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Silva, Al (audio interview #1 of 1)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Al Silva was interviewed in an office in the Signal Hill City Yard. TOPICS - family background; education; military; US Navy; municipal employment; housing and oil wells;Japanese school; gasoline service stations; oil industry; municipal employment; and Signal Hill Water Department;Signal Hill Water Department; education; municipal employment; Long Beach Gas Department; and Long Beach Airport; 6/28/1991
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- 2022-10-05
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- SUBJECT BIO - Al Silva held various civil service jobs in the city of Signal Hill beginning in 1959 and observed changes in the city. He worked for the Water Department and the Street Department where he became a supervisor. But he gave up that job to return to operating equipment, which was work he enjoyed. In this single interview, Silva describes how he came to southern California when he joined the Navy during the Korean War. When he returned from a tour of duty in Asia, he was stationed in Long Beach where he met his wife whose family lived in Signal Hill. He held several other jobs before taking the civil service test and going to work for the city. He started out oiling dirt streets and saw many changes as the city grew. Silva, at the time of the interview had lived in Signal Hill since the 1950s. The interview was conducted as part of a project to document the history of Signal Hill. INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Al Silva was interviewed in an office in the Signal Hill City Yard. TOPICS - family background; education; military; US Navy; municipal employment; housing and oil wells;Japanese school; gasoline service stations; oil industry; municipal employment; and Signal Hill Water Department;Signal Hill Water Department; education; municipal employment; Long Beach Gas Department; and Long Beach Airport;
- *** File: shasilva1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-2:12)... Identification. Silva was born in Danville, California in 1932. His father worked for the WPA and right before WWII began, he went to work for Pittsburgh Steel. The his family moved to Walnut Creek, CA, where his father worked at St. Mary's University in Moraga where he was in charge of the boiler room. Silva's mother also worked at St. Mary's in the kitchen. Silva attended school in Danville up to the second grade, then he went to Antioch, CA, then the family moved to Walnut Creek in 1947, then to Concord. He didn't finish school until after the service, and he received his diploma from Long Beach Wilson high school in 1963. He joined the service in May of 1951 and was discharged in 1955. (2:12-8:11)... Before he joined the Navy, he worked part time at St. Mary's and also at his uncle's auto shop. He enlisted in the Navy even before the Korean War broke began because he didn't want to be drafted into the infantry. He wanted to work with heavy machinery but he served instead on a destroyer. In the Navy he worked as a deck hand, then he moved into the ship store, then the laundry. Working the in the laundry was easier because he was away from the direct supervision of officers. He didn't learn any skills in the Navy that were useful later in his life. After boot camp, he boarded ship at Vallejo, then to went Port Chicago and then to San Diego. On December 1, the ship left for Pearl Harbor where they stayed for 2 months, before leaving for Midway and then Japan. He enjoyed working on the ship; it was sort of like working in Signal Hill since the crew was small and it was easy to make friends. As the ship sailed on, he got to see how other people lived in places like China and Korea as well as Japan. While he was overseas, he found out the next port they would stop at would be Long Beach. Most of the fighting ships were home ported in Long Beach; sailors he knew believed they were treated better in stores, restaurants and other places there than in San Diego (8:11-13:08)... When he left the Navy, he decided to stay in Long Beach. He met his wife, who lived in Signal Hill, at a birthday party in Long Beach, and they were married six months later. They moved up to Walnut Creek because Silva had bought a house there. When he found it difficult to find a job, they moved back down and he began to work with his father-in-law at Conrock. where he stayed for a year. Then in 1957 he went to work for a steel mill in Torrance that made machinery for oil wells. He worked there for a year and then he was laid off. Before that, in July of 1957, he took a test to work for the city of Signal Hill. He held a variety of jobs in both southern and northern California until he received a letter from the Signal Hill asking him to come to work for the city. He began in July 27, 1959 working on resurfacing Ellis Street near Pacific Coast Highway. (13:08-19:34)... In February, 1960 he transferred to a job as operator of the city's incinerator. It was located near the office where Silva is being interviewed. It was apparently a state-of-the-art machine and people from other cities came to inspect it. But as air pollution rules grew more strict the city had to stop burning trash and the incinerator was knocked down sometime in 1968. Near the incinerator the city had a large hot house, made of glass with a steel frame that sat down in a hole. There was also a 2 bedroom house with a garage that city rented to city employees. It was knocked down in 1982 and a new building was constructed. Silva's office moved there in May, 1985. The yard where Silva is being interviewed used to be used for sewer disposal. There was a little building with a sewer pump and a row of garages built by the WPA. The yard for street repair equipment was behind where the city library was located at the time of the interview. The Water Department facilities on Gundry were built in 1929; the city has pictures of the construction of the reservoir. In the 1920s and 1930s the Water Department was a 24 hour watch because of the oil well fires; the last big was in 1958 and Signal Hill was forced to take water from Long Beach to fight the fire. This was before Silva went to work for the city, but he's heard that two employees, Bill Westby and Ray MacPherson, helped with the fire. (19:34-22:10)... When Silva came to work for the city of Signal Hill, much of the area around the city yard was open fields. All the new buildings are a surprise, especially the auto mall that was being built as the time of the interview. The original plan for the auto mall included the area that was the city yard at the time of the interview. The city chose another, smaller location for the yard, but, in the end, they were allowed to stay in their current locale. (22:10-24:53)... Silva's wife lived on Signal Hill when he met her. Her father , Vincent Munoz, worked for Consolidated Rock for about 40 years, since he was about 18. He and his family lived on the same street for almost 50 years. In 1964 his father-in-law built a new two story house near the one where his family lived. He came from Mexico, and Silva's mother-in-law was from Miami, Arizona. At the time of the interview, Silva's wife's brother, Vince, is a superintendent at Edison and one of his his sisters-in-law works for Douglas and another works in a banking business. (24:53-26:50)... Silva and his wife moved to Signal Hill to live in his father-in-law's first house after the new one was built. The first house was originally built to be a store in the 1920s or 1930s. Silva and his wife lived in a couple of other places until 1966 when they bought a house at 1922 Raymond. In 1981 they bought the house next door where his daughter lived at the time of the interview. In 1984 he bought 2.5 acres in the desert, where he hopes to retire. (26:50-30:07)... Silva has seen many changes to the Signal Hill area. Many oil companies leased land for 99 years, but gave up the leases when the oil was all pumped out. When they gave up the leases, the land was available for other development. At about the same time, the city of Signal Hill widened both Willow St. and Cherry Ave. Some streets were rerouted, like 23rd St. He was once hit while in a service truck there. Another time a driver coming down the hill knocked down many of the guard rails, which were very unstable and rain often took out chunks of the street. End of tape *** File: shasilva2.mp3 (0:00-4:16)... Silva has photographs of the Japanese school house that used to be on Palm Drive. When Silva came to Signal Hill, the building was a restaurant called the "Gay Nineties" with sawdust and peanut shells on the floor. Old timers used to talk about the Japanese gardens that were around there. They said that even in the 1930s, Signal Hill was covered with gardens kept by Japanese farmers. A neighbor, Mr. Rodriguez, told him about a dairy on 28th and Cherry and a school house on Willow and St. Louis. Ray Mace told him that his family had 48 acres on Signal Hill and raised corn there. Their house was torn down when no family members lived there anymore. Several Signal Hill employees took photographs of changes in the city. (4:16-7:42)... When Silva came to work for the city, almost all of the local businesses were related to the oil business and there were oil wells everywhere. There were only two gas stations and on 21st and Cherry, there was a two story building. The court house was on the second story of that building and the lower level held a bakery. When the oil related businesses closed, the city almost became a ghost town before other businesses opened. (7:42-10:48)... Sometime around 1961, Silva went to work for the Signal Hill Water Department but he later returned to the Street Department. While working at the Water Department, he helped to install water mains and sewer lines but now the city hires contractors do this work; city officials say it costs less that way. When they dug holes for water lines, they often found old oil lines and had to cut them out. Many of the oil lines weren't buried very deep; cars could only drive on Temple Avenue after all the pipelines were covered over by the silt from the hill. Most of the oil lines were laid down in a hurry. (10:48-15:15)... When Silva started working for the city he was classified as a "laborer." Then he was reclassified as a miscellaneous employee. He ran the incinerator for about a year and half, then he worked at the Water Department for about 15 years, digging ditches and installing services. Sometime between 1960 and 1963, the city got its first backhoe and he went to work for the Street Department. Many who were hired at that time already had experience with machinery, but many quit, while Silva and John Travers stayed, because perhaps the city life was too slow. Silva can operate just about any of the machines in the city yard. The only thing he didn't want to do was drive the street sweeper. He was asked to do it in 1960, but he turned it down because of the early hours. In 1978, he became a supervisor but he gave it up in 1983 because he likes working on the street and operating the equipment. His liked being a supervisor when a supervisor was really a working foreman. At the time of the interview, a supervisor can't work out on the street anymore. He has to spend his whole day talking to people. (15:15-19:32)... EPA won't let city workers make oil dirt streets like the city employees did before 1970. Signal Hill had a machine that workers could use to pave a whole street. There's an interruption in the interview. About five years before the interview, Silva was using a backhoe to scoop up a stack of branches. As he was raising the bucket , the wall next to him collapsed. There was no rebar to hold up the blocks and no mortar to support them. He was amazed that the wall managed to stay up as long as it did and hadn't fallen down in small with earthquakes. Although the damage to the wall wasn't the city's fault, he city paid for its reconstruction. One of the former owners of the home near the wall, Maury Shoop, had a son who died in a plane crash in 1954. The plane crashed right in front of Silva's house on Raymond Ave. (19:32-26:15)... The city used to have a street paving machine but contractors, who only do that job, do it cheaper so city employees don't pave streets any more. City employees used to do heavy construction but not any more. Silva and John Travers, for example, cut off all of the water mains and rerouted them when the San Diego Freeway was built. All city employees have at the time of the interview were backhoes and dump trucks. Silva is glad he's near retirement. At the time of the interview, Fourth of July was approaching and the day before, Silva had been putting up signs. It's a dangerous time in Signal Hill. In the past, fireworks have started fires. At the time of the interview, the city was getting ready to put up signs and block off streets. The only fireworks allowed now are the ones set off at the city park a part of a celebration called "Roughneck Roundup" which was started in 1979. This event used to be called the "Festival of the Oil." Some local citizens used to have horses and put on a horse show in the ball field where the roundups are now held. The city built the ball field in 1962, at the same time the freeway was being built. Jenkins Construction donated heavy equipment to grade the field. Others donated light standards. Silva worked on the project one day, but most of the work was done by contractors. In the end, they created the only baseball diamond in town. (26:15-28:38)... George I. Osborn, known as "Pete," was superintendent when Silva started working for the city. At that time, only the ground floor of City Hall was used; the basement and second floor were closed. There used to be a garage in the basement and it was also used as a first aid station. Later it was used as a fall out shelter. (28:38-30:04)... The names of many Signal Hill streets were changed. And the look of the town changed. For example, 28th street used to be lined with palm trees. End of tape *** File: shasilva3.mp3 (0:00-4:30)... Introduction There used to be auto salvage yards on Signal Hill. Gene Wells had one where he kept a 1936 Dodge fire truck and old tractors. Some old farm equipment for farms that used to be around Signal Hill ended up in these yards. There were also dairies near Signal Hill. One year he came back from vacation and found condominiums in place of the dairy. The Long Beach Gas Department gas holder was near Signal Hill. By the time of the interview, the Gas Department stored natural gas underground. Since Signal Hill is near the Long Beach Airport, several airplanes have crashed in the area; once even a helicopter crashed nearby. (4:30-7:45)... When Silva first came to work for the city, it seemed like there was a coffee shop or a restaurant, built during the oil boom, on every corner. Two years before Silva went to work for the city, he was took night classes at Long Beach Poly to get his high school diploma. There he met an elderly man who, as it turned out, lived near him and knew a lot about Signal Hill history. He said that the land all around the airport used to belong to the Bixbys. In fact, Silva's father-in-law used to work for the Bixbys. Around the 1940s, things began to change as development began. (7:45-11:59)... The elderly man, Silva met at Poly told him that a dairy was started on Signal Hill about 1919. When Silva was reading meters for the Water Department, he had opportunities to talk with many old timers. When he started using a backhoe, many time he dug up abandoned oil wells and, in the process, found all sorts of glass and junk because the wells used to be dump sites. He also found wooden water mains, which were very old. End of tape
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