Carl Herman Hittenberger - Surgical Store Boss Has Come Long Way - By ANITA DAY HUBBARD - The San Francisco Examiner, 04 Mar 1962
I follow East Bay Yesterday, and you should, too. A few days he posted this:
A listener just sent me this old newspaper clipping about his great-grandpa, who was born in Reno in 1886, but grew up "on a 5-acre farm in then remote East Oakland." They grew most of their own food and "had enough extra to barter for things they needed from the general store."
— East Bay Yesterday (@ebyesterday) September 14, 2021
Since I like to research old-timey Oakland stuff, and I know how to dig through old newspapers and old maps, I figured I'd try to go from an image of a newspaper clipping to something readable, with context. Here it is. Thanks, Liam.
Mature Living
Surgical Store Boss Has Come Long Way
By ANITA DAY HUBBARD
He puts in full time as active manager, always on the job, at his main surgical appliance store on Market St, and the five statewide branches that
have grown from the first shop he and his bride set up at McAllister and Jones in 1912.
They'll be celebrating their
50th wedding anniversary
this fall, along with their son Herman, now manager of the production
departments and their daughter Martha, treasurer, and co-ordinator of the
ladies departments, and three grandchildren.
Carl Hittenberger's 75 years rest as lightly on his erect, athlete's body as
a dry fly on a trout stream.
He was born in Reno on Nov. 22, 1886. He was an infant when the family moved to a five acre farm in then remote
East Oakland, to rear their six children. His father, skilled in his native
Germany in making surgical appliances and braces, found a job in San
Francisco.
The farm was two miles across open fields to the commuter train at the foot
of 13th Avenue [now Park Boulevard, north of East 38th street - MF] that connected the ferry boat to the city. The family
collected all the broken crockery they could find to mark the father's walk
in the pitch dark mornings and nights across the pastures and ditches. [This is what it looks like today. It appears the street was renumbered, perhaps when the highway was put in, because the house is now 1367 E. 36th Street. - MF]
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| The rough location of the farm, in an 1888 Map of the City of Oakland and Surroundings. |
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| The same location in an 1899 Map of Oakland and vicinity, Showing Real Estate & Electric Railways |
Carl and his siblings worked hard on the farm, where chickens, pigs and a
few cows, together with orchard and vegetable garden, supplied food for the
growing flock and enough extra to barter for things they needed from the
general store.
The store wagon came every Saturday, and they traded eggs and butter for
sugar and coffee and such, "even Steven."
About young Carl's only sport as a small boy was fishing for shiners in the
Oakland estuary.
He remembers once he had a noble string of fish, hung in the water to keep
them fresh, after a long day's angling.
A shark came along and gulped down the lot.
In later years when he read Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea" he had a
fellow feeling with the poor old fisherman, and his lost trophy.
He never lost his taste for fishing though. He maintains a rustic lodge on the Klamath River, is past president and the only sur
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CARL HERMAN HITTENBERGER ... an active manager |
viving charter member of the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club, and two years champion distance plug caster.
H. H. HITTENBERGER 29 Apr 1902, Tue
Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com
Carl's father opened a business of surgical appliances and braces in Oakland
in 1902. The children all helped in the store.
When Carl was 13, and was graduated from the
Swett grammar school, he enrolled at night school, and began working full time for his dad.
After four years, at 17, he went to in New York to work in a Brooklyn
surgical appliance factory. In 1907 he went to Germany to study and work in various orthopedic
clinics, then back to Oakland for three years, thence to New York where he
served an apprenticeship in the manufacture and fitting of prosthesis for
the
George R. Fuller Co., managed their branch in Philadelphia until he returned to Oakland, and
married
Marie Drewes, the an German girl he had met on his first trip back from Germany in
1907. That was Nov. 5, 1912
A month later young Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hittenberger, established the "C. H. Hittenberger Company" in San Francisco.
They worked together for five years. Mrs. Hittenberger often carried on
alone while her husband went by hired horse and buggy to "call on the trade"
in neighboring counties.
Carl Hittenberger has a dedicated approach to his work. A large proportion
of the employes in all the branches are amputees, or wear appliances of one
sort or another.
Same house in 1908 and 2021 (although there have clearly been some modifications over the years) pic.twitter.com/337ymAefZJ
— East Bay Yesterday (@ebyesterday) September 16, 2021
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