As you recall from last month’s story, Ralph Mattison owned a number of businesses in Aptos Village and he helped to organize the Aptos Volunteer Fire Department and build the first fire truck.
The same people who fought fires were also first responders to emergencies. Before the concrete bridge over Aptos Creek was built in 1928, the entrance to the Village was an 1873 wooden bridge made for horses and buggies. In the middle, it contained a sharp left turn into Aptos Village. When early cars started using the bridge, they would routinely crash through the railing at night and land in the creek 100 feet below. One night, Ralph Mattison and Paul Johnson nearly crashed themselves. They found five automobiles down in the creek. They saved the living and removed the dead. One time, they had to rescue a man who was thrown out of his car and was lodged in the top of a redwood tree beside the creek.
Despite the advertisements by the Rio Del Mar promoters that this was one of the safest beaches in the state, many bathers had to be saved. In the 1920s, most people wore heavy wool swim suits and often hung onto ropes to enter the water because they could not swim. There were no lifeguards. A lot of people came to the beach in those days from San Jose and they would often get into trouble. Ralph was not alone in rescuing people, but he personally saved seven people from drowning. Only one person ever thanked him. Ralph was also a deputy Sheriff and was a trustee of the Aptos School (today’s Valencia Elementary).
In the late 1920s, Ralph was one of the founders of the Citizen’s Commercial Bank in Soquel. It closed for a time during the Depression, so Ralph continued to lend money privately to those who needed it. Some of his loans were never repaid. After the bank reopened, it was eventually sold to County Bank.
Ralph Mattison even owned the concrete ship for a short time. In 1934, after the ship had broken and had been stripped, Art Wikkerink, a fruit packer in the Village, purchased it and the wharf from the owners, the Calvada Company. He charged people to use it for fishing. Wikkerink owed Ralph some unpaid bills, so he gave Ralph the deed to the ship. Ralph did not record the deed because he did not want to pay property taxes on it but kept the deed for a year-and-a-half. Eventually, Art paid off his bills and Ralph gave him back the deed. While he owned it, Ralph removed the running lights from the ship, which he later donated to the Seacliff Museum.
During World War II, Ralph was a Deputy Warden and was in charge of the local militia and the observation post in Aptos Village. A three-story tower was erected in the middle of the Village to view and report on the activities in the bay. Thick telephone lines were laid directly on the ground to Ralph’s house. He had direct lines to Fort Ord and Army Headquarters in San Francisco (no dialing, just pick up the receiver). He was also in charge of two, four-inch cannons located in the Village.
Ralph also supplied dried apples to the war effort. The Army wanted to pay whenever it was convenient. Ralph had to negotiate to be paid on a regular basis so that he could pay his crew. Then he had to go to San Francisco to talk to the General who talked to Washington D.C., in order to negotiate for the wood to make boxes for the dried apples. The worst part was that the Army did not want to give him nails to make the boxes because they needed the steel to build warships. It is a good thing that Ralph was a good negotiator, or it would never have worked out.
Ralph survived an explosion in the 1940s. He was welding a lawn mower for a friend when a spark ignited an open cask of gunpowder. Ralph’s recovery took over three months in the hospital and he was lucky that he did not lose his arm and shoulder. Eventually, Ralph decided to retire. Ralph’s wife Hazel passed away in 1980 after almost 62 years of marriage. Ralph credits her as the reason for their successes.
Ralph Mattison passed away on the Fourth of July 1999, 102 years young. He was a heroic part of the fabric of our town. His house on Mattison Lane, on the hill above Aptos Village, has been replaced with several new homes.
Our next “Coffee, Tea and History” presentation will be “The Death and Life of the Monterey Bay.” It is the compelling history of the decimation of the bay’s marine life and the heroic people who helped to revive it. Our speaker is Dan Haifley of O’Neill Sea Odyssey and Save Our Shores. Saturday, Jan. 26, 2:30-4 p.m. at the Rio Sands Hotel community room, reservations are required. This story is also the “Our Community Reads” book for 2019. $20 general, $10 for museum members and guests with a library card. Don’t miss it!
