Seventy-five years ago, in 1942, Labor Day fell on Sept. 7. The big excitement of the weekend in Berkeley was a major fire at 2815 Piedmont, “injuring two firemen” and causing $12,300 in damage “to an apartment and adjoining structure” reported the Berkeley Daily Gazette. “It was the largest residential blaze in Berkeley of the calendar year.”

The two-alarm mid-day fire was a scene of confusion, and Berkeley Fire Chief William Meinheit was caustic in his criticism of self-appointed volunteers, including those involved in civil defense, who interfered with efforts of firefighters. “We had a hell of (a) time” he told the paper “Well-intentioned but untrained citizens hampered our fire fighting considerably. Fifteen or 20 men would grab a hose and run in the opposite direction with it” from what the fire department wanted.

A fire captain told “an eager citizen” to leave the burning building. The man replied “This is a disaster. I’m an air raid warden. That makes it my business.” Neighbors complained that dozens of the unasked for volunteers trampled their gardens while dragging hoses and carrying buckets of water.

Labor changes

“A group of ten women have been hired by Key System as collectors on the San Francisco bridge railway, and the first of the group started work this morning,” the Gazette reported on Sept. 5, 1942.

“Mrs. Beatrice Hagerty is the first woman fare collector. A group of women is now in training as motor coach operators. In addition, much of the work servicing and repairing motor coaches will be undertaken by women. Faced with a shortage of manpower, Key System has announced that the use of women employees in place of men now with the armed forces will show a rapid increase in the near future.”

The Sept. 5 Gazette also appealed for “white collar men” to spend their vacations helping in local canneries. In Berkeley “there are immediate pleas for 178 men” as “peaches are jammed into every available storage space waiting processing.” Among the local canners was the H.J. Heinz Company, whose building still stands at Ashby and San Pablo, housing Orchard Supply Hardware and other businesses. The request was for 40 men to temporarily help out.

“Pay will average 73 cents an hour. The major remuneration will be a contribution of patriotic effort to feeding the armed forces.”

More grease

Berkeley’s “grease drive” was lagging, the Sept. 5 Gazette reported. Housewives had been asked to bring grease and fat scraps to meat markets. The grease would be processed for use in manufacturing munitions, but it wasn’t coming in to Berkeley markets at the expected rate in early September, 1942. Butchers were reimbursing housewives four cents per pound for grease and fat scraps.

Wilson grand-daughter

Last week, I reported on the death of former Berkeley Mayor J. Stitt Wilson on Aug. 28 1942. On Sept. 4 that year his grand-daughter, Miss Mary A.Bowles, was married in Linda Vista. She was the daughter of Wilson’s daughter, actress Violette Wilson and Irving Pichel, theater and movie director.

Irving Pichel had, in turn, headed up the Berkeley Playhouse which was a well-known repertory theatre company that performed in a converted church on Allston Way in Berkeley in the 1920s and ’30s.

Civil War veteran

Eric S. May, 95, died 75 years ago today in Berkeley at his home at 2424 Roosevelt Ave. He was Berkeley’s last known veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic in the Civil War. Union veterans in Berkeley were once “a thousand strong in membership” noted writer Hal Johnson.