Growing up during WW II

In the spring of 1941, when my parents were unemployed and trying to recover from a business bankruptcy in Niles, California, my dad secured a job as a miner at the slate quarry in Placerville., California. My parents had located an old abandoned farm house on eighty acres in the fruitridge area northeast of Placerville that they could purchase for little more than the cost of back taxes. They traded in our old Willys car for a 1935 ford pickup truck and we were on our way to becoming farmers.

I was 5 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and WW II broke out. I remember it well. At the onset of World War II, my dad was thirty nine years of age. He felt a strong obligation to enter the armed forces and help in the war effort. When he tried to volunteer, the local draft board informed him that they could not use him because of his age. He was employed at the time at the Placerville slate quarry, a job I am sure he was not in love with. It was "pick and shovel” underground mining work for which he was paid about twenty dollars for a forty eight hour week.

Dad would drive the eight or so miles to work each day, the first portion of which was a over a non-maintained rutted, dirt road. When it rained or snowed, this road became nearly impassable. I recall an instance when Ray and I were walking to school and we came upon Dad in his pickup down an embankment along our dirt road. He had been on his way to work and the pickup had slid off the road. He was not hurt and the pickup received no more than an additional dent or so. One of the local farmers brought a tractor and pulled him out later that morning. I think he missed the whole day of work.

I also recall an earlier instance when Dad arrived back home from work in the morning a hour or so after leaving. We all thought something was wrong He explained ,no, he had just told his boss he wanted the day off because it was his son's birthday. He had these bursts of sentimentality and tended to do things like that. I believe the date was August 31, 1941.

Gasoline was rationed, during the war and most people were only entitled to three or five gallons per week. We had a "T" (Transportation) sticker for our pickup because we owned a farm and were therefore entitled to additional gallonage.

When Dad First Went Away

I think it was in the spring of 1942 that Dad traveled to the bay area to seek employment in the war effort. He secured a laboring job with Moore Drydock at the Oakland shipyards. He stayed at the Claridge hotel and came home about every two weeks. Usually he traveled to and from the Bay area by Greyhound bus, but sometimes he took the pickup. Busses did not run regularly and military personnel had priority. Sometimes he had to wait many hours to get his ride. Occasionally, the whole family, including Grandma Reedy would pile into our pickup and take him to Sacramento to catch the bus from there.

We all missed Dad and his absence was almost traumatic. In my opinion this had the greatest effect on my brother, Ray. Many adult friends, as well as Dad, had a way of telling Ray that he was the oldest and now "the man of the house" He was told to take good care of Grandma, Mommie, Jack and Louise. This was meant in fun, but he was very young and took things very seriously.

Dad once took Ray to Oakland with him when he returned to work at the shipyards. They didn't take the bus but rather went in the pickup. Ray stayed with a person or family named McGarvey for about two weeks and was able to spend some additional time with Dad during this period.

I recall two instances in which Dad was injured on the job at the shipyard. The first instance was a broken leg. He was working on an elevated platform near an operating crane. The crane operator, in moving a large sheet of steel, swung it too abruptly and Dad was hit. I recall him stating that he leaned as far as he could off the platform or he would have been killed. He came home briefly to recuperate, but returned while still wearing a cast.

The second instance involved a high voltage electrical shock. I don't really know how it happened, but from what I understood at the time, the voltage was several thousand volts, although indirect. He was injured and hospitalized, but recovered with no outward marks or disfiguration.

Will You Read to Us?

There was no television during the war years, of course. Our house had no electricity, telephone, bathroom, or hot water We had a radio, battery operated, which was used essentially for the nightly news. We had no means of getting to movies or any other entertainment source. We looked forward each day to the time around eight o'clock when Mom would read to us.

Mom would sit in an overstuffed chair or on the couch and we three would squeeze in around her while she read by the dim light of a kerosene lamp. I remember many, many books. Among them were the Billy Whiskers series, The Four Little Blossoms, Little Men, Little Women, Uncle Remus and The Jungle Book. We also looked forward to a monthly magazine, "Wee Wisdom", and its continued stories. For those who have experienced the privilege of being read to as a child, I think most will agree that this relationship creates a special family bonding. It did with us.

Neighbors

Our nearest neighbors were a mile or more distant. The closest were the Carrs and Hasslers, the Winklemans, the Volzs, the Toombs (Frank), the Bruenius' and the Madden's (Joe). There were different families of Veercamps, Larsens, Maddens and Toombs. Many of them as well as other local families were related. For example,Claire Carr and Nita Winkleman were sisters; their maiden name was Hassler. I also recall a saying among the locals that you don't say anything against a Veercamp because you may be either talking to one or a relative of one.

During the war years, the farm women organized self help committees and organizations to support the war effort at home. They shared home grown fruits and vegetables, canned goods, chickens, eggs, milk and items different ones had sewed. They also raised money for the Red Cross, often through sales of these same commodities.

Although the neighbors did not live close and we did not see them often, they were our security and support systems.

Tending To The Farm

Each morning Mom got up, usually before daylight, and went out to the barn to milk the cow. She would also feed the cow, pigs and chickens. During the winter, there was often ice and/or snow on the ground, which made these chores all the more difficult. She made it enjoyable at times, though. For example, when milking the cow (Daisy), she would squirt streams of milk at the cats (We had several). The cats would stand up on their hind legs and never miss a drop. I can also picture Mom going out to the barn on cold winter mornings with Mary, our calico cat, wound around her neck. Mary always appeared at the appropriate time and looked forward to this ride. A better fur neck piece, one couldn't ask for.

We children had our assigned chores. I was often called lazy, so I guess I often evaded some of my chores. I recall feeding chicken, gathering eggs and making beds. I sure didn't like washing dishes. Louise was still quite young and I don't recall that she had chores. I think Ray did the most. As I recall, he even learned to kill and dress chickens at seven or eight years of age. He also learned to cook and was preparing meals or parts of meals during this period.

On several occasions, I saw my mother unload bales of hay and one hundred pound sacks of feed from the pickup. She put them on her back and carried them to the barn. The barn was on the side of a hill and not easily accessible and it's hard to imagine that she really did this, not once but many times.

Alaska

Dad worked at the shipyard about a year as I recall. It may have been less. While working there, he heard that the Army Corp of Engineers was recruiting civilians to work in Canada and Alaska constructing a highway (now called the Alcan). This project was receiving high priority since there were no existing roads into the interior of Alaska and the movement of men and military equipment to that area was considered essential.

Dad was hired as a laborer for Bechtel, Price and Callahan, one of the contractors for the project. We watched him leave on the train from Davis, California that morning which I think was in early 1943. He was headquartered in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, but worked at various locations along the highway under construction. I remember the many letters and cards sent to each of us expressing love and loneliness. Then one day several months later, we heard he was coming home. Since it was wartime and this was a wartime effort, he could not quit but had to be officially discharged. I have read the discharge papers, which state that he was urgently needed at home to attend to the farm.

We were all glad to have him back. I remember our dog, Sport, winding his paws around Dad's leg and whining because he was so glad to see him.

Dad wasn't home very long. I think it was only a couple of months before he secured another position in Canada working for Standard Oil This time he was working on a pipeline being laid along the Alaska highway. I suppose the pipeline was for transporting oil or natural gas, but I'm not sure. His job was some type of general labor as before.

I don't recall how long Dad was in Alaska during this tour but I think it was less than six months. He was again headquartered in Whitehorse, but the names of workplaces like Norman Wells and Fairbanks were mentioned in his letters.

Then there came the letter telling us that Dad had been involved in an auto accident and was in the hospital. The person writing the letter, a male friend, also mentioned a possible heart attack (He spelled it "hart"). He had been driving on a darkened highway at night and had run into the back of some sort of truck setting on the roadway without lights. He was thrown from the vehicle and laid out in the snow for a couple of hours before being rescued. Initially he was taken for dead, but was revived in the hospital.

He came home to stay (at least for the duration of the war) after this tour.

Canned Foods and The Nectarines

In going back over this period of the war years, I am reminded of a rather humorous, story that the family was always fond of telling. It involves nectarines.

As I have mentioned previously, Mom canned fruits and vegetables and maintained quite a large stock of these foods in the cellar. I believe at one point, she had some five hundred jars of canned goods. Anyway, Ray was in the cellar one day and he took out a jar of nectarines on the sly, opened it and ate a nectarine. Then he hid the jar. Needless to say Mom found the jar soon thereafter. This was no small thing because times were hard and absolutely no one could afford to waste food. So Ray was in trouble. He was made to sit down at the table with a spoon and to eat the whole pint of nectarines.

Why I did it, I'll never know; I guess it didn't seem fair for Ray to get in trouble alone. But soon after Ray's incident, I went to the cellar, found a jar of nectarines, opened it and ate a nectarine. I left the jar behind and again Mom found it. She was quite angry that Ray would do the same thing again. Then she learned that this time it wasn't Ray. She brought me into the kitchen with the jar of nectarines and a spoon and told me I had to eat them all. The problem was that my jar was a quart, not a pint. She did relent after I had eaten about half of the jar. I would probably have gotten sick otherwise.

After this episode, neither Ray nor I would touch nectarines for several years.

We Lose Grandma

We all loved Grandma Reedy. As I mentioned previously, she lived with us during my early childhood years. She often told us stories of her earlier years in Indiana and about her family growing up. As I recall, there were times that she comforted us children when we were hurt or when she thought Mom had punished us too severely.

Two things that stand out in my memory about Grandma were that she played solitary (cards) every day and she spent many hours grooming and picking ticks off our dog, Sport. Regarding the cards, she would sit in her favorite overstuffed chair and place a special board (similar to a kitchen cutting board) on her lap. She shuffled the cards by cutting the deck and loosely pushing the two card groups together; she never flipped one group against the other as the” pros" do. I never understood how she played the game, but sometimes she would say she won; other times she would say "it beat me". It puzzled me as to who or what could beat her when she was the only one with cards.

I can still picture her sitting on a bench on the side hill above the road leading to the house, with Sport's head in her lap. It seemed that Sport always had dozens of ticks imbedded in his fur and skin and many were so engorged with blood that they burst when Grandma tried to extract them. But she would continue until she couldn't find any more. Sport really loved her.

Grandma became ill in late 1943 or early 1944. She was eighty six years of age and suffering from arthritis and respiratory problems. For several months, she was bedfast. When it became obvious that she needed care beyond what the family could provide, Dad arranged for a private duty nurse to come each afternoon and evening.

A nurse came daily for several weeks until Grandma died. Each day she brought a half pint of ice cream that was only for Grandma. Once in a great while one of us children might get a taste, but only if Grandma had eaten all she wanted. The nurse brought one penney each day for me; she called me "penny a day Jack". It had something to do with my reputation for avoiding work, I think. It came from the nursery rhyme, "See-saw, Marjorie Daw---, etc.,etc. He shall have but a penny a day because he can't work any faster". It was all in fun and I enjoyed the attention.

I don't know who paid for the nurses services because my parents didn’t have money. I suspect my Dad's sisters from the east contributed; it seems they were always there when needed.

Then came the day that Dad picked Ray and I up after school one afternoon and then continued driving in toward town. He was very quiet and seemed to be in deep thought. I think Ray and I both asked at the same time, "how's Grandma"? Dad replied, "she's gone". I had had no previous experience with a loved one dying before and it was traumatic. It was even worse when the hearse came and took her away and when later I saw her in her coffin, so cold and still.

It wasn't long after this that we sold the ranch and moved to another area near the small town of El Dorado.