Maggiolo History
Sisters Anita (left) and Alma Maggiolo visit Live Oak School in the late 1930s. Both grew up in Live Oak and had attended the school in the 1920s and early 1930s. Their parents were immigrants from Italy who carved out a niche as vegetable farmers when most of Live Oak was chicken ranches and bulb ranches.
CAPITOLA HISTORICAL MUSEUM COLLECTION
Santa Cruz Sentinel
26 February 1984
By DON MILLER Sentinel Staff Writer
In those late winter days when the sun emerges from its pale shadow and the rains have been absorbed into the rolling earth and the first wild-flowers jut upward to the blue sky like rumors of impending spring, it's somehow jarring to discover farmland within the city limits. It's also somewhat sad. The last large tract of open space in Santa Cruz is located in the embattled Live Oak area. The land, an amorphous grab bag of parcels bordered by 7th Avenue, Capitola Avenue, and the Broadway Extension, provides an anachronistic setting for wistful memories of a not-so-long-gone era - the Live Oak of the first six decades of this century when it was a rural enclave of chicken ranches and vegetable farms. Except for this glade of green hills, fallow fields, and a weathered barn or two, Live Oak has changed dramatically in the last twenty years.
This is the story of one family's changes on the last remaining undeveloped land in Live Oak. Rose Maggiolo's parents, Giacomo and Maria Ceresetto, bought the ten acre parcel that runs from 7th Avenue down to Arana Gulch in 1923. Rose's husband. Emilio, grew up down the street. His family owned the land where the Hillhaven Extended Care facility now sits. Emilio's parents, Guiseppe and Silvia (who will turn 90 this September), were born in Genoa, Italy. Rose's mother and father were born in the same city. The Ceresettos came to Live Oak in 1922. Before that, they lived in Bonny Doon, where they planted a vineyard on top of a hill.
"We had 14 inches of snow that year, Rose remembers. "The grape got frozen on the vine."
They bought the Live Oak land for $750 an acre. "During the depression," says Emilio, now 69, "the land here went down to $250 an acre." Rose's family raised row crops carrots, beets, turnips, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, squash, corn, parsley, parsnips, rutabaga, celery root, radishes, and string beans. "Lots of string beans," she says.
Emilio's father came to Santa Cruz in 1900. He lived on a vegetable ranch in Soquel, then moved to San Jose where he raised and sold produce. He came back to Live Oak in 1924. Rose and Emilio both attended Live Oak School. They met when he was in the fourth grade and she was in the first. They were always friends.
"There weren't many Italians in Live Oak then," says Emilio. There was a slaughterhouse nearby. The flies would congregate. Emilio grew up down the street - driving a produce route. In 1930 he dropped out of Santa Cruz High after his father died, leaving the mother, two sisters and a younger brother to support.
"Those were rough days," says Emilio. He'd leave at dawn to go downtown to the wholesale market on Water St. All the vegetable growers would meet there. Emilio would bring his produce to the market. Local grocers would come by to pick and choose among the bushels of green cabbages and rows of yellow corn. Emilio would buy the excess fruits and vegetables. Until World War II, when he couldn't get enough gasoline, he delivered to individual customers. He also sold to restaurants, hospitals and rest homes.
Emilio was a familiar sight around town first in an old Model T he kept for 10 years, then later in either of the two battered International trucks he used for deliveries. There were some bad times. During the Great Depression, he couldn't sell his vegetables. "We'd feed produce to the horses and cows," he remembers. "People ask me, 'Why?' The market just wasn't there. I couldn't sell string beans for two cents a pound."
Times got better.
After the War, he expanded his acreage. He plowed with horses until 1950. Now he bought tractors to furrow the fields, collect the harvest, to raise dusty clouds that blew across the cars that Rose. Then she would put them in a newspaper and burn them in the woodstove." "The area (Live Oak) was 90 percent chickens," Rose says. "Fleas and flies and rats," laughs Emilio.
They were married in 1946. They moved into an old structure on the back part of the property. "The termites used to hold hands to hold it up," says Emilio of his honeymoon cottage. "We could hear them eating at night," remembers Rose.
They worked hard.
Sundays were for picnics. Sometimes they'd go to Twin Lakes Beach. "Wading not swimming," Rose smiles. The chores came first. The row crops were planted early in February. They'd continue to plant until October. "It was warmer then," Rose says, remembering that she never needed a coat for school.
Emilio has his own memories of the weather - a killing frost one Labor Day, another that came in June of 1934. "We had beans growing on the slopes," he says. "They went black overnight. Those things stick in your mind when you lose a crop." The families would finish harvesting in March or April. The summer's crop would already have been planted. There was always work to do.
Rose and Emilio had a business and a home they'd built in 1952. "We weren't getting rich, but we were happy." They raised two daughters, Susan and Linda, in Live Oak. Their property borders the new yacht harbor. Since the 1920s the city has wanted to link Brommer Avenue and Broadway Street to provide a straight line access to downtown for Live Oak residents (and others). That road, still unbuilt, would have to cross the Maggiolo's land.
"My father didn't plant in that area (where the city surveyed)," says Rose. "The state wanted to put a four-lane road across the gulch," states Emilio. "They allotted $275,000 for it but the hassle got so strong they pulled in their horns. The Supervisors spent the money for bicycle trails." By the 1970s, change had come and gone. "There was no market," complains Emilio. "Too much was being raised in other areas." In 1972, he plowed under part of his crop - rows of cauliflower and radishes disked underneath the dark earth as the field hands watched and wondered if they'd return to jobs in the next season. It hurt, says Emilio, "but we'd cut down our acreage and we started to specialize (in crops) and to use less water.
Emilio drove his produce route until 1982. He'd done it for 52 years. "A lifetime," he sighs. He'd stopped planting the year before. "We'd been the last farm (in Live Oak) for a long, long time," says Rose.
A farm in the city.
"In the old days," Emilio points out, "you had to be close to town because of transportation." Those days were gone, with the chicken ranches and dirt roads and the wide-open views.
"I couldn't spray anymore with all the buildings," says Emilio.
"I was still enjoying it. Rain or shine, seven days a week I delivered. I developed a lot of friends. But you get up into your 60s and the time comes ... "
I never thought it would get this crowded," says Rose, listening to the whine of traffic out on 7th Avenue. "It hurts now to see it (the land) like this, but it's nice to see him not work."
The future is hazy.
The couple own a mobile home park down the road a piece. Their roots are in Santa Cruz.
But still, "I don't know how long we'll be able to stay," says Emilio. "We get badgered all the time by developers. They offer you an offer you can't refuse." They started to come to Live Oak in the early 1960s. "In droves," says Emilio. The developers would knock on his door or stop him in the fields and ask him if he wanted to sell out. "Not now," he'd say, "or in the foreseeable future."
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Owned and operated Sorrento Oaks Mobile Home Park from 1973 - 1995.
Emilio died 8/6/1997 (82 years old)
Rose died 11/26/2008 (88 years old)