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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Phil Bush demonstrates how pioneers brewed coffee.
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Treasure Chest
Historians fill trunk with magic By Pam Marino
Frances Bush holds up what looks like a pair of old-fashioned bloomers in front of a class of third-graders. They are bloomers all right, but these are a special kind called umbrella bloomers.
She opens them up to reveal a split that allowed women of 100 years ago to use the bathroom.
Laughter fills the classroom.
The funny bloomers are just one part of the Traveling Trunk, a portable display of everyday objects from 60 to 100 years ago that demonstrate just what life was like when orchards covered this valley.
Frances Bush, her husband, Phil, and Cupertino native Henrietta Marcotte are three volunteers who bring local and California history to life for schoolchildren in the Cupertino and Sunnyvale area.
The Trunk started more than 20 years ago when the Cupertino Historical Society didn't have its own museum to display all the antique objects donated by local families over the years.
Tish Picchetti, from one of the original families that grew wine grapes on Monte Bello Road above Cupertino, had brought a book to a society meeting at the Union Church that showed a big trunk for preserving clothing. The group decided they could use a similar trunk for bringing historical objects out into the community, and the Traveling Trunk was born.
According to Marcotte, the original trunk was a big, heavy steel affair that Picchetti and her husband took around to schools in their station wagon. Marcotte was asked to help, and she eventually took over the trunk, transferring the items to bags. Some even called her the "bag lady" when she went to presentations.
Marcotte is 88 now, so Frances and Phil Bush have taken over carting the items in suitcases since about three years ago. There are about 150 items in all in the display, enough to fill a banquet table. They pick up Marcotte to visit schools, both public and private, as well as senior centers and day care centers, to make presentations. Phil Bush estimates they share the items and stories with about 1,000 children and adults a year.
"The children are very well-behaved," Marcotte said. "They seem to be interested in the early days."
Cupertino History Museum director Ethel Worn said the program has grown mostly by word of mouth among teachers. "The program has really become so popular," she said. So much so the museum is preparing to train additional volunteers to make presentations.
Last week Frances and Phil took the Traveling Trunk to Regnart Elementary in Cupertino as part of the school's Discovery Day. Children craned their necks to check out items like a brass scale used to measure gold during the Gold Rush, kerosene lamps, and even a blue metal lunch box used by Phil Bush in the first, second and third grades when he grew up in Stockton. That got some "wows" from the students.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Frances Bush pulls a pair of umbrella bloomers--split down the middle to make it easier for the wearer to go to the bathroom--from the Trunk and tells students how the controversial garb paved the way for women to ditch their petticoats in favor of pants.
Many of the children who see the presentations express disbelief at the old items, surprised that things weren't always plugged in to make them work, Frances Bush said.
"I don't think a woman's feet could fit in there," one third-grade boy observes of the petite 100-year-old shoes that the Bushes displayed. Most of the girls agreed that not even their feet could fit the shoes now, which led to a discussion of how and why people were smaller a century ago.
The children take an interest in an ice pick and ice shaver as Phil Bush relates how people used to buy blocks of ice to put in their ice boxes. The third-graders have been reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder, which tells of how Almanzo Wilder's family got ice by cutting it out of frozen lakes. The Bushes tell the children that here in the Bay Area, ice came down from frozen lakes in the Sierra Nevada.
And so history does come alive for the children, who are used to computers, televisions, washing machines and food processors.
The Cupertino History Museum gets its own benefits, since some of the children wind up bringing their parents to the museum in the Quinlan Community Center on Stelling Road, said Worn.
"It works as our ambassador," she said.
In addition, the museum is small, with a satellite location at Vallco Fashion Park, so display space is limited. The items in the trunk would otherwise be packed away where no one could see them.
Frances Bush said she thinks bringing the Trunk to the children has another benefit, since it encourages them to go home and ask lots of questions of parents and grandparents about their own family histories.
Phil Bush pointed out that children from other countries learn more about United States history through seeing the items and hearing the stories connected to them. Some children have even said their grandmothers still use some of the old-fashioned items back in their native countries.
Marcotte, whose family lived where a Donut Wheel store sits on De Anza Boulevard now, likes to tell lots of stories about the area when she was a child, as well as stories she learned from other longtime residents.
As for Phil and Frances Bush, they adopted this community in 1951, after coming from Stockton. Phil taught at Lincoln Elementary on McClellan Road, which back then only had six rooms. He said they considered this area "God's Country," when they saw the acres and acres of fruit trees bloom in the spring, and the yellow mustard blooming underneath.
Both Bushes have a background in elementary teaching, so making the presentations to children is very enjoyable to them, Frances said.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Children crane their necks to check out items docents pull from the Trunk, including this kerosene lamp.
Some of the more unusual items--.such as the calf weaner, which is possibly the oldest item in the collection--are especially fun to show the youngsters. It is a rectangular metal object, with a kind of ring at the top for putting into the nose of a calf. Phil Bush holds it up to his own nose to show the children how it works. When farmers wanted calves weaned from their mothers, the calves wore this device, which has sharp edges. When a calf tried to drink from the mother's udders, the mother was poked by the sharp edge and would kick the calf away.
Another pair of bloomers in the collection came from a physical education outfit for Fremont High School in Sunnyvale. The faded, plum-colored bloomers serve as a prop to tell the children the story about Amelia Bloomer, the woman who wanted to free women of petticoats so they could do things more easily. They paved the way for women wearing pants.
"It was shocking at first, terribly shocking," she relates to the children.
Shocking then, and maybe a little shocking to these children at the end of the 20th century, who, thanks to the Trunk and volunteers, get a first-hand look at life a century ago.
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Cupertino, California Since 1947
