Birthday cake is always on the Thanksgiving menu at Lynette Bell’s home. That’s because her mother, Dolores Silva Greenslate, was born near the holiday in 1924. Back in those days, the neighborhood was mostly farmland, worked by Portuguese immigrants from the Azores Islands and some Japanese families. Farmhouses were two-story wood buildings with no indoor plumbing. Families raised livestock, chickens, and pigs for food. Lewis Park sits on property formerly owned by her great-grandfather, Antone Rodriques Perry.
Dolores lived with her parents, Victor and Mamie Silva, and her brother, Marvin, on an 80-acre ranch belonging to her grandparents, John and Clara Machado. The ranch wasn’t far from where The Trap sits today. Her grandparents planted vegetable gardens and fruit trees.
Dolores liked to stand on the levee to watch the ferryboats. “They came so close, I could talk with the passengers,” she recalls. At Sutter School (now site of the Cabrillo Club), she remembers learning “bad words” from her Japanese classmates. She was a teen when she met Norman Greenslate. They both went to California Junior High, C.K. McClatchy High School, and Sacramento City Junior College. Norm liked Dolores, but his second love was baseball, and he was very good. He was scouted by the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago White Sox, but World War II interrupted his baseball plans. He served with the 398th Army Engineers and was photographed at the Battle of the Bulge. Ken Burns used this photo in his documentary film and book entitled The War.
Dolores did her part in the war effort by growing a victory garden and entertaining troops at USO dances. Lynette says her mother loves to jitterbug. Dolores is also in the Burns film, recounting when she sent a pin-up picture of herself to Norm, so he wouldn’t forget her. He certainly didn’t. They married in 1946. Norm played in local softball leagues and, years later, was inducted into Sacramento’s La Salle Baseball Hall of Fame. He passed away in 2017 at the age of 93.
In 1962, they moved into the Greenhaven 70 development. She acquired the nickname “Duck Lady,” as she would feed day-old bread to the ducks in the clay pit (now Lake Greenhaven). In 2015, she was selected as Grand Marshal for the July 4th Pocket Parade. Signage on the vintage car she rode in said “Duck Lady.”
As a founding member of the Portuguese Historical and Cultural Society, she devoted 10 years of her life interviewing Pocket’s Portuguese families. They are included in the book, Portuguese Pioneers of the Sacramento Area. She’d visit Pocket schools wearing traditional Portuguese attire to share these stories.
These days, she enjoys church and Sunday potlucks with Lynette, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
She remembers the special birthday cake Grandma Machado made. It had lots of whipped cream and fresh fruit, served with homemade vanilla ice cream. Kids drank root beer and adults got red wine – all homemade. This Thanksgiving, Dolores plans to indulge in cake, wine and a birthday dance.
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