Our parents, John Everett and Anna Mae (Dillon) Flanagan, were married May 21, 1927 in Arthur, Nebraska and started their life together in Lewellen, Nebraska. Daddy worked on large farms and operated his own truck while Mother cooked for the farm hands on the farms where Daddy worked. Near the end of the Great Depression Daddy built a house on his flatbed truck and he, Mother, my two older sisters, my two older brothers and I (one year old) headed west looking for a better place to live. Daddy and Mother worked their way through Montana, Idaho, Oregon and California and eventually settled in San Francisco. Daddy worked on the construction of the San Francisco International Airport, worked as a welder on the construction of one of the high-rise buildings in San Francisco and worked as a welder in the Hunters Point shipyards during the war. During our years in the San Francisco Bay Area Mother and Daddy had six more children, bringing the total to eleven children.
Around 1947 Mother and Daddy purchased a peach and grape producing ranch in Modesto, California which later turned out to be an unsuccessful business so they sold that farm. Their twelfth child was born on January 11, 1948 in Modesto and died that same day. Later they purchased a home in Danville, California, and while living there Daddy worked for the Fruehauf Trailer Company in San Leandro; Mother, along with caring for us children, managed and operated their egg and chicken business which, at times, consisted of two thousand laying hens and several hundred fryers. They eventually sold their home and business in Danville and purchased a forty-acre ranch in Manton, California with the anticipation of raising Nutria, which is a fur-bearing animal. While Daddy worked to develop the Nutria farm and worked part-time for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company; Mother, along with caring for our family, worked for several years as a cook for others in Red Bluff, California and later opened up a small diner in the old Manton Trading Post in Manton and called it "Ann's Diner." |
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John
Everett & Anna Mae Flanagan 1935?
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John
Everett & Anna Mae Flanagan 1946
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Because of the poor market they put the Nutria business on hold and Daddy worked full-time for PG&E until he retired. Prior to his retirement he and Mother purchased a piece of property in Manton, Ca. and placed a mobile home on that property and converted it to a restaurant and also called it "Ann's Diner", which Mother operated until she retired at Eighty years old.
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