Yes, It All Really Happened

© 2013 by Bernard C. Baumbach. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/11/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-1306-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-1305-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-1304-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013916108

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Contents

THE BEGINNING:

LIFE ON THE CUTTING EDGE

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO FLY?

A PIECE OF CAKE

THE LEMON STREET HOUSE

THE PASSION IS RECOGNIZED

A LESSON LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN

SUN AND SANDY SOIL

MY ¹ST AIRPLANE—MY ¹ST CAR

PLAYING AND PILFERING—THE DEPRESSION YEARS

EXPERIENCING DISASTER IN 1933

AIRBORNE EXCITEMENT AND GLOOM

THE WANDERING WAIFS

FINALLY, THE AFFIRMING ANSWER

A PRELUDE TO GRANDPA’S TUTELAGE

THE WONDER OF WORKING

WITH WOOD

MY FIRST RIDE ON THE UNION PACIFIC

FIVE DOWN AND ONE TO GO!

SELECTED RITES OF PASSAGE,

SUMMER OF 1935

HIS NAME WAS GAYLORD

AN ESCAPE FROM TERROR

HARVEST MOON DANCE

THANKSGIVING AT GRANDPA’S HOUSE

WE THREE:

A BICYCLE, MY FATHER, AND ME

THE GROWTH SPURT: In Six Episodes

VARIATIONS IN THE LIFE

OF A ⁷TH GRADER

ANAHEIM’S 1938 DISASTER

BUT IS IT NORMAL?

ARTISTIC AND USEFUL CREATIONS

FROM OUT OF THE BLUE,

THEN INTO THE BLUE

WE QUALIFIED FOR THE CENTURY CLUB

DEVELOPING MY POLITICAL INTERESTS

TOP-SPIN, FAULT, AND GAME

ROMANCE TRUMPS DECEIT

I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE

A DINNER FOR MOZART

THE DYNAMIC DUO: A RETROSPECTIVE

AND THEN THERE WAS SUSIE

HOME ON MY THUMB

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE GREAT

AND POWERFUL

This Book Is Dedicated

To my Parents Whom I Often Disappointed—

Bert & Julia Baumbach;

To my Siblings Who Endured My Independent Nature—

Eileen, DeeDee, Marilyn, and Earl; and

To my Best Friend in the later years of this period of my life—

Jacque Edward Schweiss.

BCB

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A son of ‘The Golden West,’ Bernard C. Baumbach traveled east to Columbus, OH to complete his baccalaureate education at Capital University. Subsequently, he was awarded M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Texas at Austin. Beginning in 1950, he taught at (now) Texas Lutheran University in Seguin. Although it was outside his specialization, he was instrumental in introducing computer science into the TLU curriculum in 1969. He retired as Professor Emeritus of Sociology in 1990 after forty years of academic endeavors. In 1992, the mayor of Seguin asked him to spearhead a project to establish a senior citizen center. The Silver Center began serving the seniors of Guadalupe County in 1994.

He and his wife, Dorothy—who is a native Texan—moved to Sun City in Georgetown in 2002. Bernie and Dot, as the two of them are commonly known, are the proud parents of two adult sons, both of whom have careers in the Information Technology industry. The older son, Paul, lives with his wife, Leslie, and son, Kyle, in Winston Salem, NC. Karl, the younger son, and his wife, Essie, also live in Williamson County. They have one adult daughter, Morgan, who lives in Round rock, TX.

Dr. Baumbach currently posts essays on various religious and social issues on his website: www.bernardbaumbach.com.

FOREWORD

Since this is about me and those whose association impacted my life, I think you should have a brief glimpse as to who I am.

My name is Bernard C. Baumbach. My baptismal certificate declares that my middle name is ‘Clare.’ That name was never was an issue in my early life and it wasn’t until after both parents had died that I actually became curious as to why I was given a name that bore no connection with either side of the family. And so, I have simply fabricated explanations whenever queried about the ‘C.’ in my name.

Born in Anaheim, California on Thursday, February 19, 1925, I am the older of two sons and the third child of the five children born to Bernard E. and Julia C. Baumbach between November 23, 1920 and October 26, 1928. You will meet and learn a little about my parents and my siblings as you weave your way through these stories that span my first twenty-one and one-half years of life.

The primary purpose of this project has been to leave a description of middle-class American life as experienced during the second quarter of the 20th century to those in my kinship system who were born decades later.

This collection of autobiographical vignettes—for which I plead guilty of enhancing with fictitious dialogue in order to craft a story—provides a literary context for reconstructing the actual events, only segments of which are sequestered in memory. In other words, I am determined that in so doing I am involved as much in explanation as I am in entertaining.

There is one issue that needs clarifying. This collection does not adhere to an exacting chronological order. That is, this trek back through time begins when I was very young. I have been challenged regarding the validity of the earliest stories. But I remain resolute. The claims made regarding memory recall in each of them are true. Some stories leap ahead in time, others retrogress. Nevertheless, for each vignette I still possess in memory a residual segment of that event. I have provided literary enhancement in order to suggest what probably may have been the entire event. Even at this advanced age, I remember well the more traumatic experiences I had, beginning with those in infancy. This ability to recall certain features of selected events of my life as an infant and as a very young child is perplexing. I confess! I am at a loss to explain it. I have often wondered why I possessed this ability for such an extended, yet selective recall. It is unnerving to forget so easily dates, facts, figures, formulas, vocabularies, historical events, and personages associated with a more recent era. Nevertheless, I resolutely affirm that even though the experiences herein recorded were of a time so long ago, there remain those experiential segments that I have not forgotten.

In the first of the stories presented, I was not yet two years old when the event occurred. As is true for every situation described in this collection, the entire experience is not remembered from start to finish. However, in each story the core of the experience as a segment of the episode has remained a vivid and well-remembered image. Based upon a single or a few of the traumatic features of an actual experience that were indelibly etched upon my memory, these stories are an effort to craft a partial explanation as to why I have become the person I now am as well as to provide some description of the sociocultural and social psychological circumstances in which they occurred.

I am acutely aware of the fact that in this memoir a greater emphasis has been given to my pre-teen years. This imbalance was provoked by sage counsel to restrict the size of this book. Hence, a number of stories emerging from experiences occurring, and/or endured, throughout my high school and college years—indeed, a number sufficient for more than another book—were pulled from the manuscript, but not deleted from my computer. The dialogue in each story admittedly involves some fabrication. But the persons, the places, and the various features of each historical context are actual and true. Given my subsequent understanding of the personalities of those principally involved in each story, in crafting the scenarios I have not hesitated to propose what I believe might have been an approximation of what may well have been the actual dialogue. Ergo, although each story is not absolutely authentic from beginning to end, with respect to the centering experience in each case, YES, It ALL Actually HAPPENED!

B.C.B.

Chapter 1

THE BEGINNING:

LIFE ON THE CUTTING EDGE

I begin this collection with a story built upon the earliest of all my memories. You’ll have to take my word for it, of course, but the following experience actually happened before I was two years old!

You rattled when you slept!

That was Mother’s terse response to a question I had asked late in the summer of 1942. I was seventeen at the time and was facing both a surgical procedure and entry into my first semester at Fullerton Junior College. I had queried her about my memory of an experience of many years earlier. She confirmed my suspicion that it was a surgical procedure.

What do you remember from so many years ago?

I remember you carried me into a building and into a room where the walls and the drapes were a dark green. We were met by a couple of people in white coats. One of them carried me to another room and placed me on a high, narrow bed. I remember voices and being touched. But then a silvery thing—like a sieve—came down over my face. I’ll never forget that! I don’t remember a thing after that.

Well, that’s the basic picture. The building was the Johnston Clinic.

My memory’s clear on that. You carried me up the steps and through the doorway. There are things I can’t remember, but I’m positive about what I do remember.

They used ether to knock you out. You were still woozy when I got you back home and in bed. It was day surgery. No over night in the clinic. They let me take you home later that afternoon.

I learned several years later that Mother would sew, or darn, or tat, or mend whenever she couldn’t sleep, or when she was waiting for some one to phone, or waiting for some one to drop by for a visit. In any case, darning socks was a task which she pursued, not merely out of economic necessity, but to fill the void while anticipating an interruption so that she could put her darning basket aside and take up a more pleasurable activity, like visiting with a friend or talking on the telephone. In short, I bet that Mother was sitting beside me, darning socks and hoping that something better would soon happen; and in that instance, you could say her darning Daddy’s socks meant that soon I would be better—I would recover from having had my adenoids removed.

That was my first experience of outpatient surgery if, respecting my modesty, you ignore the experience of circumcision. It would be in the late summer of 1942 that I was scheduled to have my tonsils removed, also as an instance of outpatient surgery. There were several major differences between these two experiences. One was that of a six-weeks period of preparation for the upcoming tonsillectomy that included my eating huge portions of lamb and drinking innumerable glasses of Knox Gelatin. This change in diet was the accepted procedure for shortening the time required for blood to clot. Secondly, at seventeen years of age, I was expected to walk unassisted into the clinic which was located in Fullerton. I had been warned several times by the nurse who weekly checked the clotting time that I was to have nothing to eat or drink—a sip of water after I had brushed my teeth was all I was allowed—the morning of my surgery. Finally, I had only the advantage of a local anesthetic. I was first given a sedative—it looked like a ‘horse pill’ to me—which was supposed to keep me calm and relaxed without rendering me unconscious. It proved to be insufficient in my case and so the nurse corrected the deficiency by injecting something into my arm. It worked! I was a bit groggy, but semi-conscious as the nurse assisted me into one corner of the operating room. She seated me on a stool with my shoulders and head pressed against the two walls which met at the corner. I had to be able to follow the instructions of the surgeon as the operation proceeded. After a brief exchange with the nurse, his first words to me were Open wide! I was conscious enough to follow directions from the surgeon, but so woozy that I can’t remember what they were. I do remember that he worked from my left side to my right side with the nurse apparently swabbing and manipulating the suction device. Then, following the requisite suturing, the nurse and the surgeon helped me back to the room where they had given me that ‘horse pill.’ I lay down, relieved that it was all over. My recovery period was not very comfortable. I kept my mouth closed and tried not to swallow. Every few minutes a nurse would come in and check me for possible hemorrhaging. Then, after an hour or so, the surgeon came and checked out his handiwork using a flashlight.

You’re ready to go home, Bernard. But be careful and don’t strain you throat for a couple of days. With that, I got up off the bed and with a nurse steadying my steps, walked into the waiting room. When Mother saw me with the nurse, she dropped her magazine, came over and put her arm around me, under my armpits, and we walked out of the clinic and over to the car. I said absolutely nothing during our four mile drive back home. I nodded and grunted in response to Mother’s chatter. Apparently she had been as nervous about the procedure as I was. Once we were home, I changed into my pajamas and lay down on my bed. It was then that Mother asked me if I’d like some vanilla ice cream. My answer was a simple smile, a nodding head, and perhaps some grunting. In a few minutes she was back with a huge bowl of vanilla ice cream. I’m certain that I enjoyed it. It was the first food that I had all day. It was the only food I had through the following day. The cooling texture of the melting ice cream flowed soothingly down my wounded throat. The doctor—I don’t recall his name—saw me twice again before releasing me from his care. It was after the second visit that I registered for the Fall Term of 1942-43 school year as a first semester freshman at Fullerton Junior College.

Chapter 2

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO FLY?

My birthday and kite-flying season made the closing weeks of February a very special time for me. This was particularly true during my pre- and elementary school years. I think that I was actually glad that February was short-changed by two days. So much sooner those blustering breezes would herald the coming of spring. You might say that it was really the kite-flying season of March that I anticipated with its renewed opportunity to ponder the question, What Is It Like To Fly? I would talk to the wind while coaxing a kite into the sky, yet reminding it that I held the other end of the string. It was sad, in a way, for it was I who wanted to be flying—but maybe not like a kite.

Don’t ask me how or why; it is just that I still remember the following episode. My second birthday had been celebrated but a couple of weeks earlier when I experienced my earliest recollection of kite flying. Apparently Daddy had a passion for the sport which he, quite unknowingly, would pass on to me. In spite of my very young age, the following experience was vividly etched in my mind. Indeed, now decades later, I can still recall that morning as though it were just a few days ago.

Daddy had fashioned a two-stick bow kite that might have measured my height inch for inch. He had covered the kite’s frame with white paper and attached a tail which consisted of strips of cloth probably torn from an old bed sheet. He tied the strips together in such a way that the knots gave the kite’s tail the appearance of a string of bow ties. At least, that was how he did it for the kites he made for me and my brother in subsequent years.

Kite flying, as with everything Daddy did, involved carefully determined procedures. In launching the kite, he would grasp the line about an arm’s length from the kite’s bridle, hold his hand as high as he could reach, and as the spring breeze sought to blow the kite free from his control, he would let the string slide slowly across his index finger, pinching it whenever the wind slacked off. Without running into the wind, without taking more than one or two backward steps, the kite would slowly draw the string across his hand as the ball of twine unwound as it rolled and tumbled on the ground at his feet. Ever so carefully, he fed the line to the kite, almost like feeding a child—give me more!

But that first kite: How high did it fly and how far out did that ball of string let that kite soar? It might as well have been a mile up and a mile out, for what I remember as a two-year old is seeing that kite high in the sky and bobbing about in the wind. It was higher than some birds that were flying about, but I doubt that they were curious about this strange visitor to their space. In later years, when flying a kite myself, I often wondered if the birds were perplexed, wondering how such a strange, wing-less creature could fly. But I doubt that my backyard experience that morning provoked me to want to hold the string myself. Again, I was excited simply watching the kite and was more than content to do no more than that.

At that time, the land behind our house was undeveloped and I have no memory of the vista available more than a few feet beyond the wire garden fence that enclosed our backyard. The kite soared above this open space and beyond, tugging for more string. But after it had reached a place in the sky, high and away as it swooped and dipped over the field behind our house, Daddy tied the string to the top of the fence and returned to the garage and whatever he had planned to do that day before he left for work in the Huntington Beach oil fields around 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Now I was alone with the kite; there it was, just it and me. The ocean breezes—I really didn’t know at that time that that’s what they were—were steady and the kite stayed aloft in spite of the fact that Daddy was no longer in control of the string. My attention was riveted completely upon that kite. At that age and as a reaction to that experience, I doubt that I was then curious, as I had become in later years, and pondered the question, What is it like to fly? But maybe this was when it all began.

I cannot say how long I was in the backyard, peering through the fence, watching the kite as it yielded to the variations in the ocean breeze. But some time soon after Daddy had returned to the garage, I experienced what I earnestly believe was transformative. It may well have been the defining moment that initiated my lifelong interest in flying, in the things that flew and in the people who flew them. In all probability, it was what happened next that probably imbedded the whole experience in memory.

Daddy had tied the kite string to the top of the fence. It must have been sometime in early March. The year was 1927—a year most important for those who do things in the air, high in the sky, like Lucky Lindy—but I wouldn’t learn of him until years later. But what I remember is a whirring, buzzing noise that suddenly filled the sky. It must be true that first impressions are the most indelible, for after all these years I can still see that biplane coming out of the eastern sky, heading right for the kite—or so it seemed. It had to have been much farther away than I thought, but I must have called out somewhat frantically. Daddy came rushing out of the garage to see why I was so agitated. He shaded his eyes against the mid-morning sun and gave a few perfunctory tugs upon the kite’s tether, assuring me that it was not coming down. Obviously, for Daddy, the kite was in no danger as the plane crisscrossed the sky, circling in a wide, lazy manner. After all, airplanes had become somewhat commonplace in 1927.

But then, just as Daddy was ready to go back to the garage, something literally blossomed in the sky near where the plane had just been. This was to be the occasion for another dramatic and lasting impression. First, it was that airplane off behind my kite; now it looked like a person was hanging under a huge, white umbrella, gently swaying in the distance as he drifted downward. How can I describe the amazement, if not perplexity, of a two-year-old boy? Daddy often threw me up into the air and I’m certain that I would shriek with delight as I fell back into his arms. But I was never very high nor in the air for very long before he’d catch me. I don’t think that I ever considered such tossing as a form of flying. But way beyond my kite there was something coming down out of the sky, held aloft, yet gently descending, strapped to an umbrella, gently swaying back and forth. Daddy picked me up and we watched it drift lower and lower. Soon it disappeared from our sight. Then, and for the next several minutes, I forgot about the kite and marveled at what had just happened.

I was to learn that that was a parachute, a piece of equipment so critical to the lives of innumerable pilots. That drop was an omen. I remember Daddy setting me upon his shoulders, my legs astride his neck, as he began to tug at the kite with sharp pulls on the string. He wound the string around the wooden core in a figure-eight fashion, pulling upon the string briskly whenever the kite settled too rapidly. But, in a manner comparable to the style he used in getting the kite into the air, without running backwards, much less taking a quick step, Daddy managed to return the kite to the backyard as deftly as he had sent it out. But that event out there, what was it? What happened to the airplane? Where did the man land? Questions like these, however, did not run through my mind until years later.

It was but a few days after that exciting experience that Daddy had a surprise for me. I recall him standing in the driveway in front of the garage and throwing a handful of cloth wrapped with string into the air. Just as the object began to fall back to earth, the string unwound from the cloth and it, too, blossomed into a homemade parachute about the size of a large handkerchief. I doubt that Daddy fully realized the magnitude of the impact that had upon his—at that time—only son.

Chapter 3

A PIECE OF CAKE

This story has nothing to do with a job that is exceedingly simple—a piece of cake! Rather, it is a story about an actual piece of cake and its role in the bonding of a father and his third child who was his first son. It was on the morning of February 20, 1928, the day following my third birthday.

Because of the date, I only know, but do not remember, that the first birthday of my younger sister, Marilyn, was celebrated twelve days earlier. However, in memory, my third birthday continues to play more vividly than most birthdays of more recent vintage. The imagery which presents itself so clearly involves Daddy calling me to come from the breakfast nook into the dining room where he was finishing his breakfast.

Sonny, come here for a minute. Yes, that was the infamous nickname my parents foisted upon me from the very beginning. I spent years desperately trying to nullify it as the name which identified me, particularly when in the presence of relatives or, much worse, whenever in public or worst of all, when in the presence of my school chums. In retrospect, it was not until I left the family circle, having transferred from Fullerton Junior College in California to Capital University in Ohio, that I was able to escape completely the resentment I experienced because of the name ‘Sonny.’

My two older sisters were not at home when Daddy called me. Eileen, in first grade, and DeeDee in kindergarten, had been whisked away to classes at Broadway Elementary School. Daddy was having breakfast at this later hour because he had come home from work on the graveyard tower—it ran from midnight to eight o’clock in the morning—at a drilling rig in Huntington Beach. It was only when he worked the graveyard tower that he ate breakfast in the dinning room All other times he had breakfast in the breakfast nook that was something of a sun room at the back of the house. Just off the kitchen, its east wall was filled with windows so that it was the brightest and cheeriest place in the house during the morning hours. Furthermore, it was the typical place for breakfast on the weekends. School schedules and Daddy’s ‘round the clock’ work schedule generally dictated that different persons would eat breakfast at different times.

Nevertheless, there was Daddy in the dining room finishing his breakfast. Typically, it would consist of two eggs sunny-side up, very crisp bacon, hash brown potatoes, and two or three slices of buttered toast with strawberry jam. At his right hand, as was the dining pattern throughout his life, was a pot of coffee on a trivet, a small creamer filled with evaporated milk diluted with an equal amount of water, and his cup and saucer.

But the strongest recollection was of that huge cake in the center of the table. I remember it as a yellow cake with a snowy-

white frosting with blue decorations. It was somewhat disfigured, however, because of the pieces which had been cut from it the day before in celebration of my birthday. And since it was my birthday cake, it still boasted three partially burned blue candles. Although it remained in the center of the table as a now diminished tribute to my third birthday, it still grabbed my attention whenever I walked through that room.

Just as I entered the dining room, Daddy asked me to close the door to the kitchen. This was hardly a problem for it was a swinging door and it took little effort to close. Nevertheless, when it was closed it was just as effective a barrier to sight and sound as a regular passage door. We were now alone, Daddy and me. Mother was in the kitchen with Marilyn who was in her crib in the sun-filled breakfast nook.

Over here, Sonny, next to me. His voice was always soft, but I think at this time he might have lowered his voice even more. I sat in the chair around the corner of the table on his right. Even for a three-year old, it was evident that something unusual was in the making. He took the last piece of toast from the side plate and placed the now empty plate in front of me. Without saying a word, he reached for the cake, pulled it toward him, and after wiping the residue of butter and jam from his knife onto that last piece of toast, he began to cut a slice from the cake. I thought that this was really something—Daddy was going to have a piece of my birthday cake for breakfast! Wow! Who ever heard of having dessert with breakfast? But he wasn’t fooling around. And look at that ‘Daddy-sized’ piece he cut! But then it happened. He took what seemed to me to be the largest piece ever cut from a cake and, with a cautious glance toward the kitchen door, set it on the plate he had placed in front of me! The reason for secrecy was now evident.

Go ahead. It’s your cake, isn’t it? I think birthdays ought to be celebrated for, . . . ah, two days anyway. Don’t you?

I’m certain that Mother eventually found out about my having had a really big piece of my birthday cake that morning. If she did not surmise that fact from the obviously diminished size of the cake, I am certain that my childish exuberance over having been involved in something quite so exciting was loudly published throughout the house within very a very short time. In either case, neither her reaction to the event nor her response to Daddy or me were sufficiently dramatic as to create any indelible impressions.

But why was this experience so very special that I have remembered most of its features for all of these years? Although I had replayed the memory time and again throughout the intervening years, the tragedy of it all is that I did not come to fully appreciate the significance of Daddy’s gesture that morning until several months after his death some sixty years later. And then it was too late to say anything about it. I began to recall any number of experiences which at their respective times were never memorable because Daddy rarely expressed his feelings openly, dramatically, or emotionally to his children. But as the recall process began, I realized that in incident after incident, whenever he gave, made, or repaired toys or books or whenever he enabled me to become excited, it was generally accomplished with maximized subtlety and a minimal display of affection.

He was rarely involved in our school activities; for weal or for woe, it was Mother who governed that aspect of our lives. It was Mother who provided the kudos for most of our achievements. It must be acknowledged, however, that Daddy’s work schedule was not conducive for a full and unqualified participation in the lives of his children. His was shift work and he changed towers each week until I was in high school when he was assigned to the oil fields northwest of Bakersfield, California, which were two hundred miles or more from home; oil fields in which he had worked when he first came to California at the age of seventeen in 1909. It was then that he returned home but once a week on some occasions, but more typically he would be gone for three weeks at a time. But even before that, working in the Southern California area he often had a one- or two-hour commute to the drilling rig.

The more serious aspect of his work schedule pertained to the fact that when working in Southern California, he would have to change towers each week. In other words, one week he would clock in at eight in the morning. The next week it would be four in the afternoon. During the final week of the rotation, he would begin work at twelve o’clock midnight. All of this demanded that his pattern for sleeping had to accommodate that kind of disruption from one week to the next. In turn, his sleeping schedule imposed severe constraints upon household activity, particularly with five children in school, and the three daughters taking piano lessons which required each to practice each day. There would be weeks when, although Daddy was at home every day, because of our school schedules, we kids might not actually see him nor sit down to a meal with him until the weekend.

And so there were two things which, long after the fact, I came to realize were critical in shaping the kind of relationship which bonded my father and me. The first was his work schedule which, for me, was an impossible arrangement. But it was work which he was skilled at performing and which, relatively speaking, paid handsomely so that he might continue to provide his wife and his five children with more than the basic necessities of life. The second one, and the more important, was the austerity of his own social skills, particularly in the matter of communication. He seemed reluctant, if not unable, to express his feelings freely. When he was happy he would laugh heartily. There were a few occasions—far too few occasions—when he would dance a jig that suggested that he was Irish. When he was perplexed, he simply drew more forcefully upon the cigar he was smoking. When he was displeased, he would rustle his newspaper or throw it to the floor. But never, not even once, did he ever raise his voice or his hand against any of his children in displeasure, punishment, or correction. I’m quite certain, however, that many times he experienced an internal rage which he effectively suppressed, thus contributing to the peace and tranquility of family living. Apparently, whenever he was angry, he retreated into silence and, regardless of whomever was the object of his anger, he would give voice to his concerns only to Mother—and then only if he was certain that all of the children were fast asleep or, at the least, out of earshot.

After we had moved to the house on Pine Street, the radio in the living room, a Majestic console radio, was his most probable source for true relaxation and out-loud laughter. Whenever he had the chance, he would smile at the radio antics of Amos and Andy or of Fibber McGee & Molly or enjoy the repartee of Jack Benny or Fred Allen. He was not enthusiastic about any team sport, but he followed the careers of Jack Dempsey and the boxers who followed after. He had the mind and the skills of an industrial engineer; but he lacked the required education by as much as high school and beyond. Obviously, however, his career as a core maker in Oil City, Pennsylvania, as a bench machinist in Wasco and Fullerton, and as a roughneck throughout Southern California all affirmed his ability to work effectively in small groups and later, as a driller, to direct crews in their work assignments. Later in his career, he provided the leadership necessary to successfully drill thousands of feet down with a diesel-electric rig in Central California even as, in his earlier years as a driller, he successfully completed a whip-stock operation of slant-well drilling with the oil rig situated on solid ground in Huntington Beach that reached out and under the Pacific Ocean floor. These earlier drilling procedures utilized natural gas or steam-driven equipment. It was working with these kinds of things and working in these kinds of environments that, for him, were ‘a piece of cake.’

But that was the way Daddy was, and he did do many special things for his children. But there never was a big fanfare; little, other than hushed directives, suggested that he was doing something out of the ordinary. This was simply the way he did things when it came to his children. And so it was that morning of February 20, 1928, Daddy’s cutting of that big piece of cake for me the day after my birthday, was but one of his innumerable—but at that time unrecognized—gestures in his uniquely non-verbal way of telling me of his love. How I regret that I never told him that loving him was a piece of cake.

Chapter 4

THE LEMON STREET HOUSE

1st Home at 554 S. Lemon St., Anaheim, CA

The house in which I grew out of infancy into childhood was located in a developing middle-class residential neighborhood in Anaheim. Our home was a modest house which faces west and stands yet to this day at 554 South Lemon Street. The house reflected the architectural style so characteristic of Southern California middle-class structures built during the years between World War I and the Great Depression. Those houses featured huge front windows which could not be opened, nonetheless suggesting the casual openness of Southern California living. The living rooms in many homes—although not in ours—featured false fireplaces which, at best, housed a set of gas-fired logs. The interior presence of such a feature was boldly suggested on the exterior by a non-functioning brick chimney which, at best, might have been something of the attitudinal baggage brought West by relocating Yankees, most of whom were Mid-Westerners from