Christmas Leave 1940, but You Can't Go Home Again

My ten-day Christmas leave began on the 20^th of December.  I still had not saved enough money for either a bus or train ticket so I elected to hitch-hike home to Vancouver.  To get out of the San Diego and Los Angeles areas, I did buy a bus ticket to Bakersfield, California, then hitchhiked up Highway 99. Men in uniform had very good luck hitch-hiking in those days and I had the good fortune of decent weather in the Siskiyou mountains.  I arrived in Portland, Oregon, the morning of the 22^nd and caught the interurban bus to Vancouver.

My first leave in uniform was not the triumphant return I had envisioned and, in the end, it emphasized the point that already my life and my interests had diverged from those of my family and my old friends.  It began with the fact that the family had moved du9ring my absence of six months.  Instead of the familiar yellow house I had left in July, they now lived in a small shingled house on the eastern outskirts of town.  It was somehow not like “coming home”.

They were all glad to see me, of course, and admired my tailored uniform (Richard had come on boot leave in a regulation baggy blouse).  It was nice to be there for Christmas, but somehow there was a feeling that I no longer really belonged.

The same was true of the close friends I had left behind.  Dad still had the old Chevrolet and the first evening home I drove it down to Gearhart’s.  The only ones I saw were David Schaeffer and Ariel.  We had a Coca Cola and they asked me the usual polite questions about life in the Navy, but it quicky became obvious that they were not really all that interested.  I had been away and was not up to date on local happenings.  Our acquaintance had become casual.

I spent some time on evening with Shirley Mills and her family, but did not take her out on a date. She had started to Oregon State College and was only home for the Christmas holiday.  Again, I answered the usual questions about life in the Navy.  Shirley and her sister Mary admired my uniform, my suntan, and my muscles that had been hardened by daily calisthenics.  Mr. & Mrs. Mills asked polite questions also, but then they would suddenly be discussing local events or happening at OSC whih left me feeling very much the interloper.  Before long I excused myself on the basis that I had to get back to my family, but instead, I drove down to 13^th and Kaufman to see Patty Cross.

That was one fo two gratifying instances during my leave.  Pat wanted to hear everything I had been doing and, unless she was an accomplished actress at the age of fifteen, was truly interested.  Her mother welcomed me like a returning son and I spent a comfortable evening with them.

The other gratification was a movie date with dear Elaine.  She had enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle and was home for the holiday.  I recall that she wore a simple black dress for our date and the scattershot high school girl was becoming a poised young lady.  She, too, was truly interested in what I have been doing and, with her rapid fire delivery, wanted to tell me all about the university.  She was a dear, sweet friend, but I did not have the feeling that a serious relationship could develop for us—I had too far to go out there in the world.

My leave was to be up on December 30^th.  I decided to leave Vancouver on the morning of the 27^th to allow time for hitch-hiking in case rides were slow or scarce.  The weather had turned rainy in Oregon with possible snow in the Siskiyou Mountains so, although he could not afford a ticket to San Diego and it was my responsibility, Dad insisted on buying me a cut-rate ticket on a small wildcat bus line in Portland that would get me into Northern California.  The crowded little bus deposited me in Redding and from there, with less than five dollars in my pocket, I was on my thumb.

I had good luck with rides down the long valley through Sacramento and by dawn on the 28^th had been left near a truck stop café in Lodi.  There my luck seemed to have run out.  After an hour or more with very few cars and trucks passing, I went to the café for a glass of milk and a doughnut (I still had not developed a taste for coffee).  The driver of an automobile transport truck loaded with wrecked and used cars was next to me at the café counter.

When the truck driver heard that I was headed for San Diego, he made me an offer.  He said that he could ick up the wreck of a Cadillac convertible in Modesto but that he had a full load of cars.  The rear car on his truck, however, was a driveable Chevrolet sedan and would I drive it for him to Los Angeles?

I jumped at the chance.  When he had finished his breakfast we drove to Modesto, unloaded the black Chev sedan, and loaded the wrecked Cadillac in its place.  He instructed me to simply stay on his tail and to flash my headlights when I needed to pull off for gas.

The drive was uneventful until we reached the top of that section of old Highway 99 past Bakersfield that was known as “The Grapevine”.  It was sunset when we pulled off at a café for some supper and was dark when we took to the road again.

That truck driver took the twisting curves of that steep mountain grade considerably faster than we comfortable for an inexperienced driver like me.  I had to keep his taillights in sight, however, because I did not have the address of the wrecking yard in L.A. that was his destination.  He had just said, “Aw, you won’t have any trouble keeping me in sight.  If I lose sight of you in my mirror, I’ll just pull over until you catch up,” so, with sweating palms on the steering wheel, I stayed glued to his tail.

The worst part was when we got into Los Angeles and its traffic and stop lights.  It seemed to me that at every stop light it would turn red while the truck was pulling through the intersection.  I was afraid that if I lost him he might make a turn before I caught up so I got the front bumper of the car as close to the truck as I dared and simply shot though the red lights.  It was fortunate that we did not encounter a police car as I left exasperated motorists honking at fifteen or twenty intersections, or so it seemed.

We finally found the wrecking yard on the south side of L.A. and I heaved a sigh of relief when I parked at the yard and, since he lived in Long Beach, I had hi drop me at the bus station there.  He had paid for my supper andI had just enough money left to buy a ticket on the late bus to San Diego.  IT had only a few passengers so I stretched out on the long rear seat and slept.

From the downtown San Diego bus station, it was but a short walk down to the Broadway Landing where I caught the “nickel snatcher” foot passenger ferry out to North Island.  I arrived on the Naval Air Station dock just at morning colors and, as I walked to the barracks past the tall flag pole with the stars and stripes waving against the blue sky in the warm breeze, I had the feeling that I had truly come “home”.  I belonged there.  I loved my close knit family dearly and would always be concerned for them; however, never once again would I feel any real pangs of homesickness.  For a long time to come the Navy would be my real home and my squadron would be my “family”.

[I would argue that the Navy remained what defined my father for his entire life.  Although only a relative short part of his life in actuality he thought of himself as “an old Navy man” until the day he died.]

Machine Gun Fire in Europe, Typewriter Fire at School

When school opened in September, it was good to get back to the now-familiar red brick building.  I was at ease there now and was well acquainted with many of my classmates.  I would have all the pre-requisites for the Naval Academy examination.

I still had one elective course and I selected Journalism and joined the staff of our bi-weekly newspaper “The Columbia Log”.  That one extra-curricular activity resulted in my acquaintance with an individual who became a life-long friend, Elaine Eberle.  She was a junior that year and I was a senior.  Even though we were not in the same Journalism class, she was also on the staff of “The Log” and we saw each other there often when we were preparing copy for the paper.

Elaine was very attractive.  She was small and slim with a piquant face on which were was always a happy smile.  She had long thick hair.

It was little Elaine’s personality that was truly outstanding.  She iterally bubbled with vitality and enthusiasm, and she was seemingly involved in every activity in the school, most especially those having to do with writing and the arts.

Our acquaintance began, I believe, with Elaine twitting me about my typing when we were there working on copy for the paper.  Her typing was smooth and she rattled words onto the page like a machine gun.  My typing was very slow and uneven because I had not taken a typing course and had developed my own style like an old-time newspaper reporter—two fingers on each hand and a thumb for the space bar.  It was strictly hunt and peck—and I still type that way, crudely but quite rapidly.  [My father made sure I took typing and I am a fair hand.  My husband’s father was a business teacher, Dave took typing, but he still pounds away with two fingers.  Sigh]

I retaliated for Elaine’s comments by occasionally walking by her desk while she was busily typing and hitting the carriage release on her typewriter so it would slip to the left in the middle of a sentence.  That annoyed her, of course, and I sometime got out of the door barely ahead of a flying eraser.  It also resulted in our becoming fast friends and we often worked on school projects together—she directing and me doing.

It was my involvement on the school paper that, in the spring of 1939, very nearly resulted in my being suspended from school.  I had been assigned by Miss Hurd, our faculty editorial advisor, to provide and editorial based on current events.  The subject I selected was the worsening situation in Europe where Adolf Hitler was leading the German people to a glory that would soon become a world disaster.  The war clouds were heavy over Europe and, since I fully intended to go into the military, I followed developments there quite closely.

On this occasion, I had put off writing my editorial for the paper that was to be published the next day until the last minute.  A few days before I had seen a newsreel of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, returning from a meeting at Bertchesgarten with Adolf Hitler.  Chamberlain came off an airplane clutching his rolled up umbrella in one hand and waving a document with the other.  He halted at a bank of microphones and made his statement that there would be “peace with honor”.

At the time, while Europe was plunging headlong into a war that would make the original World War look like a preliminary bout, the United States was a very divided nation.  There were three distinct schools of thought.  First there were the isolationists and pacifists who wanted peace at any price.  Then there were the German sympathizers in surprising number, many of whom belonged to the German Bund.  Finally, there were the “war hawks” (among whom I counted myself) who did not want war, but who felt that if Herr Hitler was not checked, war was inevitable.  I did not envy Franklin Delano Roosevelt his position in the White House.

To get back to VHS, on this occasion I was to turn in an editorial after school that would be typeset that evening and would appear in the school paper the next day.  At the last minute, I laboriously pounded one out on the typewriter, then went looking for Miss Hurd who was to approve all copy for the paper.  She was nowhere to be found.  Apparently there was sickness in her family and she had left early.  Neither could I find our other faculty advisor, Mr. David Miller, and the student newspaper editor, Jean McKellar, had gone home.

I knew that I was in trouble with Miss Hurd if my editorial did not appear so, in desperation and thinking that what I had written was accurate and very timely, I made an illegible scrawl on the corner of the copy where Miss Hurd’s initials should have been.  Then I trotted down to the pressroom and handed the copy to the typesetters.  No one but me had seen it.

The next day, when the paper came out Elaine got one of the first copies off the press so that she could check on a Column she had written.  She was a very astute young lady and was appalled when she read my editorial.  She came on the double looking for me, copy of the paper in hand.

I have a yellowed old clipping of that editorial here before me.  It reads:

MICE OR ME?

Out of the chaos that was Germany after the World War there has arisen a menace to world peace.  We are watching today the most humiliating chain of events in history.

One man, supported by a literally hypnotized nation, is marching across Europe with disregard for national boundaries and for the feelings and rights of other people.  While this is going on the nice that call themselves the great leaders of democracy are scurrying around carrying their umbrellas and squeaking for peace at any price.  We all want peace but the price has already been set—and it is war.

Hitler says treaties are made to be broken.  As long as he retains this scornful attitude, in the light of present affairs who will say there can still be peace with honor?

Peace with honor today?—PHOOEY!

Elaine was a voluble talker at all times and this time she ws sputtering like a thirty-caliber machine gun when she found me.

“CONRAD FRIEZE!  Did Miss Hurd ever in her life approve this editorial?!”

I took the copy of The Log she was waving in my face and saw with satisfaction that it had been printed exactly as I had written it.

“We-ell, no,” I said meekly.  “I got it ready late and she was already gone.  Couldn’t find Miller, either.  What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s WRONG?!  Conrad, it is downright warmongering!  You know that Mister DeYoung is a confirmed pacifist!  You have heard the things he has said in assemblies about the trouble in Europe!  Weren’t you paying attention?  Boy oh boy, is he going to be upset!”

Russian Visitors in Vancouver

There were other memorable events during that summer of 1938 before I started my senior year at VHS, both involving airplanes.  The first occurred while I was still working at the riding academy.  One afternoon Charlie Barnett came in and told us that a big Russian airplane had landed at Pearson Field in Vancouver from a direct flight over the North Pole from Russia.

When I got off work that afternoon, I was burning with curiosity since anything having to do with airplanes always got my full attention.  I had the bicycle that day so I raced across the Interstate bridge and out to Pearson Field.  There, guarded by soldiers from the Barracks, sat a sleek monoplane.  The slender fuselage was painted green and the long, tapering wing and the tail surfaces were red.  It had a single in-line engine in the nose.

I was a bit disappointed.  I had expected to see something really impressive like the fabled Maxim Gorky that was the largest airplane in history (until Boeing build the 747 many years later).  The Russian monoplane did not look big enough to carry much of a crew and it definitely was not a passenger airplane.

Since I could not get close to the airplane because it was in the Army part of the field and was guarded, I went around to the private part of the field where I had several friends.  There I found that it was truly an historic airplane and flight.  A Russian crew of three had taken off from somewhere in Russia and had flown, without refueling, directly across the North Pole.  They had evidently been heading for San Francisco, but had run short of fuel and had landed at Pearson Field which was shown as a military field on their charts.  It was a real milestone in the history of aviation.

The following Saturday, I was in Gerhart’s Drugstore with David Schaeffer, Ariel Mansfield, and a couple of the others.  We got to talking about the Russian flight.  None of the others had been in an airplane and I told them about the flight Dave and I had taken.  They were very skeptical and did not think we had really done it.

I had my weekly pay from the riding academy in my pocket and was sort of “feeling my oats” so I said cockily, “Okay, I tell you what I am gonna do.  I am going to down to Pearson Field right now and have an airplane ride.  I will have the pilot fly over here and I’ll wave to you to prove that I have been in an airplane!”

The others pooh-poohed the idea so there was no backing out.  I got on my bicycle and pedaled down to the airport.  I found a fellow that had a Bird biplane and bought a twenty minute ride for three or four dollars with the condition that he would fly over the courthouse square as low as the law would allow.

The airplane was an open cockpit biplane and I felt like David Niven or Errol Flynn in “The Dawn Patrol” when the pilot strapped a parachute on me and handed me a helmet and goggles.  When we taxied out to the runway, I was wishing I had a long white scarf to throw around my neck and let flutter in the slipstream.

The flight went great.  I gloried in the open cockpit with the wind rushing by and the engine making so much noise that voice communication with the pilot was impossible.  He knew what I wanted, however, so he broke out of the patter and headed across downtown Vancouver at less than five hundred feet.

I did not see anyone in the vicinity of Gearhart’s during our first pass over the courthouse.  I signaled the pilot to go back by pointing at the drugstore then made a waggling motion with my hand to indicate that I wanted him to rock the wings.  He nodded and threw the little airplane into a steep bank to fly back over the square.

That time I saw Ariel and a couple of others come out of the drugstore and wave while they jumped up and down.  The pilot rocked the plane and I stuck my arm out into the slipstream and waved.  As we flew over the apartment building at the end of the block, I saw David Schaeffer leaning out of a window waving a white handkerchief.  It was a very gratifying experience.

Reunited

My next clear recollection of that train trip was when we came down the Columbia River Gorge on the last day into Portland.  We had been in dry and almost barren brown hills of eastern Oregon then, a few miles beyond Pendleton we were suddenly on the bank of the mighty Columbia River.

I moved to the right-hand side of the coach and gaped in awe.  I had never seen so much water in one place before.  At home in the Ozarks, especially during the drought years, I could throw a rock across the biggest river I knew about.  Now I was gazing at a mile-wide expanse of water that was headed for the Pacific Ocean.

The best was yet to come.  After a short stop at The Dalles, we were into the heart of the Columbia River Gorge.  The brown hills gave way to mountains covered with green Douglas firs and rocky cliffs over which streams tumbled in great waterfalls.

I moved back to the left side of the coach and, nose pressed firmly against the windowpane, gaped ecstatically as we passed Horsetail Falls, Bridal Veil, and Finally double-tiered Multnomah Falls.

During the final hour into Portland, I felt a kinship with old Brigham Young as I kept repeating silently to myself, “This is the place!  THIS IS THE PLACE!!!”  That train began a love affair with the Pacific Northwest that would remain steadfast during the remainder of my life, no matter how much of the rest of the world I saw.

My father had borrowed Uncle Austin’s black Plymouth sedan to come to the train station at Portland and he, holding baby Sandra, and my mother were on the platform to meet the train.

My principal memory of that reunion was the reaction of my mother.  She had left behind in Missouri a tow-headed youngster that she could kiss on the forehead but I had grown a full six inches or more during those months.  Instead of little Conrad, she was looking at a gangling youth, arms and legs hanging out of that too-small grey suit.

As I stepped down from the train, I heard my father exclaim, “There is is!” and as I turned toward them my mother stood stock still as I advanced, her mouth open in surprise.  As I came near, she finally said “Conrad?” in a questioning voice then gave me a big hug.  The top of her head came barely to my nose.

“Conrad Ross Frieze,” she said in mock severity but with delight, “I swear you have grown a foot in just seven months!  Just look at you—we are going to have to get you some new clothes!”

Shifting little Sandra, now a roly-poly one-year-old to his left arm, my father gravely shook hands with me.  He simply said “You are looking fine, boy.”

The drive to our new home was fascinating.  We crossed the long Interstate bridge over the Columbia to Vancouver.  Below on the water I saw a tugboat pulling a big raft of logs slowly downriver—just like the picture in the atlas at Bona School.  Upriver there was an honest-to-gosh sternwheeler steamer thrashing along.  My father pointed out the DuBois sawmill from the bridge where he worked.  He had taken the day off to come get me.

It was a wonderful feeling to be with the family once more.

The Way West

I woke shortly after sunrise.  The landscape outside had changed during the night.  The undulating prairies had given way to rolling hills and rocky outcroppings as we approached the Rocky Mountains.  I was enthralled.  We were getting into cowboy country. 

I was hungry and feeling the call of nature.  I made my way slowly through the swaying car to the lavatory at the end.  For a country boy fresh from a two-holer outhouse, the train lavatory was opulent.  The sink was marble with gleaming brass fittings and there was a fancy light up beside a gilt-framed mirror.  I wondered where electricity and hot and cold running water came from on the train.  The toilet was flushed by a foot treadle.  I was fascinated by the fact that the treadle simply opened a flapper valve and, peering down, I could see the ties flashing past.  Now I knew the reason for the sign that said “Do Not Flush While Train is in Station.”

I washed my face and combed my unruly mop of hair, then made my way across an open platform into the dining car.  It was a bit overwhelming.  Each table was set with a white linen cloth, heavy silverware, white coffee cups with gold rims, and water glasses that must have been crystal.

There were few passengers in the diner at that early hour.  I took a seat at the nearest empty table.  The white-coated black waiter, flashing his white teeth in a big smile, placed the menu in front of me with a flourish and a “Mawnin’, young suh!”

He waited while I studied the menu.  I was appalled at the prices.  At home in Greenfield a complete breakfast of eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, toast, juice and coffee could be had for 35 cents—twenty-five cents without the juice.  You could also get a hamburger for a dime.  Here on the train, a glass of juice was twenty cents alone and a bacon and egg breakfast was seventy-five cents.  On the lunch part of the menu, a hamburger was fifty-five cents.

I surreptitiously felt of my pocket where, after the movie in Kansas City, I had little more than four dollars to see me to Portland which was still two and a half days away.  I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair.  “We-ell,” I said, “I am not very hungry.  I’ll just have a glass of milk and some toast, I think.”

The waiter never batted an eye but I realized later that he knew the reason for my discomfort.  He smiled, “You sho’ that’s all?”  When I nodded wordlessly, he leaned down before he turned away and said in a low voice, “Tell you what—when we gets the folks from the Pullmans fed, Ah’ll be comin’ through the coach with some sandwiches—they is only two bits apiece.”  Then he turned away to get my milk and toast which was going to total thirty cents here in the dining car.

The black waiter was not only as good as his word, he was better.  About an hour and a half later he did indeed come through the coaches with a tray of ham and beef sandwiches.  When I held up my hand and dug out a quarter, he flashed that big grin again.  Without asking my choice, he pulled a sandwich from the bottom of the pile.  Instead of cold ham or beef, it was a bacon and egg sandwich still warm from the grill.

After that I did not go near that expensive diner but bought sandwiches three times a day and sometimes a bottle if pop when a vendor came through.  A grape NeHi was a dime instead of a nickel that my grandpa charged at his store.

There was not much else during the trip that made a deep enough impression on me for me to remember more than fifty years later.  I recall that there was a boy a couple of years older than me sitting across the aisle.  We struck up an acquaintance and would sometimes get off and stretch our legs when the train was in a station.  I still remembered that other trip when I thought the train was going to leave my mother behind so, even though I now knew that the train would not leave until the whistle blew and the conductor call, “All aboard!”, we never wandered very far from our coach.

I do recall one scene clearly the second day out, probably somewhere in Wyoming.  I knew that I was finally “out west”.  There was a dirt road paralleling the railroad track.  I watched as we passed a man wearing a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and driving a buckboard behind a spirited team of horses.  Behind him loped a young fellow on a pinto rocking along in a silver-mounted saddle.  I was a bit disappointed that he did not seem to be packing a six shooter.

Competition for Valdectorian

I wish I knew which was Mary Neil.  My dad is in the back row leaning against the door frame on the left.

The school year was going fast and I had been letting tomcatting around with Roundtree on weekends interfere with my studying.  After I cut that out, I buckled down to it especially after Mary Neil had made 100% on a history test and I only got 96%.

Soon my fifteenth birthday came and I knew that Mr. Mitchell would have to say who the valedictorian would be before long as graduation was only a month away. (The length of the school year was different then.  I believe it was adjusted so that the older children would be out of school in time to help with spring planting.  Anyway, our graduation was scheduled for the evening of April 2^nd at the Bona Church.)

An example of flour sack dresses during the Great Depression

A few days later during a nice spring afternoon, at the end of the school day when he dismissed us, Mr. Mitchell quietly said, “The rest of you are excused but I would like for Conrad and Mary Neil to stay for a little while.”

The others filed out casting knowing smiles at us.  They had known all along that it would be between Mary and me.  I looked sidewise across the room at her.  She was sitting very straight with her hands folded in the lap of her faded cotton print dress and with her chin set determinedly.  She turned her head to look at me so I quickly looked away and stared at the picture of Sir Lancelot and his horse on the wall above Mr. Mitchell’s desk until he said, “Come up here, both of you.”

We stood side by side in front of his desk waiting.  Mitchell reached into a drawer and took out two slim books—one red, the other blue—and laid them on his desk.  The title of the blue one was “Valedictories” and the red one was “Salutatories”.

Mitchell studied us and said, “Relax.  I want you to know that I am really proud of both of you.  You are, without a doubt, two of the best students I have had in my classroom and I know that you will both go far.  The competition was good for both of you and forced you to do your best.

“I will not keep you in suspense any longer.  Mary you did better than Conrad in History, a little better in Geography, and you were dead even in English.  Conrad had a definite edge in Mathematics and Science.  It was close and I congratulate you both.”

He picked up the two thin volumes and handed the blue one to me and the red one to Mary.  I must say that she took it without wincing.  She touched my arm and said softly, “I’m glad for you, Conrad.”  There was just a trace of moisture in her pale blue eyes.  At that moment I almost liked her.

Mr. Mitchell said, “Don’t memorize any of the sample speeches in those books—they are old fashioned.  Just get the idea and write your own.  I would like to see them next Monday.  You can go home now.”

The other had all gone so I walked the mile to Bona with Mary Neil.  She didn’t say much, maybe because she was not used to walking with boys.  I was happy as a turkey gobbler in a polkberry patch, but somehow, I could not lord it over her.

She had a threadbare sweater over her well-washed print dress.  I knew that the Cook Neils did not have much.  In fact, Cook Neil was one of the regular loafers at Grandpa’s store.  I do not know how he kept groceries in that little shack, much less clothes.

I felt sort of guilty somehow.  I said lamely, “You sure are smart for a girl, Mary.  Maybe you should have won.”

She smiled wanly and answered, “It doesn’t matter, Conrad—I’m used to sucking hind tit.”

“Hah,” I scoffed, “you won’t always be.  You know what I bet?  I bet that when our graduate from Dadeville High School in a couple of years you’ll get a scholarship and go on to teacher’s college or something.”  I grinned at her.  “I won’t be here so you won’t have to worry about me!”

Dorthea Lange Photo

By then we were at the crossroad in front of Grandpa’s store.  She laughed and, unexpectedly, held out her small hand to shake hands with me.  “I hope you have good luck out there in Washington,” she said, then she turned and marched down the hill clutching that little red book.

Settling in with Grandpa and Grandma Stanley and Gene Autry

Chapter 11

Graduation from Bona School

Being with Grandpa and Grandma full time was a real shift in my lifestyle from that little farm.  I guess I considered myself a “town boy”—although you want to remember that the population of Bona, Missouri was a total of twenty-one people!  I had my own little bedroom on the ground floor just off my grandparents’ bedroom.  That was handy because if I wanted to go to the outhouse at night, I could just go out the window without bothering them.

It took some adjustment.  At first I was homesick for the rest of the family.  I had slept in the same bed with Richard all my life.  In the beginning it was kind of lonesome without his body warmth and without his kicking or poking me once in a while.  It was strange when I woke up in the mornings, too, but I soon got used to it.

It was a time of rapid development for me—both mentally and physically.  It made me feel independent or maybe I got that from Grandpa Stanley because I had heard it said that Charley Stanley was “as independent as a hog on ice.”  That eight months was also the time that I suddenly shot up to my full height of almost six feet.  My mother was to be astonished when I arrived in Vancouver after only eight months and having grown a good six inches.  I grew fast but more up than out.  I was slim and later when I joined the Navy I still only weighed 137 pounds soaking wet.

It was a delight being at Grandpa’s store all the time.  After school and on Saturdays I swept the bare wood floors for him with a mixture of sawdust and oil to pick up the dust and leave an oiled finish on the wood.  Before long I was helping wait on customers.  I could pop paper sacks open with a flourish just like Grandpa did and weigh out pinto beans, flour, etc.  I also tended the chickens that Grandpa took in trade.  They were kept in a chicken house out back until Grandpa made his weekly trip to Springfield and took the chickens, eggs, and cream to market, then picked up supplies for the store.

It was helpful to Grandpa and Grandma that soon on Saturdays I could tend the store while Grandpa went to the house for lunch and Grandma did not have to come trotting across the yard.  Sometimes she tended the store and I was allowed to go along with Grandpa either to Springfield or to Aldrich where things like chicken feed came in on the train.

Best of all, since I had been driving our old Model T Ford for nearly a year, Grandpa taught me to drive both the truck and their Chevrolet sedan.  The only trouble I had was learning to shift gears since the gears in a Model T are handled entirely with your feet and the gas lever by hand.  I caught on quickly however, and by Thanksgiving Grandpa would let me drive the car by myself for short rides.

On one occasion when Grandpa was busy on a Saturday, he actually sent me in the truck by myself to the depot in Aldrich to pick up a freight shipment for the store.  I was proud as a proverbial peacock.  When I got to Aldrich, I drove grandly up and parked in front of my Uncle Merritt Stanley’s garage ostensibly to visit while I wanted for the afternoon train, but partly to show off for my cousin Charles who was not allowed to drive yet.

I got my comeuppance on the way home however.  When the train came I loaded the truck—handling sacks of chicken feed and bran mash was easy after all those bales of hay I had bucked for Ben Long—and was doing fine until I got to the foot of the long hill leading up into Bona.  The truck engine stalled when I shifted down and I could not get it started again.  I finally had to suffer the embarrassment of hoofing it up the hill admitting that I was stalled.

Fortunately, my older cousin Leon Frieze who was a real truck driver at the time was at the store and he hiked back with me.  He finally figured out that it had something to do with the coil and got it going for me.  I decided then and there that I was going to learn everything is to know about engines.

The time with Grandpa and Grandma was not all work.  I had plenty of time to get out with my friends and many cousins.  I would go duck and quail hunting with Claude and Billy Todd.  Once I went bird hunting with my cousin James Lowell and two of our Kansas City cousins, Ennis and Buddy Fulkerson.  James and I must have shot the birds that day because Ennis and Buddy were Kansas City kids and neither of them could hit the broad side of a barn.

In those days I was ambitious to be a cowboy singer and I itched to buy a Gene Autry guitar.  There was a real beauty in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue that only cost three dollars and ninety-eight cents—and that included an instruction book and song book.  Mother sent me a little spending money once in a while and Grandpa sometimes paid me for extra work around the store.  I had a secret hiding place in my bedroom and in it saved nearly all of my money until I had five dollars, then I sat down and ordered that guitar.

It was a great day for me when the mail carrier delivered my new guitar in a big flat cardboard box.  Grandpa showed me how to tune it by sounding the right notes on Grandpa’s parlor organ and adjusting the strings.  I must have driven the two of them half-crazy sitting there evenings twanging away practicing chords.  Grandma finally gently asked if I could practice in the afternoon when they were both at the store!

I never did get to be much of a guitar picker but it was fun to fool around with.  Later on Grandma told my mother that she had to go into the bedroom for a good laugh one day when she overheard me telling Billy Todd, “Why, I have only been through two lessons so far and I can already play ‘Red River Valley!’”

Although he was an excellent fiddler, Grandpa was not much help to teach me because he played the fiddle entirely by ear.  He could do a lively rendition of “Marching Through Georgia”, “The Wabash Cannonball”’ and things like “Amazing Grace” but he was at a loss to show me how to read a sheet of music.

Grandpa did not mind if I experimented with his fiddle occasionally so once in a while I would fool around with it and got so I could handle simple tunes in the key of C.  Before I left for Vancouver in 1937 I could do a fair job on either the guitar or fiddle with things like “Red River Valley” and “Springtime in the Rockies.”

Heading West

I did not attend the auction at our little farm.  I had no desire to watch our meager and somewhat shabby but familiar possessions dispersed to strangers.  I had said my goodbyes to old Buck, that patient and gentle big buckskin horse, and to Red, the little blazed- face sorrel.  They had served us well and were my friends.

Mother had told me that I could keep one of our two guns—either the slim little twenty-two or the single-barreled breech loader shotgun—for hunting that fall.  I chose the shotgun.  I had only been permitted to carry a shotgun for the past year and some bird hunting wa all that it was likely to do in the fall.  I would be leaving in the spring before squirrel season.

Mother also asked me not to plague Grandpa and Grandma with a dog so, very reluctantly and having to hold back tears, I said goodbye to my good friend Pup and gave him to one of my cousins who I was sure would treat him well and take care of him.

On the day of the sale on a Saturday I simply helped Grandpa around the store and carried buckets of water from the well for Grandma.  I do not know how much money was realized, but hopefully it was sufficient to defray Mother’s expenses on the long trip west.

Departure day for Mother, Richard, Rex, and tiny seven-month-old Sandra arrived.  Mr. Ganaway loaded our old metal trunk and such housewares as mother could take into the truck, then he piled bedding and pillows on top so that Richard and Rex would have room to sit up under the canopy.  There was even a small space for them to hang their feet down at the back.  Mr. Ganaway said, “Well, boys, you won’t see where we are going, but you will sure know where we have been!”  It promised to be a long, long haul on those miles across Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington.

Our family was never very demonstrative.  My mother’s eyes puddled up a bit when she told Grandma and Grandpa goodbye.  She hugged me and admonished me to write a letter once in a while.  She turned then and climbed into the truck while Richard and Rex scrambled into the back.  Grandma reluctantly handed up Sandra Dean.  I patted Sandra’s tiny hand, then closed the door as the truck engine growled into life.  They pulled away and off down the graveled road toward Dadeville and the highway west beyond.

The last I saw was Richard and Rex waving gaily from the back of the truck until the dust obscured them.  I stood in the road and watched them disappear past the little house where we had lived, then I had to hurry off to school.

Dreaming of Washington, Walter Mitty Style

That day [his father left for the west coast] I was truly walking on air on the way to school.  My imagination ran wild.  During the morning, while the tenth grade was reciting, I got a picture atlas from the library shelves and flipped it open to the Pacific Northwest and the State of Washington.

It was a glorious prospect.  The pictures in the atlas were all in black and white, but my imagination added the colors.  There were green mountains, the snow peak of Mount hood, and vast expanses of evergreen forests of Douglas fir.  There were photographs of logging and one of a tugboat pulling a huge raft of logs down the Columbia River which, to me, looked as big as an ocean.  I could throw a rock across the Little Sac River in most places but the Columbia was more than a mile wide—as wide as the distance from our house to school!

Inevitably, I went off into one of my Fantasies.  This time I was a lumberjack in a red plaid wool jacket and calked boots. I was high off the ground, topping a tall spar tree, when the foreman came and yelled up to me, “Hey, we got us a log jam in the creek and it looks like a real killer.  You will have to come quick!”

I was famous not only for being the best tree topper in the Pacific Northwest, but also for being able to clear any log jam.  I finished topping the spar tree with two mighty swings of my sharp double-bitted axe and came down on the double.  The foreman led me trotting down a shaded forest path until we came to the large creek down which the logs were floated to the Columbia River.

The jam was a bad one.  Logs had wedged between huge boulders and those behind had been piled high in a tangle by the swift current.  My practiced eye quickly spotted the key log at the bottom of the jam.  Get that out and the whole shebang would hurtle down the creek.

I simply said, “Gimme a peavey,” and spit on my hands.

“But when you pop that key log loose, the whole pile is going to come down on you.  You won’t be able to get up out of there in time!”

I had already considered that.  “Never mind,” I said flatly, “when she pops out I’ll ride her down the river—done it before.”

I took the heavy peavey and nimbly hopped from boulder to logs until I had made my way down to the source of the problem.  The huge pile of logs towered over me and creaked ominously from the force of the water dammed upstream of the jam.

The four-foot thick key log was jammed against the edge of a big grey boulder.  Calculating the angle, I got the point of the peavey into the thick red-brown bark, set the hook, and heaved mightily.  There was a groan and a scrape as the end of the log came loose.  It started to move and the pile of logs rumbled as they came loose.  Catlike, I leaped onto the log, my calked boots holding firmly to the shaggy bark.

The log lurched then, a split second ahead of the crashing pile, shot out into the current of a white water rapid.  I balanced the peavey crosswise in front of me and, as we shot out of sight around a bend, the canyon echoed my triumphant “YAHOO!”

I suddenly snapped back to reality there in Bona School.  The room had gone silent and everyone was staring at me.  In my excitement and enthusiasm, I had shouted “Ya-hoo!” out loud!  Mr. Mitchell was looking at me and grinning.  “Beg pardon, Conrad—what was that you said?”

My face was beet red and my ears were burning in embarrassment.  I slowly closed the book and mumbled, “I—well—ah—I was thinking about something else I guess, sir.”

All thirty kids in the room roared with laughter at my discomfort.  Mitchell rapped on his desk for order and said dryly, “Yes, I guess you were and I think I know what it was.  We appreciate your enthusiasm for the great Pacific Northwest under the circumstances but we do have work to do.  I shall call recess five minutes early then we will get back to work on our science project.”

Of course I was razzed unmercifully on the playground, but beneath it all, most of the kids were envious of the prospect that Richard, Rex, and I faced.

Home is Where the Heart is.

Last home Conrad lived in with his parents.

Dad was not much of a hand to write but we got short letters every week or so.  He had found a job at the DuBois sawmill on the waterfront in Vancouver where he had worked ten years before.  George DuBois had remembered him and what a good worker he was before.  In due time Dad saved enough money to rent a house and get the basic furniture so the problem became how for him to get my mother and us four kids to Vancouver.

It may have taken weeks for Dad to save the money for train tickets, but fortunately, there was a friend, a Mr. Ganaway, living near Arcola who decided that he wanted to see the Pacific Northwest.  He had a pickup truck on which he had built a homemade canopy.  A deal was made that Dad would pay for the gas and, after an auction sale at our little farm, they would load in our possessions.  Mother and baby Sandra would ride in the cab with Ganaway and us boys would ride on top of the things in back.

Even though it was my ambition to leave the hills and, initially, I had been elated at the prospect, in September when departure was a matter of a month away I began to have some second thoughts.  The school year was well under way and I did not like the idea of interrupting my final year there to start in the middle of the term at a new and much larger school.  I had been told that Vancouver High School where we would go had around three hundred students in each class.

As the month wore on, I became ever more reluctant.  I was still competing with Mary Neil for valedictorian of graduating tenth grade.  I was also aware that I was getting an exceptionally fine education from J. B. Mitchell.  More and more I was torn between my original sesire to get out of the Ozark hills and wanting to finish the school year at Bona.

One day when we were to spend our last night in that little grey farmhouse, I was a long time getting home from school.  I remained after the others had gone, cleaning erasers and taking a long look around that familiar room where I had spent so many hours.  I wanted very much to finish the year.

Grandma and Grandpa Stanley's house 1936, Bona

As I finally walked slowly homeward, I paused in Bona.  I looked for a long time at my grandparents’ house and store, at Tom Humbert’s store across the road, the road down the hill west past the frog pond, and I gazed across the rolling hills and woodlands to the east from the porch of Grandpa’s store.  All this was home and down inside I did not want to leave.  I was torn, too, between a dread of the strange new world out there and eager anticipation of a better life to come.

I stared again at Grandpa’s house then trudged on up the road toward home, an idea forming.  I nearly chewed the inside of my lower lip raw thinking about it.  I am sure Mother made note of the fact that I was unusually silent and thoughtful during supper.  I was ordinarily the ebullient one and should have been dancing with glee.

After supper, while Richard was drying the dishes I had washed, I took a look around the familiar kitchen in the soft yellow light of the kerosene lamp (no more of those, I thought silently—we will have electricity in Vancouver), then I went quietly through the living room and out onto the small front porch.  I sat on the step in the darkness.  There was a moon overhead and the pale white moonlight dappled the grass in the yard where it came through the red leaves of the maple trees.  There was no breeze but there was a hint of fall frosts in the air.

I sat there for a long time thinking.  Finally the screened door behind me opened and closed and my mother sat down beside me, draping a sweater around my shoulders.

“You’ll catch your death—it is getting chilly out.  What are you doing out here by yourself?”

“Oh—I was just thinkin’.”

“Think-ing,” she said automatically.  “What were you thinking about?”

I shook my head and looked down at my bare feet in the moonlight, “Nuthin’ much.”

She was very perceptive.  She put her arm around my shoulders and said softly, “You don’t really want to go, do you?”

For all of my fourteen years, I suddenly felt very young.  I felt tears sting my eyes as I let the things I had been thinking come tumbling out.

It’s not that I don’t want to go, Mama!  I do want to go—and in the worst way.  But not just now.  If I don’t finish the school year here, old Mary Neil will be valedictorian for sure.  I can do it if I could stay!  No old girl can do better than me!”

I turned to her pleadingly.  “How would it be if I stayed here for the rest of the year with Grandpa and Grandma?  I could help them some and they have that little room on the back of the house that no one is using.  I could sleep there.  Then, after we graduate, I could come on to Vancouver on the train—I’ll save up all I can toward the ticket!”

There was a secretive smile on my mother’s young face in the moonlight.  “I guessed that was what was bothering you several days ago.  You just have not been yourself.  As a matter of fact, I have already talked it over with your grandparents.  They are willing for you to stay if you want to do that.”

My spirits soared to the stars as she went on, “It would be the worst for you to change schools just now.  Richard is hardly settle in at Dadeville High and Rex is young enough that it won’t matter all that much.  They will just miss a week or two of school.

 “I know how bad you want to be valedictorian and Mr. Mitchell thinks you can do it, too.  Yes, I have already talked to him.  He has faith in you, Conrad, just as your father and I do.  You will have to be very good for your grandparents and not give them any trouble.  You must help them and work hard at school.”

I promised and, after she went back into the house, went capering around the yard in the moonlight in a wild sort of dance, swinging from tree limbs and hanging by my knees.  The old irrepressible Conrad was back—I did not have to leave the Ozark hills just yet and I would be living full time with Grandpa and Grandma!