1933-1937 (7 to 11 years old)
The house we lived in on Coleman Creek was not much of a house.
My mom swept the floor every day, maybe more. She was very clean.
Anyway, this house had cracks in the floor, maybe a half inch wide, so
all the debris went under the house, where we had a dog named Socks who
kept everything clean on the ground. He was later killed and thrown in
to an abandoned well by a man named Strunk. My brothers and I always
hated him and tried to think of ways to get even. We never did. Mr.
Strunk had some goats and they were always eating the roof off his
house. We always thought it was because he killed Socks that he was
getting what he deserved. It was about this time I started school. Age
7. We didn't have a kindergarten, so everyone started at seven in the
first grade. I remember my first day very well. My teachers name was
Mrs. Fish. Not a very nice lady. I had never seen an indoor toilet
before and my first day at school was an adventure indeed. During the
first morning, I had to go to the toilet. When I got to the toilet, I
didn't know where or what to go in. They had wash basins, urinals, and
toilets. I ended up peeing in the brass floor drain. Didn't realize
until the next recess, what I had done.
We were very poor back then, in the middle of the Great Depression
as it was called. We didn't know we were poor. We always had enough
to eat and were warm. When I say we, I mean Roy, Bernie and me.
Mrs. Fish always made me stand up so she could show everybody how
clean my clothes were, even if they were patched overalls and shirts
made from flour sacks. I hated it. She always made a lot of how you
looked. Some kids took a lot of flack because of her. It's strange
though. One of my good friends was Ted Fish, her nephew. My best
friend, by the way, was Glen Wright. I understand he still lives there.
I'll find out one of these days. I guess the rest of my first year was
uneventful. In school, that is. That was the year that Bernie and I
went cherry picking. There was a man named Andy Calhoun. A friend of
my dad's. Everybody was a friend of my dad's. Incidentally, anyway, we
always passed Calhoun's cherry orchard going to and from school. Dad
always said, "Don't take anything from anybody unless you ask first." If
we wanted to get killed, all we had to do was take something that wasn't
ours or lie about anything. Everyday going home from school, we would
knock on Mr. Calhoun's door and ask if he had any cherries we could pick
to eat. He always said we didn't have to ask every time, but we said
our dad said we did. By the time he finally got through to us the
cherry season was over.
When I was eight, rather on the Christmas (about three weeks)
before I was eight, my sister Garnet, who was working in Medford at the
time, bought a Radio Flyer wagon for Roy, Bernie and me. It was
probably the nicest Christmas present I ever got. Even though I had to
share it with my brothers. We always shared without any conflict. One
time we scrounged up an old buggy. You know? Like the ones you see in
the western movies. We took it all apart, except for the wheels and
king beam. That is what ties the front and rear wheels together. So,
after we took the body off we nailed a board about a foot wide to the
king beam, then tied a rope to each end of the front axles to steer
with. Then we would spend a half day or more getting the contraption to
the top of a hill on an old road. Roy would hold it back while Bernie
and I got on. He would give it a push and jump on. Me steering, Bernie
in the middle and Roy in back. Let me tell you, that was one hell of a
ride. I'll bet we were going sixty miles an hour, bouncing and swaying
and it was all over in 3 or 4 minutes. We would spend every day doing
this until the wheels disintegrated. Usually about four days.
After that we would take the iron wheels off an old wheelbarrow. I
should say iron rims. Then take a stick about 30" long and nail a cross
piece near one end about six inches long so it looked like a cross.
Then holding the bottom end of the cross, we pushed the wheelbarrow rim
and guided it with the cross stick. Running behind until we were
pooped.
Another favorite past time, and one of mine, was swimming. It
really wasn't swimming but at the time I thought it was. There was an
irrigation ditch running by our house in Phoenix. It was about 15 feet
wide and four feet deep. A little way past our house. Maybe a half
mile, it crossed a gully, and of course the water crossed in a flume, or
a ditch made out of metal, anyway. We would go to the upstream side of
the flume and float across and out onto a cement apron. Just beyond the
cement apron the eater washed away the bottom of the ditch so there was
a big deep pool and the water swirled around in a kind of whirlpool. I
would come out of the flume and across the apron and into the deep
water. Usually the current would carry me across the deep pool to the
shallow water on the other side, but sometimes the current would whirl
me around into the deep water and since I couldn't swim I would go
under. Roy was the only one who could swim, so he always went first and
waited to see that the rest of us all got across. If not, he would dive back
in and pull one or both of us to the shallow water. I`ll bet he
saved me from drowning five or six times a day on a summer afternoon.
Going home from swimming on those same summer afternoons we used to
stop at a grove of trees. Wild grapes were growing in these trees. The
grapes weren't all that great, but the vines were hollow. We would cut
off a piece about 6 inches long and smoke it like a cigarette. Further
along towards home were several large tomato fields. You could reach up
under the vines and find a big red ripe and cold tomato. Boy, were they
good. Another thing we did in late summer and early fall was swiping
apple juice. There was an apple and pear processing plant in Phoenix
called Newberry Packing Co. They had a huge wood vat that they stored
apple juice in before making cider. It must have held 10,000 gallons.
It was out in the middle of a storage yard and not easily seen. We
would get a nail and drive it into the crack between the wooded staves.
Pull the nail out and it was followed by a stream of apple juice, which
we would catch in what ever was handy. In a few minutes the pulp inside
would fill up the hole and stop the flow until the next time we wanted
some juice.
About this time of year the blackberries were ripe. My mom always
canned whatever could be canned. The reason I brought up the
blackberries first is because we always picked them barefoot. No
fooling, from the time we got out of school in the spring until we
started back in the fall, we never wore shoes. This made our feet very
calloused on the bottom and with a little care the blackberry thorns
never bothered us. As I said, my mom canned everything. My dad would
go out into the woods and near a spring, he would build a scaffold about
20 feet up in a tree. Before dark he would take his double barreled
shotgun and climb up to the scaffold. He would clamp a five battery
flashlight to the bottom of the barrel. He would also place a piece of
rock salt near the spring. He would wait until a deer came. When the
deer licked the rock salt, you could hear it very easily. Dad would
turn on the light. The deer would look up at the light and it would
blind the deer. Dad would fire and we would have meat to can for
winter. As I said before, we were very poor and it was extremely
difficult to provide for a large family during the depression, so we
took what we could get, when we could get it.
We had a single shot 22 rifle among other weapons my dad owned.
Dad would give Roy three or four 22 shells and send him out to get some
silver gray squirrels for supper. Roy always came back with three or
four squirrels for supper. I never remember Roy missing a squirrel.
Even to this day, I don't know of a better shot. There were lots of
Laurel trees around where we lived. Just before dark, hundreds of
robins would come to roost in these trees. My dad would go out and
point his shot gun up into the tree and shoot twice without aiming. He
would kill as many as two hundred robins. All of us would spend half
the night plucking and cleaning them. My mom would make a great big
stew or pot pie as she called it, with homemade noodles. It was
positively delicious. Mom also canned robins.
Another thing my mom excelled at was baking bread, or any other
pastry. I remember the bread, because she always baked a little loaf
for me. I can still taste that warm bread with butter on it. We only
had butter when we had a cow, which wasn't too often. Aunt Garnet still
bakes it once in a while. When we didn't have butter, we had Oleo
margarine. Back then, Oleo, as we called it, was white. It came with a
little package of coloring. It was up to one of us to mix the coloring
into the Oleo. It was a rotten job and the Oleo didn't taste that good
anyway. Saturday night was bath night. We had a big wood cook stove
and mom would have us bring water from the creek and fill several large
pots to heat on the stove, then pour it into a wash tub. Bernie was
always first because he was the smallest, Roy and I took turns being
second. Speaking of water. We never had any running water or an indoor
toilet until I was almost nine.
I was nine before I had my first taste of beef. I had pork and
chicken of course. One of our real great treats was store bought bread.
It was almost like eating cake. We usually had that once a year. The
year I was in the 3rd grade, we lived at a place called Mud Springs.
There wasn't anything there except us and another family down the road a
half mile. We went to a school on the other side of the mountain called
Independence School. I don't remember how far it was, but it seemed
like quite a ways. I remember that school was out at three o'clock and
if I didn't go straight home, it would be dark when I got there. Early
in the school year, it was still pretty warm out and we always stopped
at a farm called The White Place. They had a little house log built
into the ground. It was called a spring house and was used for keeping
food cold. There was a spring coming up right in the middle of the
earth floor. It was cold enough to make ice crystals in the milk stored
there. A cold cup of icy milk sure hit the spot on a hot afternoon.
As I think about it, it must have been about four miles from home
to school. The reason I am trying to remember this is because one day
in late fall (maybe November) Mr. Sauer from down the road came and told
my dad that a German shepherd dog had gone mad in Medford and was
thought to be roaming Dark Hollow. This is where the White place is.
We would cross the hill from school and into Dark Hollow, stop at
White's for some milk or an apple. I got to fooling around and Roy and
Bernie went on without me. When I realized they were gone, I started
out alone, going up the side of the hill on a trail through head high
brush. As I continued on, I looked back and saw this big dog following
me. As of yet, I didn't know about the mad dog. Anyway I stopped to
let the dog catch up with me. But when I stopped, it stopped. This
went on until I was almost home. The trail came out on the road about
300 yards from our house. I looked back again and the dog was getting
much closer and I could see the foam on his mouth and he started to
snarl and started to run after me. I started yelling for dad. Just as
the dog was ready to catch me, dad stepped out on the porch and shot the
dog right over my head. I was so scared, I wouldn't go out after dark
for months. Anyway, dad told us not to go near the dead dog. He got a
can of kerosene and poured it over the dog right where it lay. Piled
some wood on it and set it on fire. He kept putting wood on it until
there was nothing left except ashes. Then he spent the next month it
seemed, telling us to stay away from any animal that looks or acts
strange. Later, we heard that a little girl had been bitten by this dog
and later died of rabies.
I told you about carrying water from the creek for bathing. We
also had to carry water for my mom's wash day. Everybody got up at
daylight and building a fire on a rock fire pit. Filling two great big
tubs with water. One to wash and one to rinse. My mom did it all by
hand on a wash board. I still don't know how she did it. It was work a
full-grown would protest. There was a hand operated wringer to squeeze
the water out of the rinsed clothes and of course this chore always fell
to the boys. It was a day we didn't look forward to.
I was telling back a ways about mom canning. Since we didn't have
electricity. We didn't have a refrigerator and since we lived out in
the mountains, there wasn't any ice man. The only way to keep anything
cool was to use a window cooler. This consisted of a box, maybe an
apple crate or something similar and attach it to an open window. Drape
the outside box with burlap. Then periodically wet the burlap and the
air passing over the burlap would cool whatever you had in the box. Not
too efficient, but it sure helped keep the butter from melting, and as I
said before, butter was a rare thing for us.
After we left Mud Springs came the big event. We moved into
Phoenix. My dad rented a house, known as the Johnson place. This is
the first place we ever had that had electricity and running water.
What an absolutely amazing phenomenon. I must have flushed the toilet
twenty times the first day we moved in. Our radio wouldn't work on
regular house current because ours worked on a car battery. I suppose
it won't mean very much to tell you about the programs we listened to.
To all of us they were absolutely spellbinding. The actors and our
imaginations were all that was necessary for the best entertainment you
could ever imagine. The Johnson place was just across the irrigation
ditch I was telling you about, from the school house. It was the first
time, we didn't have to go a long way to school. No more getting up
before daylight and getting home at dark. We were really living.
I remember one time when we were going to Independence School. Roy
did something wrong, I don't remember what, but the teacher was going to
spank him. I should point out here, that the school had two rooms. One
had from the first to fourth grades. And the other had from the fifth
through the eighth. We had two teachers and a handyman. Roy's teacher
took him to the furnace room to punish him and he didn't think he
deserved it, so he wouldn't let her spank him. She called the handyman
and they both tried. It didn't work, so the teacher sent him home.
When he got home, dad wanted to know why. He told him and dad made Roy
go back to school and let the teacher spank him. She must have saw
something funny about the whole incident, because when he got back to
school, she really broke up and everything was forgotten.
That brings to mind, my first fight. We had, as all schools do, a
class bully. His name was Warren Hays. He would make fun of our
clothes, take part of your lunch, or whatever else he could do to make
you uncomfortable. One day we were playing on an outdoor basketball
court and here comes Warren. He grabbed the ball and pushed me in the
face. That was the last straw. I kicked him in the knee and when he
bent over to rub it I hit him in the side of the face. Well, we were
just starting to get into it and the bell rang. He said, "We will
finish this after school." After school, I waited, but he never came.
That was my first fight and the last time we had to worry about Warren.
As long as I have you all primed, I better tell you about my first
encounter with a girl. We were both seven. We were up in a loft over
her folks garage, just doing what kids do, when we ran across a book.
The book had some nude pictures in it. We wondered if we looked like
the pictures, and took off our clothes to find out. That's about all
that happened. When I got home, my mom asked me what I had been doing.
I knew that taking off my clothes as I had and where I had was wrong, so
I lied. She whaled the hell out of me. I never knew until years later
how she knew. She noticed that my shirt was buttoned wrong and put two
and two together. Mothers are pretty smart.
It was about a year after we moved to Phoenix, when we moved again.
This time to Talent, Oregon. Another little wide spot in the road just
south of Phoenix. We only stayed there a short time and then came the
big adventure. I was ten years old. Both my sisters, Garnet and Jean
had moved to Reno, Nevada. Both were married. Jean was separated from
her husband, Al Davis, who is the father of my niece, Pat. Garnet was
married to a man named Emilio Campagnoni, a Brazilian immigrant. He was
a nice man and pretty well off. He ran a garbage collection company.
Anyway, Garnet and Jean wanted dad to move to Nevada, because there was
a lot better chance for him to work at his trade, which, as I said was
an electrician and power lineman. We had an old red truck with wooden
spokes in the wheels. One day, long before daylight, we left Oregon.
Mom and dad and Bernie were in front. Roy and I were in a big cardboard
box on top of all our belongings. What an adventure. None of us kids
had ever been further away from home than Medford, so this was like a
trip to any exciting place I ever dreamed of.
My dad never, ever drove over 35 miles an hour, so the first day we
got as far as Dunsmire, CA., about 125 miles. We made camp off the road
a little way. We had a tent and a camp stove and bedrolls, so it was
just like home. I'll never forget. We had a whole lot of biscuits and
beans and it's still one of my favorite meals. The trip was uneventful
until we turned east of Red Bluff and started over Mount Lassen. We
were about halfway across when an axle on the truck broke. Dad got a
pull to a small gas station and store nearby and they had a phone. I
should say here, that back then, phones were kind of scarce outside of
cities. Dad called Garnet, and her husband ordered an axle out of San
Francisco and had it shipped to us by bus. It took five days. We were
pretty high up in the mountains and it got pretty cold at night. Cold
enough to freeze ice on the water bucket. It really bothered my dad's
rheumatism and he was in constant pain, although he tried to hide it.
When it came time to install the new axle, we all had to help. Finally,
it was done and the next morning we were off again. I guess I didn't
mention we only traveled in daylight. No lights on the truck. That day
we were traveling on the road between Susanville and Reno and I can't
remember ever being so cold before. I can remember having to pee so bad
and couldn't get dad's attention to stop. Seems like we went on
forever. We finally stopped at the Nevada state line. What a relief.
Dad called Garnet and she and Jean met us at the city limits and led us
to our new house. A place they had rented for us at 941 Quincy St. I
can't recall how long we stayed there, but I finished the fourth grade
at Orvis Ring School.
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