Blog | California Genealogical Society

by Debbie Mascot (6/4/2026)

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The Jukebox this month got me to thinking about the cable car controversy that prompted the Song/Advertisement that was posted. I didn’t know about this so I set off to learn more and went down some rabbit holes (as I tend to do).

By the mid-1940s, San Francisco’s transit system was struggling. Years of heavy wartime use and deferred maintenance had left the cable car infrastructure in poor condition. City leaders, including Mayor Roger Lapham, argued that the aging system was expensive, outdated, and impractical. Modern buses were promoted as a more efficient solution, and plans were announced to replace the Powell Street cable car lines entirely. To many officials, the cable cars were little more than worn-out relics and financial burdens. Supporters of modernization viewed their removal as a necessary step toward the city’s future.

Not everyone agreed.

Leading the opposition was Friedel Klussmann, a civic activist who organized the Citizens’ Committee to Save the Cable Cars. At a time when city politics and business leadership were overwhelmingly male, Klussmann and a coalition of women launched a determined public campaign. They researched the issue, challenged official claims, and argued that the cable cars represented something far more valuable than a balance-sheet expense. They were a living piece of San Francisco’s history, the last surviving cable car system in the United States, and a symbol of the city’s unique identity.

The campaign quickly became a citywide controversy. Newspapers debated the issue, politicians took sides, and voters were asked to decide the cable cars’ fate. Preservationists accused city leaders of using political maneuvering and behind-the-scenes tactics to push the system toward closure, while supporters of removal insisted that sentimentality should not outweigh practical transportation concerns. The battle reflected larger postwar debates taking place across America, where older transit systems were being replaced by automobiles, buses, and freeway construction.

In November 1947, San Francisco voters delivered a decisive verdict. By a margin of more than three to one, they approved a measure protecting the Powell Street cable car lines. Additional efforts in the following years preserved portions of the remaining network, although not every route survived. The five-line system that existed before the controversy was eventually reduced and reorganized into the three cable car lines that continue operating today. Despite those losses, the preservation movement succeeded in saving the heart of the system.

The cable car controversy remains an important reminder that historic preservation often depends on ordinary citizens who are willing to challenge powerful interests. What many officials once dismissed as obsolete transportation is now one of the world’s most recognizable urban landmarks. Thanks to Friedel Klussmann and the activists who fought for their survival, San Francisco’s cable cars continue to climb the city’s hills nearly eighty years later, carrying both residents and visitors through a moving piece of history.

Sources:
https://www.streetcar.org/75-years-ago-cable-car-war/
https://www.sfmta.com/blog/75-years-after-battle-save-cable-cars
https://www.sfcablecar.com/history.html
https://www.facebook.com/groups/remembered/posts/1316732925195222/
https://sfcablecars.org/stories/politics-tricks-cable-cars

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While I Was Away

by Debbie Mascot (6/1/2026)

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It happened while I was at a writing retreat in Wyoming for 2 weeks. To be honest, I was only at the retreat for a week, but we had to drive because my husband’s mother followed NO GENEALOGY RULES and just changed his name all willy nilly when he was a baby without any documentation so he couldn’t get a passport or RealID. He’s now been to court to legally change his name (at the age of 64) so that he can fly again

That was too much info, but I clearly still have issues. ANYWAY, while I was gone, the Jukebox came out! My fav! The focus on this one is transportation and I couldn’t decide if I’d send in my Pan-Am story or my railroad story. Pan-Am is longer and has already been printed elsewhere, so I’ll include it below, and send in my railroad story.

Do you have any transportation industry stories of you or your ancestors? I’d love to read them in the Jukebox! Send to: [email protected]

The Pan-Am Experience.
Repost from July 2015 (https://www.l-ags.org/tracer/Vol_43_3.pdf)
By Deborah Conner Mascot

I was thumbing through a Good Housekeeping magazine recently and came across a short article titled, “The Pan Am Experience.” Next to it was a picture of what appeared to be the internal organs of a glamorous 1970s passenger airplane, complete with smiling flight attendants dressed to the nines. From the gist of the headline, I gathered that it was an advertisement to eat how you did on Pan Am in the 1970s.

For only $295 ($355 if you want the fancier upper dining deck) you can board a replica Pan Am 747 and never actually fly anywhere. At the check-in desk, instead of getting strip-searched and herded like cattle, you get a ‘70s boarding pass complete with ticket jacket and carry-on tags. Using your boarding pass, you now have a chance to enjoy the lounge without having to sign up for the airlines’ outrageously heavy interest Mastercard program. In the lounge, with drink in hand, you can visit the authentic Pan Am memorabilia.

When I was growing up, my father was a graveyard airline mechanic for Pan-Am at San Francisco Airport. Without implicating my family in the demise and eventual bankruptcy of Pan-Am, I believe it’s okay to mention that at one time or another we lived on much of the Pan Am memorabilia that you will see in your Clipper Club lounge. Our coats and luggage all featured the logo, having been “borrowed” from the airline. My childhood art masterpieces were done on the Pan Am computer punch cards of the 1970s. Many of our food items, including the Chateaubriand served on special family occasions, were “leftovers” from Pan Am. Just seeing the logo for me is like many of you might feel seeing the wallpaper that adorned your childhood home.

After you peruse the items of my childhood, you will board the Air Hollywood replica of Pan Am’s first Boeing 747. Having not actually experienced the Air Hollywood version, I can only imagine that you get to board this without the person behind you crashing your heels with his luggage or the woman in front of you taking the last spot in the overhead compartment.

Once boarded, your Stewardess (not flight attendant) will be wearing the original tightly fitted uniform and you will be offered a cocktail while soothing music fills the cabin of the fake airplane. While they perform a safety demonstration, you get to sit back in comfortable, roomy seats, rather than being shoe-horned into the spot between the smelly bible salesman and the extremely large woman who may or may not be a circus performer.Rather than having peanut packets thrown at you, you are served a gourmet four-course meal on fancy China (that may or may not have been used with the Chateaubriand during my special family dinners). And instead of having plastic cups thrown at you with 6 precise cubes of ice and four exact fingers of cola, you are served your choice of beverage in crystal glasses that may or may not have been my childhood everyday glasses.

During his 10 years at Pan Am, my father made lifelong friends. It wasn’t until Dad’s funeral that I learned that some of my “uncles” had only worked with him for a couple of months before moving on from Pan Am, but they never moved on from one another. There are many stories I cannot share that I learned about Dad during the after-funeral party, and most also featured Pan Am in some way or another.

Pan Am was a pioneer airline, in both its early routes through continents and in its fostering of a family-like atmosphere for the employees. The Kelly Act of 1925 authorized government mail contracts to private carriers. As a result, many aircraft owners began air carrier services, including Pan American World Airways in 1927, when it won a contract to deliver mail to and from Cuba and the United States. By 1930, it expanded to include mail between Mexico and Latin America and the United States. At this same time, air carriers were forced to carry passengers not just cargo to remain competitive. In 1939, Pan Am was the first United States passenger service to Europe and then provided military transport to Europe, Africa, and Asia. By the middle of the 1970s, Pan Am had become one of the world’s largest air carriers. Deregulation, recession, turmoil in world politics, airline airfare wars, and high gas prices, caused Pan Am to lose ground in the mid-1980s.

With their fleet aging and no money to purchase new aircraft, Pan Am was spending too much money on keeping their flights in the air– over $800 an hour for maintenance costs for every hour an aircraft was in flight. It should be well noted here that my mechanic father was not earning a cent of this $800 an hour per aircraft, as he was no longer working at Pan Am. He was in the lay-off program of years before, but if he had been among the mechanics left, he would have used his Macgyver-like skills to use spit, glue, and duct tape to keep those planes in the air for far less than $800 per hour (we should all be thankful for that lay-off). Pan Am filed for bankruptcy in 1991 and, while they tried to reopen in 1997, they had to shut their doors once again when they couldn’t pay their creditors.

While they may not have been the best of business people, I will forever be grateful to Pan Am for my “uncles,” for my winter-wear, and for giving this poor child from a poor family the taste of Chateaubriand, which I found at the time tastes best with a hint of catsup.

The Bootlegger’s Daughter: A San Francisco Tale

by Debbie Mascot (5/28/2026)

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One of our CGS members wrote to me with a book recommendation. I love to read, but sometimes it’s hard to find time. That said, the intro she sent was intriguing and so I downloaded the book to my Kindle and had to force myself to put it down to go to sleep.

It’s a historical fiction written by a retired physician from Northern California. It’s based on the life of his grandmother, who lived in San Francisco in the 1920s through Prohibition. I’ll put his summary below, but what catches me is that the stories nearly mirror those told to me by “my” Mariani family who lived there during the same time. Getting different stories, but with the same backdrop makes it come to life even more! I haven’t got to the end, but I do highly recommend. I downloaded on my Kindle, but I’m going to order a couple of “real” copies- one for my library downstairs and one for my local used bookstore!

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-bootlegger-s-daughter-a-san-francisco-tale/341362077370bbb1?ean=9798993547510&next=t

Here are his words:

My book is titled The Bootlegger’s Daughter: A San Francisco Tale. The book is a historical fiction but based heavily on fact. The book was written based on detailed notes including letters from the 1940’s that my uncle collected and interviews with relatives during the 1990’s and a more recent interview with one of my aunts.

You will find out what is fact vs fiction in the author’s notes at the end. About 85 percent of the family story is based on fact and 100 percent of San Francisco’s history is factual. I had to add some fiction where there were gaps, including conversations.

It is about a girl (my grandmother Ann White born in 1910) the eldest of 6 children born to immigrant parents from Ireland. Her father William White put an illegal still in their family home in the Bernal Heights neighborhood in SanFrancisco in the early 1920’s. He expanded his operation by leasing a home next door where he added a still and kept a mistress. Ann and her sister were tasked with monitoring the stills and delivering their father’s concealed whiskey via a child’s play wagon stacked with dolls, to speakeasies, homes and back room bars. Her father develops severe alcoholism and in a bout of alcohol withdrawal called delirium tremens he cuts one of his fingers off with a hatchet in front of his family. He dies, not too long after, leaving the family poor. Her mother has a mental breakdown shortly after and Ann is left with the aftermath. The story follows her throughout her life having to overcome many challenges with her closest sister.

Like a James Michener novel I weave the city’s history throughout the story through conversations, observations and character placement. It’s not a deep dive but Topics covered include the Gold Rush, Chinese/Irish riots, Emperor Norton and Mark Twain, The Embarcadero, Golden Gate Park, Chinatown including the bubonic plague eradication, Japantown and the origins of the fortune cookie, WWI, San Francisco politics in the early 1900’s, San Francisco Worlds Fairs, Prohibition including its roots, the 1930 fight between Max Baer and Frankie”Campbell” Camilli, The New Deal Program, Dock worker strikes, Lilian Coit and Coit Tower, WWII, The U.N., the Beatniks, The Key System, SF sports, The Beatles concert at Candlestick, The Summer of Love, and the assassination of Mayor Moscone and Councilman Harvey Milk and the subsequent trial of Dan White using the “Twinkie defense”

I am a first time author and a retired family physician ( 29 years). One of my degrees at UCSD was American History and I currently do volunteer work with Placer County Museums and give tours of Old Town Auburn and an old Hotel/ farm house called the Bernhard House.