All the children in my family, myself, my two older brothers, and my four sisters, were born in our house at 3100 J Street, in Vancouver, Washington. Our family lived in this house from 1912 through 1933.
The house was one story with a kitchen, pantry, dining and living rooms, bathroom, two bedrooms, and a large sleeping porch. The sleeping porch was added along the north side of the house. All of us kids slept there. There were no glass windows in the sleeping porch, just screened windows and sheets. It was cold in the winter and sometimes my mother would warm some bricks, wrap them, and put them in the beds. One of the bedrooms was used as a common dressing room, clothes room, sewing room, and junk room. Mom and Dad had the other bedroom. The kitchen stove was a wood burner as was the stove in the living room. We had stacks of wood outside, some of which we would stack up and make into playrooms. There were several fir trees around the house. We also had a pie cherry tree and a couple of apple trees.
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A newspaper article shows the house being moved when they put the I-5 freeway through Vancouver. My mother had written comments on the clipping, correcting the newspaper account, which said the house was built in 1930. It wasn't built in 1930s but was built about 1910 because Mom and Dad moved into the house in 1912. (The clipping doesn't show the sleeping porch. I would guess that they tore that off before trying to move it).
There was a small building out back which probably was once a garage but which Dad had converted into an office. It also served as my brother Lad's radio shack. It became the place where all of the neighborhood kids gathered. Sometimes they played cards, and sometimes they would use it as a shop where they would melt lead over a stove and pour it into holes drilled in a block of wood to make sinkers for fishing. Lad became a licensed amateur radio operator, or a "Ham." These Hams contacted each other all over the world, and then they would exchange their calling cards, which were postcard size and had their call letters on them. Lad's call was, and still is, W7CPP. He had cards plastered all over the wall that were received from other Hams. Lad was also an experimenter. One day he asked me to climb up on a stool by the workbench and hold two wires. ZAP! I got a shock that knocked me to the floor. Needless to say, I wasn't too happy about that.
My mother really liked the kids that came around. She liked to tell them jokes. One time she told them that if you picked a guinea pig up by its tail that its eyes would pop out. She knew that a neighbor had acquired a couple of the animals. So the kids tore off and came back looking sheepish. Guinea pigs don't have tails. She also liked to pass along "tradelasts" or good things she had heard about the kids from other people. I think the kids liked my Mom because of this attitude and her interest in them. She was always telling me that if I picked my nose that I would pull a string and pull my eyes out. But she also passed along a few tradelasts for me.
We had a combination garage and barn. The barn was for the cow we always kept. The cow was staked out in the fields around our house where it grazed. My Dad and Lad did all of the milking. I didn't envy them on cold mornings. From the milk we churned butter and also churned a lot of ice cream. One time I thought I could use snow and save on purchased ice, to freeze the ice cream. I didn't use rock salt to melt the snow and the ice cream never would freeze. I learned. My Dad bought a lot of black walnut trees, which he planned to use as rootstock for English walnuts on his place in Minnehaha, a few miles out in the country. He never got around to it, or changed his mind. All of these trees grew up one or two feet apart, along the side of the barn, and got quite tall. We played in these trees, climbing from tree to tree.
We also played in the fir trees and would climb to the tops of them and come back down all covered with pitch. One fir tree had two sturdy, long branches close to the ground. We would walk on the bottom branch and hold on the upper branch until we neared the end. Then we would let go of the top branch and swing down to the ground on the lower branch. We called this the parachute. Lad used the trees to string his aerials for his radios.
We also had a chicken coop and raised several chickens. The older boys got the idea of hypnotizing the chickens. They would take a chicken and lay it on a board with its head flat on the board, and looking at the end of straw. Then they would pass their hands over the chicken's head and the straw until the chicken didn't move. It worked. To time how long the chicken stayed in that position, they gave me a stop watch and asked me to tell them when fifteen minutes was up. I let the time run over until the chicken finally woke up, a few minutes after the fifteen minutes was over.
In the woods in front of the house, (J Street wasn't cut through), was a large chunk of granite. I suppose it was deposited by glaciers. Anyway, we all thought there was a pot of gold under it. We would dig periodically but never did get to the bottom. But it did consume a lot of time. Then one day a neighbor came in, dug it out, tied a chain around it, and towed it back to his place, roughing up the street. That was the end of the gold legend. In these woods were Hazelnut bushes, and we ate lots of Hazelnuts.
The fields behind the barn were used for football games. One day my friend Herb Sugg got a real football uniform and wanted to play a gang from near the Pythian Home. One of this gang was Fred Provo who became a top notch football quarterback in High School and the University of Washington. We didn't stand a chance against these guys, even if Herb had an official uniform. I don't think we scored once. Little did I know then how famous Fred would become. These fields were also the home of a lot of poison oak and yellow-jackets. One day I put a quart jar over one of the yellow-jacket holes to watch them swarm up into the jar. Then I decided to knock the jar over by throwing rocks at it. When the jar went over I started to run but tripped. Before I could get going again I was stung several times. Live and learn.
We stored apples and pears in the basement to ripen. The fruit came from the place in Minnehaha. One day I ate a pear that was overly ripe and got sick. I never ate a pear for years after. Finally I did try another pear, and wondered why I had waited so long. A mental block I guess.
I got the measles while we were living here and I can remember that I had never been so sick in all my life. I thought I would die. They moved a bed into the living room where it was warmer. In those days, when you caught a contagious disease, the county posted a colored sign on your front door to warn others. We also got shots for diphtheria and a couple other things, and these shots would make your whole arm sore for days. I guess shots are different these days.
Our first radio was a crystal set. My dad used to listen to it with ear phones. Later we got a regular radio, I don't remember what kind it was.
My mother had a hard life, raising all us kids in those days. I can remember her chasing my two older bothers with a switch one day. And when I said bad words, my mother would wash my mouth out with soap and give me a switching too. I usually didn't remember saying anything bad. The switches were cut from the bushes around our place.
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In 1934, when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, we moved to 1004 E. 29th Street, still in Vancouver. I'm not quite sure why we moved. My father wasn't doing too well financially and may have lost the other house. I think the rent for the new place was $25 per month. It belonged to the Dicksons. The house had two bedrooms downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs. The closets of the upstairs bedrooms were lined with cedar to keep the moths out. It had a front porch and a screened-in back porch. It had a living room, dining room, kitchen and one bathroom.
In the basement was a wood-burning furnace that put heat out through a vent in the hall, near the center of the house. Several loads of wood and a few of coal would be put in the basement to last the season. My Dad and Lad built an office in one corner of the basement, and built a workbench. I later added my darkroom. My Dad had a large roll-top desk and I always wondered what happened to this desk. I think Lad kept his radio stuff upstairs in one bedroom corner, but he didn't use it much after he went away to college. The kitchen stove was a wood burner. Both this stove and the furnace had coils to heat water for the water tank. Nevertheless, my mother often heated water on top of the kitchen stove in a big double boiler and carried it to the bathroom when she gave us kids a bath. Speaking of baths, my mother used to bathe three of us in the tub until Billie noticed me and said I had a "tail". That ended the communal bath.
Outside there was a double garage where the Dicksons used to load shells for their guns. Several empty shells were lying around. Dad used it for a storeroom as well as a garage, and saved every thing including old rugs, He sent these old rugs to a rug manufacturer, together with some money, and got some new rugs in return. But there was a lot of other junk that should have been tossed. This house was also removed or torn down when they put I-5 Highway through town. Most of the houses along J and K Streets were in the way. I-5 was built as a ditch with overpasses for cross roads. A few blocks North was the city garbage dump. It had originally been a gravel pit. I always wondered what they did with all the garbage and junk when they dug the ditch through it. I visited this area in 1993 and recognized other houses that weren't removed. But the whole area looked seedy and run down, and I thought that it was a sparkling area when I lived there.
Many stories come to mind regarding my years growing up in Vancouver, not in any particular order.
The Russians landed in Vancouver after a 5,000 mile-flight over the North Pole from Moscow. We knew that they were coming in our direction but didn't know where they might land. Jean got up early in the morning and turned on the radio and got the first report that they had landed at Pearson Field in Vancouver Barracks. We drove down and got to see the plane before the crowds arrived. Later in the afternoon, all highways in and out of Vancouver were crowded with cars. Dick worked at Western Union at the time and they were swamped with telegrams. General George Marshall was stationed at Vancouver Barracks at the time and the Russians used his house to clean up and get fitted for new clothes. The plane sat for several months but was finally dismantled and loaded on to a boat at the Vancouver docks. We went to the boat and talked to some of the crew who could speak English. They kept saying how much better Communism was because nobody was out of work. Years later a monument was constructed to commemorate the flight. I never could find any record for this flight as a first, in any of several different books on aviation. I later found out that it didn't qualify because none of the preparatory papers had been filed for the flight.
We took several trips to Salem to visit Uncle Will and Aunt Jennie Hogg, and Aunt Elsie (Nutter) Evans. Dad always had old cars and they seemed to break down when we were about twenty miles away. The car would be towed the rest of the way and fixed for the return trip. This happened several times. Or, it would get a flat tire, which required a stop to fix. Then Jean talked Dad into driving to the beach. We made it without breaking down and even took a longer route home along the Oregon side of the Columbia River. Dad ran through several old cars. He had a couple of air-cooled Franklins, which were good cars, but he smashed up both of them in wrecks.
I liked to swim and always wanted to go along with whoever had the means of transportation, or rode my bike if it was close enough. There were several places to swim, some near and some far. Brookside Park was a dammed up section of Burnt Bridge Creek along the north side of Vancouver. It was very muddy, having come through several farms, but they did chlorinate the water. It cost to swim there because it was developed, having dressing rooms and facilities outside such as slides and rafts. Eventually I think it was forced to close as being unsafe. Sometimes we would go to Hayden Island in the Columbia River and which was near Jantzen Beach Park. Herb Sugg and I went there once with Herb's big sister and another girl. Sometimes there would be highly tanned naked men sunning themselves. And the sandy beach would have clumps of feces here and there because there was no sewage treatment upstream. But it was otherwise a nice place. Jantzen Beach had some very good pools and we went there a few times. Salmon Creek was about eight miles north and had a few places to swim which weren't muddy. One of these was in an old gravel pit which made for a bigger area for the water and to swim. I went there at night once with Kenny Snedden. We went past a couple who had a fire going by a big log, and went to the far side of the pond. Kenny got in the water first and disappeared. I thought he had drowned and kept calling for him. Finally he came quietly swimming back and said he had been across the pond watching the couple make love!
Lacamas Lake north of Camas was another favorite place, but farther to go. Several of us went there at night and swam across the lake and back in blackness. This really wasn't a safe thing to do because nobody could find you if you got into trouble. We were changing clothes in the car when Mel Broberg, who was smoking, leaned down to reach something on the floor and touched his hair with a lighted cigarette and lit his hair, it was like a torch. It looked worse than it was.
Battleground Lake was in the crater of an ancient lava dome. It had a very long slide, which was the main attraction. Also, the Lewis River, several miles north, had several good places to swim but were they ever cold. The water came from the mountains. Ladine Park and a County Park are two other places I remember. Portland also had about eight city parks, each of which had a swimming pool, and the cost wasn't too steep for us kids. One park was only ten miles away and we often rode our bikes over there for a swim. This was the same park where my bother Dick and his friends would go at night to get night crawlers, big worms, to go fishing with. The crawlers would come out onto the grass at night and could be spotted with a flashlight. Blue Lake Park was a little further, east of the Portland Airport. It was a nice place in that the water was a little warmer. I'm sure there were other places that slip my mind.
Herb Sugg, Bill Andrews, and I planned a bike trip to Lake Merrill near Mt. St. Helens. Bill was the only boyscout among us and he finally backed out. Herb and I went, a trip of about 50 or 60 miles. Our bikes in those days only had one gear, Herb's allowed him to better climb the hills, and mine was better on flat ground. We finally reached Cougar, Washington where we hired the owner of a Go-Devil to haul us up the steep road to the lake. The Go-Devil was like a pickup truck but was cut down to about three feet in width to be able to drive on the narrow road, or trail. Herb's Dad had a cabin here, and I had been to it once before with them. We didn't know how to cook but tried. I started to boil some rice and it kept expanding, requiring baling out some of it so it wouldn't overflow. But we must have cooked something to keep us alive. We rowed a boat all over, and climbed up the slope of the mountain for a ways. We were going to stay for one week but decided to come home early, and it was a Saturday, which was a mistake. The trail down was so steep that we had to lock our brakes most of the way, and skid down. At the bottom of the hill, our brakes were so hot that they were spitting oil. Brakes in those days were in the hub of the rear wheel and not on the tire or rim as they are on today's bikes. I guess we got a late start because it was dark by the time we reached a Grange Hall in the country where Bill Andrews was playing the drums in a dance orchestra. We stopped in long enough to watch him play. Then we continued our ride on Saturday night with all the traffic. Herb had a generator light and went in front. I stayed behind and flashed my flashlight to warn cars coming up from the rear. This worked in that the cars would slow down, except for one speed demon, who nearly wiped us out. At home the next morning, there was a loud explosion, which later was reported to have been a meteor. If we had delayed our return until Sunday, we might have seen the entry.
One year the Columbia River almost froze completely over. There was still a channel of ice that was flowing down the middle. In those days there were no big dams on the river and the ice could form east of the mountains where it was much colder, and flow all the way down the river to Vancouver. They say that it did completely freeze several years before. Also, a tornado ripped through NE Vancouver one year but fortunately only hit a few fruit trees so the damage was minimal. This was really a freak since we seldom got that kind of weather. We took a ride out in the country to see the damage.
My Dad's place in Minnehaha was on a hill, so we called it "The Hill". It was only a few miles out in the country. It had an old house that was very dilapidated, and several fruit trees, apples and pears, and was planted in filberts. We grew a few vegetables and picked black berries. The trees were loaded with tree frogs and I soon found out not to pick them up. We all walked out to the hill one day and camped out under the stars. I think this was one of his real estate ventures that didn't work out and he must have lost it.
Brother Dick used to take me to a hockey game or a baseball game in Portland. I had inherited a sheepskin coat from a relative that was killed, and I wore it to the ice arena, not knowing that it wouldn't be that cold. I used to beg an occasional nickel or dime from him to go buy a banana. He used to give me rides occasionally to an out of town football game. I played golf with him a couple of times in later years. Dick and his pals spent many an hour out in field behind the barn practicing baseball pitching. This is the same field where he and many others, including me, used to play football.
Mom and I got our first airplane ride with Mr. Sugg, our lawyer neighbor. Mom had me swear that I wouldn't tell Dad because he was against flying. To me it was very noisy, which it was, but I guess I wasn't expecting it. We just took off and flew around once and landed.
Bill Andrews was in the Boy Scouts, which I never joined, but I used to go watch him when he had meetings at Arnada School, and went camping at Lewis River Park. In the park they had contests such as wall climbing. One summer he got a job as a fire lookout. Bill's father and mother took me up to the place once, and we had to walk up a trail the last few miles. Bill's Dad shot a quail on the way up and cooked it for dinner. Bill was always having people up at the lookout. Once his Aunt went and she took a movie of a quail sitting on a stump back-lighted by the setting sun. Then it fell over, somebody shot it. The movie was shown to a scout troop, one of whom was the son of the game warden. The game warden came up to Bill when he came down the hill to pick up his groceries, and wanted him to confess that he had shot a quail, but Bill denied it all. Bill became a pilot in the Army Air Corps and was ahead of me at Williams field. He was flying fighters at Portland Air Base when I was home on leave after my cyst operation. I went to Portland to watch him and he told me later that his superior didn't want him hobnobbing with a cadet. Bill was later killed in Germany after VE Day and I don't know the circumstances. Both he and Roy Higgins, who was killed during the war, were shipped home for reburial and I was a pall bearer at each funeral. They were two close friends.
Bill McLaughlin owned a Model A Ford and he and Kenny Snedden drove it around the United States. They had wanted me to go with them but I decided not to. They went down through the South and then up to New York City and then home via the Northern States. They broke a piston somewhere in Montana, but found an old tractor out in a field which had the same engine. They took a piston from the tractor and fixed their car-pretty resourceful. They didn't have a lot of money and subsisted on lots of doughnuts. When they got home, they were skinny having lost many pounds.
We took many roller skating trips at night to a place in Portland. Sometimes it would be a school trip and sometimes it would be for the Columbian carriers. One time this girl in High School asked me to go with her, which I did, and Bill Andrews and Herb Sugg couldn't figure it out. They were jealous. I admit I wasn't much of a catch but enjoyed the outing. Maybe I should have pursued the situation, but I wasn't aggressive enough. As a Columbian carrier I also got to go on a camping trip to Mt. Ranier. It happened on the same day that my mother went there with Aunt Jennie and Margaret Hogg. One of our drivers saw a hyena run through our camp and said, "Look at the prairie dog!" It was the first time he had seen one.
In 1938, the Vancouver High School basketball team won the State Championship. They were a very good team and beat all the Portland teams and several college freshman teams. The playoffs were at the University of Washington in Seattle. We scraped together enough students and talked one of the school bus drivers to take us. We got half way up and the bus had engine trouble. But it was fixable and we got there in time for the final game. Our band wasn't there, so a Hoquium band played for us. The semifinal game was an odd one—Vancouver won 10 to 8. I guess each team was too careful and tense. But in the final, Vancouver drubbed Everett 42 to 24. We got on the bus for a several hour trip home at night. Then the students went on a strike and took a day off to celebrate, much to the disgust of the faculty. I guess they stood to lose money with the students out. But it was a good celebration.
Our High School band played for Gen. George C. Marshall, who was at Vancouver Barracks and who was appointed by President Roosevelt to become Chief of Staff. And of course you all know about him since then, I assume. Marshall was the guy who picked Eisenhower over several others, to become a General and lead the American forces. I really didn't know what it was all about when we played for him, but I later found out. Military doings didn't impress me at the time.
Herb Sugg's father owned a golf course east of town. We used to go there, and sometimes we would go in the bushes in the rough, to find golf balls. This was before I played the game. Later he decided to build a clay tennis court near his house. Herb and I went to the golf course and cut down some trees that had trunks about the size of poles that were needed around the court. I'm not sure the tennis court was completed, although we worked on it, but I do know that a basketball court was set up. Herb's Dad also collected some of his fees in wood. Huge stacks of four foot long cords were delivered near their barn. Then they got a goat and we trained the goat to climb up a ramp to the barn and then on to the woodpile. The goat was just like one of us and would go and climb everywhere we went.
Herb, I, and others built a tree house on the top of one of the fir trees near the barn. The top had been cut out of the tree and the limbs had grown large enough to support the house. One day a marauding gang came by, led by an Amazon or large girl, and started peppering the tree house with rocks, and then they moved on. I guess this was gang warfare in those days.
Brother Lad took me to a magican show at Shumway Jr. High School and I think it was Houdini. Needless to say I was very taken in with the show. He also took me on camping and hiking trips. We camped once at Government Camp in a forest east in Skamania County. Lad, Dave Reeves, and I hiked to the top of Silver Star Mountain, about 4000 ft. elevation. This was the first time I had gone on such a long hike. I thought we would never get there and they kept saying, "Just around the next bend and a little further." Then we got up in the clouds and I was afraid, but we just kept on the trail and finally reached the top. It was a good view and I was happy to have been along. We heard a bear one night, which was not unusual. We hung things the bears liked to eat high up on a sapling that was too high for a bear to reach and not strong enough for a bear to climb. We climbed Larch Mountain, which was up behind Multnomah Falls on the Oregon side of the Columbia River. Dad came on this hike. We drove up the Lewis River by Mt. St. Helens to look at Christmas Box Canyon. This was formed by a washout on the side of the hill where water had accumulated under a bed of lava. The Lewis River had been flooding at the time and the washout caused a peak surge in the flood downstream.
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The Snedden's cousin from Spokane visited them once and we went on a ride to the Hills above St. Johns in Portland. We were out in the country and then Snedden's car quit. There weren't even enough cars coming by to thumb a ride. We all had paper routes to get back to. Finally a mechanic in a crossroads service station got it going again and we jumped in with the cousin at the wheel. From here we started downhill to get to the Willamette River. We were going a little fast and the brakes wouldn't slow us down for the curves. The cousin tried to make one more outside curve but we didn't even start to make it. Instead, we went straight over the side and rolled down the hill for 97 feet. We were all thrown out and the car was demolished. I think the car was a 1928 Chevy, which had wooden superstructure. I was the only one not hurt and climbed back up the hill and ran down the road to find a phone. I came to this farmhouse They didn't have a phone, but drove me down to the highway where I phoned the cops. They and an ambulance and tow truck finally showed up. I told the cop how it happened but he didn't believe that I could have been in the car and not have gotten hurt. Jack had a broken shoulder and the other two had sprains, which they got over. I felt shakey for two days and tried to play tennis to calm down.
Lad had an old car, which he let me drive once in a while. I wasn't too smooth with the clutch however and broke a rear axle. Lad just said, "Fix it." Fixing it wasn't too much of a job on that old car. The Sneddens helped me get the old axle out and put in the new one. But then it had to be adjusted and I'm not sure I got that just right.
Herb Sugg always liked to take his Dad's car out in the country and speed it over the bumps or dips in the road. I think the car was a Chrysler. He would get it going fast enough to sort of take off when going over a bump. This wasn't very safe and he just about lost control once. It also wasn't the best thing to do to a car. But that was Herb.
Billie learned how to play the piano and learned a jazzy tune, I think it was the Banana Roll or Piano Roll Blues. She clunked it out fortisimo! But it sounded pretty good. Sister Jean was a very good piano player and even gave lessons. She also played in a group that had several pianos playing at the same time. I went to see one of these performances. I forget what they called the group.
Our neighbors across the street before the Sneddens were Maggie and Dad Ferrier. He was a Civil War veteran. He liked to shoot his shotgun at the flickers that would get under the eaves of his house. I had a toy truck that would lose a wheel once in a while, and I would go see Dad Ferrier because he had some round wood in his basement and would saw off a piece and replace the wheel. They had a big open touring sedan of some make and he would give us rides occasionally when he went to the store in Vancouver Barracks to get food. Maggie was a great gardener and always had flowers growing in the parking strip and vegetables in a big garden. When they both died, I went with my mother to the funerals. Dick heard me telling one of my friends about seeing dead people and he didn't think I should be talking about that.
Brother Lad used to torment me went I would fall asleep on the couch. He would make like a fly on my face and I would keep batting it away while half asleep. It seemed like this would go on for hours. And he used to tease Nancy about some little guy in the neighborhood, Hamilton or some such name.
In high school we all had to run cross country through the streets of northwest Vancouver. I wasn't much for running but thought it would be a snap. I usually rode my bike and wasn't in shape to do a run, I guess, because I developed a cramp in my gut and all I could do was walk the last half. I think I came in last.
We used to fish in Burnt Bridge Creek north of town. My brother Dick caught a big trout upstream by a slaughterhouse, about two pounds I believe. I never could catch anything and used to go the whole length of the creek. Some people caught crawdads in the creek in Leverich Park. Dick and his pals also trapped skunks. He had some pelts on a board by the barn and did they stink. I don't know how they skinned them without getting stunk up.
When at Arnada we had a project to make a big book about America and send it to Japan, I think the Japanese students sent us a similar book about Japan. Ernest Hoff and I decided to make a page of stamps, a complete set. We didn't quite have all the stamps in the series but had left spaces for them because we intended to complete the set and the teacher saw our arrangement and got huffy about the irregular arrangement. We had to explain what we intended to do, and we did complete the set. I don't know why she couldn't figure it out.
Robert Wilson was a deaf neighbor who we looked after. We taught him to ride a bicycle and to climb the fir trees. After he learned these tricks he was always doing them. He had a fascination with spiders and caught them and put them in jars and in a cage where he would study them for hours. He couldn't speak too well although he had learned many words and names. He always called me Bubba, for Bobby. When he wanted to communicate he would always carry a notepad and pencil and write things down.
My mother used to enter contests such as making up jingles or limericks and often won prizes. Once she won a case of tuna. I liked tuna and she made tuna sandwiches to take to school. I liked it so much that I asked for three sandwiches a day. But after a while my system was beginning to rebel in that I was getting too much tuna. Finally one noon as I was eating my lunch, my jaws locked, they refused to open for another bite of tuna. I felt bad having to ask my mother to switch to jelly sandwiches.
Money was something that we didn't have much of and always spent it frugally. Also, candy was something we didn't get much of compared to the neighbor kids. I had earned a little money doing small jobs and never spent it. But one day I had a craving for a candy bar and went to the neighborhood store and bought one. I felt guilty of spending my own money and came back through the woods to hide and eat it. Such was life in the depression days.