Peter Leibert's Page

Those Early Days  

By Peter James Leibert

Where I Lived  

There is no doubt in my mind that I was born in the country of the United States, within the state of California, within the boundary limits of the city of Riverside, and within the “borough” of Arlington. Over my years, I have seen a few documents which might be proof of all this, you know, a birth certificate and a baptism certificate.

Part of this process started when my maternal grandparents arrived in New York during October 1890. They were from the Zeeland region of Holland/Belgium and were on their honeymoon, but had previously decided to settle in the United States. Upon arriving in New York, Petrus and Amelia Goethals had originally planned to head directly west toward northern California. During an earlier visit, Grandpa had figured out that the San Francisco area was the place to settle.

But Grandma noticed that they could take the train from New York to San Francisco, via a southern route, for the same price as the northern route. By taking that route they would see new areas that Grandpa had not seen. So they took the southern route.

The route of their “southern” train brought them into San Bernardino, California where they were told they would have a layover and then would continue on to their San Francisco bay area destination. As they departed the train, numerous salesmen of the time approached these passengers offering free horse and buggy rides to see the surrounding area.

My Grandpa and Grandma, I am told, decided to take one of these offers, and this, my grandma told me, included a free room for the night within the brand new city of Riverside. So off they went. Before to much time had passed, they had signed an agreement to purchase an orange grove, with house, in the newly established city.

The area, incorporated as Riverside, originally had been purchased by a real estate developer during the year 1870. This developer designed a layout for the community, graded a framework of dirt roads, constructed a number of homes, and planted thousands of acres in oranges. During the early 1880’s, before my grandparents arrived, the people who resided in this area had decided to incorporate the city. This occurred during the year of 1883.

The primary street of the area, on which their house faced, was Magnolia Avenue. This “avenue”, a 100-foot wide dirt street, consisting of two divided lanes. Down the center, and on each side of the avenues, were lines of trees. Most of the trees in the part of town where my grandparents settled were Brazilian Peppers. These pepper trees had a large, fat, knobby, rounded trunk with bright green, filmy, curtain-like foliage that would wave in any breeze.

There were a few Magnolia trees, probably just enough to justify the name. Magnolia Avenue was one of the original roads laid out during the 1880s when the early developers were laying out the area and planting the orchards of Riverside community. So this is how it came that the family was to become linked to the city of Riverside.

At the same time that the Goethals newlyweds (my mother’s side) were heading toward the new world, my paternal grandparents (my father’s side) were already an older married couple and even had a 1 year-old son named George Bowman Leibert, Jr.

Both of my paternal grandparents had been born in San Francisco, Grandpa George Leibert Sr. of German ancestry, and Mary Regina Cavanaugh Leibert of Irish ancestry.

My future Dad was drafted during WWI and served with the 35^th Division in France. He survived the fighting there, but he was one of the hundreds of thousands that received heavy doses of poisonous muster gas. This left him with lung problems that affected some of his future activities. Eventually, he migrated to the Taft, California area where oil had been discovered and he got employment with Standard Oil Company. During this period he also homesteaded some land in nearby Carrizo Plains.

In Taft, he met a young Catholic girl at church that swept him off his feet. That young lady was Marie Nathalie Goethals from the city of Riverside. After an appropriate courtship, the two of them were wed. This wedding occurred in the city of Riverside. Their wedding reception was at the Riverside Mission Inn.

These newlyweds chose to build their first nest in the city of Whittier where George Jr. had transferred to carry on working with the Standard Oil Company as a Heavy Machine Operator. During those days, the job requirements for HMO”S probably included the tasks of tending to their horses’ needs, including water, feed and applying shoes as necessary for the well being of these animals.

I am not sure exactly where in Whittier their small home was located, but it was either on Walnut Street, or Union Street near Pickering Street and Whittier Boulevard. But, I do remember that the house was situated in a grove of Walnut trees. In this home, my eldest sister Marie Theresa and my eldest brother John George were born.

After a few years, the growing Leibert family purchased ten acres of orchard land from my maternal grandparents’ in Riverside. The piece of property that my grandparents had originally purchased was 25 acres on the southwest corner of what was known as Magnolia Avenue and Hughes Alley. My Mom and Dad purchased ten acres of the northeast part of that acreage.

During that time, Magnolia Avenue was known as state highway 18 and was the key road traveling through that area. There was a set of railroad tracks sharing the center of the roadway with the central line of pepper trees. As far back as I can remember our section of the tracks

were used only once a day – usually at night. A single train would be made up of an engine, and two or three freight cars and they were likely going to or from the big warehouse located a few miles west of our home.

When my mother was a teenager, Magnolia Avenue was unpaved. I have included a circa 1910 vintage picture that shows Mom and the rest of the Goethals family standing in the center of Magnolia Avenue. The roadbed in that picture appears to be loose dirt, rounded, and sloped toward large drainage ditches on either side. You will notice in the picture below that the photo had been taken before any railroad tracks were installed.

By the year 1935, when my own memory started kicking in, I recall the street as being pretty much the same – except that the pepper trees had grown a lot bigger and thus provided a continuum of shade from our place almost to downtown Arlington.

The roadway of Magnolia had been paved before the time I started taking control, but in the early days of my memory, the roadway was still shaped the same - a rounded, domed road with drainage ditches on the sides, certainly on the outboard side. The sidewalks in front of our house were always dirt. Of course, cement walkways had been installed within the business part of Arlington but that didn’t begin until we had walked almost a 1/2 mile east of our place. The cement sidewalks started at Harrison Street.

We lived about a mile east by northeast of the Riverside city limits of that time. At the city boundary where it crossed Magnolia Avenue, there was a big sign over the road – Welcome to Riverside. It is no longer there, having been replaced by a plastered wall sign announcing the city limits. Even that sign has been moved a mile or so further west. Our Leibert home was on the northeast corner of a ten acre lot, right at the corner of Hughes Alley and Magnolia Avenue. Mom and Dad had purchased this acreage from my grandparents before I was born, about 1928. The side road, known as Hughes Alley, traveled on the easterly side of the property, then went on to cross Indiana Avenue and eventually passed over some railroad tracks and then turned sharply left to terminate at Harrison Street.

Hughes was a dirt road until sometime after I had left home to enter military service (during mid-1948). On the westerly side of our grove, my grandparents had a similar 10-acre orange orchard. My grandparents actually owned 15 acres at this location in all, six acres in seedling oranges, four acres in English walnuts. Across the back they also owned 5 acres where they always grew an alfalfa crop. On the east and west sides of the “Leibert” orange grove were rows of tall Cypress trees.

I understand that the original property developers planted these Cypress trees as a windbreak for the orange trees. The trees were supposed to reduce the likelihood of any significant wind blowing oranges off the trees. Windfall still occurred whenever we had one of those really heavy “Santa Ana” winds.

The house in which I lived during the entire period of my growing up was a large stucco home, originally built as a one-story with a relatively small 12 by 15 foot “fruit cellar” basement. My Dad and his Step Dad Clarence Cochran built our house during 1928 and 1929, so it was a house that was quite new on that first day of November of the year 1929 when I was born there.

During the process of my Dad and grandfather building this house, they had been told that if you bought in bulk, it was much, much, cheaper. So they decided to order a carload of hardwood flooring, and they used it everywhere. Not only did they use hardwood in floors, but hardwood was used in the walls and the ceiling and a few other places as well.

When the house was nearly finished, my folks decided to purchase a large carpet for the living room. I understand that months went by and the carpet never arrived. So the local carpet store sent in a replacement order to the manufacturer. In due time the replacement carpet arrived and was installed. A few months later another roll of carpet arrived. The wrapping was all oily and very dirty. It had been in a train wreck.

My folks contacted the local carpet store and they responded, “if you want it, you can keep it”. It must have been too expensive for the carpet store to dispose of it. Mom and Dad unwrapped the carpet and it was fine. None of the oil or dirt had gotten on the carpet at all. So the Leibert family then became the owners of a carpet for our large dining room. I am certain that both of those carpets were still in good shape and still being used in the house at the time when it was sold during 1966.

Even though the house had a lot of square footage on the first floor (maybe as much as 40 by 60 feet) the house was actually configured originally to be a two bedroom house. It had a large living room and a little bit smaller formal dining room.

Mom and Dad had one bedroom (with some sort of baby at any one time), the four girls shared a second large bedroom, and John and I shared a sleeping porch – which was probably a room about 12 by 20 foot and was screened from the outside world – no glass windows.

The kitchen and breakfast combination room was quite large – probably 20 by 25 feet or perhaps even larger. This is where we spent most of our time when in the house. It was the only room that was ever heated. We also had a screened-in canning porch at the rear of the house. For the convenience of our household’s residents, we had one full bathroom, and a single toilet out on the screened porch. The porch toilet was in the room where the boys slept.

Sometime during the mid 1930’s, my Dad added two more rooms up in the attic where my brother John and I were then relocated. These rooms were paneled with knotty pine and then painted with a clear varnish. The floor was “hardwood” - painted brown.