They honored the Takens family, owners of Meadowlark Dairy since the 1950s. We’ve known the family almost that long, having moved into a home on Foothill Road south of the dairy in 1958. My mother routinely purchased milk from the drive-in on the original dairy site on Foothill Road when we were kids. That was before Jannes Takens relocated the cows to Tracy from the expansive field at Bernal Avenue and Foothill Road where the Laguna Oaks subdivision is today.
The Alviso Adobe city park housed part of the original dairy. The retail operation moved to its familiar location downtown on Neal Street and has flourished. They eventually got completely out of the dairy business so they buy product from others and sell it at the drive-through location.
It’s amazing how many soft-serve ice cream cones are served now that the third generation has taken over from Bruce and Patti. It’s also notable how many Pleasanton teenagers, perhaps numbering in the thousands, had their first paying job at the dairy.
The other honoree, Judy Rathbone Burt, is a native of Pleasanton whose family settled here in 1881. She worked for the school district in the Amador Valley library for much of her career and is known for volunteering with the museum and other organizations in town.
I ran into a first-in-my-lifetime experience Saturday when I stopped by the ATM machine at the Wells Fargo branch on 2nd Street in Livermore. I knew I needed some cash for the upcoming week so I inserted my card, punched in my code, and touched the screen for $40 in cash. It was taking a while and I got an odd question that asked me whether I wanted it in 20s or 50s. I said 20s, it spit out my card and started churning cash.
When the door opened, there stood a huge pile of cash--$3,000 in 20s I came to find out when I checked the mobile app and had the money counted and redeposited in my account inside the branch. Just how an ATM managed to dispense $3,000 when the normal one-day limit is $200-$300 remains a mystery to me. Just happy it happened during banking hours so I could easily rectify the error and redeposit it in my account—also helped that I happened to have that high a balance on that day.
