10. Verda Agnes Chatfield & George William Day
7. Verda Agnes Chatfield, child number seven, married George William Day (Mar 27, 1927) a non-Catholic (he converted the day before their wedding only to get past Nellie). Grandma wasn’t happy. George was ten years older than Verda who was only eighteen—and he was a widower with two small sons (a two-year-old and an eight-year-old) and he had married Verda less than a year after his first wife died from a botched abortion and he drove a brand new Jordan which cost a fortune—any one of those things being enough to raise a mother’s eyebrows. He was also a bootlegger, but Grandma didn’t know about that. Actually, George was in business with his Uncle Louis, distributing slot machines and punchboards (stand-up lottery-type gambling games) to taverns and country stores, along with dispensing a little liquor on the side. Liquor was sold in mason jars and whenever a raid took place, the innkeeper bumped the jar of white lightening with his elbow, knocking it over, any evidence disappearing down the drain. Bootlegging was the country’s most profitable industry—and gambling was the real great American pastime. George drove a 1926 Jordan, a beautiful touring car with a California top (a leather covered hardwood roof) and sliding plate glass windows, the hood ornament a block away from the steering wheel. (In 1926 a Jordan Playboy cost $1,845; in 1930 a Model T went for $300). He was a slight wiry man, high-strung and unpredictable. A one-time semi-professional bantamweight boxer, he never weighed much more than 120 pounds—and could lift twice his weight. Once a drinker (his stomach problems eventually kept him away from alcohol), he smoked a pack of Lucky’s a day.
Apr 1927: Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, Sacramento Co., California (pg 4):
Verda Chatfield, George W. Day
Wed in Chico
CHICO (Butte Co.) April 9. —Miss Verda Agnes Chatfield, widely known in Chico, was married last week to George W. Day, a graduate of the Chico schools, son of Mr. and Mrs. G.W. Day of Chico.
The bride is the daughter of Mrs. C.H. Chatfield of this city. During her education in the Chico public schools she was prominent in school and social activities and since graduation has been identified with the business life of the city. The couple will make their home in Chico Vecino.
Note: They were married in St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Chico by Rev. Jas. Dermody
When Louise, George’s first wife died, his oldest son Bob lived with Louise’s parents in Chico; Verda raised Junior, his younger son. Bob spent his summers with George and Verda from 5th grade through high school in Watsonville and Vallejo, but preferred living with his grandmother; he was an only child there and well-taken care of by her.
Verda was more like a friend to Bob as they were only ten years apart in age. They got along at times, and at times, they didn’t. She got mad at Bob whenever she caught him snatching a mason jar of her stew; before she could nab him he’d make a run for the river to feed the bums and tramps. He ate with his friends in their hobo camp hidden under the bridge of the Pajaro, listening to their fancies of flight tales of riding the rails. He was in the third grade.
Bob sold papers for the Chico Enterprise, getting in line six days a week with the other urchins his age, plunking down his dime for six newspapers. You did your regular customers first, then ran like hell and yelled “Chico Enterprise! Chico Enterprise!” up and down the streets to sell the rest. They sold them for a nickel a paper, saved a dime for the next day’s batch, and made twenty cents of which they either saved, invested, or squandered. Bob enjoyed his. The movies took a dime, a dime went for black licorice (which he kept in his mouth like chew, spatting black spittle on the sidewalk, making him feel grown-up) and the rest went to rent horses for 25 cents an hour to horseback ride in Bidwell Park with the other kids in the neighborhood.
Oct 24, 1929 was Black Thursday. The financial and stock markets had crashed and the news hit the streets like an avalanche; people couldn’t believe it. Bob had never sold so many papers, going back to the vendor several times to get six more, and six more, and six more. He couldn’t believe it either. It was the happiest day in his eleven-year-old life.
George and Verda had five children together, (she lost a daughter, naming her Bernadette, the year before Marceline was born), Marceline, Jim, Judy, and Jeffery. George worked for the Union Ice Company for twenty-five years, first in Watsonville (which is where my Dad first worked with him), in Vallejo, and then in Redwood City. When he retired in the 1950’s, the family moved to Chico, and for several years he and Verda ran a girl’s boarding house for college students. One late September day, a boy came to the house to see the girls. He’d been drinking and was creating trouble and when Verda told him to leave, he knocked her to the ground. It caused the onset of her heart problems and she had a heart attack shortly after, the first of many. When George died in 1954 at the age of 55, Verda got into a clothing store and then a motel business, but neither enterprise fared well. In 1978, she died of heart failure.
By the 1920’s, almost every family had a car. The automobile was accepted and reliable.
A famous car of the 1920’s was the Jordan Playboy. It is remembered because of an ad that is its creator, Ned Jordan wrote in 1923. The ad, headed “Somewhere West of Laramie,” did not focus on the technical aspects of the Playboy. In fact, it did not mention them. “Somewhere west of Laramie there’s a bronco-busting steer-roping girl who knows what I am talking about,” Jordan wrote (so legend has it) on an envelope while riding on a train over the Wyoming plains bound for San Francisco. “She can tell what a sassy pony that’s a cross between greased lightening and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he’s going high, wide and handsome. The truth is — the Playboy was built for her.”
Jordan was inspired by a woman on a horse he saw out the train’s window as it pulled away from a small station in Wyoming. A horseman himself, Jordan was fascinated as the woman took chase of the train on her horse. “Where are we?” he asked a friend he was traveling with. “Oh, somewhere southwest of Laramie,” his friend told him. The ad was published in the Saturday Evening Post just a week after Jordan feverishly penned it and forever changed the way cars were marketed. The ad finished with, “Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things grown dead and stale. Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight.”
Source: History of the Automobile (Essay), www.echeat.com
George Day, my father’s best friend, died on Feb 17, 1954, in Chico, California.
Feb 17, 1954, Chico Enterprise, Chico, Butte Co., California:
George W. Day, Ex-Manager of Ice Firm, Dies Today
George William Day, retired manager of the Union Ice Company, died at his home on Hazel Street early this morning.
Mr. Day was born in Sacramento May 2, 1898, and it was there he received his education. He went into the ice business and became manager of the Union Ice Company’s various firms. He was employed in Watsonville prior to War II and later was transferred to Vallejo and Redwood City.
Previous to establishing his home here four years ago, Mr. Day had lived here a number of years ago with his grandmother, Mrs. Kitty DeVoe, who was one of Chico’s early pioneer families.
Mr. Day was a former member of the B.P.O. Elks Club, of Watsonville, and spent as much time as his work would permit taking part in lodge and social activities.
Survivors include his wife, Mrs. Verda Day, and the following children: Robert E. Day, of Santa Maria; George L. Day, who is with the United States Navy stationed in Pearl Harbor; Mrs. Marceline Mangini, of Oakland; Leo R. Day, of Ventura; and Judy and Jeffery Day, of Chico. He also has a brother, Guy Day of Stockton as well as thee grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements are being celebrated at the Bruise Funeral Homes and time of service will be announced later.
Feb 20, 1954: Chico Enterprise, Chico, Butte Co., California:
Funeral Services Held Today for George Day
Recitation of the rosary was held in the chapel of the Bruise Funeral Home Friday at 8 p.m. for George W. Day, retired manager for the Union Ice Company, who died early Wednesday morning. Father Burns of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church led the recitation during which Mrs. L.M. Anderson, organist, played a group of favorite sacred selections.
At 9:50 a.m. today the cortege proceeded to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church where requiem mass was celebrated.
Interment was in the Catholic Section of the Chico Cemetery. Casketbearers included Russell A. Northrop, H.B. Vaurs, Tom Day, Carl J. Clemens, A.C. Zanuker and Roy J. Mangini.
Sep 26, 1978: Chico Enterprise, Chico, Butte Co., California:
My Aunt Verda, living in Chico, died of a heart attack at the age of 70 on Sep 26, 1978. She was buried two days later in the Cathlolic section of Chico Cemetery in Chico, Butte County, California
Verda Day
Rosary will be recited at 6:45 p.m. Wednesday in the chapel of the Bruise Funeral Home for Verda Agnes Day, 70, of 123 Henshaw Ave.
Mrs. Day died today at a local hospital.
Born Aug 23, 1908, in Sanders, Mont., to Charles and Nellie Chatfield, she moved to Chico with her family at the age of three and was educated here. She married George W. Day in 1927 and moved to the Bay Area, living in Watsonville and Redwood City, before returning to Chico in 1950. Mrs. Day was involved with college housing until her retirement in 1972.
She was a member of the Catholic Ladies Relief Society, AARP, Senior Citizens organizations, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church and Our Divine Savior Catholic Parish.
Survivors are her four sons, Robert E. of Paradise, George E. of Warwick, R.I., Leo Ronald of Sacramento and Jeffery B. Of Chico; two daughters, Marceline Mangini of Hayward and Judith L. O’Brien of Sacramento; two brothers, Charles Joseph Chatfield of Paradise and Arden Chatfield of Chico; two sisters, Nellie May McElhiney of Martinez and Ina Fouch of Yuba City; 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Father Edward O’Hara of Our Divine Savior Catholic Parish will act as celebrant of the mass at 9 a.m. Thursday at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.
Visitation will be between 5 and 9 p.m. Wednesday in the chapel of the Brusie Funeral Home.