She remembers well the John Hutton Union Service gas station, the Louanna dress shop and Morgan Electric, businesses that existed in downtown Willow Glen in the 1940s, when she and her husband, Andy, owned Village Shoe Store at 1377 Lincoln Ave. Trapani says theirs was the first shoe store to open downtown, catering to customers from 1945 until about 1965.

Recently she was reunited with an old friend and fellow business owner, Mildred Lewis, 86, who owned Morgan Electric, a television, radio and appliance store on Lincoln Avenue between Willow Street and Coe Avenue.

Lewis and her husband, Herbert, bought the store from its previous owner in 1944. It closed in 1964.

Alberta Trapani and Mildred Lewis reconnected after both read the Feb. 26 issue of the Willow Glen Resident, which featured a story on the history of Lincoln Avenue. After they both contacted this newspaper to talk about their experiences running a business in downtown Willow Glen almost 60 years ago, the Resident reunited the two women.

Ironically Trapani and Lewis only lived a couple blocks apart but had not seen each other in more than 20 years. They didn't know they were still neighbors or if the other was still alive.

Their excitement to reunite was evident as the women talked at the same time and laughed out loud while reminiscing and telling old stories about their business years downtown.

And even though it's been difficult for Lewis to get out of the house because of a problem walking, the two plan to meet again for lunch sometime soon, they say.

"It's a shame we haven't kept in touch because we live so close," Lewis says.

Photograph by S.R. Woehrmann Picture in Time: Former Morgan Electric owner Mildred Lewis and her husband, Herbert (above), were among the first to sell televisions in the area.

Both families were members of the Lions Club and the Willow Glen Merchants Association, which changed its name to the Willow Glen Business and Professional Association in 1949.

Trapani and Lewis were also involved with the Willow Glen Business and Professional Women Association, for which Trapani served as secretary.

Both Herbert Lewis and Andy Trapani have passed away. Andy was a charter member of the Italian Men's Club. Alberta was on the women's auxiliary and still serves lunches to senior citizens at the Elks Club in Willow Glen on occasion.

Back in the 1940s and 1950s, Willow Glen Merchants Association members had parties together, and the association even played in their own band. Different merchants played instruments, including the saxophone, drums, piano and accordion.


History to Remember

The Lewises moved to Willow Glen in 1944 from San Francisco because Herbert Lewis had health problems. Their doctor recommended that he move out of the city. Herbert went to work as an electrician in a magnesium plant in Monta Vista as part of the war effort. But he had a passion for fixing televisions, Mildred says.

Before he married Mildred, he traveled the country with just his tools and tubes, fixing people's television sets, Lewis says. So after moving to Willow Glen, he bought a business called Morgan Electric, formerly located at 1092 Lincoln Ave., close to his house on Coe Avenue.

He didn't go to school to study business but learned about running a store through "the school of hard knocks," Lewis says. "He had a natural gift for doing business and electronics."

The couple sold radios, television sets, hi-fi and appliances during a time when there were many electronic technological advances, Lewis says. It was an "exciting time" because it was when television was first becoming popular.

"People would go to downtown San Jose to find a television but always came back to Willow Glen to buy it because they heard that Herb was a 'crackerjack' service man," says Lewis, who was known as the only woman in the area to fix televisions.

When the store first opened, television wasn't like it is now. There was only one channel available in San Jose that broadcast out of San Francisco, and there were only three dials on the set and no remote controls, she says.

"We never dreamt of having such a thing," Lewis says about remote controls.

She recalls that televisions were such a novelty in the area at the time that a customer who had never seen a television thought the people on the screen could see her so she waved her hand in front of the set.

It was often difficult to sell televisions to people who had never owned one, so the Lewises had a system. Herbert would talk about the technicalities and technology of operating a television and Mildred would tell the wives about the furniture the set came in and how "easy it was to run," she says. "Women were afraid to touch it because it seemed complicated."

But Lewis wasn't afraid to touch televisions. She always had an interest in electronics, so her husband taught her how to fix the television sets. People would bring tubes in a paper bag and she would check them and put them in the right socket.

"There were 32 tubes in a TV and I got a reputation for being good in the testing. Everyone would send people to me," she says. "I was the first quality control woman of Willow Glen."

The couple also had another system to introduce people to the invention of television. Because the sidewalks used to be wider on Lincoln Avenue, they would place the television set up high in the window and put speakers outside. People came in the evenings with orange crates and set them on the sidewalk to watch television. Eating popcorn and fruit, they would watch shows and films from England that were being broadcast.

"The purpose was to make people fascinated, get them used to television and show them it was not hard to run," Lewis says.

Photograph courtesy of the Lewis family Tube Time: Mildred and Herbert Lewis opened Morgan Electric on Lincoln Avenue near Coe in 1944. Herbert would also provide home repair service for televisions traveling in a shiny black truck. In the late 1940s the couple's sons, Jim (left) and Bob, would hang on the truck's running board.

Up the avenue, Alberta and Andy Trapani had bought a shoe store that was "right in the heart of Willow Glen," on Lincoln Avenue near Minnesota Avenue.

When they bought it, it was a shoe repair shop, but they turned it into a retail shop that sold shoes for men and women. Their primary sales focus was selling children's shoes and selling children's prescription shoes to help them walk correctly while they were growing. They also did some repair work on children's shoes.

Their store—Village Shoe Store—was the only shoe store when they moved to Lincoln Avenue, but when they left there were five other stores selling shoes, including Bergmann's Department Store, Trapani says.

"It was fun because we met so many nice people," Trapani says about doing business in Willow Glen. "When I go grocery shopping sometimes, people will remember me and say, 'Oh, there's the shoe lady.' I'm surprised they remember me. The people that recognize me are either the mothers that brought their kids in or the kids themselves."

The couple never had children, but they were surrounded by a lot of other people's children while doing business in Willow Glen.

"The kids would always want Andy to wait on them, which didn't bother me a bit," Trapani says with a smile. "They liked him."

She recalls buying her television set from Lewis and says Lewis' husband was also their TV repairman, but she doesn't shop on Lincoln Avenue anymore.

Looking back, Trapani says times were different in the 1940s and 1950s. She would stay at the store by herself all night and "not think anything of it back then."

Shortly before the store closed, Andy went into real estate, and she ran the shop by herself six days a week and two nights a week until she sold it and started working for a dress shop.

There was camaraderie among business owners back then, she says. It was like a village—everyone knew each other, but "people don't do business like that now," she says. "Money was also scarce when we were in business. It was right after the war, so people shopped around for more of a deal. I wish I had our store now. I could make a fortune."

Fifty years ago doctors, dentists, grocery stores and gas stations were common downtown. That isn't the case now, she says.

And there were more clothing stores, like Louanna, a dress shop owned by Mildred Lewis' brother Jack Zimmerman and sister-in-law Helen.

Opened in 1950, the store was across the street from Bergmann's Department Store, which is now home to Casa Casa. It carried women's clothing, dresses, sportswear, lingerie and costume jewelry.

The shops on Lincoln Avenue all complemented each other, says Helen Zimmerman, 96. Customers could buy women's clothing from Louanna, men's clothing from George and Inman Clothiers and shoes from either Village Shoe Store or Bloom's Shoe Store, which opened in the 1950s.

"We all carried different things, so it was like a little village," says Zimmerman, who moved to Willow Glen from San Francisco in 1933. "In those days everyone had a fashion show. Our store was hired by organizations to have models show our clothes. There was once a show that included all the clothing store business owners on Lincoln Avenue."

Their son Bob Zimmerman bought the business in 1961, and Jack passed away in 1972. The Willow Glen store closed in the late 1960s because the family also owned stores in Hacienda Gardens and the Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell and it became "too much to handle," Bob says.

And to fill up their cars, Trapani, Lewis and Zimmerman would often go to one of the two gas stations on Lincoln and Minnesota avenues that no longer exist.

John Hutton owned a union service station on Lincoln and Minnesota avenues from 1948 to 1960. Today Sylvan Learning Center sits on that corner.

When he first opened John Hutton Union Service gas station, the price of gas was about 32 cents per gallon, he says. There were only three gas pumps at the location but it was a "little moneymaker" and "very busy at that time."

Still a Willow Glen resident, Hutton, 85, says there are no gas stations on Lincoln Avenue near Minnesota Avenue anymore because "gas stations require much more space now because they have more pumps and offer more services."

"They are quite expensive to build and you have to have a lot of room," he says. "There is no room in Willow Glen to build anymore."

During those days he also owned gas stations at Lincoln and Terra Bella avenues and Winchester Boulevard and San Carlos Street. For Hutton, who always wanted to own a gas station, it was a dream come true.

After serving in the Navy during World War II, he worked for Hendy Iron Works in Sunnyvale but kept his ears open for any opportunity to start a gasoline business in Willow Glen. And when he heard about a new station being built in Willow Glen he jumped at the opportunity. Before then, he sold war bonds and partnered with a friend who owned a service station in downtown San Jose.

His Willow Glen service station competed with the Texaco across the street, but he and the owner were friends, as were many of the local business merchants.

He sold the station at Lincoln and Minnesota to two of his workers, but eventually the station was torn down and the city of San Jose put buildings and a parking lot in the space. Before retiring, he ran a carwash on Moorpark and Meridian avenues.

Now with his free time Hutton makes ornamental mailboxes that look like barns, churches and lighthouses. He looks back fondly on the 1940s and 1950s, when he had friends and next-door neighbors who were doctors, real estate agents and owners of "variety stores" that sold crystal and silver.

He even remembers the taste of the homemade pies baked by a woman who ran a restaurant on Lincoln Avenue before the large corporate pie shops opened, he says.

Trapani agrees that it was an special era for the community.

"We didn't even realize it at the time because we were so busy with everything that was going on, but looking back at it, those were really fun times," she says.