Saratoga Stereopticon

Elementary school affiliation runs unusually deep in these parts

By Willys Peck

Four out of 21 from 62 years ago; not a bad ratio. Interpretation: Of the 21 graduates in the Class of 1937, four of us were at the recent Saratoga Grammar School reunion in Wildwood Park. Not surprisingly, we same four had started together in the first grade on a sunny September morning 70 years ago, when the 1923 building--now due for renovation and expansion--was just getting well broken-in.

Now usually designated by its Oak Street location, the school is K-5, to use the current nomenclature. Back then it was 1-8, which was what we thought grammar school was all about: eight grades. In a column on last year's reunion, I commented on the rather unusual circumstance of people convening on the basis of grade-school affiliation. One expects high school class reunions, but a grammar school would have had to have been something special to engender such loyalty. Looking back, Saratoga really was special. It had something to do with small-town cohesion, when people looked to a school as a main community focal point. For instance, Saratoga School had a fine auditorium with a proscenium stage and draw curtain, just the thing for amateur theatrical groups. The auditorium also had a projection booth, and there was a time in the 1930s when Friday-night movies were regular fare.

Unwieldy class sizes were not a problem; the 21 graduates in 1937 represented an average total. A picture of the combined second and third grades taken in the fall of 1930 shows 31 pupils.

Transportation wasn't a big problem either, what with an enrollment that hovered around 175 and below. Probably a majority of pupils walked or rode their bicycles to school. Those who lived farther out along Saratoga Avenue and Saratoga-Los Gatos Road took the streetcar. That is, they did until late March of 1933, when the Peninsular Railway ended its service and Peerless Stages Inc. (a name that always struck me as redolent of the Old West) took over with its buses. The school district also had its own bus, which served the Pierce and Mt. Eden roads area. A very few pupils were transported daily by their parents.

The reunion had all the right touches, such as old class pictures and posted messages, one being from the ever-gracious Olivia de Havilland, Class of 1930, again regretting that distance from her Paris home prevented her attendance. There were dried prunes and apricots, reminders of the days many of the graduates had spent on ladders picking 'cots, in cutting sheds, and on hands and knees picking prunes. There was entertainment by Les Landin - who began his teaching career in the district just after World War II--and his "Skillet Family" bluegrass combo.

Vince Garrod, Class of 1932, who served many years on the school board and has a handle on the district's history, told how the district boundaries came to extend into the present Monte Sereno. This came about, he said, with the discontinuance of the old Austin School, situated on the present Austin Way, and the fact that the Los Gatos School District, which would have seemed the logical entity to take over, didn't want to pay for pupil transportation. Saratoga did, and that's how we got an added district that included the Austin Corners contingent, some of whom were at the reunion.

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I think it was the late columnist Herb Caen who either originated or quoted the remark about preferring to live in the past because you meet a better class of people. This blanket slander of later generations, while it doesn't hold up, has an interesting sidelight. Maybe not "better class of people," but ones who were fascinating in a variety of ways. Leafing through an 1888 volume, "Pen Pictures from the Garden of the World," about people and locations in Santa Clara County, I encountered the biographical sketches of William and Benjamin Campbell, father and son, who might be said to have gotten Saratoga started with the building of a sawmill at the present location of Saratoga Springs resort.

Of William, who was born in Kentucky and came to California in about 1847, "He settled in Santa Clara County and took an active part in the conquest of the country, participating in all the conflicts that took place in Santa Clara Valley. Naturally, he became one of the leaders in the work of developing the resources of this wonderful new country. Assisted by his two sons, David and Benjamin, he erected the first sawmill within the limits of the county, for cutting the mighty redwood trees."

A footnote: Benjamin Campbell is responsible for establishing what is now the city of Campbell. The present Campbell Avenue was the driveway to his house.

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