At Sea, Cont'd

One day we were in port, and the word came that Germany had surrendered. There was much rejoicing all the way around. But we still had a job to do, "unfinished business". Japan, in their entire history (which is much longer than ours), had never been defeated. And their philosophy was against it. "Death before dishonor". Their soldiers virtually never surrendered, but of course were sometimes physically captured. We all evisioned a fight to the very bitter end.

We did a lot of work on the ship to get it perfectly ready. One job I had was to paint the SK radar antenna. At that point I was the highest man on the ship, even over the Admiral, (Admiral Bill Holden, we were his flagship). Once we were in port, and several of us were way up there doing work on the SK antenna, and wouldn't you know it, they decided to get up a head of steam. Note that we were above the smokestacks in a not very environmentally friendly location. It got rather hot and thick up there. The Chief and I believe one other tech decided to sit it out. Not me. I took a deep breath, and climbed rapidly on Hot Rungs through a worse area of steam and smoke and then down into the clear and the deck. I asked the Chief later, and he said they just stayed there and "sucked it in".

Eventually it was time to head west to the "Western Sea Frontier", as the newspapers always termed it. On the way, we stopped at Mog Mog atol in the Marshall Islands, for not much more than over night. We went ashore and went swimming. Once we got under way again, we finally joined the Sixth Fleet as they were finishing their operations against Okinawa. They had earned a couple of weeks of rest and rehabilitation, and were now on the way down to Leyte in the recently recaptured Philippines.

I remember entering the Gulf of Leyte. There were a lot of very small uninhabited islands covered with trees. But the islands all had very high steep cliffs. Finally we got to Leyte itself. But far away from any city. We went ashore in what you could call an "enclave", just a beach, and a fence surrounding it. Through the fence the sailors traded with the native people, who appeared very intelligent, yet very poor but friendly.

After a while we put out to sea again. And on the Forth of July, I saw fireworks like I have never seen before or since. I was eye witness to the Sixth Fleet "flexing it's muscles". There were towed targets in the air and on the ocean. Both were attacked fiercely with lots of fire power. Most impressive were the rocket attacks on sea sleds used for targets.

We were on the way back up to operations, this time off the coast of Japan itself. I believe we cruised up and down about 200 miles off the coast. I do have a record of noontime positions of longitude and latitude for those months which I have kept in the "Topeka" book, but have never got around to plotting, but always wanted to some day. I remember seeing birds and sometimes even butterflys, off the coast of Japan. Also, I was able to pick up Mt Fujiyama on the SK radar.

Our task force included an aircraft carrier, our sister ship and maybe another cruiser or so, plus destroyers. Out about 50 miles there were destroyer escort "picket ships". The planes on the carrier would daily make bombing runs on the Japanese mainland. We had two seaplanes that were launched by steam catapult. The pilot would rev the engine up to the maximum, and the catapult, being angled some degrees off to the side, the ship heading into the wind, and then the catapult would fire. The plane would run down the catapult, get into the air, sag a bit, and then be on its way. Retrieval was a tricky business. We would head into the wind, then at just the right time, we would make a turn to smooth out the water for the plane to land on. It would land, taxi up to alongside the ship; a boom would lower a hook, and the pilot would reach out, grab the hook and thread it through a big steel "eye", and then the boom would hoist it back aboard.

The planes were supposed to be only for reconosance, but often they would come back and their guns had been fired. I think in at least one instance they were attacking a train.

The USS Topeka's main job was to protect the carrier.

Once one of the pilots of our seaplanes came in to land, but not quite right, and attempted to take off again but failed. He flipped over. When I saw him, he had only his shorts on, and was riding the pontoon of his plane like on horse back. The rest of the plane was under water. A motor whaleboat was launched, and he was rescued. The plane could not easily be retrieved, and was sunk by gunfire.

Well, I must go now. Next time I'll tell about our "anti-shipping sweep" into the entrace to Tokyo Bay.

At Sea

Continuing my narative, we headed for Panama Canal. Now the ithsmus of Panama is twisted, so that the Pacific side is actually East of the Atlantic side! On one side of the ithsmus is Panama City, and on the other side is Balboa. I remember writing a letter describing perhaps Balboa. The airport is tucked in between a couple of mountains. I did get shore leave I think in Panama City. I remember going to a juice bar for a fruit drink, and trying out my Spanish. The people behind the counter were surprised and impressed.

I remember meeting a guy in U.S. uniform there. He was from Puerto Rico, and could not be sent to the war zone (because he was from Puerto Rico).

Calvin Larson and I were assigned Shore Patrol duty one night at a whore house. There was a live orchestra there, and sawdust on the floor, and I remember one of the orchestra members spitting on the floor. Our instructions were, "don't take anything to drink" I got exceedingly thirsty, and asked for a glass of water. Larson scolded me for this. There were no incidents.

We passed through the canal on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I looked up on a hillside and saw our sister ship, the USS Oklahoma City. She looked out of place up there. We also went past the original French effort at a canal, which was pointed out to us over the PA system. This really was like a tour at this point. At one end of the canal we passed the U.S.S. Franklin, on the way to the East Coast. She was a floating wreck, but still able to make good headway. She had taken a hit in one of the magazines, with just terrible damage. They never did fix her up, but she is now, still I believe, a floating museum somewhere.

Once we got into the Pacific, we headed for Pearl Harbor for final outfitting, refuling, etc. On the way, we squared off with our sister ship, the USS Oklahoma City, putting 10,000 yards between us, and shot at each other's wake using a 3 degree offset.

On the way, on shortwave we listened to the Free French Radio in Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa. Also we listed to Tokyo Rose.

Eventually we reached Hawaii, and pulled into Pearl Harbor. As part of the "All Hands", I helped load big ammunition shells. We got final installation of some of our radar. At times we would put out to sea, and return. We were in Hawaiian waters for about a month. I seem to recall having a total of two afternoons ashore. On one of my excursions I bought a Swiss wrist watch with a date hand. I grew very accustomed to it; the date hand was red and made one revolution per month. I would glance at my watch, and mentally say to myself, "wow, it is half past May". I've never been able to find its equal since.

On my first liberty ashore in Hawaii, some of the old timers said that this was "heaven on earth". We took a narrow-gauge open-car railroad train from Pearl to Honolulu. On one of my excursions ashore, I rented a bicycle and went to the top of Diamond Head. At the top I looked out over the bay and saw a very formitable armada of warships. On the way up, there were orchids growing wild. And down in the valley I could hear roosters crowing. A most attractive place indeed.

On one or the other times, I went to Waikiki Beach and rented a surfboard. It was in May, and I lay on the surfboard with the water washing over me, not realizing how badly I was getting sunburned. The next morning at muster, while standing at attention, I had to squat down so as not to faint. I was put into the sickbay with very bad burns on the back of my legs, so bad I could not stand straight up as the skin would stretch too far. While in sick bay, another kid was brought in. He was OK, but only a little shook up I guess and very wet. We were at sea again, and he had been sitting on the top lifeline with his back to the ocean, and his heels hooked into the bottom lifeline. Pretty foolish. His heels unhooked and he had gone over. The scarry part for him was that he saw the ship almost disappearing in the distance, before it turned around. He was also worried about sharks. He did remember his training though, and took off his pants, tied knots at the end of each leg, and filled them with air to stay afloat.

Well, time to go again.

Navy Pier (Cont'd)

One of the sailors in our class was Calvin Larson from Minnesota. He was a strong believer, and invited me one time to come to a gospel service. At the service, the fellow up front pleaded so strongly that I came forward and accepted Jesus as my Savior. I believe this was September 28, 1944. The very next Sunday, I went to downtown Chicago, and attended the biggest church I could find. I sat in the balcony. The minister preached something on politics. Thus it was that I became a "dormant" Christian for the next 19 years.

While in Chicago, I went to hear President Roosevelt give a speech. Everyone went wild (but not me; I wasn't in favor of him). I also attended the Democratic National Convention there in Chicago, and saw Harry Truman nominated to run for Vice President.

On another note, the only time I lost my wallet was at Navy Pier. I had put it in my pillowcase and went to sleep for the night. In the morning it was gone!

One evening they put on an electrical show for us at the theatre at the end of the pier. Some guy sat on a wooden stool, and received a very high d.c. electrical charge, and all his hair stood straight out from his head.

Eventually it was time to graduate. I was promoted to Radio Technician's Mate Second Class. They asked us what kind of duty would we like. Foolish people put things down like "Instructor at 190 North State Street, Chicago (another secondary school like Navy Pier). No one wanted duty on an LST Landing Craft (LST for us stood for "Large Slow Target"). I put down for something I thought I could reasonably hope to get: i.e., a light cruiser. So it happened that I was assigned to the light cruiser CL67, U.S.S. Topeka, which at that point happened to be on a shakedown cruise to I believe Trinidad. So I was sent to the Personnel Receiving Station in Norfolk, Virginia.

While in Virginia I had a chance to take another flying lesson, which I did, again with a Piper Cub out of a rather tiny field in the middle of a woods. While there I also learned a couple of facts. One, at Mail Call time, the letter "N" is just about in the middle of the alphabet. Two, I met a guy on a bus on the base who said he used to be an "A" student, but after suffering a rather severe blow to the head, became a "C" and "D" student.

Now I can't recall if I had delayed orders to Norfolk (I think I did). So I guess I went home first. And everything seemed smaller. And my parents thought I had matured more (but that could be debatable). I remember driving my Dad's car through Ellington with snow chains on it at 60 MPH. I also went over to Simsbury and took a flying lesson in another Piper Cub, but this time it was equipped with skis. Two things I remember about that one lesson. One was that if you come in for a landing and your altitude is too high, you can kill altitude by flying somewhat sideways, I think by banking to the left but holding a right rudder, or vice-versa. Later I learned that this technique can be a setup for you to be flipped over by a gust of wind. The second thing I recall at that time was that the end of the runway was a field full of tent tobacco posts and wires. Definitely not a place where you would want engine failure.

Now I had gone out with a couple of girls in Chicago, but it never amounted to anything. Same thing on my leave back home. I had a date with Joan Hyde of Ellington, a classmate of mine from High School. I was not attracted to her, but just fun on an intellectual plane (she was smart). So I was very relaxed. We had a good time horse back riding on a couple of their horses. Probably that was the very first time I ever had been horse back riding. The other girl was very pretty, a few years younger than I was. She was Marylin Wells, the daughter of Franklin Wells, a well-known farmer from Talcotville. I managed to get enough nerve to call her up and ask for a date to take her to a movie. We went to a movie in Rockville. I was scared to death. When I dropped her off at home that night, she very politely said "I had a nice time", and that was the end of that.

Finally it was time to go up to Boston Navy Yard and report for duty aboard the U.S.S. Topeka. While in Boston, I had the opportunity to look up another old classmate from High School, the top of his class, Alan Backofen. He was in a Doctor of Science degree program at M.I.T., Metallurgy. He told me they were working on Atomic Energy, but couldn't tell me more. Later I learned that both he and his wife became sterile due to radiation and could not have children.

When I first came up to the U.S.S. Topeka, tied up to the dock there in Boston, and looked up at it, I thought to myself: "Is this where I maybe am going to die?"

Finally it became time to ship out. I guess it was "ready or not", because the ship had about a 3 degree list to port. We left Boston at fairly high speed in a fog, using radar, and out at sea, followed a zig-zag course to avoid German submarines. We passed about 200 miles east of Cape Cod, and for years I had a favorite saying that the closest I ever go to Europe was 200 miles east of Cape Cod.

On the way down to the Carabean, we got word that President Roosevelt had died, and Harry Truman was President. What a long time he was President! And I never was for him. He was elected when I was in Third Grade, and here I was in the Navy on a cruiser heading for war.

We headed for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and stayed overnight there. Later we went to Culebra Island in the Virgin Islands for target practice. Ultimately we headed for the Panama Canal.

That was an experience, but it will be for another time. Time to go.

Navy Pier, Chicago

After 3 months of Primary in Gulfport, MS, we went to Chicago, Navy Pier, for 7 months of Secondary. The food there was just wonderful. The contrast between it and Gulfport was just unbelievable. The people in Gulfport were almost outnumbered by us sailors. But in Chicago it was just the opposite and everyone was most cordial towards us. Even if one of us was standing by the roadside waiting to cross, sometimes a car would stop to offer a ride!

At Navy Pier we got into all types of Naval Electronics, including radio transmitters and receivers, underwater sound, but especially radar of all types including search (long distance), and fire control (gunnery aiming). But all this was towards the end of our training; in the beginning we were very heavy on strictly electronics theory.

We had a lot of classroom sessions, some labs, and tons of homework. The classrooms at Navy Pier were normal size, but the sleeping area was monster in size, comparable to an aircraft hangar building. There were 4,000 of us learning electronics there. There were some characters amongst us. There was Wincup, who was a died-in-the-wool communist. There was another fellow from Scotland (I believe he was a Scottish Nationalist), who would say "Hitler may yet prove to be a friend". Then there was Loudermilk, a straight "A" student, who always fell asleep in class, to the consternation of the instructor, who would have him get up and stand in the corner. Loudermilk always had a smile on his face. Sometimes while standing in the corner, his eyes would close, and the book he held would fall. But he still had a smile on his face.
Another character (I don't know his name), was an old Navy veteran with oceans of hash marks on his sleeve (each one represents 4 years). But he would usually be found curled up on his bunk. People said he was regularly drunk.

We would be marched to downtown Chicago sometimes for swimming and diving lessons at the pool in The Palmer House, a high end hotel that is still there to this day.

While at Navy Pier, I had more spare time than I ever had in my life before, even though it was a very intensive course. With a buddy, we took the "Hiawatha" train up to Milwaukee to his home, and went on a double date. Often I would go roller skating. And I also enrolled for a few dancing lessons at Arthur Murray.

And on most week-ends, I went to Harlem Airport and took flying lessons in a Piper Cub, with an instructor who was an American veteran of the Royal Air Force (he had volunteered early). I didn't accumulate quite enough hours to solo, but would have if I had remained in the area long enough. My log book got left behind in the move years later from Indianapolis to Chicago. After a number of accumulated hours aloft, I practiced speed turns, and once, climbed to higher altitude and did a tail spin, to experience how to get out of it (they don't do that anymore). To get out of it, you flip the aerolons in the same direction as the spin, but hold opposite rudder. We did, and I got out of it OK. But I scared the instructor, who kept saying "the wings! the wings!" I had kept the straght down (dive) position a little too long for comfort before pulling out. This brings me to one of my favorite stories. Once I was coming in for a landing, and at the very last minute, another student flyer taxied right in front of the spot where we were going to touch down! My instuctor grabbed the controls, dove the plane into the tarmac, and we bounced OVER the other plane then came to a landing.

Once or possibly twice, I went to Palwaukee airport (unlike Harlem airport, it is still there), and took a lesson or two in a Talorcraft, which has a yoke rather than a joy stick like the Piper Cub. I felt I had perfect control with the joy stick, but never got used to the yoke.

Time to quit.

USN Gulfport Cont'd

They had a very good large swimming pool there, and we were taught proper ways to swim, etc. One place was 8 feet deep, so I did some experiments there at the deep end. I inhaled to the maximum, held my breath, and climbed down the ladder to the bottom and let go. Immediately I popped right up to the top. Then again I did the same thing but this time I exhaled to the maximum. I let go at the bottom, and just stayed there (and then climbed back up).

At night I went to bed on my cot in the Quonset hut. I felt pretty much at home at that point, and did just like I would regularly do at home. I used an upturned orange crate for a night stand, and put my stuff on it when I went to bed, including my wallet. A buddy from Brooklyn was totally shocked, and gave me some friendly advice. Put your wallet in your pillow case so it won't get stolen.

Another thing I did to avoid too much laundry work was to take my mattress bag and use all four surfaces before washing it. One week, normal, next week, turn it over, third week turn it inside-out, fourth week, turn the (already inside-out) over. Fifth week: Laundry. I though I was so clever with this. But looking back, childish.

Towards the end of our three-months crash course in Pre-Radio, I became rather sickly, I believe due mainly to very poor food, lack of fresh vegetables, etc. My friends urged me to check into sick bay, but I thought it would be a very bad idea, only delaying my leaving of this place with such poor food, so I stuck it out, though I had a hard time studying at night. So finally we graduated from there. Next stop was Navy Pier, Chicago.

That's all I have time for right now.

USN

Life at NTS Gulfport was good and bad. The weather was generally good. I believe it was the springtime. My fellow ETM (Electronic Technician's Mate) students were generally very decent people, but most with backgrounds totally different from mine, though a few were from farms, most were from cities like NYC and Chicago, etc.

It was generally conclude by all that the supply officer there at Gulfport was a crook. It was based on our experience at chow hall, which was mostly "sea rations". So many of us would just go to the on-base store and buy sandwiches, etc. One time for breakfast the powdered eggs were green. The comment: "Pretty, ain't they!!??" Another time I experienced a cockroach fried into my eggs.

Well, I have to go for now. (I'm now in San Marcos, CA)

Jan. 28, 1944

Jan. 28, 1944, I was sworn into the U.S. Navy. We draftees at that point were given the choice of Army or Navy. I had read the book "Red Badge of Courage", and wanted no part of the Army.

I had taken the precaution, probably by my parents advice, to take with me a written recommendation from my High School science teacher. This, combined with my electronics course at Hillyer Jr. College caused the Navy to give me the "Eddy Test", a test promoted by Capt. Eddy, an electrical engineer, to measure aptitude in electronics, "radio" in those days. I passed. Everyone else headed for Camp Drum, NY, but they gave me 30 days "delayed orders" plus railroad tickets to get me one month later to Great Lakes Naval Training Station, IL, just north of Chicago.

So I came home. I had 30 days that I wasn't expecting. I needed excitement. I'd never been away from home alone before anyway. I decided skiing would be fun. So I checked out Mt. Tremblant, in Quebec Province. Somehow it appeared that it wouldn't work out. Next choice, Lake Placid, NY. That looked OK. So I went to Hartford and bought a pair of skis, and bought a bus ticket to Lake Placid, and got a hotel reservation there.

It was the first time I'd ever been on a long bus ride. I remember one night passing through Watkins Glen. Finally I got there and checked in at the hotel. The ski tows were ruining, and they had various slopes. I started out on the beginners slopes, but after a while it was quite tame. So later I graduated myself to courses running downhill on winding trails through the woods. We went quite fast through the trees, but it seemed OK, you just lean in the direction you wanted to go and everything worked out OK. In conversations with others, people took me for a seasoned skier.

I didn't stay but a few days at Lake Placid, and I came home. Eventually it was time to head for Chicago. I travelled straight through the night. The next day I was in Chicago, following the directions to get to Great Lakes NTS, which I did. There they issued me a uniform, and gave me something to put all my clothes in to send them home. And I was in boot camp in the middle of Winter.

The weather was rather bad, but we still drilled outdoors. I actually don't remember being cold though. Everyone started to get mildly sick. I did also, but a little more than many. So while the rest of the company had target practice for one week, I was in sick bay with "cat fever" (catharral fever). The one memorable time there was one day while I was laying in bed there, two corpsmen came to me to get a blood sample. But unbeknownst to me, one was in training and the other was his trainer. Maybe I was his first guinea pig. He struggled to get a sample. Seven times in the left arm and three times in the right arm before he finally "struck oil". I got him to switch to the right arm as my left was starting to wear out. Actually, they both, towards the end, wanted to quit, but foolish me, I didn't let them!

So I got better, and rejoined the company, minus target practice. We did, however, learn stuff from the Bluejackets Manual. Those in charge made believe they were tough guys, but they didn't fool me. The rules were strict of course. We kept all our belingings in a "sea bag" that we kept tied up to a rail. Anytime you needed anything, you had to untie it and take it down. One of my "shipmates" was Al McBride from Pittsburgh. I talked to him a couple of months ago by phone when I was visiting Pittsburgh. Another one was Niswander. He seemed rather inept, and was always taking down and tieing up his sea bag. One night the comment was what iis Niswander doing? The response: "Oh, he's just Niswandering around".

After 4 weeks of boot camp we were shipped down to Chicago, to Hugh Manley High School for 1 month of intense pre-radio math. The photo at the left was taken at Hugh Manley. I'm in the middle of this segment of a group photo. For the whole month we were never allowed out of doors until the very end. The Navy had taken over the whole High School. There were tripple decker bunks in the gym where we slept. The local radio station owned by Balaban and Katz had donated to the Navy a TV camera, video amplifier, and cathode ray picture tube. Those in charge of it had pointed the camera out the window, and it was connected by a thick cable to the amplifer, which was connected by another thick cable to the picture tube. Closed circuit TV. My first observation of it. It was impressive, but there was occasional trouble due to an intermittant bad connection somewhere.

After this month, they put us on a troop train for Gulfport, Mississippi. On that train I saw winter turn into summer as we headed south. About half way there in the middle of nowhere, the train stopped for no discernable reason. It was way past "chow time". People were hungry, but we had not been given any food. There were complaints. Outside some people were selling sandwiches. Some would not buy any on general principles. But I guess I was unprincipled, and bought. In retrospect, the whole thing now looks suspicious, doesn't it? Oh well. Truthfully, I never thought of the obvious angle until just now.

Finally we got to Naval Training Station, Gulfport, Miss. for 3 months of Primay. We slept in Quonset huts, did our own laundry, and had intensive training in general radio theory. For one class we each built a superhetrodyne receiver. I remember once, doing my laundry, I saw somebody else's newspaper headlining the Allied invasion of France. One of my classmates was of religeous bent. He had several nicknames, as "the chevroned reverand", "the sneaking deacon", and "the sinister minister".

We did have week-ends off, finally. So every week end I liked to see how far I could get from Gulfport. I travelled by bus to Mobile, Alabama, Jackson Mississippi, New Orleans Louisiana, and once from there via steamboat up the river to Baton Rouge and LSU where I went to their museum and saw some Confederate money, saying they would pay up six months after the end of hostilities between the Confederate States of America and the United States of America.

Another time I went again to New Orleans and went swimming in Lake Ponchetrain. Again, another week end I went to a paper mill town, Bogalusa, Louisiana. I didn't always go by bus. Often I hitch hiked. It was easy in those days. Everyone was patriotic, and anxious to give servicemen a ride. Once in central Mississippi as I was hitch hiking through, I was walking along a road through the country, and happened to go past a farm where the chickens had gotten out of the fence, and I helped the farmer get them back in. It turned out I was headed for a town he had never been to. In fact he had never been over 20 miles from home!

Time to go.

High School, Cont'd

In 1939 I started my Freshman year at Rockville High School. Just about that time, Germany attacked Poland, and then England and France declared war on Germany. I remember hopping on my bicycle and peddling all the way up to Farnam & Jesse Lane to tell them the news. They didn't have either a radio nor any electricity.

It was the beginning of about a year of what they called the "Phoney War" (fake war). We were neutral. We would receive newsreels from both sides. I remember one time I went on my bicycle down to South Manchester to a movie, and they showed a newsreel from Germany of a very stirring military march. At another time a large section of our class was taken to the Palace theater in Rockville to see newsreels of the war, which included German planes taking off to bomb England. At that point, half the class cheered!

There are so many things people forget, and are never put into history books. For example, the Polish government prior to the invasion had been leaning towards Germany! Another thing, in the 1930's, there was a popular U.S. radio commentator, exceedingly anti-Jewish, by the name of Father Caughlin. There were both pro-Nazi's and pro-Communists throughout the country. One pro-Nazi group was called the German-American Bund. They held a ralley in NYC and filled Madison Square Garden. Prior to hostilities, there were some "leanings" towards the Nazis in the British royal family, also amongst Scottish nationalists, and in the USA, Henry Ford, and Charles Lindberg.



Just at that time also, was the 1939 New York World's Fair. My sister Barbara and some others took a group of Girl Scouts down to New York to see the Fair, and I was given the opportunity to go along, which I did. We took the train down for a very long day of it, during a part of which my nerves gave me trouble (traces of the effect of Chorea from previous years), so I didn't get to enjoy it as I should have. The train went underground before reaching Manhattan, and while still underground, we changed to another train going to the fair. It wasn't until years later that I ever saw NYC above ground!



The Fair was in Flushing, N.Y. and to me it was utterly fantastic. One of the most memorable things that I saw for the first time was television. Another thing that impresed me was that at night, you could look up in the sky and see all the clouds totally lit up from escaped light from below. Crosley had a remote-controlled car. Both Germany and Poland had pavilions.



I remember once during study hall in the High School auditorium, one kid had a newspaper with headlines, "1,000 PLANE RAID ON LONDON". It really didn't look good for England and France. And then France was finally defeated. German bombers over England were so safe at that time that the Luftwaffe head, Reichmarshal Herman Goering went along once for the ride.



We had a short-wave set at that time, and I regularly used to listen to Radio Berlin to see what they had to say. In fact I listed so regularly that our hired man thought I was a Nazi sympathizer (but I wasn't). I just liked to hear everything from all sources. In fact, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, about 1938, we used to listen to short-wave station EAR, "The voice of Republican Spain", in Madrid. This was during the Spanish Civil War, when the Communists were supporting the Republican (Loyalist) side, and Hitler and Mussolini were supporting Generalissimo Franco's dictatorship. Franco won, and I fully expected he would come into the war on the Axis side, and he proabably would have except Spain was too worn out by the long civil war. At that time the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was against the Spanish Loyalists. My Dad, then a Socialist, was for them.



With regard to Japan, at that point it was of course neutral also. But the way Japan had treated China was common knowledge in the USA, and almost everyone was pro-China and anti-Japanese, including myself. I remember even in first grade, in the Weekly Reader, an account of Japanese soldiers roping together a crowd of Chinese civilians, pouring on gasoline, and setting them on fire. In the mid to late 1930's, I remember going with my Dad to "Storrs College" (forerunner of University of Connecticut), and hearing a speaker talking about our selling scrap metal to Japan, which he said "we will get back in the form of shells fired at us".

While in High School, I regularly read the Reader's Digest. They gave good reasons for being against excessively strong central government, and convinced me to be a Republican, which I have been ever since. But in wanting to hear all sides, for 6 months or so, I subscribed to a New York Communist newspaper, "The Daily Worker". After about 6 months, I had the feeling I could have written it myself, it was so predictable. There were a number of Communists around, including one of the local farmers, Mr. Grabowski. My Dad was against them, as they claimed to be Socialist, but were actually violent.

Just for excitement, one night my friend and I made a big firey hammer and sickle on a hillside, just to see what the reaction would be. Nobody saw it. Another night, we did the same thing, but this time with a swastika. Same thing, no excitement, nobody saw it.

All these shennanigans came to a screetching halt after December 7, 1941. "A day which will live in imfamy". We were at war! It was Sunday evening, and Dad and I were down in the barn milking cows, and had the radio on. It was unbelievably shocking news. Back up at the house, we continued to listen to Radio Berlin on short-wave. Our news wouldn't say what or how many ships were sunk at Pearl Harbor, but Radio Berlin listed them all, the names of all the battleships that went down that day. My dad's comment: that sounds more like the truth. It sounded quite grim.

On the local news we listed to broadcasts from Manila until sometime in January 1942 when it fell to the Japanese. In those days our country was totally unified. I never heard on one dissenting word. We were at war because we were attacked. Hitler had made the comment once that he would "take the US by telephone". Germany at that time was making so much progress in their war that probably Japan figured "now is the time". Plus they had had previoous experience. In the 1900's they did a sneak attack on the Russian Far East Fleet, and practically sunk the whole thing, and wound up victor in that conflict. So they had "learned their lesson". But of course it was the wrong lesson.

Now I have become convinced for some time that we really had no business entering the First World War, and believe a big factor was British propaganda. What a difference there would have been had we remained neutral during the First World War! But obviously WWII was totally different.

I was always facinated by geography. And in looking at the Western Hemisphere, it looked quite plane to me that the most reasonable thing for me to do language wise, was to learn Spanish. In High School I was having two years of Latin and two years of French, but Spanish was not offered. In earlier years they had dropped Greek, and in WWI they had dropped German to get even with the Germans. So my sister and I signed up for a night course in Spanish, while I was still in High School.

In my Junior year of High School, I took my first plane ride, a United flight from the field next to the river by downtown Hartford, up to Logan in Boston. On the flight, as we approaced Boston harbor, the stewardess pulled down the curtains by each window so that we couldn't see tahe ships in the harbor because it was a wartime secret, classified information. The reason Iwent to Boston was to apply for admission to MIT as an engineering student. To my great joy, I was accepted, and started receiving invitations from fraternities.

However, my Dad said something that I misunderstood, thinking he was forbidding me to go, and I held it against him for several years until the misunderstanding was cleared up. Later he explained that his position was that if I went, I would just be drafted into the Army, and not get to go at all. So I stayed home, for a while. But I was restless. I thought maybe I'd get into the Navy V-12 program, where they put you through college for officer training. So I went down to New Haven, and applied at Yale for the V-12. They gave me a bunch of examinations, including a thorough dental examination, and at that point, my old "bugabo", my nerves started acting up, (the Chorea resido from years before), and based on that I was rejected.

I then enrolled in Hillyer Junior College in Hartford, night school, to learn "Radio" as electronics was called in those days.

But I was still restless. So, even though I was an essential worker (our doctor said "you can get along without doctors, but you cannot get along without food) I went up to the local draft board and asked them to draft me (make me 1-A). They said, are you still working on the farm? I said, "Yes". They said, "You have to quit first". I went home and thought about it for a while. A week later I went back to the draft board, and said, "I quit". They said, "OK, in a few days you will get a postcard in the mail". Those few days came, and I showed the card to my Dad. He said, "Well, we'll take care of this!" I said "I asked them to." He said, "Oh, if that's the way it is, I gues there's nothing to be done about it". And a little while later, I was told to come to Rockville, to get on a bus there to take us to Hartford to be entered into the armed forces.

More details later. Time to quit.

Catchup with Photos

Here is a picture of Brewster Skinner that I took when we were walking home from school
























Here is a picture I took of Delia Partridge, our study hall teacher in High School. Some students called her "Birdie" Partridge. She was a Normal School classmate of my mother's.

I took this picture of her without her knowing it, with my little Univex camera. It was underexposed, and they wouldn't make a print of it, so I never saw this photo until 60 years later when I used the Hewlett-Packard scanner for negatives and could adjust the exposure level.


















Here is another Univex picture, taken by me at arm's length, on the way home from school in the wintertime.






















Here I am as a teenager, holding some electronics.






















This photo was taken in the 1930's in front of the farmhouse in Vernon. The milkhouse is in the left background, and a portion of the barn is in the right background. Note the barn is before my Dad put an addition on the south side of the barn. The skis were left over from when the Blankenburgs had the farm.

We think this is Dick Niederwerfer with the catcher's mit. Probably taken over near the Tolland County Home.

Charlie Thrall at the back door of his house. He can date it by (a) his sweater, and (b), the light over the back door shows it is after they got electricity.

Bill Rizy standing in front of our hatchway, with our shop in the background.

Probably Talcotville Congregational Church Kindergarten about 1927. My sister Barbara Neill is in the back row, third from left. Wallace Thrall Jr is in the front row, second from right.

Barbara's Story

This will be my attempt to put my sister Barbara's story into the blog. Bear with me. It will be without pictures which I may add later. Let's see what happens:

GROWING UP ON THE FARM
By Barbara Neill

When I was a little girl I lived on a farm in Connecticut. We raised cows and chickens and for extra cash we grew half an acre of strawberries, one acre of asparagus and lots of corn. My father said it was a good system because usually when the price of milk was low, eggs were high and when we were getting next to nothing for eggs, milk would go up. In the spring when both eggs and milk were low we had those other crops. Nevertheless we were poor.

I grew up in depression times; we had very little money. But nobody in New England spent very much then, even if they had it. There were old-time Yankee farmers in our neighborhood who had plenty of money but they bought as little as possible. We didn't have any choice. There were a couple of times in the 30's when I realized that my father was desperately worried about money. I remember him saying that if a bank held our mortgage we would probably lose the farm.

My grandfather held the mortgage. This was my mother's father and it had been his farm. My mother had grown up here. The place did not hold many happy memories for her; she had had to work very hard as a child and my grandfather was not easy to get along with. He and my grandmother now lived in an apartment in the city but every week he would come down to see how my father was doing. He didn't approve of very much. He saw waste everywhere. He would carefully pick up strands of hay in the barnyard until he had a handful, then angrily shake his head saying, "Waste, waste."

We had moved to the farm when I was just turning eight and my brother was about three. Terrible things happened right away. This was in 1927-28 when all cattle were being tested by the state for tuberculosis. We had twelve milk cows, all good ones that had been prized by my grandfather. Six re-acted positively to the tuberculin test. They looked just as healthy as the other six but they had to be slaughtered. The state paid low beef prices for them. My father had to replace them with high-priced cows which were not as good as the ones he had lost.

Then my little brother got sick. He kept putting his hands to his head and crying. We all thought he was just homesick but it turned out that he had a bone infection behind his ear called mastoiditis. The common antibiotics we have today had not yet been discovered; there were not even any sulfur drugs. The only cure was a painful and risky mastoid operation. The operation was a success. Only later did the doctor explain how dangerous it was. Since the jugular vein was right next to the bone, it took unusual skill to avoid cutting the vein. He told of a surgeon who cut seven jugular veins in a row before giving up the idea of becoming a specialist. Even after a successful operation great care was needed. The wound had to be kept sterile and the bandage changed daily. It was a painful business. The doctor came to the house several times the first week my brother returned home, then a visiting nurse took over. All this was expensive and there was no such thing as health insurance. Financially we were off to a bad start even before the depression.

But all this gloom and doom affected me only marginally. Life on the farm held great rewards, depression or not. Especially for me; I loved the out-of-doors and all living things. I had advantages. Space for instance. I had lots of space; a room of my own and about forty acres outside. Of course that's an exaggeration because most of the land was in crops or in hay or pasture. But I considered the fifteen acre pasture across from the house as sort of my playground. It had a brook running through it. A nice, clean, transparent stream, rushing furiously over stones in narrow places then making deep mysterious pools where it curved around trees, cutting under them and exposing the roots. It wore down through the land where the ground was soft or sandy, creating over-hanging embankments. It wasn't good to get too close to the edge of those sloping embankments; sometimes the whole edge fell in.

The brook was a great place to play. There were water striders, polliwogs, crawfish, snails and tiny, black salamanders hiding under stones. Most of the fish were dace. They were easy to catch with peanut-butter pails. Peanut-butter used to come in tins which held about two cups. (When you first opened the peanut-butter you had to spend a couple of minutes stirring because the peanut oil was all up at the top; nobody yet knew how to homogenize things. But it was wonderful tasting peanut-butter.)

My system of catching fish was to take a peanut-butter tin in each hand, carefully approach a school of fish swimming near the surface than make a sudden swoop, clapping the tins together just under the water. I usually got one or two. Surprisingly no fishes were ever squashed between the tins. The catch was put into a regular 12 qt. pail carried for the purpose. One afternoon I got seventeen. Most were let go but some were taken home for my fish bowl.

Sometimes I'd just sit on the bank of the brook and watch things. Dragonflies would fly past on regular routes up and down the stream. The same dragonfly would stop during each trip on a particular branch or leaf. Butterflies surprised me. I had thought they liked only flowers but I saw that most of them also liked mud; at least I saw swallowtails sitting in muddy places as well as flocks of little blues and some of the copper colored ones.

Once I was a little scared. I had never seen a snake at our brook but when I did it was a big one and it had just caught a frog. I made a feeble effort to frighten it into letting the frog go but it slithered away into the weeds to swallow the frog at leisure.

In the spring when the brook was very nearly a small river, larger fish would drift down from a distant pond which fed it. Bullheads, suckers, an occasional trout and sometimes a few pickerel were seen. The suckers were about six inches long and sluggish. I found that by moving extra carefully I could close my hand around one and lift it right out of the water. When I put it back just as cautiously, it just swam away with a lazy flip of the tail.

In midsummer the brook ran low. It even dried up completely in places. Tadpoles, which we always called polliwogs, were often trapped in small pools. Their survival depended upon becoming adults quickly. I noticed something rather miraculous. In the puddles which were drying up, the little tadpoles became tiny adult toads faster than those of the same size living in deeper pools.

Once each summer at this time there was a visit from the Great Blue Heron. I suppose he really came many times but I only saw him once each summer. The arrival of the heron was an event. It was such a magnificent bird, unlike anything I had ever seen. He swooped in on his great, gray wings, stalked solemnly about the shallow pools, stabbing here and there with his sword-like beak as he filled up on tadpoles and fish. He was something to watch. I thought of him as a royal bird from a faraway place. Once, after he had flown away, I found a feather that had been dropped. I could hardly believe the luck; it was one of the long, slender, tubular feathers from the dark crest on his head. I saved this treasure and it became the start of my feather collection.

None of the other children in the neighborhood were interested in live things the way I was. When I say, "neighborhood" I mean a large area with not many people in it. We could see one other farm-house from our place. Two girls about my age lived there and we often visited each other. In the other direction there was a cluster of farms and quite a few children, but they were too far away to play with very often. We all went to a one-room school with 27 pupils and 5 grades. There were 3 in my 4th grade. After the 5th grade we took the trolley to the city school.

Our teacher did more than teach school; she was also the janitor. No small job, since there was no running water and the heat was supplied by a wood-burning stove in the back of the room. It was the same school my mother had gone to and there hadn't been many changes.

Two of the oldest pupils were appointed water carriers. It was a ten-minute walk to the spring where the pail was dipped into the cold, clear water, so clear you could look straight down about four feet and usually see one or two frogs on the sandy bottom. The full pail was laboriously carried, water sloshing, between the two pupils back to the school. It was set down in the entry-way where we kept our coats, a dipper beside it. We all had our own drinking cups.

I didn't know where the wood came from but in the winter there was always a big pile of fire-wood stacked near the stove. Whoever sat nearest the stove usually had the job of keeping the fire going. I never thought about it but the teacher must have gotten to school very early to heat the place; then there was the sweeping, dusting, etc. For all this and teaching too, she was paid $600 a year. It was a low wage even for depression times.

Some of those one-room, country school teachers were known for their ingenuity and wisdom, teaching with a natural talent that made pupils remember them all their lives. My uncles used to smile warmly when they spoke of their first teacher, Mrs. Dart. Unfortunately neither I, nor later on my brother, were so lucky. Both of us had teachers who were short-tempered and actually incompetent. My brother's teacher was so ignorant that she once told the children that the moon was larger than the earth.

It wasn't considered necessary to have a college education to teach school. My mother had taught one year in a small back-country school directly after graduating from high school. With the money she earned there she went on to Normal School which specialized in preparing teachers. The best teaching jobs went to those with Normal School diplomas. Along with reading, writing, arithmetic and history; etiquette and elocution were important subjects.




Before marrying my mother had taught for seven years and had loved it. It must have been hard for her to go back to farm life. One compensation surely was her garden; her flowers were a source of joy for all of us.





Our house had a lawn shaded in front by two huge maple trees. There were flower beds between the lawn and the orchard to the east and alongside the unshaded side of the house. When I was about ten I had a garden of my own in a spot near the house. I raised annual flowers - zinnias, cosmos, California poppies, portulacca, nasturtiums and calendulas. My mother liked perennials better. Now I know why but I couldn't understand it then. It was fun to plant the seeds of annuals; they came up fast and soon you had lots of big, colorful flowers. It's true that they needed thinning and weeding and lasted only one season but next spring you could always plant more. Perennials needed less attention; that's why my mother liked them; she had no time for annual flowers. Her garden changed very little - mostly iris, lilies, phlox, peonies and oriental poppies. These plants lived over the winter and once you planted them you had them for years. Mother got her plants as gifts, a few at a time, from other farm women and when she herself had extras, she gave them some. Plant swapping was the way to have a garden without spending money. (I never heard of anybody buying a plant) Seeds were cheap and once in a while my mother would try a new variety but it took perennials two years to blossom. I couldn't imagine waiting that long for anything .

In New England the seasons are sharply defined. Winters are harsh with brilliant snow and sleet, spring is a long, slow awakening with lots of rain, summer is warm and lovely and fall has magic when leaves that were green turn red and gold. I thought all of it was beautiful. Maybe spring was best. Then as now seasons and holidays were celebrated in special ways. On the first of May we hung May baskets. It was more a custom for girls than for boys. If you could find a small woven basket you were in luck, especially if it had a handle. If not, you made your own out of colored paper. Baskets were filled with wild flowers and ferns. The idea was to tip-toe up to a neighbor's door without being seen, hang the basket on the door-knob, knock, then run and hide. Although it was often the lady of the house who came to the door it was a children's game. One May day coming home from school I was greatly surprised to see old man Henley with a may basket in his hand, stealthily approaching his own front door. Small and wiry, Mr. Henley was called "old man" not because of his age but because he was dour and unsmiling. I walked along the road slowly, wondering what would happen next. I heard the door open, then running footsteps, a silence, then peals of laughter I recognized as Mrs. Henley's. Astonishing - I would never understand adults. When I told my parents about it I was pleased to see that they were as surprised as I was, also highly amused.

The Fourth of July was a big day. Every year we had a huge picnic with lots of my mother's former high school friends. When it was our turn to be hosts the lawn looked like a festival. Each family brought a dish; there were pork and baked beans, cucumber salad, brown bread with raisins, scalloped corn, potato salad, chicken, corn muffins, fresh strawberries, watermelon and lots of pies and cakes.



Thanksgiving and Christmas were feast days too. Thanksgiving was with my father's relatives, Christmas was with my mother's, but our own Christmas was best. While we had a woodlot, we always cut our own Christmas tree. Having no spruces or fir trees, we used white pines. They were quite pretty with their long, blue-green needles, but young pines growing naturally in the woods don't have many branches. One year I persuaded my father to cut a hemlock. He said OK but it wouldn't last. It was cut the day before Christmas; my mother and I trimmed it right away. For two days it was like a Christmas tree in a fairy tale; thick, soft, feathery branches festooned with strings of pop-corn and cranberries, chains of colored paper, a tin-foil star on top and the nice old glass and tin ornaments we saved from year to year. Then the needles started to fall. In less than a week more than half the needles were on the floor and mother said it had to go. It was the last time we had a hemlock Christmas tree. I thought it had been worth it but I am sure my mother didn't think so. We found the little hemlock needles in cracks between the floor-boards for months afterward.


We didn't have the kind of farm I used to read about in storybooks. Those farms had geese, rabbits, ducks, goats, sheep, pigs and of course the child always had a pony. We had none of these extras; my parents thought there was enough to do taking care of the necessary animals - cows, chickens, cats and my one dog.

My first dog was a gift, arranged by friends of my mother. It was a small, black-and-tan terrier that needed a home. I loved it and so did my brother; my parents tolerated it and my grandparents disapproved of it entirely. My grandmother just didn't like dogs and my grandfather said you could always tell the real dirt-poor farmers - they usually had about six hound dogs hanging around the door-yard, a medium-poor man would have two or three, a well-to-do man might have one but a really rich man never had a single dog. "Take Old Man Brant", he said (the richest man we knew) "never saw a dog around his place, did you?" I was unimpressed. And in time Fido who was a feisty little dog, won my grandfather's affection. He was seen petting it when he thought no one was looking and finally he accepted it openly, even taking it with him on trips with the horse and wagon.

We generally had an abundance of cats. All were females since they were the best hunters and the cats' job was to keep down the rat and mouse population. Already on the farm when we came were two tortoise-shells, "Loungy", short for lounge-lizard because she loved the kitchen lounge and "Ougen", her big-eyed daughter whose name means "eyes" in German. These were the only two house-cats, that is they were sometimes allowed in the kitchen. There were a number of barn-cats too wild to approach; the few that would let themselves be stroked were given names, the rest were anonymous.

For awhile rats invaded the hen-house. Each night one of the cats was shut up with the hens; even if she didn't catch a rat her presence would keep them away. Ougen was always first choice since she was a superior rat-catcher. She was known to tackle anything, having even been seen bringing home such exotic fare as garter snakes and young rabbits for her kittens.

Kittens were a problem. The excitement of finding a litter of kittens in the hayloft was tempered by the knowledge that they would soon be drowned. My brother and I tried to keep their whereabouts a secret. It never worked for long. My father or the hired man would find them and they would be gone the next day. Once in a great while I was allowed to pick out one to keep. What joy! Would it be the gray and white one? The tiger? The biggest, or the smallest? It wasn't easy to make a decision; they were all cute. Replacements were seldom needed. Occasionally a cat would be struck by a car or just disappear; one cat had to be shot for catching and eating a baby chick. But far more kittens were born than we could ever keep. I understood this well but it was very hard when my father handed me a burlap bag of kittens one morning and told me to drop them off the bridge on my way to school. I shriveled inside at the thought. It never occurred to me to disobey and I did it. The bag didn't sink right away. No rock had been put in to weigh it down. The kittens mewed as the river current carried them downstream. I felt wretched for days.

The time came when we were actually short of cats. A disease which had always attacked the kittens, giving them sore eyes for a while, became much more virulent. They would seem to recover, then be struck down again, this time fatally. At last we were left with the two aging house-cats. It was decided that new blood was needed. A friend offered us two unusual kittens, just weaned. They were part Manx; the male had a stub of a tail, the female none. Both were jet black with extra toes on all four feet. I thought they were enchanting. I brought them into the kitchen to introduce them to Loungy. She couldn't have been more horrified if they had been bear cubs. Her hair stood on end, she spat and hissed, her eyes got huge and fierce and her face looked like a demon's. They were such little kittens and she had always been such a good mother, I couldn't understand her reaction. I continued to play with the kittens, hoping she would get used to them. She did not. After half an hour or so she went to sleep on the couch. Even in her sleep a deep throaty growl issued from her throat from time to time.

The black kitten, Sam, grew into a healthy, handsome cat. His sister met with disaster before she was grown. She was killed by a car while the two of them were walking along the roadside. It seemed that he understood what had happened because forever after he ran when he saw a moving car. He was afraid of little else. He never picked a fight but he allowed no other male cats on the place. He was an outstanding hunter, one of those unusual male cats who consider catching mice and rats a worthy vocation. With all this he was the friendliest cat we had ever had, even coming out to the vegetable garden to keep me company whenever I had weeding to do.

We hoped such sterling qualities would be passed on to his offspring. They were - at other farms. At least we had reports of bob-tailed kittens appearing in the litters of neighbor's cats. We never had any. Loungy and Ougen found mates elsewhere. A few of their kittens grew up so we never ran out of cats but none of our cats ever resembled Sam though he lived on the farm for nearly ten years.

Most farmers had automobiles by the early thirties but they weren't very reliable and the roads were generally poor. It is hard to describe a really bad road to someone who's never seen one. I don't mean a little-used road through the woods with boulders and overgrown bushes. Ordinary bad roads were the usual gravel roads seen everywhere in the twenties and thirties. Only major highways were paved. The road past our house was a typical dirt road. It was wide enough for two cars to pass anywhere; it was scraped with a road-scraper spring and fall and fresh gravel was put down in the worst places. The trouble was the mud in the spring and ruts in winter. Looking down the road you would see a driver in a Model T Ford churning through the mud, trying desperately to maintain his speed since to slow down would invite stalling. A large puddle posed a problem, especially if it covered most of the road. The driver had a choice of splashing right through it, hoping it had no hidden depths to bring the water over the running board, or steering way over to the side where the risk was plain to see since the shoulders were always muddy. We helped locate burlap bags, old boards and flat stones for those who had made the wrong decisions.

Winter was often worse because any ruts formed in late fall and not scraped in time, stayed frozen all winter. There was a joke about a road sign someone had seen. "Choose your rut carefully, you will be in it for the next mile." Snow actually improved the worst roads since all were ploughed even then and the snow filled the ruts.

We had a good time with snow just as children do now. We made snowmen, built snow-houses and forts, had snow fights and of course went sliding. Most of us had Flexible Flyers and we took them to school. The school-house sat on a hill so there was good sliding close by. The hill was not long but it was very steep and had a rise at the bottom which gave a roller-coaster effect. When one of the older boys brought his home-made bob-sled, half the school population could get on at once. We all clung to each other, little ones on the laps of big ones, then screaming wildly, the whole over-loaded bob-sled hurtled down the hill on its short run. We never had a single accident.

At home when conditions were slippery enough, we went sliding in the road. The road had just enough slope beyond the house so that, covered with ice, it gave a tremendously long ride. I would walk up to the next farm, meet friends there and we would continue on to the steepest place for a good start. If it was really slick we could coast for nearly a quarter of a mile, ending up in front of our house. Our parents took a dim view of this even though were almost no cars ; we were usually called in after one or two rides. In a few years it was all over; our town bought a sand truck. It was rare that the whole road remained slippery; they spread sand over the best sliding places. We hated that sand truck.

Dressing for winter was complicated. Cotton stockings had to be pulled over long winter underwear, a difficult task. I had "arctics" for my feet, each with four, hard-to-manage buckles. Usually I had a woolen skirt and a middy blouse with a kerchief which had to be tied. Then there was the heavy cloth coat, a woolen scarf around the neck, a knitted cap and mittens. We were often too warm but since nothing was waterproof except the soles of the arctics, we were also often wet and had to come in to dry out.

Boys outdoor winter clothing was much the same with the difference that they wore pants instead of skirts. And they had long, woolen stockings which came up to the knee since that is where their pants were buckled. Knee-length knickers were worn by all boys until they were in the seventh or eighth grade. The first pair of long pants marked the beginning of young manhood.

Clothing was more formal then. No woman would think of going to church without gloves. Everybody wore hats. My father had a good felt hat for best, a straw hat for summer and several caps for everyday wear. All the boys wore caps. Even though we had so little money, mother and I had spring hats and fall hats. Every spring I looked forward to the trip to Rockville to pick our a pretty new hat. There were two places to buy; a regular clothing store which had a hat section and the hat shop which sold nothing but ladies' hats. To have to wear last year's hat was a sure sign of dire poverty. Only once or twice were we reduced to that state.

On the other hand a coat was worn for years and years. Mother had a blue-green, woolen coat with a raccoon collar. The year I was nine she announced that she was going to get a new coat. I looked at her in amazement. "What is the matter with the one you've got?" She looked at me and said, "Barbara, do you ever remember seeing me in another coat?" I thought about it, then had to admit I hadn't.

I remember very well the coat my grandfather bought for me the next year. He simply announced one day that he and I were taking the trolley to Hartford to get me a new winter coat. What excitement! I had never been to Hartford or to a big department store. It was an hour's ride by trolley to Hartford. The size of the stores and their bewildering variety of goods overwhelmed me. The sharp, quick-talking salespeople seemed unfriendly.

The saleslady who sold us the coat was not only unfriendly but unhelpful. The coat was at least two sizes too big for me. True, it was a lovely material of a rich, brown color and the collar was genuine beaver. When she asked if I liked it, I nodded dumbly, too shy to point out that it was for someone much older than me.

My grandfather believed that buying children's clothes too large for them was the sensible thing to do - this way they could be worn for years without becoming too small. For clothing to be outgrown while still in a wearable condition was bad management and a sinful waste.

He was so enthusiastic about my new coat after we got home (Such wonderful material! Such a soft fur collar! Feel the thickness !) that I was convinced that I was lucky to have a coat like this. But by the time it fitted me it was an old, worn-out coat. My mother said hardly a word; undoubtedly this sort of thing happened to her many times while growing up.

Two of my grandfather's sons were mechanically inclined. One summer they bought an old Reo, got it in running condition and took a trip out west to Ohio. They also experimented with electricity. Several years before we moved to the farm they had rigged up a Model T Ford engine and a generator to produce thirty-two volt electricity. The engine was also used by itself to run a big rotary saw for cutting wood for the stove.

We had electric lights before anybody else in the area. But we had lights only in the kitchen and the dining room - and in the barn. My grandmother believed electricity was dangerous and hadn't let her sons wire the rest of the house. One of the chores on the farm was to run the Ford engine to generate electricity. It was housed in the "shop", a building adjacent to the woodshed. It had to be run about every other day and since it was an old engine it often broke down. When the engine hadn't been run a few days the lights would get dim. They got dimmer and dimmer as the electricity became weaker but I never remember them going completely out.

When I went to bed at night I carried a kerosene lamp upstairs with me. I was entrusted with this only after I had proved that I could hold the lamp steady and straight, then could set it down correctly, keeping it perfectly level. Everyone was careful with lamps; I simply never heard of anyone dropping one. Living beyond the range of fire engines, we knew that once a fire got going, it would burn everything to the ground.

Lamps needed daily care. We had three. The fragile glass chimneys got smoky and had to be washed, wicks needed trimming and shaping and new kerosene had to be added. We also had a gasoline-burning Aladdin lamp with two carbon mantles. It threw a brilliant light but was tricky and time consuming to start; it was only used on special occasions.

When we first moved to the farm and for several years afterward, there was no furnace and no running water. My grandmother raised seven children without these conveniences and so of course did and do thousands of other people all over the world. There was a well in the backyard and a pump above it.

When my grandmother first came to the farm she had had to carry water into the house by the pail-full, but in a few years she had raised enough chickens and sold enough eggs to buy herself a new pump which was installed inside the kitchen. The pump was not hard to work; you just pushed the handle up and down a few times and soon water would pour out of the spout.

There was no bathroom. There was an outhouse or privy; we didn't call them johns then. Although it was reasonably close to the house it was a cold trip in mid-winter.

Baths were taken in the kitchen in a large, round, galvanized iron tub. The tub was kept in a rear entry-way we called the "back kitchen". At bath time it was brought into the kitchen and filled with water dipped from the hot water tank. Kitchen ranges which were huge, flat-topped, cast-iron stoves, nearly all came with a twenty gallon metal tank along one side. If this was kept filled, hot water was usually available since the kitchen fire was always going except in the hottest part of the summer. Woe betide anyone who used hot water, then forgot to replace it with water from the pump. It took hours for a tank-full of cold water to heat up.

Connecticut winters are cold. With no furnace, only the kitchen and dining room of the house were kept warm. The big kitchen stove, polished every week with "stove blackening", burned off its polish quickly. The heavy, round, stove lids which covered the roaring fire inside sometimes glowed dull red. The pot-bellied stove in the dining room was less successful. It was not adequate on really cold days and it was not large enough to hold enough wood to last through the night. One of my parents would have to get up around three in the morning to add more wood to the fire. The bedrooms were icy. Country kids learned to undress under the covers. In the morning the thing to do was to grab your clothes, dash downstairs and dress in front of the dining room stove.

Even after we got the furnace (a Holland costing $300) we still burned wood for years. We owned a woodlot, a separate piece of land more than a mile from the house. Enough wood was cut each winter to last a full year. Trees were cut down when the sap was frozen and the ground was covered with snow. Branches were trimmed off so the logs could be loaded onto a sledge drawn by our two horses, Prince and Jerry. It was tough work; my father and his hired man chopping the trees and working the crosscut saw until they were sweating in the freezing weather. And it was hard for the horses struggling to pull a loaded sledge over uneven terrain where iron runners hit rocks or high spots, forcing the runners through the snow into the ground beneath.

Jerry was finally buried in those woods. He was a nervous, impatient horse, the opposite of Prince, an easy-going sort. My grandfather had bought them more than ten years before we came, the first young horses he had ever been able to afford. Though they were the same size and color, both bay, they were never a smooth team. Prince, ever one to take care of himself, always lagged two steps behind Jerry. The year that Jerry died it happened that our hired man, Armand, was a match for Jerry in temperament. He was a hard worker but he was an excitable man with a quick temper. It was never clear what happened but when my father went back to find out why Armand had not returned with the logs, he found the sledge stuck, the horses wet and steaming and Jerry staggering, barely able to stay on his feet. They quickly unharnessed the horse but he fell and died there in the snow. My father always believed that Armand had beaten the horses and that Jerry had broken a blood vessel trying to pull the immovable sledge.

It is hard to realize the importance horses used to have, especially on farms. Even after automobiles were common, nearly all farm machinery was still designed for horse power. Very few farmers I knew had tractors. Not only were they costly but those early machines had unpredictable habits. Many were unbalanced, being lighter in front than behind which caused them to flip over easily. To stabilize them, some farmers chained heavy rocks to the front end.

Horses were not much safer. Runaways were one of the excitement of the times. I was involved in only one runaway; Jerry was the culprit.

Every town had a blacksmith shop where horses were brought in to be shod. Jerry needed shoeing and there were errands to be done in town so the horse was harnessed to the spring wagon for the forty-five minute trip to Rockville. The spring wagon was an open delivery wagon, the fore-runner of the pick-up truck. It had a comfortable wooden seat on springs up front. I was pleased when my father asked me if I wanted to come along. All went well until after the shoeing, when we made a short stop at a lumber yard at the top of a hill near the railroad tracks. Just as my father got back into the wagon and turned the horse toward home, a loud train whistle sounded. Then Jerry saw the train. Down the hill he galloped.

"Hold on tight!", said my father. I saw him pulling on the reins as hard as he could, but incredibly I wasn't afraid. I had complete confidence he could stop the horse. As he told it later, he had no confidence at all. The horse was out of control; he had a fast decision to make. At the bottom of the hill the street came to an end; there was an intersection; directly in front was a wooden factory building; to the right was a bridge over a river and to the left the street angled so sharply that the wagon would surely tip over. Since we could also skid off the bridge into the river if we went right, he opted for straight ahead into the factory hoping the horse would make a big effort to put on the brakes. He certainly tried, but his downhill speed with the wagon behind him was too much. As we hit the sidewalk curb then slammed into the building, the spring seat flew up through the air with me still clinging on tightly. I landed right beside the horse's head. He had a skinned face and a bloody mouth. The ends of both shafts were broken off. My father was wedged between the horse and the wagon. Neither of us were hurt at all. When the seat was replaced and the horse calmed down, we climbed back in the wagon and had a sedate ride home.

Obviously runaways could be dangerous; people were often hurt. One driver-less team galloped past our house pulling a damaged wagon that had been hit by a car, the driver having been thrown from the wagon, picked up and taken to the hospital.

I had such a clear view of another runaway that I can still replay it in my mind; and no one was hurt. These horses were hitched to a wheel-harrow, easy to pull when the disks were turned parallel for road travel, which was where they were when they took off. They really flew. They went by the house at race horse speed. The driver, whom I had never seen before, looked scared to death. He was yelling, "Whoa! Whoa!" at the top of his lungs. It seemed to inspire the horses to greater speed. Apparently bored with the road, they veered off into a field. Not far ahead was a disintegrating stone wall. Instead of turning away from it, like steeple-chase horses, they made directly for it. Together they leaped the scattered pile of stones. The wheel-harrow hit the stones with an impact that threw it high in the air; not, however, as high as the driver. He rose as if fired from a cannon. Even more fascinating was that after his trip into space, he landed back in the seat. He must have been saved by his vise-like grip en the reins. But his luck didn't hold. The horses decided on a new maneuver; a hairpin turn in the middle of the second field. That did it. As one end of the harrow lifted, the driver foreseeing his fate, jumped to safety just before the whole thing turned over. That stopped the horses - they couldn't pull the upside-down harrow with the seat gouging into the ground. Since the driver was up and running toward the team, I could laugh with a clear conscience.

Runaways were a rare occurrence with us - we usually had old horses, over-worked most of the time. After a day of deep plowing Prince and Jerry barely had the energy to walk across the pasture to the brook for a drink of water. Jerry's panic at the train was the only true run-away we ever had - though I do remember a fast trip on the hay-rake when he was stung by a bee. Jerry was raw-boned and roman-nosed but our hired men always picked him when there was a one-horse job to do since he was the better worker. Prince was smoothly made with a pretty head but I had to admit he was lazy. The two did not operate well as a team. Prince always lagged behind. Any attempt to speed him up was also a signal to Jerry who immediately jumped ahead again. The problem would have been helped if they had regular bridles with blinders which prevent horses from seeing to the side or behind them. They had open bridles since my grandfather believed horses should be able to see all around - and Jerry could see the knotted reins coming down on Prince.

Good-natured Prince was practically my pet. On Sundays or when work was done I used to pile burlap bags on his bony back and ride him all over the fields and into the woods. Even my mother didn't worry... not only was he trustworthy but his energy level was so low that it took repeated blows with my heels just to put him into a jog - a jog so slow that my father said that he himself could walk faster than that.

I was always defending Prince. He had only one good quality upon which everybody agreed - he was intelligent; no one thought he was a stupid horse. Though many instances proved this, there was one episode which made me think he was almost noble. There is no way to tell how much the horse understood what he was doing, but it did seem at the time that he knew he was saving another horse's life - and maybe Jerry knew too.

It was a horse belonging to our neighbor, newly purchased for the early spring work. The horse was unfamiliar with the swamp in the pasture, unaware of the danger in becoming mired. When he was found he was on his side, half submerged in the mud, still struggling feebly. No one knew how long he had been there, maybe all night. The first we knew about it was when we saw Mr. Snellis and two other men carrying ropes and shovels into the swamp. My father went to help. Even with four men working it took a long time to get a rope down through the mud and around the body of the horse. Then all the men got out on firm ground, which unfortunately was uphill, and pulled as hard as they could. They couldn't move the horse at all. Then a piece of luck – another neighbor came down the road with his tractor. With shouts and waving of arms he was told of the predicament. He drove his tractor into the field - ropes were attached and the tractor started up the hill. We all expected the tractor to snake the horse right out of there. It didn't happen. The back wheels kept slipping on the half-frozen ground. When they did grab hold, the driver had to be very careful - too much gas and the front wheels lifted -the whole front rising off the ground. All the men had hold of the rope, trying to synchronize their efforts with the tractor with the tractor, but it was no use - it was too unpredictable.

That's when my father decided to go after our horses. They were harnessed in record time; a double whiffle-tree was located - the hired man carrying it alongside as the horses came trotting up the road and turned into the field. The traces were fastened, the long rope tied to the ring on the whiffle-tree, the horses started forward. I wondered if they could see the horse in the swamp - if they had any idea of what was happening.

The remarkable thing was the way they pulled. For once in their lives they pulled as a team - without encouragement or urging they strained every muscle. It was not surprising that Jerry pulled hard - but Prince pulled like one inspired. Both slipped to their knees several times but they never quit until drawn back by the reins so they could catch their breaths. Now with a steady pull they could count on, the men could time their efforts with the horses' pull. On the third big try, the horse in the swamp began to move. Slowly he was dragged across the hummocks to solid ground. He looked so pathetic - a fine big horse, helpless and trembling - covered with black slimy mud. He was unable to get up. Our horses were driven back to the farm for the stone-boat to move the horse down to his own barn where he could be cared for. (a stone-boat is a sort of giant skid handy for moving heavy things - every farm had one) I didn't go back with them to the Snellis's but I was told they had hot water and blankets ready for the horse and Mr. Snellis was going to call the vet.

Included in the talk that night at the supper table were remarks about the amazing way our horses had pulled, especially Prince; he had out-pulled Jerry.

"I never saw him pull like that", said my father. "I wonder if he knew?"

It would be good to report after all this that the mired horse recovered, that the efforts were not in vain. But the truth is that the horse did not recover. The vet who examined him said it was hopeless. So the day after being rescued from the swamp, the horse was destroyed. It upset everybody. Although it was conceded that the vet -might have been right, the general opinion was that he should have waited at least a couple of days before putting him down, just to make sure.

It was the next winter that we lost Jerry. Then for several months after we lost Jerry we had only one horse. The early spring plowing was started with Prince alone using an old, single-furrow plow. A replacement for Jerry was essential but with little money it wasn't easy. Finally a gray-roan mare called Gyp was found for fifteen dollars. She was a surprisingly good-looking draft type, heavier than Prince, not too old either - but she was totally blind and foundered in both front feet. Despite this she was a good worker although naturally rather slow, but then, so was Prince.

Before we bought her she had not been used for over a year. The first time I saw our new team working together I was astonished - they were a graphic lesson in what is meant by "condition." They were pulling a sulky plow, two furrows at a time through heavy, wet earth. Prince, over twenty now, ribs showing, had to pull harder than Gyp. But after fifteen minutes of work, the new mare was sweating profusely and her sides were heaving. Prince wasn't even breathing hard. I couldn't understand it.

"What's the matter with her?", I asked my father.

"Nothing" he said, "Just out of shape, that's all. She'll get better." And she did. Within a few weeks when she was in better condition, the work was easy for her.

I made friends with Gyp. By testing I learned that she could see nothing at all, not even a carrot held a foot from her muzzle - and she loved to eat.

That fall after the hay had been cut, Gyp was turned out in the seven acre lot in back of the barn. By herself in a new place, she panicked - neighing and running around wildly. She ran into the bushes in front of the stone wall along one side of the field and into the bushes and fence at the other end. I called to her, caught her and walked around with her until she was calm. I didn't have time to introduce her to all the barriers surrounding the field, but in the few weeks she was there she learned them by herself - indelibly, as I later learned.

The next spring the lot was again a hayfield. When it was time to cut it in June I used Gyp in the hay rake. It seemed to me that she was anticipating the turn-around at the fence-line but I knew this must be my imagination. To make certain I decided to drive right up to the fence then turn her at the last second. It was no use. I could not get her closer than four feet to that fence anywhere I tried. Though it seemed unbelievable she remembered the whole field. The map in her head was perfect.

In common with my grandfather, I had always found horses interesting. Years before, during visits to the farm he often let me lead Prince across the road to pasture. This was accomplished by grasping his long, silky foretop - the horse conveniently lowering his head so that I could reach it. I carefully walked to one side to avoid his feet while holding tightly to the fistful of hair lest he get away. Sometimes I got three cents for this, occasionally a nickel. No doubt the sight of a six-year-old girl firmly convinced she was in control of a 1400 lb. animal, leading him proudly to the pasture, afforded my grandfather great amusement, much more than five cents worth;

Later he taught me how to drive, setting me up on the high seat beside him holding the reins. By the time I was ten I could drive a horse by myself. My father had that in mind when he needed an extra hand during our second summer. There was a field of hay cut, ready to come into the barn. It looked like rain - only fast work could save it. It was the kind of emergency common on a farm. But this time to my amazement I was expected to help. With someone on the rake and two men pitching the hay on to the wagon, it could all be brought in before the rain ruined it. I was going to work the rake and drive the horse at the same time.

Our rake was so primitive it didn't even have a foot lever to dump the hay; I had to reach back for a handle which manually lifted the huge curved tines to release the hay. It was too hard - it was too heavy - the reins got tangled - I felt helpless. Through tears I cried, "I can't do it! I can't do it!"

"Yes, you can" said my father, "Keep trying, you can do it." Somehow I did manage. I dumped the hay in ragged piles, the horse wandered all over the fields but the hay did get raked.

Well, it worked! Later I'll maybe add the photos.

My 8th Grade & High School, etc.

For 8th Grade, two smaller 7th grades came together but we had two teachers, Miss Modeste DuBay, and Miss Murphy. We would always begin the school day, with the teachers and the students repeating the Lord's prayer. Our teachers were both Catholic, so they didn't say the last part of the prayer that the Protestants did, but we said it all, and they remained with bowed heads until we finished. Our one Jewish student simply remained quiet. No one had a problem. We would sing vaarious songs and hymns, including "Come Thou Almighty King".

Maybe about this time or a little later, Dad bought an old, but quite fancy used car. Maybe it was a Studebaker, but I can't be certain. Here he is with the car, parked under the Norway spruce tree. In the background you can see our shop.

Crazy things we used to do: I remember one night we all went bowling in East Hartford. We rode in Dick Niederwerfer's car. We were driving along Main Street, and one of us (for fun, (not me)), pulled out the throttle. Dick was driving. His quick reaction was to push the hand throttle back into the dash, but he accidentally pushed in the headlight switch instead, so there we were, travelling at high speed down Main Street in East Hartford with our lights out at night! But not for long; it all came out O.K.

We would regularly go bowling in Rockville about once a week. One time afterwards we went to the "Diner" for some ice cream. On some kind of a dare, I think it was Dick Niederwerfer ate his ice cream with ketchup on it.

Once we saved up sparklers from 4th of July, and on Haloween night put a row of them in the tar across the state highway, and lit them, then hid to see what would happen. Nothing happened.

One 4th of July I bought a few rockets. I had in mind to tie a thread to one, send it over a very tall maple tree on Skinner Road, and use it, with increasing string sized to put up another antenna. The first rocket didn't do the job because the thread wouldn't unwind from the spool fast enough. So for the second attempt I laid out a large amount of thread in a zig zag patern on the ground (in the chicken yard). It worked well for the first second or so, but then the thread snagged on a weed, the rocket did a U-turn in mid flight and plowed down into the chicken coop roof. Dad wouldn't let me make a third attempt.

Summers we spent an awful lot of time hoing asparagus, cabbages, strawberries, everything. Once or twice a year, when we least expected it, and it was very hot, Dad would come out, and say, "It's too hot to work, lets go down to the shore and go swimming!" We would always go to Rocky Neck State Park. (Note that is where Barbara took my picture in knickers sitting on a monster size rock).

Many summer Sunday afternoons I would take our dog and go for a very long walk, straight south across the pasture, across Gunthers lot, and thence into Gunther's woods. Sometimes I'd be gone several hours.

In my first two years of high school, I was getting mostly C's, maybe a B, but also one or two D's. I failed Sophmore Geometry and second year Latin. My Geometry teacher was an old Normal School classmate of Mother's, and Mother made a deal with her for me to study through the summer and take a make-up test in the fall. I did it under Mother's control. I wouldn't have done it by myself. Sitting at a card table in the living room on a wonderful summer's day, studying Geometry? Of course not! But I was forced to, and in the fall, I passed it.

I remember once during the school year, Mother had me sitting in the evening at the dining room table to study Latin. I was so angry that I just sat there with the book open in front of me, and I just looked at it for 1/2 hour but didn't study. Then it came to me that since I had to sit there anyway, I might as well study, so I did.

My second year high school was not too good. I was abscent sick almost a month because I first had the flu, and when I recovered from that I came down with the mumps. But something happened to me, I don't know what, and for my last two years of high school, I had all A's and B's. One incident: There were two Algebra classes, that started out about even. As time went on during the school year, the class I was in, taught by Coach Chatterton, started to dwindle in size without my noticing it. Eventually there were only a few of us in it. About that time Mr. Chatterton laughed and said "well I guess no one here will be going to college". I piped up and said that I was intending to go. It seemed that all those who had left our class had transferred to the other Algebra class and were being prepped for college. So I spoke up just barely in time.

Speaking of college, Dad used to pay me in cash for the work I did, and I saved up $50 on the top shelf of my closet. When I got that much, I went out and bought an old 1931 chevrolet coupe. At this development Mother said "I thought you were going to go to college!"

Well, I guess that's enough for now.