1906

Nellie Goodloe, my grandmother, thought she would never live to see the day when one of her paintings would place third in the 1916 San Francisco Exposition.

One night in April, then years before the exposition, in the year 1906, she was awakened by the sound of her daughter screaming and her husband pounding up the stairs to her daughter’s bedroom. Her bedroom floor was heaving and there was a piercing sound of cracking as the building swayed back and forth.

Shaking with fear, Nellie managed to crawl through the enveloping darkness to the front hall where she found her husband, Paul and her teenage daughter Clarascott.

Paul said, as they heard a crashing sound of bricks tumbling down the roof and saw them flying past the window to the street, “we have to get out of here now, this is one hell of an earthquake.”

The trembling threesome slid down the shaking stairs leading to the front door on their behinds. Fortunately the door was not jammed so they could continue their sliding process down the outside stairs to the sidewalk.

Paul said, “We need open space, let’s head down the street to the Chinese vegetable garden.”

Clad only in their night clothes Paul, Nellie and Clarascott, clutching each other, walked cautiously the 200 yards towards the vegetable garden. They were able to stand upright as the ground had stopped heaving and shaking. 

There was an eerie silence in the neighborhood, punctuated by the shrill shriek of sirens in the distance. The acrid smell of smoke wafted towards them as they pushed open the garage door behind which lay the vegetable garden.

Nellie:  “Paul is the city burning?”

Paul:  “Nellie, I know as much as you do. It certainly sounds and smells like it. We are better off here until we find out. God save us and our property.”

Nellie, Paul and Clarascott, huddled shivering together, in the midst of tall stalks, zucchini, cauliflower, and tomato plants in the tennis court size garden (which it eventually became) for what seemed hours.

Finally, hearing sounds of activity on the street, the three ventured outside. There were people crowding a truck delivering tents for those made homeless by the earthquake.

Paul grabbed a tent although their large shingled building look intact except for the chimney bricks scattered around.

It was decided that Paul and Nellie would venture into their apartment separately for their clothes and some supplies as they didn’t want to both die if it collapsed and leave Clarascott an orphan.

Paul noticed the front outside stairs were slightly askew but the front door opened and the inside stairs to the front hall seemed intact. There were large cracks around the fireplace in the living room to the left of the hall.

Paul recalled that when he had the four unit two story building constructed in 1902 the entire building was attached to the brick fireplaces in each unit. Although the chimneys had collapsed the brick fireplaces seemed intact but he decided they couldn’t risk it. The smell of burning buildings seemed to be getting stronger.

Paul collected supplies and clothes for himself and Clarascott for a camp-out in the vegetable garden.

When Nellie gingerly entered their apartment hastily collecting clothes and some family keep sakes, she was dismayed to see her artwork and china scattered across the floor.

As the family moved into the vegetable garden ashes and a cloud of smoke puffed around them, wafted from the house fires burning on the other side of Vanness Avenue.

Paul immediately set to work setting up camp while Nellie brewed some coffee over an open fire. The aroma of morning coffee brought some sense of normalcy to the bizarre setting.

Paul, ever positive, said, “At least we will have vegetarian diet and I brought enough butter to last a week.  Hopefully the fire won’t cross Vanness and we will soon be able to repair Filbert Street.”

The four unit Filbert Street building, a short distance from the Palace of Fine Arts, location of the 1916 Exposition stands intact to this day. Nellie’s oil painting of their Cupertino ranch won third prize at the Exposition.