1938-1939 (12 to 13 years old)
About that same time, Bryson, my oldest brother went to work for
Crescent Creamery Company. He had a home delivery route for milk,
cream, butter, and some other dairy products. Right away, we started
getting all the things free. Back then, milk came in quart and gallon
glass bottles, that I haven't seen in many a year. Milk was ten cents a
quart and thirty five cents a gallon delivered. Incidentally, bread was
ten cents a loaf. Doesn't seem like much now. Does it? This period
was about 1938 I think.
That summer we moved across town to 618 Spokane Street near where
dad worked. Of course that fall we started going to Orvis Ring School.
That seemed like the place that I started changing. I started raising
hell, fighting, playing hooky, smoking, and every other thing that gave
mom and dad ulcers. That time in my life continued for quite some time.
I'll tell you about it as we go along. One incident that stuck in my
mind all those years concerns my teacher. Her name was Grace Warner and
she was teaching the sixth grade as well as being principal. I was
being my usual obnoxious self one day and she decided that I should be
punished. The usual punishment for boys was getting whacked across the
palm of the hand with a ruler. Anyway, I held my hand out and she gave
me a good one. I really hurt bad and instead of crying, I laughed.
That bought me about five more real fast. The more she whacked the more
I laughed. She broke down and cried. I really tried to behave after
that and got promoted to Junior High School. I think the only reason I
got promoted, was so she could get rid of me. There were, of course,
other teachers, but none made any impressions on me.
We were pretty close to the Reno fair grounds. We used to go down
there and exercise the horses. I mean leading them around in circles.
They paid us fifteen cents an hour. One morning and we had enough for a
movie, 10 cents and popcorn, a milk and a hot dog 10 cents. Sure did
like those movies. One time at the fair grounds, Bernie and I were
crossing the infield. They had electric fences put up temporarily to
keep the stock apart. There was an irrigation ditch running down one
side with a fence along side of it. You had to jump the ditch and go
under the wire. Well, Bernie missed and fell in the ditch. He grabbed
the fence to pull himself out and damn near electrocuted himself. I
tried to pull him loose and got a big charge too. I finally had to
tackle him to get him loose. When you are wet and hold onto an
electrically charged wire, even a low voltage fence, you can't let go.
I'm telling you, it ain't no fun!
They also had the Reno Rodeo at the fair grounds in June of every
year. I sure liked those bucking horses and the bulls. Back then we
had western movie cowboys. They mostly sang a lot and always caught the
bad guys. They were all our heroes and they would come to the rodeos.
Us kids would die to get close to one of them. Kind of like your rock
stars of today. Up until that time, my life had been pretty much like
any other kid growing up during the depression. However, when I was
fourteen, things started to change. I have done a lot of soul searching
to decide whether or not to tell you about this period in my life. I
still have some misgivings, but I guess I better.
1939-1940 (13 to 14 years old)
After I finished the seventh grade, I never went back to school
again. I had some friends that were a little on the wild side. Me too,
I guess. The first thing I did was to get a job with Western Union
Telegraph delivering telegrams. That was a big deal back then. I made
twenty five cents an hour. To deliver the telegrams you walked, which
was pretty slow, or you rode a bicycle. I didn't have a bike, so me and
another guy stole one. I used it for about a week and one day the
police came and arrested me. When mom and dad found out, you would have
thought the world had come to an end. They were absolutely honest
people and thought I was too, and honest people just didn't do things
like that. Anyway, I was put on probation for a year. I don't know
what was going through my mind when all this was going on, but it
couldn't have been much. Two weeks later me and this same guy stole two
cases of Coke off a delivery truck. The driver caught us a half block
away and took us home. My dad beat hell out of me and told me I needed
some discipline.
In 1940 they had an organization called the Civilian Conservation
Corps or the CCC. You were suppose to be seventeen to join but my dad
signed the papers to enlist me. This outfit was just like the Army.
You wore uniforms, slept in barracks, ate in a mess hall and had Army
officers running the place. The term of enlistment was six months and
you served it in a camp that was ran by the Department of Agriculture or
the Bureau of Land Management. I was sent to a BLM camp about 70 miles
east of Fallon, Nevada. Right out in the middle of the worst desert you
ever clapped a eye on. When I said 70 miles from Fallon, I meant that
was the nearest place with human habitation. We were paid $30.00 a
month. Of the $30.00, twenty-one was sent home to your parents. We got
nine dollars to spend on cigarettes and other frivolties. They fed us,
furnished our clothes and a place to sleep and took care of us if we got
sick or hurt. This camp was made of wooden framed structures with tar
paper roofs and walls. They heated our barracks with coal stoves. Two
in each barracks. Sixty men to a barracks. We used to take turns
staying up at night to put coal in the stoves and to see they didn't
burn down the building around our ears.
I went there in October and stayed all winter, and I mean winter.
Lots of days it got down to 10 degrees below zero. As we were working
out in the brush all the time, the cold was pretty bad. It was a real
treat to get kitchen duty because we got to stay in a warm kitchen all
day. We got up at six every morning, cleaned our area and made the
beds, went to breakfast at 6:30 and got on open trucks to go to the work
area which was five to thirty miles from camp. We grubbed brush and dug
out areas that showed signs of having water. If water was found, we
cemented in small pools to feed grazing cattle and sheep roaming the
desert. At lunch time we had sack lunches. Usually baloney and cheese
sandwiches, a piece of pie or cake, and an orange. We made coffee over
open fires we had going to keep warm. If you have ever eaten a baloney
and cheese sandwich straight out of the refrigerator you will have an
idea of what our lunch was like. So, in self defense we used to put the
sandwiches on a shovel and hold it over the fire to melt the cheese.
Once it was melted it wasn't too bad, except that more often than not,
we burned the bread. It was a winter I still remember very often.
We got a pass to go to town once a month. Always on a weekend.
Sometimes I could go to Reno, but most of the time we went to Fallon.
They ran a truck to Fallon. If you wanted to go anyplace else it was up
to you to go there and back on your own. One weekend I decided to go
home. Since there was no way to get there except hitchhike, I did.
There was very little traffic then. In fact there is very little
traffic now (U.S. 50). I went out in front of camp and stood for quite
a while. Nobody stopped, so I decided to walk a ways. It was starting
to get dark and cold, so I kept walking to keep warm. Before I realized
it, I was a long way from camp with no traffic at all. I finally
decided to wait until morning. This was about 10:00 at night. I found
a spot under some big old sage and grease wood and sat down. As I sat
there and cooled off after all that walking, I started to get really
cold. This was in March, but plenty cold yet. I got colder and colder
and started worrying about freezing to death. I tried to start a fire,
but everything was too damp to burn. I ran out of matches and then I
finally thought of trying to go back to camp. By then I was so damn
cold I couldn't get warmed up at all. I was getting desperate. I
finally came to a place where an old creek bed ran by the road. It was
about four feet deep. I was trying to find a place to crawl in to get
warm. Finally I found a hole in the bank, not quite big enough for me,
so I started to dig it out with my hands. After I got a couple of
inches off the surface I notice the earth was warmer. It still held the
heat from the days sun. I laid down and knocked enough warm dirt down
to cover myself with. I laid there the rest of the night under several
inches of dirt. It was really pretty warm. I do remember my teeth
chattered for a long time. I am sure that dirt kept me from freezing to
death.
In the morning I finally caught a ride. Only it wasn't to Reno,
but back to camp, a nice warm breakfast and even warmer bed. Everybody
laughed at how dirty I was. I didn't care. I was warm. My brother Roy
enlisted and came to camp in January. He didn't like it much and after
about six weeks he just went home. I had always thought it was like the
Army and you couldn't quit, but Roy did. He said he walked the whole
seventy miles to Fallon. It is a long way, but I believe him.
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