Watching the Submarine Races

I did not call the Navy recruiting office but I sure did sme heavy thinking.  It was stunning news.  I was now eighteen but the age limit for acceptance for the Annapolis examination was twenty.  I had lost a full year.  I also thought long and hard about my job and the fun I was having using the car and dating girls.

Then, too, there was Mr. Garrison, owner of the CC Store.  He was a very kind man and was encouraging me to save my money and go to college and take Business Administration.  He had even paid the fee and enrolled me in a public speaking course evenings that the Rotarians were sponsoring for local businessmen.  Mr. Garrison was taking the course with me.  I had a feeling somehow that if I suddenly left I would be letting Mr. Garrison down.

In the end I told dick “no soap”.  “Dang it, they turned me down once and now things are different.  If the durn Navy doesn’t need me, I sure as heck don’t need them!”

“Okay, nipple-noggin,” he replied, “suit yourself, but you mark my words, there is a war coming and you will probably wind up getting drafted into the Army and go slogging around with a rifle getting shot at.

“Not me, boy.  I am going to be out there on a nice clean ship—or maybe even an airplane—with a good place to sleep and three squares a day!  You will be sorry, just you wait and see.”

I pooh-poohed him and laughed off it off, but I must admit that I watched with a feeling of envy the morning he packed that little green zippered bag and caught the bus to Portland.

It was not long after Dick left for boot camp that I got myself involved with Shirley Mills.  She was one class behind me and had a sister, Mary, who was one class behind her.  I knew them, but casually and knew that their father, Chapin Mills, was a state senator.  They lived over on the east side at 25^th and “F” streets.  Being an old westsider, I considered them to be a bit out of my class.

Shirley was a full-figured girl with a moon-round face and a pug nose.  She had long platinum blonde hair.

  I used to see her sort of drifting dreamily down the halls at school in a shapeless coat, clutching a stack of books to her chest.  I never considered her more than mildly pretty, although she did have very good legs.  I never considered dating her, especially after I heard one of the fellows comment, “Boy, those Mills girls are sure squirrely pair!”

An afternoon in late March, I was coming up the basement stairway of the store with an armload of boxes of ladies’ stockings.  On the middle landing, Shirley cornered me.

“Conrad,” she said, “Mary and I are going to have a party at our house next week and  I would like you to come as my date.”

That jolted me, coming as it did right out of a clear blue sky.  “Well, I dunno,” I stammered.

“Ah, come on,” she said with her best smile, “it will be fun.  You know Mary’s boyfriend, Pat Madden.  Pat will be there.”

I looked her up and down.  She had herself all gussied up and was wearing a sweater that showed off her bosom and a tight skirt over her full behind and plump thighs.  Her calves were nicely tapered to trim ankles.  I probably blushed and finally said, “Well, okay.  What night and what time?”

It turned out that the party was quite small.  There was just Shirley and me, her sister Mary and Pat Madden, and two other couples I do not remember now.  The girls’ parents were out at Eastern Star or something.  They came in later while we were having refreshments, greeted all of us, then went off to their bedroom in the back of the house.

The other two couples left fairly early.  It was obvious that the Mills girls did not consider the evening over but we turned the music down because of the parents.  Not knowing what to say or do next, I finally suggested that we take the Chev, drive over to Swan Island airport in Portland, and watch the big airplanes come in.  We could stop at waddles on the way back.  The sisters readily agreed.

I had been serious about watching the “big” airplanes.  United Airlines had just put the first DC-3s into service and, to me, that was a big sleek airplane.  I drove across the Interstate bridge, and in on Union to Swan Island.  There was a dark perimeter road around the airport.  I parked a little way away from the lights of the terminal.

We ended up necking instead of watching planes.  And so it began.  I took Shirley to the movies then out for hamburgers a couple of times.  She asked me to go to the Class of ’40 senior ball in April, which I did.  That sort cooled my relationship with Elaine for a time.  When I walked into the senior prom with Shirley on my arm, Elaine sort of glared at me and her manner was a bit icy when I danced with her later.  Shirley assumed we were “going steady” but I did not.  I continued to regularly see Pat Cross and some others, but I did continue to date Shirley from time to time.  That full figure of hers was a definite attraction.

Getting a Second Chance with the Navy

One afternoon sometime around my birthday in March when I turned eighteen, I came home from work and found Richard stretched out on my (our) bed upstairs.  His suitcase and a box of things he had at college were on the floor.

“Dick,” I said in surprise, “What the hell are you doing home?!  You flunk out or something?”

He grunted and swung his feet down to sit on the side of the bed.  “No,” he said morosely, making a wry face, “the money ran out.  I had a part time job at the Common building doing dishes at meals that was keeping me going.  They fired me when I got caught playing patty cake with one of the waitresses.  Let that be a lesson to you—do what you want to have funk, but don’t get caught.”

“What you gonna do?”

Dick heaved a long sigh.  “Well, I thought it over on the bust on the way home.  With that war in Europe being what it is, I’m going to join the Navy.  We are going to get into it sooner or later and I sure as hell don’t want to get drafted into the Army like Dad did during the World War.”

“The Navy?!  Well, good luck, Buster.  They turned me down last year, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, but you have that tooth missing and I have a perfect set of teeth.  Not even a cavity in my head.”

“You got nuthin’ but a cavity in your head,” I retorted, otherwise you would not have gotten caught playing around with that waitress.  I hope she was worth it!  You join the Navy, you’ll do something dumb, maybe even in boot camp, and get thrown out!”

That scheming, calculating look that I knew so well came into Dick’s eyes.  He smiled to himself and got off the bed.  As he went by on the way out he said, “We’ll see, flea-brain, we will see.”

Dick borrowed three dollars from me the next morning and caught the bus to Portland.  When he came home for supper, he proudly announced that he had been accepted and would be leaving for Navy boot camp in San Diego in about ten days.

Then he turned to me.  “By the way, numb nuts, when the yeoman at the recruiting office filed my papers, he found yours in the file next to it form when you were turned down.  He showed it to the chief petty officer in charge and they told me they are taking a lot more people now and that you could go with me if you still want to sign up.”

“You’re pulling my leg!”

“No, no bull.  It’s the god’s truth.  All them in the morning if you don’t believe me!”

Getting a Second Chance with the Navy

One afternoon sometime around my birthday in March when I turned eighteen, I came home from work and found Richard stretched out on my (our) bed upstairs.  His suitcase and a box of things he had at college were on the floor.

“Dick,” I said in surprise, “What the hell are you doing home?!  You flunk out or something?”

He grunted and swung his feet down to sit on the side of the bed.  “No,” he said morosely, making a wry face, “the money ran out.  I had a part time job at the Common building doing dishes at meals that was keeping me going.  They fired me when I got caught playing patty cake with one of the waitresses.  Let that be a lesson to you—do what you want to have funk, but don’t get caught.”

“What you gonna do?”

Dick heaved a long sigh.  “Well, I thought it over on the bust on the way home.  With that war in Europe being what it is, I’m going to join the Navy.  We are going to get into it sooner or later and I sure as hell don’t want to get drafted into the Army like Dad did during the World War.”

“The Navy?!  Well, good luck, Buster.  They turned me down last year, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, but you have that tooth missing and I have a perfect set of teeth.  Not even a cavity in my head.”

“You got nuthin’ but a cavity in your head,” I retorted, otherwise you would not have gotten caught playing around with that waitress.  I hope she was worth it!  You join the Navy, you’ll do something dumb, maybe even in boot camp, and get thrown out!”

That scheming, calculating look that I knew so well came into Dick’s eyes.  He smiled to himself and got off the bed.  As he went by on the way out he said, “We’ll see, flea-brain, we will see.”

Dick borrowed three dollars from me the next morning and caught the bus to Portland.  When he came home for supper, he proudly announced that he had been accepted and would be leaving for Navy boot camp in San Diego in about ten days.

Then he turned to me.  “By the way, numb nuts, when the yeoman at the recruiting office filed my papers, he found yours in the file next to it form when you were turned down.  He showed it to the chief petty officer in charge and they told me they are taking a lot more people now and that you could go with me if you still want to sign up.”

“You’re pulling my leg!”

“No, no bull.  It’s the god’s truth.  All them in the morning if you don’t believe me!”

Working at the CC Store

When I was back in Vancouver, I went to see Mr. Garrison at the CC Store.  Sure enough he needed a combination janitor and stock boy.  Thanks to Mr. Marshall’s letter I promptly  got the job for twelve dollars a week.  Richard had gone to Cheney for the fall term at EWCE so I had the large upstairs front bedroom at home to myself and plenty of the old Chevy.

The CC Store (originally Carter and Carter), Vancouver’s largest men’s and women’s clothing store, was an anachronism even back there in 1939.  The main floor was a high-ceilinged space with men’s clothes on one side and women’s on the other.  Shoe departments and restrooms were in the back.  Over near the dress goods and bedding, a wide stairway led down to the bargain basement where all the unsold odds and ends wound up and where the stockroom was located.

The main floor of the CC Store looked like something from around the turn of the century [19^th] , which I guess it was.  There was a mezzanine balcony across the front of the store that held both Garrison’s office and the central cash register.  The cashier sat up there with a commanding fiew of the entire main floor.

On the floor there were about six clerk stations from each of which a steel cable ran on a slant upward to the cashier.  When a sale was made, the clerk put the money and the sales slip into a wooden canister that hooked onto a little wheeled trolley on the cable, gave a yank on a cory, and the trolley went whizzing up the wire to the cahier.  Soon the trolley came coasting down with the receipt and the change.  The cashier was a very pretty and personable little blonde whom I liked, but I never tried to date her because she was so much older than me—she was at least in her middle twenties.

During the months I spent at the CC Store, I did quite a bit of everything.  First of all, I was the janitor who swept the floors daily although the clerks, three middle-aged women, were responsible for keeping the merchandize neat on the racks and dusting the counters.  I also had to clean the restrooms.  That unpleasant duty convinced me that women are not very neat in someone else’s toilet.  The Men’s room was not too bad, but the Ladies was something else.   [This is the opposite of my own experience]

The big stockroom at one side of the basement was my domain.  When I first went to work, it was an unorganized mess and I had trouble finding things.  I got the store manager to let me in one Sunday when the store was closed, hauled everything out of there, and re-organized the place.  Mr. Garrison made not of that, I guess, and some of the other things I did because a month after I went to work there he gave me a raise to fourteen dollars a week.

Each week, it was one of my chores to wash the big plate glass display windows that were on the Main Street and 8^th Street sides of the CC Store.  The manager, a dapper and whimpish fellow in his early thirties, usually did the arranging of the displays.  I thought they were a bit haphazard and not very imaginative.  On one occasion I made a suggestion to him about a display.  The next thing I knew, I was in charge of window displays.  He had not liked crawling around in there changing displays (we had no curtains to drop) with people walking by.  I did not mind—I could wave at girls I knew as they passed.

My age was a problem when I began to clerk part time.  The clerks all had to belong to a union and I was underage.  Once in a while, usually each month, a union steward would drop in unannounced to check on things and talk to the clerks.  We worked out a system so I would not get caught.

The cashier, who had full surveillance of the main floor, had a little bell that she would ding twice to alert everyone if she thought she saw a shoplifter in the store.  If she saw a union steward come in, she would ding the bell three times so I could drop whatever I was doing and disappear to the stockroom until a clerk came and gave me the all clear.  It worked as I never got caught during the time I worked there.

Those months at the CC Store were a good period in my young life.  I gave little thought to the future and just enjoyed life.   I gave little thought to the future and just enjoyed life.  I should have been putting money in the bank but I did not.  Instead, I spent my wages on some clothes and gasoline for dates since I had practically full use of the car with Richard away at Cheney.

I did not have a “steady girlfriend”.  I dated a different girl every week or so.  I usually just took them to a first-run movie at the Broadway in Portland and would then stop at Waddles on the way home for hamburgers and cokes.  None of my dates ever went any further than some harmless necking in the car and a tentative goodnight kiss.

Summer Fun at the Summit

Turned out I could bus dishes pretty well.  At five o’clock Norm, Eddie, and I put on our dark pants, white shirts, and bow ties then went across to the restaurant.  Mrs. Marshall looked us over and sent Eddie back to shine his shoes.  I met the two pleasant young waitresses (names lost in the mists of time), watched Norman and Eddie serving coffee and clearing tables for a while, then I was on my own.

Actually, even though the restaurant was busy most evening and there were always things that could be done around the grounds days, I do not think that Mr. Marshall really needed all three of us.  Two bus boys could keep up handily.  More often than not, Marshall would give one of us the evening off so we could lounge around the cabin and read a book or listen to the radio he provided.

Each of us had two days a week off so we could catch the bus home to be with our families for a night or go to a movie.  Although he always kept us fairly busy with gardening the grounds and cleaning the restaurant mornings, we sure did not hurt ourselves working.  The morning splitting wood was the hardest work I did during the entire summer.

The restaurant was closed each Monday so the waitresses could have a whole day off and, under Mrs. Marshall’s supervision, we could thoroughly clean the place, scrub the floors, wax all the tables.  The evening was ours.  I recall one Monday evening when we finished work in the early afternoon.  We decided to walk the mile down the hill to LaCenter.  Norm, being nineteen, was elected to go into the local tavern and get us some beer.

Norm got half a case of Lucky Lager and I went to the store and bought a green pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes.  Eddie bought a bottle of fortified loganberry wine.  We took turns carrying the beer back up the long hill to the cabin.  The rest of the evening we sat around with the radio going, talking, singing, and smoking cigarettes.  We had quite a party since none of us was used to drinking anything stronger than Coca Cola except for a very infrequent single bottle of beer or a few sips of wine when we were in high school.

There is no telling what time we finally went to sleep and I know the Marshalls would have heard the noise because their house was only about forty yards away.  We were a sorry looking threesome the next morning and fully expected Marshall to give us hell, but he never said a word about it.  All he said was, “Boys, I would appreciate it if you would not smoke at night in the cabin—might burn it down.”

That summer at Summit Grove passed all too quickly.  We were happy and carefree, liking what we were doing and having fun.  As fall approached, however, we had to face up to what we were going to do.  Norman was going back to college at the University of Washington in Seattle where he was taking pre-law courses.  I do not recall what Eddie Sutherland was going to do.

Marshall told us that he only kept one man on after Labor Day and that any one of us could stay.  He gave us each a ten-dollar bonus for the summer.  When I declilned to stay on myself, he gave me a letter of recommendation and suggested that I see Lloyd Garrison, owner of the CC Store in Vancouver about a winter job.

Moving On

With high school behind me and the Navy apparently out of the question, I had to face up to what I was going to do.  Dick was back working at the cannery to save money for Eastern College of Education at Cheney.  I had no job, no bank account, and little in the way of prospects.  The U.S. was starting to pull out of the Great Depression of the Thirties; however, jobs were still scarce around Vancouver. 

A time or two I contemplated calling Charlie Barnett to see if the barn job was still open at the Columbia Riding Academy, but I could not face shoveling horse manure again even as a temporary stopgap.  Neither did I want to hear Art Farr calling me “boy” again.

A friend and classmate, Corburn Actley, tipped me off to a possible job.  His older brother Norman and another friend, Edie Sutherland, were working at a combination restaurant and motel, The Summit Grove Inn, several miles north of Vancouver near the little town of LaCenter.  The boys were furnished a small cabin on the grounds to live in, took their meals at the inn, and worked as maintenance men.  They were bus boys in the evening in the restaurant which had a reputation as far away as Portland, Oregon.  It was located on old Highway 99 a mile south of LaCenter.

It was not necessary to go out to Summit Grove to apply for a job.  Coburn said that Mr. Marshall, the owner, came into Vancouver every Thursday to conduct business and that he always got his shoes shined at the stand on the sidewalk around the corner from the entrance to the Evergreen Hotel right after lunch.  The next Thursday noon, I was at the shoeshine stand.  I talked to the black man who shined shoes and he said, he knew Mr. Marshall and would tip me off when he came.

I sat on the sidewalk beside the three-seat stand and read the paper.  In a little while, the shoeshine man nudged me with his foot and gestured with his chin at a short fat in a natty double-breasted brown suit who was climbing into the end chair.  I waited until the man finished his small talk with the black man, then I stepped up.

“Excuse me, sir, are you Mr. Marshall?”

The friendly little man pulled his driver’s license from his vest pocket, pretended to stydy it in surprise, then said, “By golly, I guess I am.  That is what it says right here!”

“Well, sir,” I said, looking him right in the eyes, “I hear that you might have a job out at Summit Grove.  I sure could use one.  Got two friends working out there, Norman and Eddie.  Just graduated from Vancouver High.”

He looked me up and down.  “Friend of theirs, eh?  You think you could chop wood and bend your back once in a while?”

“Yessire!  I split lots of wood back in Missouri and I can do any kind of chore there is.”

He looked at me critically.  “Oh, Missouri puke instead of a prune picker, are you?”  I grinned at him and he continued, “Tell you what, guess I could use one more boy at that.  You come on out to Summit Grove tomorrow morning and we’ll see.  Bring a pair of dark pants, a white shirt, and a black bow tie besides your outside work clothes in case we can use you bussing tables.  If it works out over the weekend, we will work out a day off schedule with Norman and Eddie.”

It was difficult not to break out in a big grin as I asked, “Excuse me, Mr. Marshall, what does it pay?”

He chuckled.  “Dollar and a half a day like the other boys.  Besides that, you get all your meals and you live in a cabin with Norman and Eddie.  Any time in the morning will be all right.

The pay would be as much as I had been getting at the riding academy plus I would get my meals and a bed.  I was elated.  There was air beneath my feet after we shook hands and I started home.  I went by the CC Store and spent the last two dollars I had for a black clip-on bow tie.  I knew that I could do whatever Mr. Marshall wanted and it would be fun to work and live with Norman and Eddie.

The next morning my mother gave me the money for the bus to LaCenter.  I packed my good clothes, black oxfords and toilet gear in a small zippered bag, then hiked down to the depot and caught a northbound bus.

Summit Grove as it appears today.

Summit Grove Inn was well-named.  The restaurant was a large log building with a shake roof that slanted down to low eaves.  It was situated on the top of a hill south of LaCenter in a grove of hug Douglas firs.  There were leaded windows on the side toward the parking area and Highway 99, a large stone fireplace on the south side, and a main entrance on the north.  Two gasoline pumps stood to one side and, beyond those a row of five or six tourist cabins.

Across the highway from the inn, a small white house stood on an open knoll (the Marshall residence) and just down the hill from that, also beneath fir and alder trees, there was a small log cabin.  Beyond that there was a park-like picnic area with neatly raked paths through ferns and grassy areas with heavy picnic tables and benches.  It was an idyllic setting.

I went into the restaurant.  Facing the entryway there was a gleaming oak counter with six stools.  A cash register was at one end.  Around beyond the counter was the main dining area.  It was spacious and had a small fish pool with rocks and ferns slap dab in the middle of the floor.  There were ten or twelve polished oak tables with spindle-back chairs.  Each table held a small vase of fresh flowers.  They were set with white napkins and silverware for lunch.  The big grey rock fireplace dominated the room on the far wall.

The kitchen was to the right.  A woman came from there through swinging doors behind the counter.  She was a tall grandmotherly type.  Her grey hair was gathered into a bun on the nape of her neck just like my Grandma Stanley always wore her hair.  She had a round face, now ruddy from the heat of the kitchen range or grill.  Gold rimmed spectacles were perched on her nose.  She was carrying a plate of delicious-smelling golden brown crullers which she placed on the counter under a clear glass cover.

The lady peered at me over the gold-rimmed spectacles for a minute then her face brightened as she saw the zippered bag in my hand.  “Oh, you must be the new boy!  I am Mrs. Marshall.  What was your name?”

I told her and she said briskly, “Well, Conrad, sit down there for a minute.  Marshall is around here somewhere. Go ahead and have one of those crullers.  They are right out of the oil.”

The cruller was absolutely delicious—like a raised doughnut only long and twisted.  (In the fifty-odd years since, I have yet to find a bakery that can equal Mrs. Marshall’s crullers.)  Mrs. Marshall did not ask if I wanted coffee but simply brought me a glass of milk—which was fine with me as I did not like coffee at the time.

She hurried back into the kitchen.  While I was licking up the lst traces of the cruller, Mr. Marshall came in from the outside.  He was wearing the suit, vest, and tie that I never saw him without the entire time I knew him.  When I had finished the milk, Marshall led me across the highway to the cabin to drop off my bag.  I asked, “Where are Norm and Eddie?”

“Got them doing a little cleanup out back of the tourist cabins,” he replied as we went back across the highway.  “Try to keep them busy so they don’t get into any devilment.”

Marshall removed his felt hat and scratched at his thinning grey hair.  “Let’s see now, you said you could chop wood.  Well, I’ve got a pile up there in the woods that needs splitting.  Might as well start you on that.”

He got a sharp double-bitted axe from an equipment shed beside the inn kitchen and led me up the path into the sun-dappled woods.  The underbrush had been cleared except for the ferns, some boulders, and some fallen logs with ferns growing out of the rotting bark.  It was quiet and park-like in that little forest and I breathed deeply of the pure air.

Fifty yards up the path, in a small clearing, there was a pile of logs that had been sawed to fireplace length.  Marshall handed me the axe and pointed at the pile.  “There you are.  Have at it, boy.”

“How big you want the pieces?”

“Oh, fireplace size.  Just quarter the larger ones and half the smaller ones.  I’ll be back by later.”

Marshall turned and went off down the shaded path without waiting for me to answer or get started.  I shucked off my jacket, took another breath of the clean air, spit on my hands, and stood up the first piece of log.

It was duck soup—the alder was far easier to split than that blackjack and white oak back in the Ozarks.  The alder popped apart almost as soon as the axe hit it unless it happened to be a length with a big knot where a limb had been.

The exercise made my muscles feel good and I worked up a pretty good sweat by the time my pile of split wood was as big as what was left of the logs.  I was tackling a tough and burly cut about an hour later when Mr. Marshall came ambling back up the path.  He halted in surprise when he saw the pile of wood I had split.

“Good lord, boy,” Marshall chuckled, “I didn’t mean you had to split the whole pile today!  You better take a rest—it’s almost lunchtime anyway.  Didn’t sit down much, did you?”

Knowing I had a job, I grinned at him as I leaned on the axe and said, “Well, sir, where I came from, if we went out to split wood, we split some wood and got it over with!”

Well, Conrad, if you can pump gas and bus dishes without breaking too many, you got yourself a job.  Let’s go see what Missus Marshall has for lunch.”

Graduation

It is quite possible that I could have wound up higher on the honor roll for graduation had I not despondently let my grades slip after the Navy turned me down.  I just did not care.  I quit taking books home with me and spent more evenings at Gearhart’s, down talking to Patty, or going to a movie.

There was only a part of a semester to go, however, and I coasted though as sixteenth on the honor roll in a class of 289 students—not quite as good as old Dick had done the previous year, but I was not ashamed of it either.

Even though I was nowhere near being valedictorian or salutatorian for the class of ’39, I did wind up as a commencement speaker.  Each class elected on individual to give an address as class representative.  They elected me—I know not on what grounds except for the play and some successes I had on debating teams and in Friday assemblies.  It was very gratifying.

All the student commencement speakers were require to write their own speeches, based on a selected theme.  In retrospect, I think I realy blew it.  When my mother passed away three years ago, I found a copy of the manuscript of my commencement address, titled “Control of Life”, among her effects.  It ran to several single-spaced typed pages and is so pompous and pedantic that I would be very surprised if it did not put some of the audience to sleep.  Hopefully, my delivery may have kept most awake.

Even after the Navy turned me down, I had continued to keep track of developments in by then what was known as “the War in Europe”.  I knew, even on the day of commencement, that I had written the wrong speech.  I should have expanded on the theme of my “Mice or Men?” editorial and dwelt on what was going to be expected of the class of ’39, but I did not have the guts.  It would never have been approved by the faculty anyway.

While I sat on the auditorium stage during the commencement exercises waiting my turn at the podium, I was wishing I had done something more like that.  What I had written was empty, hollow, and meaningless.  Had I been more experienced as a public speaker at the tie, I would have opened by saying that Phyllis Conover down in the front row (my prompter) could put away her copy of my address because I had something different to say.

I sat there, unhappy that I apparently had no control of my own life, and unable to come up with the words for the feeling boiling within me.  When it came my turn at the podium, I started my opening greeting and from there the memorized words came automatically.  I ploughed doggedly through my stilted phrases, then sat down to await the awarding of our diplomas.

When Mr. DeYoung handed me my red leather covered diploma he smirked what was apparently intended to be a benign smile.  My time at Vancouver High School became history except for fond memories and a few relationships that have endured to this day.