The Spoon family moves to California

John Spoon’s house on Chapel Ave. in Alhambra

The San Gabriel Valley, located just a few miles east of Los Angeles, was still in many ways a frontier land of wide-open spaces in 1920. One could walk the landscape through acres of orange trees, pause to watch livestock grazing in the green pastures, or stand on the shore of the San Gabriel River, which runs from the foothills to the Pacific Ocean at Long Beach. Today, meandering alongside the 605 Freeway, the San Gabriel River usually is no more than a trickle of water, its forces held back by the Santa Fe Dam in Irwindale. Centuries ago, the Gabrielino Indians camped on its shores, fishing and hunting the area and living in peace until Spanish explorers arrived.

In 1920, as it does today, the San Gabriel Mission stood proudly in the heart of the valley, a tribute to Father Junipero Serra and the Spanish missionaries who helped settle the land and educate the natives. It was in a fast-growing community named Alhambra, in a house at 213 S. Chapel Ave. about three miles from the mission, that John and Laura Spoon and their three youngest sons began a new chapter in their lives.

Ready to enjoy a life of retirement free of farm chores and snow drifts, John Spoon was anything but inactive upon his arrival in Southern California at age 56. He and his family joined the Alhambra Little Brown Church -- later to be expanded and renamed the Alhambra First Christian Church, which is still in existence today at Fourth St. and Commonwealth Ave. John served faithfully as an elder on the church board and was a member of the church choir.

Adrian in the 1920s

Alvin Spoon in 1923

Folks around Alhambra soon came to know the same personable, dedicated individual John Spoon had been for so many years in Kansas. Meanwhile, his boys worked at finishing their education. While Clifford progressed through grade school, Adrian graduated from Alhambra High School in 1923. His older brother Alvin, who had dropped out twice before, graduated with him that same year. Alvin went to work for the Standard Felt Corporation as a multigraph operator, making $70 per month (paid in gold coin). Later, he became cashier and handled payroll for the company. Adrian got a job with the Post-Advocate, the local newspaper, and eventually bought a division of the Los Angeles Times, in which he supervised a group of distributors. This began a relationship with the daily newspaper business that has spanned four generations of the Spoon family.

Carrie, happy to be reunited with her family, was making quite a name for herself in the optometry business. Working her way up through the company, she was helping to build a small, struggling school called the Los Angeles Medical School of Ophthalmology and Optometry into what became a modern, nationally recognized institution known today as the Southern California College of Optometry.

Things were going well for all, but the Spoon boys missed their older brothers and sister. They knew Faye would never agree to come to California, but they hoped to convince Floyd and Cleo, who had remained back east with Alta, to move out west. In a letter dated May 19, 1923 and written by Alvin with help from Adrian, they made a strong argument for selling the remainder of John Spoon's property and farm machinery and moving to Southern California.

Cleo and Alta’s wedding photo, 1920

"Out here you can work at something -- carpentry, painting, truck driving, factory work or salesmanship," Alvin wrote, presumably with Adrian looking over his shoulder and giving advice. "You can make at least $4 per day at any one of those jobs, and if you are good there is no end to the advancement. It will cost each of you between $45 and $60 a month to live out here. It just depends on how radical you are."

The brothers indicated in their letter that their father wasn't as wealthy as he once was, due in part to loans he had made to his sons in Kansas. They told Floyd and Cleo that John Spoon would've been a "rich man" had he listened to friends who advised him three years earlier to sell everything he had in Kansas and invest it in California. Then they closed by telling their brothers to keep the plan a secret so others wouldn't come west and provide competition for jobs and land.

"We didn't tell Carrie and Hartley we were writing this so Carrie can't think dad is helping Floyd and Cleo some more," Alvin wrote. "P.S. Dad OK'd this."

Floyd remained in Kansas, but eventually, Cleo listened. In 1925 he and Alta moved to California with their infant daughter, Wanda Jeanette, born April 19, 1924. Wanda recalls the family’s early days in Alhambra, when they lived with John and Laura Spoon in the Chapel Ave. house.

“I remember my grandmother taking care of me when I had my tonsils out at the Alhambra Hospital, which was on Garfield Ave. and Commonwealth at the time,” said Wanda. “I think I was about 2 years old. The memory is of her is in a nurse’s white uniform. Why, I don’t know. I don’t know that she was ever a nurse, and there probably isn’t anyone else around who would know.”

Eventually, the Cleo Spoon family moved into a house on Huntington Ave. in Monterey Park, a fast-growing bedroom community next to Alhambra, and joined the Little Brown Church. Cleo got a job driving a truck for Ramona Dye Works, a dry cleaning company. Cleo and Alta had a son, Daryl Wayne, born Oct. 23, 1928. Those were good times, Wanda remembers.

Carrie Spoon Hooker in 1942

“I loved to roller skate around the block, all on sidewalks,” she said about her neighborhood in Monterey Park. “The Monterey Theater was just two blocks away. On Saturday afternoon, we could go see a double feature, cartoons and news for 10 cents.

“Chores around the house were typical, I think. We had no cleaning ladies or gardeners. We had to help do dishes and clean house on Saturdays. What I hated was helping my mother wax the hardwood floors. We used Johnson’s paste and we had to get down on our hands and knees to rub it on and polish it with rags.”

Wanda attended Ynez Grammar School, Alhambra High School in the ninth and 10th grades, then Mark Keppel High School in Monterey Park when it opened in 1940. She graduated from Keppel in February, 1942, just two months after the U.S. became involved in World War II.

As the years went by, the Spoon family continued to grow as fast as the community in which it lived. On Oct. 29, 1925, Alvin married Sarah McComb, a Michigan native he met at a Halloween party at church. The couple's only child, Donna Lee, was born April 4, 1927. Carrie and Hartley Hooker adopted a son, Delbert. And Clifford, who went to work for the phone company right out of high school, had a new bride, Alice.

Adrian kept busy with his Times dealership but he also soon took a bride, Beulah. Back in Kansas, Floyd Spoon and his wife Ida became the parents of Arlene and Donald. Faye married Forrest Applegate and eventually gave birth to two daughters, Eva Jane and Joyce.

As the children of John and Laura Spoon began to start their own families, a tradition was begun in which all the Spoons gathered each Christmas Eve to celebrate the holidays. “When Donna, Wayne and I were growing up, there were lots of aunts and uncles and just we three, so we got lots of presents,” Wanda said. “Of course we enjoyed seeing all of them together.”

Wanda also recalls family camping trips, when her family would camp together with Alvin, Sarah and Donna in a “big old circus tent” at Huntington Beach. The families enjoyed vacations, she remembers.

“My dad loved traveling and we took many trips, with me complaining,” Wanda said. “Wayne and I fought as brother as sister, but when we were traveling we had a good time together. He put up with a lot from me as a bossy big sister.”

Spoon women at the beach in the 1930s

But in the midst of the good times, the harsh reality of death visited the Spoons. On Feb. 1, 1941, Laura Spoon passed away at the age of 69. As John Spoon wrote in a letter a few weeks later, "Laura just lacked two years of reaching the time when we would have celebrated our golden wedding anniversary. But she fought a good fight and was with us six years after her first sickness. She never suffered but little and was up and around most of the time."

Death struck the Spoon family again later that decade. On April 6, 1949, word reached the Spoons in California that Floyd had passed away at the age of 48 in Auburn, Nebraska. A receipt of expenses for his service at the May & Timm Funeral Home shows a total of $512.50. It also shows that Forrest Applegate paid for the entire funeral service, plus an additional $300 sent to Floyd's widow.

Family members in California always kept in close contact with Faye and Forrest despite Faye's opposition to her family leaving Kansas. Such was not the case with Floyd in his later years, however. As Floyd became involved in more and more off-beat projects -- inventions like a new type of laundry basket -- he drifted further away from the family. John Spoon, always a proponent of hard work and smart business sense, seemed at times frustrated by his son's sense of adventure.

Speaking of adventure, there was Carrie, ever the feisty one, with eyes that smiled and a voice that was never quiet. While the others grew more and more attached to the Alhambra community, Carrie moved to downtown Los Angeles, where she continued to build a reputation in the optometry field through her work at the school there.

Hartley, who had made a small fortune in the tool-making business, built a beautiful, spacious home for his wife in a place no one would have expected. On a narrow lot in the middle of a modest community of homes near the recently completed Los Angeles Coliseum, Hartley built an attractive house fronted by iron gates, featuring beautiful tile floors and including a downstairs playroom the Spoon children loved to spend time in. When Laura Spoon's health began failing, she and John lived in the back of the house for a time. At the front of the house was an office used by Adrian to run his Times dealership before he relocated it to Alhambra.

Despite two divorces in the ensuing years, Carrie lived life to its fullest and excelled at her profession. At one point in 1933, after the optometry school had to vacate its buildings because of a lack of funds, Carrie rented a house for use by the school and worked there without pay. For 13 years she worked from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the college, then from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. at a second job. Later she established the Marshall B. Ketchum Library in honor of the school's founder. She also founded the optometry sorority, Phi Kappa Rho, serving as its president in 1941.

The Spoon "boys" were every bit as active as their older sister during that time.

In 1943, Alvin bought the Monterey Park dealership of the Los Angeles Times, which he operated until his retirement in 1962. About the same time, Cleo retired from his job with Ramona Dye Works, receiving a gold ring for 16 years' service. He too bought a Times dealership, giving the Spoon family three brothers involved in the business -- plus papa John, who helped out with the delivery routes occasionally. But it was another event that year that was described by John Spoon in one of his colorful letters to the folks back home in Kansas.

Clifford Spoon in the 1930s

Clifford, known as "babe" by his brothers and sisters as a boy growing up in Kansas, was to be married for the second time on May 23, 1943 to Helen Mae Butcher, a teacher he met while working for the phone company in San Diego. In order to make it to San Diego in time for an afternoon wedding, Cleo, Alvin and Adrian recruited additional help to get their newspapers ready for delivery. In a shift starting at 3 a.m., they made short work of the deliveries. At 8 a.m., 11 members of the Spoon family piled into two cars and were in San Diego by 12:15 p.m.

Just as they were walking into the church, the Spoons heard a car honk. They turned to see Carrie sitting in a car with a man they knew to be her new boyfriend, an optometrist named Alfred Reidell. All walked in together for the wedding.

"After the ceremony, Adrian, who had his moving picture camera, took pictures as they came out of the church door," John Spoon recalled in the letter. "A large number went to the bride's home for the reception, which was very delightful. The big three-story wedding cake was a sight to behold, and was even better than that with punch, cookies and sandwiches."

Carrie invited the family to her home the following Friday. There, she announced that she and Al Reidell had been married the same day as Clifford and Helen Mae, just a couple hours before.

As U.S. forces fought to defend democracy in Europe and the South Pacific during World War II, the Spoon family worked hard to maintain their Los Angeles Times dealerships. Cleo, Alvin and Adrian all supervised large groups of delivery boys, and Wayne began to help with the business as he reached adulthood. Then in 1944, the Cleo Spoon family moved to Temple City, a fast-growing community about four miles east of Alhambra.

Clifford and Helen Mae Spoon also moved to Temple City. Helen Mae continued to teach school and Clifford rose up through the ranks at the phone company, a profession he maintained until the day he retired.

Adrian and Buelah lived a peaceful life in Alhambra for many years after living for a time with Carrie in her Los Angeles home. By this time, Alvin and Sarah had purchased a home near the downtown section of Alhambra. They had also lived for a time with John and Laura Spoon, becoming the first of three Spoon families from that generation to live in “Grandpa” John's house before buying their own home.

John Spoon remained a pillar of the community, serving his church and speaking proudly about his family to anyone who would listen. “I am holding my age real well,” he wrote in a 1945 letter. “A woman asked me the other day if Cleo and I were brothers. Some people want to call me a flirt because my hair is curly. But I resent that, because I always deal in plain facts.”

Adrian Spoon with his automobile

John Alvin Spoon died June 22, 1952 at the age of 88. The house he lived in at 213 S. Chapel Ave., near the center of downtown Alhambra, is gone now. In its place stands a condominium project. John is buried alongside his wife Laura in the San Gabriel Cemetery, a quiet little graveyard set back from Roses Road, behind the Church of Our Savior, in the city of San Gabriel just east of Alhambra. The graves of John and Laura can be found in section X, the southeast corner of the back part of the cemetery. They are marked by simple headstones near a small tree, three rows from the south fence.

Cleo Spoon invested in the stock market and could often be found studying the stock tables in the newspaper. He was also a longtime member of the Lions Club, first in Monterey Park and then in Temple City. He and Alta were members of the Alhambra First Christian Church, and Alta was active in the Michillinda Woman's Club. They loved to take long trips, visiting many parts of Europe, Africa and South America. They would always come back with trays of slides to show the family.

Over the next couple of decades, the members of the first generation of the Spoon family to live in California began to leave us. On April 15, 1964, Adrian Oliver Spoon died. Clifford Valentine Spoon, who took his middle name from his Feb. 14 birth date, passed away on Aug. 12, 1976. On April 11, 1979, Cleo Harvey Spoon died at the age of 83. On Aug. 25, 1981, Carrie Reidell died at the age of 84. And Alvin Lee Spoon, the last survivor of the seven children of John and Laura Spoon, died on Oct. 4, 1994, on his 92nd birthday.

The Spoon legacy is carried on by four generations that have come along since, and the descendants owe much to those who paved the way out west.

Douglas Spoon

27 November 2008