Iva Langness: The Grand Dame of Fair Oaks

If you want to learn about the history of Fair Oaks, go right to the source. Often referred to with reverence as the "Grand Dame of Fair Oaks," Mrs. Iva Langness is the president of the Fair Oaks Historical Society and was born and raised in Fair Oaks.

"I grew up in the community. Everybody knew everybody."

"My mother's family came here in 1887. And about that time my father's family, too, though I'm not sure. But it must have been about the same time, within a year of each other, because their children and my mother grew up together in the colony."

Mrs. Langness has seen many changes in Fair Oaks over the years. "Nobody locked their door, or anything. When I was younger, we were free to grow up. We could go anywhere, which I did a lot of."

She has many fond memories of time spent at the river playing with friends and going with her family on picnics. "I was pretty church oriented, so we went to a lot of church picnics, especially on the Bluffs, particularly with the Raymond family." Her mother was a big "picnic person" and often looked for many reasons to picnic on the Bluffs, especially to celebrate birthdays.

Mrs. Langness attended Fair Oaks Grammar School, in what is now the Fair Oaks Community Clubhouse. She lived across the street from school and would wait for the bell to ring and then run to get in line. One of the favorite after school activities of children at the time was gathering at the schoolhouse to play baseball.

Iva Langness and other children in the colony also spent many hours in her uncle Bill Raymond's grocery store, that was located in what is now the Mary Scott Building. The children would go to the store for a stick of candy, a banana or some other treat. and next door was an ice cream parlor.

Another uncle, Immer Rice, owned a blacksmith shop on Crestline Avenue and her and her cousins could watch as anvil's and horseshoes were "magically" made from red hot iron.

When she was a little older, she had a job after school. "I worked in the telephone office when I was in the eighth grade, for 25 cents an hour. It was right downtown Fair Oaks. Mr. Rose owned the telephone company, and the electricity. His daughter Polly was the manager and I worked for her after school."

The phone company also rang the signals for fire and called up everyone if the water was going to be shut off. Sometimes the water would be shut off for several days, and the residents would hurry and fill all available containers, even the bath tub. With all the river dredging, rock crushing and excavating, water line breaks were a common occurrence.

Mrs. Langness graduated from San Juan High School, then went to San Jose State for two years and married in 1928. She stayed in San Jose with her husband for four years, then they moved back to Fair Oaks and she hasn't left since.

When asked how Fair Oaks has changed compared to when she grew up, Mrs. Langness responded, "The freedom of growing up: It was a caring community. I don't think we're any less caring, it's just that we're different people and we're always so busy. Everybody's working these days. In my day, mothers were home.

"Since everybody works, it cuts down on socialabilty, a lot, your participation in things." But, she added with a laugh, "We do have better roads."

Another change she has seen is in food preparation. "We gardened most of our food. In fact, during the depression we gardened all of our food. Not extensive things, but enough to live on. And we did very well with garden stuff. But it takes a bit of doing.

"Vegetables, for instance. If you raised a good crop, you canned it. I grew up canning, my mother canned, my grandmother canned. I grew up canning from the time I could reach the table top." Now she is happy for the conveniences of selections at the grocery store and her large freezer, although she added with a laugh that she probably doesn't need "that big of a freezer."

Before the big freeze in the early Thirties that killed many of the crop trees, Fair Oaks was primarily an agricultural society, producing a large citrus harvest. During orange picking season, professional packers came in and packed a hundred or more crates a day. Two train carloads would be shipped from Fair Oaks each day.

Olives were another commodity. "The olive plant was off Phoenix. The Phoenix's donated that property."

In addition to heading the Historical Society, Mrs. Langness is active in the Woman's Thursday Club and is a member of American River Patrons. She joined the Junior Woman's Club, a part of the Woman's Thursday Club that was open to young woman, when she was twelve or thirteen. "Mrs. Phoenix was the mother advisor. There was a club of younger people, a small group of girls whose parents belonged to clubs. And to belong to that you had to be voted on. You did not jump on and pay your dues, oh no. It was a big deal.

"Every once in a while I come across someone who lived here a long time that I never even heard of."

But you can bet Mrs. Langness knows all the native Fair Oakians and they know her. If you don't know her, she'll be happy to invite you to one of the many groups with which she is involved.