Saratoga News

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Taking a trip back through the Mail News and Star

By Willys Peck

I have given one of my more significant peculiarities--call it an aberration--the bureaucratic-sounding designation NTAA, for Never Throw Anything Away. Because of this trait, I could never consider going into a retirement home. I can't imagine any such institution accommodating the vast quantities of documents, pictures and artifacts that I have accumulated, and anyway, I have no intention of permanently leaving this house other than feet first.

Some of the most interesting items in this collection are old newspapers, and whenever I start pawing through them, I get carried away in memories and historic comparisons. Here, for instance, are some copies of the Los Gatos Mail News and Saratoga Star from the 1930s. This publication had a family connection in that my dad was editor, a job he held until 1943, when he became Saratoga postmaster.

So what was making news hereabouts 70 and more years ago? Well, for one thing, Saratoga really was a rural community. The extensive orchards extended almost into the Village itself, but for all its rural flavor, there was an intellectual element manifested in such organizations as the women's Foothill Club and the Saratoga Men's Club. Speakers at these organizations were a source of interesting copy for the Mail News and Star. For instance, a February 1934 speaker at the Saratoga Men's Club said the next European war probably would be waged without England. Russia, he said, would not fight unless forced to by Japan. The speaker was a San Jose Unitarian minister, whose world-politics credentials were not described.

About six weeks earlier, the Foothill Club was told another world war was considered abroad to be inevitable. The speaker, one Alonzo Baker of Mountain View, cited the expected war between Russia and Japan, and said it could not continue long without involving the United States.

An especially interesting feature of these old newspapers is the profusion of grocery store ads and the prices offered. One of the grocery chains was that of the Red & White Stores, two of which were in Saratoga. Mayonnaise, how about 39 cents a quart? Butter, 17 cents a pound. Eggs, 25 cents a dozen. Ovaltine, 69 cents. Of course, the reverse side was the fact that people who had jobs, and there were throngs that didn't, sometimes were able to make in a week only what a lot of medium-paid workers today make in an hour.

But back to the news content. It wasn't a local Saratoga story, but it got a lot of attention here in 1934 when a late-January fire broke out in the 1888 winery at the Jesuit Novitiate above Los Gatos. According to the story, some 40,000 gallons of wine that poured into a cistern on the property was used, enabling firefighters to confine the damage to the winery building, and wine stored in cellars outside the winery escaped destruction. The fire was visible throughout the valley.

I liked the headline message in February 1934 to the effect that "few drunks" were seen by the watchman in Saratoga. This was when, in the absence of a police department, Saratoga merchants and some householders hired a night watchman to patrol their area from 6:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day. The story led off with an account of a homeless woman, about 35, who passed through town.

"She seemed well educated and quite refined," said the watchman, C.J. Norris. "I asked her if she was bothered by the men on the road, and she said that as a rule, the 'boys of the road' are gentlemen."

I have written several times about the hobo--today they'd be "homeless"--camp under the Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road bridge over the creek, but this is the only reference I've seen to a, shall we say, hoboette?

That "few drunks" quote puts me in mind of my favorite newspaper quote concerning this town's roistering saloon days in the latter 19th century: "To be a drunk from Saratoga was the last word in drunkenness."

Rainfall, or the lack or superabundance thereof, is always news. In February 1934, Saratoga's total for the season to date was 22.66 inches, compared with a total for the previous season of 15.77 inches. I remember getting caught in the rain while walking to school. It was wet.