of those people had been there for years. Anyway, I got my little room, and there was one community shower, and one little bed. Typical bunk house type arrangement except it wasn't like a barracks. There wasn't an open place where a lot of people ... Each one had their little room. And you'd have to have that because as I said, some of those people lived there for years. I had nothing to do with the milking except to bring the cattle in, and I would stand there while they were doing it. Conklin: So there was only of you. Werner: Only one of me. Conklin: One person to gather the cows. Everyone else was a milker. Werner: Right, exactly. At the lower end of the road where it first curved away from where the milking barn was, was the mess hall I guess you'd call it or chow hall or whatever they called it then, and this again was my first experience with this type of a set up, working on a ranch. And they had this old guy named Jimmy who was the cook. And Jimmy did everything. Remember Gabby Hayes? Okay? Jimmy looked just like Gabby Hayes. Old beard, little old rheumy eyes, bald. And he was a fairly good cook. You'd have steak for breakfast, steak and eggs, or pancakes, and he was a pretty good cook. The only thing that I took issue with was he wasn't too clean. You had an old guy muttering along, so that it wouldn't be uncommon to be served ... And I'd have breakfast there, or dinner. It wouldn't be uncommon to sit there and have him bring you a plate of food that was full of dirty crud along the edges that he hadn't washed well. He couldn't see. He couldn't see that well. But it was all an experience. It was all part of growing up and getting older. Conklin: Was there any dysentery or any sort of sickness any of you got? It was just- Werner: No, nobody got sick. Conklin: Interesting. Werner: But it was indeed a very interesting experience, jumping into this. And of course a lot went on with the taking care of the cattle and so on, and the Foreman Dietz was a really good person. He knew what he was doing. Conklin: In terms of the community in the bunk house, what do you think the age spread ... Do you think most people a certain age, but then there was a guy that was 80? Or how did that go age wise? Werner: There were people there, I would say the age spread was from ... I was the youngest, but I was not a milker. From the early 20s to the late 60s, maybe even older? Conklin: Where was it concentrated? Was it evenly spread through that? Werner: 40s I would say. And again, there was a fairly heavy concentration of Portuguese, and they spoke Portuguese to each other. They'd speak English too, but there were some ... Funny things would happen where they'd play tricks on each other. Conklin: Like what? Werner: Like a guy would come up to milk a cow, and you'd have a couple hundred cows in a row there. They had this thing where a head goes there, and they give them food there. So they're eating, and then the guys come in the back with their milk stool. They had machines of course, and the guy would come up to the cow and start milking, [inaudible 00:44:38] and there was a snake draped across the top of the cow. Somebody plant a snake there, and sometimes it was still alive, and he'd jump and run because he didn't like that. Conklin: Was there any ... As a Portuguese group of people were there any sort of ceremonial or interesting sort of ... I don't know how to describe it. Because they were all Portuguese heritage, were there any traditions, did they sing Portuguese songs, did they... Werner: Well yeah, they did sing Portuguese songs, and there seemed to be a heavy drift towards religion. You'd see all these Mother of Christ statues there. I remember that. Conklin: So would they all leave on Sunday and go to church together? Werner: Do you really wanna know? Conklin: Yeah. Werner: They'd all go to San Francisco to find themselves a woman. Conklin: Oh. Well that makes... Werner: I mean this was routine. Conklin: That makes a lot of sense. Werner: Hey, how are things? Come back. Remember in those days, this was down to Third and Market or Third and Mission, south of Market area. Conklin: Okay, so that was like Saturday night's activity, or was that a typical... Werner: It was weekend type. And others would ... I suspect that they rotated their days off, so that not everybody could be gone. This is a 24 operation. You had to have enough people there to milk the cows every day, twice a day. So there were always those people there. Conklin: In the evening, they had to get up again at midnight, right? Werner: Oh yes. Conklin: So was there a time in the evening where they played cards or there was a social hour? And would you guys go into each other's rooms, or how did that... Werner: No, I was not too involved with that, because don't forget my family home was right up here. And the thing is, if I wanted to have a nice, good shower, a clean shower, I'd come home and do it, because that place was not ... You know, all these old guys, they really didn't take good care of everything. They just lived there, they slept there, and I think having to get up in the middle of the night, I suppose you get used to that, but that was more disruptive than anything else to sleeping your eight hours or seven hours overnight and then getting up in the morning. But I guess they got used to that. There was a younger guy there they hired after I was there, that come from Los Angeles. He was a cattleman too, and he had this old, like from 1928 Dodge little pick up, and we drove that thing all the way to Playland at the beach, and this was still there then, and we did all the things, going around the Playland at the beach, and came back, back to work. I don't know what happened to him. Conklin: And you'd stay up until 3:00 in the morning and sleep until when? Would you get up at 6:00 for breakfast, or? Werner: Sometimes. It depended. Usually I did. At my age, it was pretty to fit in and go along with whatever went on. Conklin: And then would the bunk house be empty when they were milking and you could maybe go sleep? Werner: Yes, it would be. We had a ... The thing that as a young person, coming from a family where my mother took care of things, and everything was nice and clean, it was a little bit difficult to get adjusted to the relaxed attitude about cleanliness. But don't forget now, when the cattle comes in and they come into a holding corral, all of them, the 200 or so head, maybe more, the mud would be six or seven inches deep in there. So people all wore these high rubber boots, you had to. And they milked in those things. So and then when they're done, they walked back to the bunk house, they walk in, there was mud all over the place. And they'd leave the boots outside. You had to have that, because if even if you wore high tops the mud will get right in there. But it was lovely experience. I enjoyed it, and being somebody who enjoyed nature and being outside and seeing the land couldn't be a better job. Very often they had a truck, I'd drive it up on the hill to where the radio station is up above, Wolf Ridge, I guess? And just look out at it, look out over Sausalito, Mill Valley, but it was a good job for a kid, and I probably lasted there about three months, and then I left because one of my ... if you have any questions about this, about the ranch anymore, let me know. One of the kids I knew who was a little bit older than I was, we lived down at Ft. Baker, he got a job at Hamilton Field. And I thought, "Ah, airplanes." Conklin: So you were gone, huh. Werner: I was gone. So we drove up to Hamilton Field. I got a job, but I won't go into that. Conklin: What element of the remote location out here was depressing? And then what were the high points? Werner: The only element that was depressing out here was the weather, the fog. The ever present fog. Everything was dripping and cold. It's ironic because unless we're having a real change in climate, every time we come out here, which is probably once or twice a month anyway from Petaluma, it seems to be nice and sunny. So I remember it back then as being mostly foggy, almost all the time, and I would go out, no matter when, middle of winter what for [inaudible 00:51:17] and go swim in the ocean. And there would nobody out there of course. People kept talking about the undertow would get you and all that. I had no problems with it, I was a really strong swimmer, and I found a way to beat it, just to stay at the surface, you don't go underneath. If you go like this, it'll pull you. You stay up on top of it, you'll flow right in with the tide. So I did a lot of swimming out there. It was cold. Very cold. Conklin: And would you consider swimming one of your high points? What was the most fun? Werner: Swimming was one of my high points, and walking all around the area was really interesting. I enjoyed it. Let's not forget, there were a lot of nice girls out here. Yeah, a lot of good looking girls, and as you grow up, as you mature, you realize things that are going on. There was this family that lived at Ft. Cronkhite, they had this nice blonde girl, and maybe I shouldn't name her last name, who I kinda liked. As a matter of fact, I liked several girls in rotation in time, but anyway, we had the teenage club had a party, and we go there, and I wanted to take her home, but I had no wheels, I had no car. So the family friend was a sergeant there, he said, "I'll give you a ride." He was there too, kinda chaperone. And an old guy, must've been 60, 55 or something. Old guy, right. Conklin: Kinda old like you? Werner: He was gray. And I said, "Oh, okay." And then I thought, "Now why is he dropping me off first?" Conklin: Old and smart. Werner: Huh? Conklin: He was an old and smart guy. Werner: No, no, no. He had something going with this girl. Conklin: Oh dear. Werner: And she was what, all of 16? 17? The eyes open up. You begin to learn. Anyway, there were several other young women, high school girls that I liked and we got to know each other and so on. And mostly that lived down below there, in NCO quarters. It was a really lovely place to grow up, to live and to mature so to speak. Because from there on then, I got the job at Hamilton Field, and shortly thereafter my dad had got reassigned, he went to the canals and the whole family moved except for my brother and I, we stayed here. Not here on the base, but we lived in Richmond there for awhile. Conklin: When you were living in the Silva Ranch and working, did you have much contact with the soldiers that were stationed out here? You were a unique position because you bridged both worlds, but did generally the ranch people have much contact with the soldiers? Werner: No. They had no contact whatsoever. It was like the ranch was kinda like an enclave, it was its own world. And don't forget these people were mostly I would say, I think they were Portuguese, right? So they stuck together. They could talk to each other much more easily. The soldiers were always in transition. They would come, they would go and so on. As a teenager who lived here, I had both. See I could talk to those people and get along with them and work with them, but I could also come back and se my friends at the teenage club, those people there. We had a real good time. Conklin: Did the Portuguese people speak Portuguese with each other mostly? Werner: Yes, yes. Conklin: And then they turned to you and speak English? Werner: Yes. It was an education. The whole thing, in the two years, was probably one of the most, greatest educational experiences that I had other than the formal education from high school and graduating, about life. You could write a book about it. It's really, really neat. Conklin: Did you see, while you were living out here, some of the gun drills? Any of the gun practice firings? Werner: No. As far as I know, none of the guns were fired after we moved in here. They were in the process of dismantling the batteries. I don't think that they actually removed ... They may have removed some of the guns during that time, but I don't think they actually removed them, cut them up, until after we had gone. What did happen, and the first thing that they had to do was remove the submarine netting across the Golden Gate, and- Conklin: Do you remember any tricky stories about that? With your father? Werner: Yes, I do. My dad was very deeply involved with that, that was his job. He had an office down at Ft. Baker, and they'd go up, there were a couple of mine laying ships out there at the base where the sewage plant is, en route to Sausalito. Down below there, there was a long pier that jutted out and they had a couple of those ships out there, and they'd go out in the Bay with those things, and they'd have to haul ... There was machinery of course. They had to haul the nets back in. And I remember distinctly my dad coming home one night really shook up. He said what had happened, as they pulled the things in, a strong load, heavy load, the things are heavy. Apparently one of the cables snapped and the cable went back and hit one of the guys, cut him right in half. Yeah. Conklin: That happens to tow boat operators. Werner: I suppose. Conklin: It does, the cables break. Werner: It's a problem. But I think that he more ... As far as I know, he probably completed that phase up there, deactivation here. And then he got all involved in the other Battery's up here, Wallace and so on. But as I said, I don't think the guns were removed during our time there. Conklin: Did he bring crabs home? Apparently while they were out, they'd go crabbing occasionally and they'd eat the crabs and some of the fish for people? You know. Werner: No, I don't think so. Conklin: Brian Chen talks about it in his book. Werner: Oh, did he? I don't think so. Conklin: Do you wanna summarize ... You've been summarizing your experience. Are there any, well for the next two minutes that we have left, do you have any... Werner: Well, there are some things that, first of all, I think it's very commendable that [inaudible 00:59:04] are restoring some of the barracks at Cronkhite. Conklin: How do you spell Cresci? Werner: Cresci? C-R-E-S-C-I. Some of the, I don't recall what that, when you look out over the top of the hill there from the mountain side, look out over the ocean, there is a big rock. Blue Rock? Conklin: We call it Bird Rock. Werner: Bird Rock, yeah, it's all white at the bottom. Okay, there used to be a bridge across, a catwalk that you could get to. And all the way, there's a smaller rock further out too. There used to be a catwalk out there. You could get across there, but the thing was really deteriorating. They worried that the thing would get weighed and collapse under you. But I'd go all over the area there. Conklin: Did you go to the lighthouse much? Werner: Yes, we did. Yeah. Conklin: Did you get to know the keepers? Werner: No, did not. No. One thing I wanted to note is that it's very difficult to realize what the area around where we lived, that whole road, looked like then, because the trees have grown up and grown perhaps 50 to 60 to 100 feet taller. You could look out over the trees anytime. Now, the houses are ... I flew by there yesterday, they're sitting all amongst the trees. Trees have grown so tall, right on the other side of the wall, the stone wall in front of the houses, used to be small eucalyptus trees. Now the things are about 60, 70 feet tall, maybe even taller. Time goes on. Conklin: Well, thank you very much. This has been a really wonderful interview. It's been very nice listening to your stories. Thank you very much. Werner: You're welcome.
Description
An Oral History interview with Werner Ottens who was a teenager who lived in the Marin headlands in the late 1940s'.
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