Remembering My Childhood (Cecelia Coronado) - Part One

(This is the first in a series of posts based on audio recordings made by my mother, Cecelia Coronado Phipps in 1983.  She was the youngest daughter of Marion and Louisa Coronado and she describes what is was like being the youngest of 10 children growing up on the Coronado property on the Napa-Vallejo Highway just north of Vallejo, CA.  Since Cecelia was born in 1906, this post covers the period 1906 to 1926.)

It is nice to think of reminiscing, especially since I am the youngest of the Coronado clan of 10.  We had a happy childhood.  I think I learned so many things from my nine brothers and sisters.  So I think it is special in my life that I can enjoy these memories.

Let me start by telling something about my childhood.  I was the youngest and my sister Hess, the oldest, was our second mother.  She told me in later years that "you could have been such a spoiled child, because you received so much attention from all of us.  But you weren't.  You grew up to be thoughtful of everybody."  This is good, I guess. ... It is very different being the youngest of so many.  I think this was a special blessing I received.

 

Teenager Cecelia Coronado in the Coronado garden

Our home was a ranch type home. The family was poor.  Mama and Papa started out on a very small scale.  In those days, they took care of their aunts and uncles, mothers and grandparents. ... There were grandparents in our home, although I never knew them when I came along.  It was a loving family.  And whatever they had they shared. …

I can recall this garden and the whole yard and the house.  When Mama had to do big baskets of mending, mending the boy’s long stockings and making shirts, underpants and under­skirts for the girls and boys, they were made out of Sperry flour sacks.  She would take these big baskets of mending and sit in the garden.  Her garden was lovely – an old fashioned garden, with “Hens and Chickens” all along the borders.  We had a rose garden and a beautiful hot house that Papa had made for her, all glass.  What I learned about gardening started very early, because I would trail her around.  She would tell me that this particular plant liked lots of sun, this one likes the shade, and so forth.  So I learned that way.  I didn't learn from books.  I learned from Mama, and she learned from nature.

There was a huge orchard.  Papa planted every tree that was on the place.  We had all kinds of quinces, apples, plums, peaches, pears.  That was on one side of the garden.  On the other side was an aviary that he had for himself.  He had peacocks, doves, quail and pigeons.  He also made Mama a portable bird cage, which was a huge thing, and could be moved to various parts of the yard when the sun or shade was needed.  She had all her canary birds in there.  She loved birds.

"Prince" - Papa's thoroughbred stallion

The back yard was a huge place.  In the back of the house was the summer kitchen.  On one side was the wash house where all the washing was done on the old fashioned wash boards.  On the other side was a watering trough.  There was also a four-door garage, a great big thing. On the north side of that was where Papa's horses were, a corral for his thoroughbred horses.  He bred thoroughbred horses.  Then there was a huge barn on the east side of the yard.  The barn was tremendous, a hay loft and everything.  Then there was a little area to one side of that, where there was a pig sty.  We had pigs.  So you see that we had all our meat.  Papa planted all our vegetables.  From the pig pens to the south was a long driveway and it was bordered with fig trees.  My memory was getting up in the fig trees after school.  It was just like a big lounging chair up there, the branches were so huge and heavy and strong.  I would have my favorite place to go up there and read books after school.  That led out to the railroad tracks.  The barn and the corral bordered the railroad tracks – the SP tracks.  Whenever we were home, all the conductors knew us.  We would run out there and they would wave to us or we would hang on the fence.  Further outside, just up the back road a ways, Papa had rented some property where he had cows and calves.  We also had that for meat.  There was also a fresh water creek running from Lake Chabot.  I would trail Papa too.  He was just ter­rific, just a terrific father.  I would go up there on weekends with him to pick watercress while he was milking the cows.  That was kind of fun, because it was like a picnic.  If he was repairing the fence, I was holding the nails for him.  I just loved being with him.  No matter what he was doing, I wanted to help.  He always called me his little girl, so I was always there.  It was fun.

In the center of this huge back yard was an immense big eucalyptus tree.  In the yard, the boys played baseball and all kinds of ball.  The older boys brought their motorcycles and their first cars in there.  There was always something going on in that yard.  As the older brothers and sister married, the grandchildren came and they played there.  Plenty of activity going on all the time. ...