 Mother, they're very interested in Oakland and San Francisco and the earthquake and fire and the things that you always tell Joy and everybody about when you were a young girl. And she was telling me this morning, so we date this, have you dated this already? Today's February 12, 1987, we're at 1233 Derby Street in Berkeley and we're talking to Ella Fister, who was born Ella Marie Spanigel in San Francisco on the 2nd of June, 1889. I have to stop. I think I'm already on the Sunday morning. Early on the Sunday morning. Okay. And we talk a lot, we've had a lot of fun with this and she's always telling Joy something special, but she does have some interesting stories. All right, Mama, you remember what you were saying just a little bit. What do you remember about Oakland, especially, and then the earthquake? Well, I remember, but I remember about Oakland, my father was a baker and he worked all night long and it was, and then the afternoon he would bake cake for the bakery, but Tuesday and Thursday, those were his days off. And he went out into the fresh air and that helped keep him healthy and wise. I remember my father taking me to Oakland and what I was particularly interested in was a bakery over there. I looked in that window and looked and they made all kinds of different bakers than we did in San Francisco and that was very interesting to me. Oakland was just a one horse town, men would drive around in wagons. It was just a little tiny wagon and one horse and they would drive it and most of the time they'd have a bale of hay on the back of their wagons. They went to town to buy the hay for their horse and that's what I remember. It was a very small town. It was large but at the same time it was a country town. How did you get there? Well, we took the Mission Street car and we rode to the ferry building and then we took the ferry boat to Oakland and then we took the train, the 7th Street train and I think we got off at 7th Street and we bonded around there. That was the heart of Oakland. What was that? Now Broadway, San Pablo, do you remember? Well, I do remember San Pablo. I remember Oakland, yeah, and there used to be quite a drive-in store there. I kind of forgot its name. Was it Withhorn Swann? The Withhorn Swann was in existence. O'Connor Moffat? They drove way down, I think down 5th Street and Broadway somewhere like that. What about O'Connor Moffat? Do you remember that? No, that was not in Oakland. Did you have yolkskin? Uh-huh. This store was gradually taken all by the Emporium and it was run by the Emporium in Oakland. Well, it would be Capwell, Sullivan and Furth. Furth, yeah. That may be it. That was the main store. The main store then. That was the name. And Capwell was a ribbon and lace store when it opened, wasn't it? They sold dry goods. They sold ribbons, lace, patterns, crochet work, embroidery. That's it. Now, let me think what you said. Capwell's in Oakland, Disney? Yes. Uh-huh. Wasn't that called the lace company or they sold laces and ribbons when they first opened? Uh-huh. That I don't remember because I was quite young then. Now was this before the earthquake? You used to come over when you were a little girl? Yeah, my father was a baker and he had to have fresh air. So he would go outside on the boat and get all that fresh air on the outside of the boat. And we'd take the train and we always got off at 7th Street, I think it was, and Broadway and walked all around there and looked at all the bakeries. That's what we did. She told me once there were wagons, just a small wagon driven by one man and I think one horse and they went all over Oakland and they delivered hay and stuff like that. That's what I remember. Oakland was just a small town. This was before the fire because she was almost 17 when the fire, earthquake and fire happened. Yes, this was before the fire. Okay. What do you remember about, do you remember the earthquake? Oh, very well, that was the earthquake yesterday. Yes, the earthquake happened about 18 minutes after 5 in the morning. Most people were asleep, which was a good thing. They were in bed, otherwise we would have had a lot of casualties. The first thing I remember about the earthquake was my mother. She was sitting up in bed praying to all her favorite saints to save her because she thought the house was going to collapse. And when I heard that, I jumped out of my bed and ran to the front of the house, out of the front window and I could open up the window and I looked down and I looked at the corner across the street and I saw a brick building that was just 6 months ago collapse, one wall and then the other went down and then shortly after that the wooden structure, which was an old thing, went flat on the ground also. And people who escaped those houses ran out stock-naked. There wasn't a stitch of clothing on them and they were screaming up the street, screaming at the top of their voice. And across the street from us was Coley's bakery and I remember all the bakers came out from their cello workshop and were on the sidewalk. I was in the window, I could see all that. And... What was the address of the bakery? It was 125, 7 and then later changed to 149, 7th Street. And the name of the bakery was Columbia Bakery. And your father's name? My father's name was the Eberhardt, E-B-E-R-A-T-R-G, just like a pencil, Eberhardt and Booth. That was Eberhardt Christopher? A Christopher Eberhardt span Nagle S-P-A-N and then Nagle L-A-G-E-D spelled with E-L. That's the German spelling. Did the fire start soon after that? The fire. I left that machine now. Those two houses collapsed. And in one of the houses that collapsed was a little restaurant. And he evidently had been up early and started his coal and wood fire and was getting coffee ready for his early morning trade. And it was since that that spot where that little restaurant was that the fire first appeared. And my father sent a young man and he told him to run all the way to 6th Street to get a fireman. And a young man did and he returned with the fireman. And I stood right at the hydrant when the fireman coupled the hose and was going to, what do you call it, douse the fire with water. And not a drop of water came and he uncoupled the hose and said there is no water. And just then I saw three drops of water splashed to the sidewalk. And that was all the water we saw. The main pipe from south San Francisco into San Francisco had broken out in the mission. And all the water that had been in San Francisco ran into the bay. And here was a city on fire and not a drop of water to put out the fire. Do you remember when they ordered the militia ordered the flowing up of buildings to stop the fire? Wait, I didn't quite get the question. Do you remember when the militia ordered certain buildings to be blown up to stop the fire? Oh, yes. That was common. Block after block was blown up. But that didn't stop it. The fire leaked. One block after the other. Just one block after the other. Until it came to Vanness Avenue. And Vanness Avenue was at the parade street. It was twice as big as any ordinary street. It was wide, you see, because they held all the parades and maneuvers on Vanness Avenue. And we all thought that would stop the fire Vanness Avenue. Well, it did, but there was one portion of it where the fire leaked over the avenue and stopped burning the northern part of the city. But they succeeded in getting that out. Did you leave your home? Did you have to leave where you were living and go somewhere else during the fire? We left our home about, I would say, half past... Half past five, quarter to six in the morning. The fire was at the corner. Just a few houses away from us. And we had to get out. Did you go by wagon? Now, wait a minute. My mother told us to go out to my chum's house. And I said, oh, that's an imposition of my sister, that I and her two sisters, putting it into their home and I wouldn't do it. But she did. She went there and we weren't there. And then my father had to go and find us. Well, he found us on 8th Street. The fire had stopped at 8th Street. And so he hired a wagon and we got into it. And he got into it. And they drove this way up to Bernal Heights to where my mother was at her home. As her friends were. And then we had a sweep on the floor. Of course, you know, we were five people. She hadn't five beds. But my mother, her son, was happened to be in Oakland. It was Easter vacation when the fire happened. He was over in Oakland to friends of his. And my mother got his bed. She was the lucky one. But we slept on the floor and it was very, very hard. My father, I guess, got tired of sleeping on the floor. And he went over to Oakland. I think by that time they let people from Oakland go to San Francisco. And first, nobody could go into San Francisco after the earthquake. They stopped all ferry boats and all trains. No one could come in. But people could go out. They could. Oh yes, they could go out. What did he do in Oakland then? My father, as I say, he walked a great deal. He looked at all, he went over there, you know, kind of the ferry trips and all that. And we just walked around. No, no, we're talking about after the earthquake, mother. Yes, I know what I said. All right, we walked around. My father took us over there. When you bought, you rented a house, didn't you? Yeah. My father looked around over there and he found a brand new house. No one had ever lived in it. And I think the rent was $65. And my mother saw it and then she said, wait, I'm going to the furniture store first. And she showed her, her bank book, and she had $4,000 in cash. And she told the furniture store that just as soon as the bank opened up, she would pay them. Well, they saw that she had money and they never had the furniture. So we moved into this vacant new house. And I had a double bed. My mother got me a beautiful birdseye maple bedroom set. My sister and I slept in the bed together. And I think my little sister had a cradle. And she slept in my same room also. And then my mother bought a double bed for her and my father. And we had a bureau. Each had a bureau in our room and chairs. And then we had tables for the kitchen and the stove. Tell us about what happened just after you saw all these things out of the earthquake, the window, out of the window at the time of the earthquake, Mother. Remember you said you went down and you could not get out of the door. I went to the window and I told you my mother was sitting up in bed praying to all the saints, her favorite saints, to save her. And then you said that she thought the house was going to collapse. And I got up and put on my suit, two of them stopping. And I guess a wrapper, we used to call them wrappers. It was a robe I put over my mic down. And I went out and looked in the window. And I looked across the street and I saw this brand new building, just six months old, one wall and then the other. And then it collapsed. And next to it was a wooden building. And then that collapsed. And the women who escaped out of that house were stock-naked. And they ran in the street, stock-naked, screaming their lungs out. What did you do for them? And I said to myself, well, mine wasn't bad at all. This I'm going to go downstairs. That's what I thought. So I went downstairs, our steps were still standing. And I wanted to get out into the sidewalk to my father's bakery. But every door in the whole community was stuck. Everybody was a prisoner in their own home. No door was open. So my husband, my father was a strong man. And he came and with all his strength, he lifted the door up and it caught in the latch and it opened up. And I was about the first on the street. And the first ones to greet me were these three-naked women. And you know what they asked me. They asked me for clothing. And I went in to my mother's wardrobe and got her very best clothes. I got three woolen skirts and three woolen jackets. And I came out and they put all the skirts over their nakedness. They were stout-fated as the jackets. And the last thing I saw, they were walking up Seventh Street. Barefooted, of course. But they had saved their lives. Now, then after that... Well, tell what you saw. You got your father's axe. You've told us so many times that people were trapped. Oh, yes. People were trapped in the swollen building. And I went over there to see what was the matter. And I heard the workingman say, if we only had an axe, we could get some of these people out. And I was right there, just a 16-year-old kid, and I typed up, I'll get you an axe. And I ran home and got my father's axe. It was too heavy for me to carry, but I began to drag it. And they saw me coming with it, and then they took it away from me. And I'm glad to say they chucked away enough timber to free people. And I saw them get out of the hole and walk away. I had that satisfaction. It saved a lot of people's lives. I don't know how many, but I guess I never did it. The axe did it. Mother, tell about the people who dropped the baby from the window to somebody else. Yeah. Right opposite us was an old-fashioned house with bay windows. And there was a father who had an infant in his hand. And there was a man in the street. And he called to the man in the street. And he said, he's going to drop the baby into his arms. And I yelled over to him, don't do it. The earthquake is over. He looked up at me, but he did it anyhow. And I'm glad to say the man in the street caught the infant in his arms, dropped them a high second-story window. And did you know if the people got out? I never did hear the end of that story. Did you know if they got out? Oh, yes. I think they did. I think they chucked out the doors or something like that. Those doors in those days were half glass and half wood. I think they got in. But every door was stuck. Every door. Nobody could get in or out of their house. We just jammed. But then there was an earthquake, another one, an aftershock about, I think it was a half hour later or maybe a little longer. And that earthquake adjusted the locks, and the people could get out of their homes. That's insane. Now, and the corner below us was on fire already, and we knew we had to get out of there. You have told me, Mother, that the houses went off their foundations. Oh, yes, some of the houses did go off their foundations. I don't think ours did. My mother said there was new construction right next to us, and she said that new construction sort of held us up, though she did expect for the house to collapse. Now, after you moved to Oakland and you moved into this new house, then did you go back to San Francisco to see later the building, the rebuilding? Well, my father was a baker. We have a bakery. But he's never had a vacation. Oh, I guess in 50 years he kept baking every night. And this is the first time he was ready. I said they'd call back. It's all right. We'll just go past that. It's all right. Go ahead. Yes. Well, we were talking. She was asking if you'd gone back. They moved back to San Francisco after a few months. Wait a moment now. How long did you stay out in Fruitvale? Wait a minute. Oh, I'll tell you what we did. After the fire, my mother said to me, go to my chum's house and I'll meet you there. And I was 16 and I had my two little sisters with me. And I said, oh, what an imposition to go at the barge into my chum pool. You told us about my house. My mother didn't think so. We stayed downtown. And my mother, in the meanwhile, had gone up to my chum's home, way out of Bernal Heights. And we were in there. So my father said, I'll go and look for the children. And he found us on 8th Street. The fire had burned to 8th Street. And if we had just a little water, we could have put it out there. But there was no water. And in one section of 8th Street, it jumped across the street. And then from 8th Street to 20th, it burned. Every house went. Do you remember telling you, I remember you're telling me, Mother, about the sound that the city hall made when it fell. Oh, yes. Yes, when the city hall collapsed. It was a big stone building. It was a lot of crap to it, you know. It collapsed. And it made a tremendous sound. Yes, that sound belongs to the earthquake. Of collapsing buildings. That's right. That belongs to the earthquake story. The sound of the collapsing buildings made. How did the earthquake sound when you first heard it in your bed at five o'clock in the morning? I didn't hear any sound at all. But a great shaking, it took me a week. And the first thing I heard was my mother praying aloud to save him. She thought, sure, the house was going to fall down. And I got up and put on my stuffies and shoes and a robe over my night down. And I ran through the window. I could open it up. Everything was fine. And I looked across the street and I saw this three-story brick building just newly built six months ago collapsed like a car in the house. Mrs. Fister? Yes. Did San Francisco look like to you at 15, before the earthquake? Yes, I can tell you about San Francisco looked like. San Francisco was a city of wooden houses. Very few brick houses were there. And at the time of the earthquake all the brick houses collapsed. And if you wanted to say swear word after the earthquake say brick house. Because that went flat. And people in those brick houses, they were killed. But the people in the wooden houses were. And we saw the fire coming. And my father sent a young man to 6th Street. We lived on 7th Street for a fireman. To tell him to come quick. And the fireman came. And I stood right by the hydrogen where they would get the water. You know, to cover the hose to put the fire out. And three drops of water dropped out. The main supply of water into San Francisco had broken. The pipe was broken. And all the water that was to go to San Francisco ran into the bay. And here we were a city on fire. And another drop of water to put it out. Mother, I'm going to give you something else to hold here. Here you are. All right. Remember, you were telling about going to the bank and about going down to the, getting chili tamales, tamales, before, for supper sometime. Oh yeah. Tell us about that. Oh. Well, we lived down 7th Street. My father had a bakery. And we lived in the flat above the bakery. And we had front windows. I slept in the front bedroom. It was a power, but my mother said never mind. He said the air was so much better in the front than in the back where we get the smell of the baked goods. So at the time of the earthquake, I ran to the front. And I saw the collapsing of the building. And at the meantime, I saw three naked women. Stop naked, not one stitch of them running up 7th Street, screaming at the top of their voice. And I said, oh, it's that bad. I'm going down. And I went down. Everything stood. But once I wanted to get out of my father's store, I could not. The door was jammed. So at that time, my father came running into the front from the bakery, in the back of the bakery where he worked. And he was strong. And he gave the door a lift. And it caught. And I could get out. And the first thing who came to me were the three naked women begging me for clothes. So I went back to my mother's wardrobe. And I got her very best clothes. And I gave each of them a bullet skirt and each a jacket to cover up their nakedness. And the last I saw of them was they walked up 7th Street there for them. But at least they were covered. That's great. Now tell me about before the earthquake. And what school did you go to? Did you walk to your school? Oh, sure. What school was it? I went to the Humboldt School. At first I went to the stocking. And then I went to the Humboldt. And then I went to Adams. And then I went to Paula Techniqueye. Did you have to take a street car or a horse car to get there? No. No, we didn't. We had to walk. You could walk. We could walk. All right, fine. You've told me that often your mother would send you to the bank. Oh, yeah, my mother would send me to bank with the gold. And I haven't put the gold in the bank for her to deposit it. She always had to get gold, huh? How old were you then? Oh, about 14. All right, fine. Now tell me about the clothes that you wore. Remember you said you always went to school with a, with a woolen skirt and a flower. So I always, my mother said San Francisco is so cold. We didn't have sweaters in those days. They weren't invented. So I had on a woolen dress. And to protect my dress, my mother made it sort of a chemical apron made out of stripes. And I put that over the dress. And that's how I went to school. We didn't wear any coat or anything. We just, that's the way he went. And then when we came home from school in the afternoon, we had to change our clothes. Otherwise we'd have dirty clothes to go to school. And I'm looking over there. So we changed our clothes when we came home from school. Did you wear lots of panty coats and things like that? Well, I'll tell you about what we did. My mother always made our panties and she made them out of the quill. You know, it's fuzzy on one side and smooth on the other. She made our pants out of that. And let's see. And we always wore a woolen panty coat. And that was enough to go to school. It was a style there when all the girls wore red flannel panty coats. And I had a red flannel panty coat. And I didn't like it. We had some rich girls in my class. And they wore white flannel panty coats with lovely embroidery on it. And I wanted that too. But I didn't get it. What kind of a hat did you wear? We wore a hat. And it was either Tim with margarites or ribbon. And a sash hanged out in back. And at the end of the sash was sewn a fringe. And that hanged down. And on Sunday, my mother, Saturday night, my mother washed her head. And then she made crisps. She didn't know how to make curls, but she made crisps. And she made about eight or ten blue tiny braids. And braided it after washing the hair. And then Sunday morning, she would unbraise those braids. And then rub the comb gently through them. And we'd have very brazy hair. Did you have special Sunday clothes? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, we did. On Sunday, we wore a petticoast made of bright embroidered flannel. Then a flannel was given to us. Definitely as a birthday gift. It's the yardage, and then it was made up. But it had all about two feet of embroidery on it. You know, all of them are machinery, of course. It was machine embroidery. Very nice. And did your mother buy that to put on the petticoats at a store? No, the manufacturer put that in. Only bought the yardage already embroidered. What about your shoes and stockings? Well, we have. My mother, she brought satin sister with the icy cold. And she'd put woolen stockings on us. All of my sister Tilly had a fit. She couldn't take it. And every time she had to put her a stocking, there would be a big hassle. Was it because of the wool or because of the mending in it? No, it was wool. She didn't like the wool. But that didn't stop my mother from having a red woolen stocking. What were the shoes like? How did they fasten? We had button shoes. High button shoes? Yeah, high button shoes. Now, my mother had to pay five dollars for her shoes. And we thought that was a terrible lot. Were the women in those days able to be in business? Did any of them go out to work in offices? Well, women in business, yes, next to us, a couple houses down, was a Jewish family. And they had a stationary store. And they had four children. And the woman runs the stationary store. And I remember one instance of the woman. They gave tickets. And if you get twenty-five tickets, you've got ten cents worth of goods, you know, free. That's what they did. And I remember one woman came to buy something. And this Jewish woman charged a five cents more. I don't know if she said, I won't pay that. That's too much. She started touching the price. And then the woman who owned the store said, well, all right. And I was right there when she flashed nine tickets in front of her. So she's given them food, except for nothing. Oh, I never forgot that. And then she said, I'm making more than ten cents purchase. I'll get another ticket. And the woman said, no. All of them was quite an argument. How did, did you have a dressmaker to make the clothes or did your mother make the clothes? Well, my mother made quite a bit, but we also had a dressmaker. And she was a very good one. My mother bought nice material and a dressmaker told her get the kidding. And at the time of the earthquake when I was sixteen, I had a very nice, I had two suits of clothes, a best one and then another one, another tailored suit that I wore to high school. You have told me that after the earthquake, when you came back to San Francisco, you went back to school. You wanted to go back to school. But there was, what was the reason why you couldn't? But you came back to San Francisco. The schools had opened, but they were way out opposite the Golden Gate Park, too far to walk from Bannas Avenue. And the morning I was all ready to go to school again, to high school when, when there was a car strike. And the common says, we were going to win this strike even if the streets had the blood red with blood. So I wasn't going to take a streetcar with a mentoc like that, way out there. So I went and walked down a few blocks and there was a millinery school and I went to it and I learned a little millinery. But I told them I was going to work as a milliner and I got a job as a milliner, but they wouldn't let you do anything. They let you line a hat and that's all. And most of all, you had to go deliver hats and I didn't like that. So I quit. I quit. And I thought to myself, if you wanted to be a milliner, you should have an ant or a big cistern or something like that to teach you. Because a milliner is an opportunity to teach you. Okay, now there was one, the ladies would like to hear about your experiences in Golden Gate Park and I also want you to tell them about the wooden sidewalks and the buttons, all the buttons you played. All right. Now I'll tell you about the wooden sidewalks. There wasn't a cement sidewalk in the city of San Francisco. Everything was wooden planks. And people kept dropping coins on the sidewalk and they drove down the cracks. But the landlord was not obliged to open up the sidewalk unless the people lost the dollar. Then he was obliged to open up the sidewalk that they could get their dollar back. And so whenever a sidewalk was to be repaired, we watched and as soon as the workman had lifted the plank, about a half a dozen kids jumped into the opening and went scrouching around in the sand. And we were never disappointed. We always came up with some coin because if a person dropped the coin it was lost. We used to take chewing gum on a stick and we would get a whole little coin and get it up. But at last it wasn't in the same position as the slot it was opposite and it would drop to the floor again. I don't think we succeeded in getting one coin up. They all dropped back. But if there was a repair being made all of you could see the kids.