Meet my grandaunt Ann Ross Deveggio...

When I was growing up, my maternal grandparents, the Rosses, lived in Lockeford, California. Lockeford is dribbled along California Highway 88 which is coincidentally the town's Main Street. Lots of traffic but more importantly (as I recall it) lots of truck traffic! Which was a challenge if my grandmother Mae Violet Ross was to receive a visit from her sister Ann. Ann was married to Louie Deveggio and their house was almost directly across the street. So it took a little care to make sure you weren't going to get run over when a visit was in order.

Formerly the Ross residence in Lockeford. The only thing missing is the sign post out front that said "PHONE" and pointed to the phone booth on the porch.

The Ross house above is little changed from my recollection in the 1950s. Even the picket fence is still there. At some point the Ross's sold the house to their daughter Catherine and her husband Ladoit Tucker. Ladoit repainted the house and I contributed a tiny bit (I did a crap job on the little section he entrusted to me!). They didn't have the house too long- they moved to nearby Lodi where he was worked for Pacific Bell.

 

One thing that has disappeared is the hand crank lever action elevator which was used to get both Rosses from the porch to the walkway. Both were paraplegic- Mae lost use of her legs from polio in about 1940 and Lewis lost first one leg then several years later the other from infection related to his diabetes. 

 

Formerly the Deveggio residence and directly across from the Rosses. The concrete stairs that led
to the road are gone- replaced by new owners with a rear entrance which avoids the busy highway.

 

The Deveggio house had concrete stairs which led down to the street (SR-88 and also Main St. depending on whether you were passing through or visiting there). And there was a driveway to the right side of the house which led down to the highway- pretty scarey way to get out of the driveway. All of that has been rearranged by new owners to relocate the entrance rear the rear of the property. 

 

Looking at these Google Maps photos, both houses are in pretty good shape considering they're probably on the order of 100 years old. Behind the Deveggio house is the commercial packing shed where local farm products were processed for shipment (Jack Tone Road is behind the house somewhere).

My Aunt Ann was Anna Rebecca Ross. She married Louie Deveggio. One of the first things that needed adjustment was what they ate. Anna (Ann) was a good cook as I recall but Louie was very ethnic in his food preference, so Scotch-Irish Anna had to learn to cook Italian dishes. I recall one summer when I was visiting that Ann left the kitchen and went to the driveway on the right side of the house and clipped leaves from what looked for all the world to my 10 year old eyes to be a hedge. "Who eats leaves from a hedge?!" My cousin Doug said "She's gonna make 'barchico macaroni'. It's really good". "What's 'barchico' mean?" "I don't know but it's really good!" In the Deveggio house barchico was a pasta dish made with elbow pasta, Parmesan cheese, olive oil and finely chopped sweet basil... basilico. So 'barchico' was probably supposed to be 'basilico'. At about 6 feet tall hat bush which I took to be a hedge was the biggest basilico (sweet basil) plant I've ever seen! And she clipped one leaf at a time. And yes I loved that pasta!

Before marrying Louie, Aunt Ann was a telephone operator first in Stockton, then later she transferred to Angels Camp where she apparently was a supervisor of telephone operators. At that point they were both living in Angels Camp. They married in 1912 and relocated to Lockeford. When the Rosses had the telephone exchange in Lockeford, Aunt Ann did her time with the rest of us handling the switchboard though she was the only one of the lot that could speak with authority. And she wasn't bashful about keeping kids in line when it came time for them to answer calls to the switchboard (everyone pitched in operating the switchboard!).

Ann & Louie never had kids, but my cousin Jean Shipman spent summers with the Deveggios. Jeanie's father was a pilot who flew crop dusters. On one occasion he had a problem with his plane while dusting in Greenfield, California... about 35 miles southeast of Monterey, California. As he made a pass over the field he was dusting, the engine hesitated or lost power. He dumped the entire load and tried to turn away from the power lines. Witnesses reported to the newspaper that his plane brushed a wing tip on the ground and crashed. In a flash Jeanie had lost a parent. Apparently her mother had trouble keeping everything going so Ann would care for Jeanie during the summer while Jeanie's paternal grandparents provided a home the remainder of the year. When I visited during the summer I would usually find Jeanie across the street at the Deveggio's or at the Ross's home.

 

When I was a kid I recall my father telling me a story about Louie Deveggio. My father was nearly giggling as he told the story. Louie and his brother Frank owned Sierra Bottling Company (apparently been gone for decades). My father told me that Louie was once the sheriff of San Joaquin County. During prohibition while he was sheriff Louie and his brother Frank were bootlegging beer out of there soda bottling company. I repeated that story many times and planned to do it here. But before committing the words to the blog I thought I ought to do a little research...

Turns out Louie was in fact a deputy sheriff in Calaveras County- not in San Joaquin County and definitely not the sheriff. I recently learned that years later Louie was a Fire Warden in San Joaquin County, but never the sheriff. And he and his brother did in fact own the Sierra Bottling Company. So the seeds of the story are there. However from my experience Louie loved to tell a story. So I get the feeling Louie found a willing audience in my father and blew a little smoke up his butt just to get a laugh out of him. And my father loved to laugh! As far as I can tell Louie, his brother Frank and Sierra Bottling Company were not the bootleggers my father claimed. Which is really too bad- it was a great story!