From Small Town to Retirement Center-Doris Matteson

Doris Matteson spends most of her time with her friends. At the age of 93, she lives in a retirement center in Glendale, California. She was born in November of 1915 and she’s lived up above Lincoln, California on a ranch for most of her life. Since her mom couldn’t take care of her in Los Angeles, she was sent to the ranch to live with her relatives. She worked at Malpractice Insurance until she started to take dancing lessons which she ended up teaching. Every Sunday on the ranch she would have chicken for dinner because nobody on the farm had any money and the houses didn’t have electricity either. Her only job on the ranch apart from helping out in the kitchen was to go to school. She was too young to help out on the ranch, therefore she was alone most of the time. The houses were about two and a half miles apart and they didn’t have cars to take them and bring them back. And all in all, she says, it was a very, not promising, but it was a very simple life. None of the city stuff.

My uncle had had quite a few inventions that he was noted for but I can’t remember what they are. That was a long time ago and he’s passed away, but my father was a jeweler. My grandfather was very wealthy and had a lot of property. And my mother worked for Adrian, the dress designer and I was part of our gang movies in those days as Extra. When my mother was working we had friends who had a ranch above Sacramento. So she used to put me on the train and I would get up. The porters would take care of me until we’d get to Sacramento. I think that the traveler’s aid would take care of me until my folks would come down and pick me up to take me back to the ranch. Trains didn’t go that fast that long ago so they put me on the train in Los Angeles and the red caps would take care of me and they would see that I got off on Sacramento.

In those days the ranch did not have electricity. At that time it was available, but it was $100 a pole to get it up to the ranch houses itself. And they didn’t have $300 cash in those days so we had coal oil, and lamps. We didn’t have any gossip, but we used to have the farm berual. Every Saturday night they would have the suppers with the dances of course in those days. I was too young to know what a gossip was. The farmers with the waltzes mostly and I presume they had some kind of country dances. All I know is that they used to call on the young ones back stage and let them go to sleep while the folks danced and had their supper. And they would wake us up and we would have dinner with them then we’d jump apart and go to our various ranches.

Most of the children went to school. We were eight and a half miles from town and the bus used to come pick us and take us into to school. And we worked, I didn’t have to do any work around the farm but the boys would be helping out in the field and the girls would be helping out in the kitchen. From the second down I had kindergarten down in Los Angeles, but from the second through the eight grade I was on a ranch up above Sacramento. And then I came down here and went to Fairfax High school then onto to LAJC and that was about the end of my education after JC. Then I started working at Malpractice. I wanted to be a doctor and there wasn’t enough money to continue with all the education so I entered the next best thing. I got into Malpractice insurance and so I got a lot of education along the line on medical stuff. But outside that I wanted to learn a couple of new dances and I ended up by having to put an album in my hand and I started teaching dances. I taught the waltz, foxtrot, tango and I taught dancing for several years. Then I got interested in fencing and then I fenced and went into competition there. I won the gold medal instead of the bronze medal and of the fencing association.

We had a lot of chicken. Nobody had any money on the ranch so we had chickens and we had chicken every Sunday. And mostly veggies and things and once in a while somebody would slaughter beef and we would get part of the liver part or the breast. You sort of shared, if somebody had peaches and you had apricots you exchanged. That way it was if I have and you don’t we exchange kind of thing. The bus stop where I had to take the bus there were no little girls. They were all little boys. And little girls and the little boys in the second grade they don’t get along that well and everything. They tolerate each other but they tease also. We weren’t segregated like the boys and girls separated.

Everybody was affected by World War I. Anybody who was a farmer’s boy was put into the service. And the women had to do quite a lot of the farm work. Of course I wasn’t involved in that, I was young to be involved in all the heavy farm work. After the war was over some of the boys did come back. They celebrated in the barn. They had the big board that you look at and they spot all the planes or ships. You keep an eye on them to see where they go and make sure that they weren’t going to be dropping bombs on you.

But we ate all kinds of fruit trees on the ranch. I think we had over 100 to 160 acres on that particular ranch. We lived off of the land, literally, chicken every Sunday. Nobody had a lot of money for a while. And everybody was in the same boat so you didn’t have a lot of envy of somebody having something more than you had. And people were so friendly it was a comfortable life. I think just being happy I’d never had a lot of problems. And so I had just a comfortable and satisfying life.

For a while from the second through the eight grade I spent a lot of Christmas parties at the ranch because mother worked. We usually had a farm bural and they’d have a big Christmas dinner or something. Very few people had very much money so the presents were few, but the spirit was there. We’d go out and we were close to the wooden areas so we’d go and chop down a tree and bring it home. We would light it, and as I said the ranch did not have electricity. So we would have a Christmas tree with candles on it. This was not the safest thing in the world.

Gladding McBean was the pottery company. That was the biggest industry. We were eight and a half miles from town and Gladding McBean was in Lincoln California and that was the biggest industry I think. Mostly on the ground they used farm hands so. The church was in town which was about eight and a half miles. But there was the farm bural and they would have some of their meetings there. We weren’t familiar with everyone, but you knew people and you got together at Saturday nights. But at that stage you sort of made your own amusement.  Your nearest neighbor was two and a half miles away and you don’t get together that much. You learned how to make your own fun and find things to do around the ranch. And all in all it was a very not promising but it was a very simple life none of the city stuff.