A community is defined by the people who take a leadership role. In the 20th century, Paul Johnston was constantly involved in the development of Aptos Village for more than 100 years. He was the man who did everything.
Paul was born Aug. 26, 1889 in Vancouver, Territory of Washington. His family moved to Capitola when he was 10. His mother was a seamstress and kept up the linens for the Capitola Hotel. His father was away in the gold fields of Alaska.
At 11 years old, Paul ran the popcorn stand in Capitola. While he was going to school, he rounded up, fed and milked nine to 11 cows every morning and evening, helped to make butter and collected chicken eggs for Augustus Noble. In the winter, Paul hunted and fished, selling salmon for 10 cents apiece. He said it was no effort to catch 30- to 40-pound Sea Bass, Salmon or Yellow Tail. Augustus Nobel also had apple and cherry orchards. Paul would help harvest the fruit and learned to make wooden fruit boxes. They needed 10,000 to 15,000 boxes for apples plus cherries, so Paul became an expert box maker.
Paul came to Aptos in 1905. He worked for the MacDonald and Sons packinghouse and Hihn’s Valencia packinghouse in the Village. A total of 225 railroad carloads of fresh apples and 200 tons of dried apples were shipped per year. They were shipped in pine boxes which were built over a small form using 28 nails per box. When he was at his best, Paul was capable of making 120 boxes per hour. He was paid 65 cents per hundred boxes. He entered a contest and was the second fastest box maker in the state. The winner made 1 1/4 more boxes but they were of inferior quality.
Eventually, Paul also became an apple packer. The apple season began in July when they would start making boxes and ended in January when the last of the apples were packed. At that point, Paul and his wife would go down to Ojai and pack oranges. In his spare time, Johnston played semi-pro baseball on north and south county teams for almost 30 years.
Paul met Christina Jensen, the love of his life, at Mangels Ranch where her parents were the caretakers. They were married Aug. 3, 1913 and honeymooned in San Jose.
During World War I, Paul was running a railroad shuttle up to the Loma Prieta Lumber Mill carrying lumbermen and supplies and doing carpentry work. Paul eventually enlisted in July 1918 and was assigned to the Army Balloon Corps. They would send him aloft on a mile-long cable as an observer. Luckily, he was retained in Texas as an instructor because the Germans were shooting observation balloons down as fast as they went up.
After the war, Paul joined the Rod and Gun Club, became a member of the State Rifle Team and set a record. Standing offhand, at 50 yards, he fired 48 rounds and hit a bullseye every time at a target the size of a 25-cent piece. He received the U.S. Distinguished Marksmanship Medal. He has received so many marksmanship medals that he had a tunic down to his knees to hold them all.
Paul’s next enterprise was as a sign painter. He worked for a company in San Francisco and only came home on the weekend. Later, he owned a sign business in Santa Cruz, but it became so monotonous that he applied to become a postal carrier in 1922, a job he held for 25 years. Paul wanted to be outside all of the time. At the time, the Post Office was a six-by-eight-foot cubby hole inside the grocery store, (Café Sparrow). Later, the Post Office rented space in one of Paul’s buildings. Paul was the only mail carrier. Paul Johnston sorted the day’s mail at 7:30 in the morning after it was delivered by the train and later by the Greyhound bus. The mail route was nearly 100 miles long and took seven hours to deliver. The route included Aptos, Valencia, Day Valley, Pleasant Valley, Rio Del Mar, Seacliff, Capitola and part of Soquel. Paul also delivered the daily newspaper. Every Thanksgiving, even during Prohibition, there were always bottles of wine waiting for him in every mailbox.
Paul and his wife Christina owned a large piece of Aptos Village. They had been renting their house at 8024 Soquel Drive from Joseph Martin and his wife. The house was built by Clemente Castro. When Joseph died in 1922, his wife wanted to sell her properties to Paul and his wife Christina. Paul bought the property where the garage is today, and all the buildings to the east, on the bay side of Soquel Drive up to the open space between the next buildings. He bought the property to the west, two years later from George Martin, and the five-and-a-half acres down below at creek level in 1930.
Paul and Christina had a number of different businesses occupy their various properties. Paul had the first gas station in the Village in 1928. It was Shell gasoline and there was one pump. Paul leased it to William Bickmore who was an avid photographer. Paul also liked to take photographs of the area. When William died, his son was burning his dad’s photographs. Paul rescued the remaining ones. Paul gifted his own photographs and William Bickmore’s to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. That became the source for many of the historic photographs of our town.
Another one of their properties was a pool hall. It had been a bar since the 1880s. A lot of bootleg liquor passed through that bar which became a problem, so Paul eventually turned it into a market. One of their buildings had six apartments, another was a barbershop and a third was a drugstore.
Paul was part of the group that formed the first volunteer fire department. He said that it was rated the best volunteer fire department in the state. The fire truck was initially located in one of Paul’s buildings. Even before the first official volunteer fire department, the locals all turned out for any emergency. When the first automobiles came through town, they had to cross Aptos Creek on an old wooden bridge made for horses and buggies. It had a sharp left turn into Aptos Village. At night, many drivers could not make the turn and crashed through the side of the bridge and into the creek below. Paul said, “We would have to take a car out of the creek about once a week. We eventually put ropes and steps right into the bank so we could go in and pull them out.”
In 1927, the company that built Rio Del Mar offered the town a piece of property for a new school. Paul was on the committee that approved the location for the new grammar school that became Valencia elementary. His daughter Anne Lorraine Johnston was in the first class.
Stay tuned for Part Two. Our next Museum fundraiser will be March 6 at Café Rio. Dine at this great Aptos restaurant and they will donate a portion of the proceeds to the Museum. Thank you for all of your support and remember, it is never too late to become a museum member.
