Childhood

As narrated by Evelyn Robinson Lyser, March 8, 1997 to her son Chris Lyser on the occasion of his 53rd birthday.

[Her father Chester’s Delevan house was modern; it had been the model home for a land development project that Chester had been an agent for at the Panama-Pacific exhibition in San Diego in 1915. A large swampy lowland in the upper Sacramento Valley had been ‘reclaimed’ with levees and huge irrigation canals, then subdivided into farms. The present Delevan Flyway Game Refuge is in the vicinity.]

When I was born in Willows, Glenn County on 6-3-10, Dad worked for the Sacramento Valley Irrigation Company, a visionary land development project to bring water to the Sacramento Valley so new crops could be grown on land that had been grazing ground for cattle. It built huge concrete ditches to distribute the water.

Along with this the company established an aggressive real estate sales program. My father was valuable to them because he grew up on a farm and knew what was good soil. Also he had been selling real estate in Los Angeles for his brother and partner - Townsend and Robinson. Dad worked as an accountant, and he had ties in Los Angeles for interesting men in this new opportunity opening up in Northern California. Dad was an early owner of a Model T Ford and met people at the train who came up to look at the advertised farm land. He drove them around on the dusty roads and as car was rare in 1910, I guess he saw a lot of horses on the road!

When the Panama Canal was completed, the Panama Pacific Exposition opened in San Francisco. A very large fair, the best entertainers, opera singers and tourists. A smaller exposition opened in San Diego, with beautiful gardens and model buildings. Dad was hired by the Chamber of Commerce (Eleanor says “by Butte County”) to be a host in the Sacramento Valley Building which had a big open square in front of it. This building is still there in Exposition Park.

When famous people came, my father showed them around and told them of the undeveloped wonders of the Sacramento Valley. Orchestras and bands played, out on the square and I was introduced by my father to John Philip Souza when his band played there to enthusiastic crowds. I saw Mary Garden?? and Ithena? Larga?? Tetrazini, opera singers and others whose names I have forgotten. Dad was an opera fan and we were familiar with the music of Caruso, Foster, and Tetrazini from our opera records we played on our Victrola. I think Dad was even more excited than I to meet them. I was five years old and a friendly outgoing child, and remember the Exposition as a dreamy place.

Mother had sewed beautiful dresses for us, and I wore my hair long and Mother curled it every morning, wrapping the curls around the handle of a child’s broom. People were so nice to me I felt almost like a princess. My father and mother were very caring parents and took us everywhere with them.

I started kindergarten there and Eleanor and I went to dancing school. We learned simple folk dances with many partners which I thought was a lot of fun.