Mom and Dad

Walking down the streets of Denton I began to notice that Mom was shorter than most other ladies.  She wore  her hair combed up in back,  piled atop her head, held in place by decorative combs, and she had very good posture.  She smiled and laughed a lot, and when she did housework she sort of sang, a vocalized humming, la la la without any real tune.  She could lose her temper, but was mostly kind and loving.  She often seemed to forget I was there, staring into space and not responding to questions.  If I finally got her attention she would just laugh gaily, dismissing any concerns I may have voiced.
In his uniform, with his first Sergeant stripes, Dad was an authority figure.  Once he took me to his office, and all the younger enlisted mean were very wary in his presence.  He was also shorter than the other soldiers.  He had a big grin, rendered kind of goofy by the big gap between his two front teeth.
When he got home from the training base he would start drinking beer.  I was urged to play outside.
Sometimes other Army friends and their wives would come over on Friday night.  In my bedroom I could hear them talking and laughing.  In the morning there was always a mess of empty bottles and snacks of food on plates.  I helped myself to the snacks and sometimes tried a sip of beer from a bottle not emptied, then I went into their bedroom to say that I was going outside to play.
If it were a Sunday they would make sure I was dressed in my suit and send me off to Sunday School at the neighborhood church, but on Saturday I wore old clothes and went outside.
I also liked to sit and read.  I had discovered Classic Comics, which were comic book versions of classic novels.  My favorite was Les Miserables, mostly because of the scenes of Jean Valjean running through the sewers.  I also liked Robin Hood.  Actually I read almost everything I could get my hands on, from Thornton W Burgess to books featuring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.  Dad offered to read to me, but I said I would rather do it myself.
There was not much interaction between my parents and me,  they mostly left me on my own.

School in Denton Texas

Denton Texas was like nothing I had ever seen.  The streets were paved, long, and lined with trees.  The trees were all deciduous, not a fir tree among them.  Even in midwinter they still had big flat leaves.
Mom held my hand as we walked down the street.  She had directions to the grade school from our land lady, who had shifted the can she spit in to her left hand and waved her right up the street before us.  "Straight up there,  honey, go a few blocks, you cant miss it."
So off we went.  After a few blocks I saw children walking down a cross street, headed for a large building, but we plowed straight on.
The houses got larger, and changed from wood to brick and stone construction.  A group of big buildings stood before us, sidewalks purposefully leading across vast green lawns.
We were both overwhelmed.
A young lady walked by and mom asked her if the grade school was nearby.  The young lady pointed to one of the large buildings and told us to go in there to register for the elementary school.
A man with grey hair and rimless glasses wearing a grey suit asked mom to fill out the proper forms and took me aside to ask me some questions.  He showed me a couple of books and I was able to read them with no problem.  I had been reading aloud from Horton Hatches the Egg to GD for months.
We did some addition and subtraction problems.  He smiled and told mom to take me to the first grade classroom.
The school in Wendling was small and simple.  The alphabet marched in order across the top of the wall and the students sat in desks attached to the floor in orderly rows and all recited in unison.
The classroom I entered in Denton was noisy.  Children stood or sat in small groups, and there were at least six young ladies helping the teacher in leading the separate groups in discussions or demonstrations.
Mom said, "They must do things different in Texas," and kissed me goodby.  I was led to one of the groups by a pretty young lady and after a few minutes I was eagerly engaged in the discussion.
At the end of the month mom got a bill, and we realized that she had enrolled me in the teaching lab of the North Texas State Teachers College.  She had to pay tuition, but she said that the education was worth it.
We were taught Spanish as well as English, typing, cursive writing; we discussed everything with the young ladies rather than listen to the teacher lecture.  Once a week we marched  hand in hand to attend college concerts and plays.  I shall never forget their production of "Showboat," and the young man in blackface singing "Old Man River."

Off to Texas

We were leaving Wendling.  Mom and I were to drive the Hudson Terraplane to Denton, Texas, where he had found us an apartment.  Mom's sister, Carldene, had returned from Georgia, where her husband David had been training as an infantryman and had shipped off to Europe.  Carldene was a jovial aunt, barely out of high school, who had locked me in the closet, had told me the barber was going to cut off my ears, and otherwise amused herself at my expense.  Now she had a little girl not yet two years old.
Grandad said Carldene should accompany us to Texas.
I was leaving GD.  No more games in the woods or meadow, no more walks across the mill pond to town to watch the loggers with their big suspenders, their stagged pants, fit to length by chopping the cuffs off with an axe, their high laced spiked boots, their muscular strutting walk.
Not knowing what to expect I stared out of the back seat window as we drove down the valley.  We stopped in Glenwood to fill up with gas and we took 99 south.
The Hudson Terraplane lasted until we got to Stockton, California.  I wandered big eyed around the hotel while telegrams passed back and forth and soon the four of us boarded a train.  Along the way we were joined by a Captain's wife, who also had a daughter, named Kim.
My little cousin began showing spots, and the two sisters told everyone she just had  a rash, but it turned out to be measles. (Nicky, you mustn't tell) they were afraid we would be put off the train.  The wife was quite vexed when Kim came down with measles soon after we arrived.
Denton,Texas turned out to be a wonderful place.
Our apartment was four rooms on the second floor of a large house owned by a lady from Arkansas who chewed tobacco and carried with her a tin can to spit in.  She had two children, both a couple of years older than I.  Kim and her mother briefly resisted in an adjoining apartment until officers ousting became available

Logging town schools

In 1944 I was six and began the first grade.  Mom would drop me off at the cousins on her way to work in the mill.  N and C walked with me down to the main road then, keeping our eyes open for the log trucks that came barreling down the road with two or three huge newly cut logs on the way to Springfield, we hurried through the covered bridge that crossed Mill Creek.  The school was about half a mile on down the road.
The school had a small room for kindergarten and four classrooms for the eight grades, two classes to a room.  There were not always two teachers to a room so a teacher might be forced to move from one side of the room to the other.  We were taught to read by looking at cards held up in the front of the class showing a letter or group of letters making a sound which we would all repeat in unison. Similarly we were shown cards with 1+1:2 etc which we would all repeat in unison.  I had already begun to pick up on reading at home so I spent a lot of my study time listening to the second grade lessons.
Both classes would listen as the teacher read a story.
For recess we would go out back of the school and mill around.  There was a large shed where we would go on rainy days.
We had indoor plumbing and there was central heating.
When I was in kindergarten an older boy named Albert got angry with me and smashed my head against the wall in the bathroom, dashing away all my memories prior to that moment.  In the first grade I kept an eye out for him but I never saw him, or else I did not recognize him.
When school was out my cousins would walk with me back to their house then I ws on my own walking on the plank road up the hill to the grandparents house.  There Grandma and GD would greet me and he and I would play war or cowoys till dinner.  On rainy days I would read to him.  Horton Hatches An Egg was a big favorite.
Then dad came back from New Guinea and after Christmas we moved to Denton, Texas.

The Warrior Returns

the Warrior Returns

By the time I was six mom had a hard time convincing me to go out and cut a switch when I had misbehaved.  She said, "You just wait, young man, till your father comes back from the army.  He's a tough first sergeant and he'll make you behave."
I had a few memories of my dad, but it had been mom and I since I was three.  She tucked me in, or if some radio show played scary music she let me sleep in her bed.  We had our disagreements but mostly we had a good time together.  She was about five feet tall with dark hair pinned up in back, like Bette Davis in Now Voyager.  She had dark moods when memories of her late sister caused her to sit and stare into space ignoring me, but mostly she laughed.  We into Eugene to watch movies and shop in Penney's, and sometimes stop at Seymour's on Willamette Street for an ice cream soda or banana split.
In our house we had two pictures of dad.  One was from the cover of Life Magazine, titled, A Yank In Australia Reads His Mail.  It showed dad in his uniform with a pack on his back reading a letter.  In another he is in uniform in front of a tent, smiling.  He had a  square face and black curly hair, combed back.  His smile was accented by a gap between his two front teeth.  He had written me saying a  Koala Bear was in the mail to me. When it finally arrived I was disappointed to find that it was stuffed!
As 1944 came to an end GD and I were in the living room while grandma prepared dinner.  We were arguing whether the King of the Cowboys was Gene Autry or Roy Rogers.  I heard mom yelling my name from outside.  She came in waving a letter. "Nicky, your daddy's coming home."
When he finally arrived I was nervous, waiting for a spanking, but he was very friendly.  He picked me up and gave me a kiss and kissed mom and we danced around the kitchen of our little house.
It was election time, and we had a good time sitting front of the radio saying: Phooey on Dewey!  and cheering when Roosevelt won.
A few days later dad and Grandad drove GD and me down to a farm outside Marcola that raised turkeys.  "Boys," grandad said, "go pick yourselves out a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner."  He opened a gate and in we went among a herd of turkeys.  They were as tall as we were, walking around us clucking and scratching the dirt.  We heard his quiet snort and turned to see him smiling.  "Choose one, boys, the farmer is here to chop off his head."  GD pointed in front of him and I nodded and we quickly stepped out of the crowd of big birds.  There was a lot of blood when the turkey lost his head.  Then the farmer dipped it in a tub of boiling water to loosen the feathers and took out the insides.
When we got home we  had to help grandma pluck the feathers off.  "Dont forget those pinfeathers," she admonished.
After Thanksgiving dad had to go back to duty in Texas.  He was to train the Air Corps boys to become infantrymen so they could fight in Japan.  Before he left we drove to Springfield to see his parents.  There were a lot of uncles and aunts and cousins.  His parents were a lot older than granddad and grandma, and Grandma Ellen smiled a lot more.  She had a gap between her front teeth just like daddy.
Then he was gone.
At Christmas we got a letter from dad.  He had found an apartment in Denton, Texas, and we were to hop in the Hudson Terraplane and drive down to stay with him.

Abbie

Grandad was born in Oklahoma on land homesteaded after the government opened up the Indian Territory.  He was raised a farmer, and during WWI he grew wheat to feed the armies fighting in Europe.  He was married with three girls when the wheat market busted after the Armistice was signed and had to sell what remained of his acreage to pay his debt to the bank.  The family boarded a train and rode to Wendling, Oregon, where he had heard that the sawmill there was looking for a man who could drive a team of horses.  On the train up into the hills from Springfield he met the mill owner, who asked him a few questions, decided that Abercrombie was too big a mouthful and called him Abbie, and suggested that he might think of bigger things than merely delivering firewood to the citizens  of Wendling.
He bought a house on the east side of  town and drove the team until he decided how he wanted to proceed with his life.  He decided on sawmill maintenance and with self education and hard work advanced to assistant head millwright.
He was a man of few words nor did he exhibit much emotion.  I never heard him laugh out loud.  He would grin briefly or would squint his eyes, but mostly he observed life with curiosity and with a rational outlook.
A lot of things amused him.  His grandchildren amused him, and evangelist preachers and "holy rollers" amused him, his wife's family amused him, and he greatly enjoyed reading cowboy novels and watching cowboy movies.
When I was small I would see him getting into his car and ask, "where you going, grandad?" and he would answer "going to see a man about a horse," and smile and drive off.  Every time I decided that he was driving down to the Downing's ranch to buy me a pony.  I would wait, or discuss with GD what we would do with a pony, but a pony never came.
When we were driving and a car approached us he would raise his first finger.  "What are you doing, grandad?"  "Just sayin Howdy."
He said things like "pertneer," for almost, '"aint," "mebbe" for perhaps.  When he hammered his thumb or bumped his shin or suffered some frustration he would say "Shoot!."
Mom said that when she was small he said "Shit!" but the youngest girl, Carldene, always followed him around and repeated after him so he softened his tone.
He was stoutly built and very strong.  He was noted as one of the best "cold spot" welders in the state of Oregon.  When there was a breakdown of machinery he would work all night if need be to get the mill back in production.
When he came home he would eat with little conversation then go sit by the woodburning stove in his easy chair and read a western novel until his eyes shut and the novel fell from his fingers and rested on his stomach.
He did not drink alcohol or gamble.  He enjoyed going to county fairs and finding the man with the hammer that he could slam down and cause the weight to fly to the top and ring the bell.  He would collect his stuffed animal and walk away with a faint grin.
In the summer during the war mom and her best friend Shirley would go to different farms in the valley and pick fruit or beans to can for the winter.  Usually I would be dragged along.  They wore shorts and tied their hair in a kerchief and they would wear a man's shirt with the bottom tied in a knot around their stomach.
One day after picking fruit mom dropped me off with grandma and went to the store.  She came back crying and angry.  She talked quietly to grandad.  I noticed him leaving.  Sometime later during dinner he returned looking disheveled and breathing heavily.  I was surprised to see him in an emotional state.
The next day I walked into town on the walkway across the mill pond.  Along the way I heard a conversation that was interesting but not entirely clear to me.
"You know old Q., he has a kind of dirty mouth?"
"I've noticed that,"
"Well, yesterday old Abbie's eldest daughter was walking in front of the union hall wearing them short pants and old Q. come by and said something to  her that set her off."
"Oh, my, her man's in away in the army, aint he."
"That's right.  Well she run on home and told old Abbie.  Now you know, he dont say much.  So I hear that old Q. there was in his barn milking his cow, and Abbie come marching in and took a look at old Q there and marched over and kicked over his milk bucket.  Q. come up a yelling and swung at Abbie and they had quite a tussle and Abbie whipped him good then marched out and drove home.  Never said a word."
"Well, my stars, that dont sound like Abbie."
Then they saw me and frowned and I scurried off, bemused.
I asked mom about it and she looked at me and stared into space so I waited a while then went out to play.
Abbie was a strong believer in family and in protecting his girls.

Everett's war
 The 41st Infantry Division was activated September, 1940, and the National Guardsmen were stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. After the attack on Pearl Harbor they were shipped out. To fool any spies, they were entrained to New Jersey, where they exercised and trained and finally set sail for Australia in May of 1942. Everett was the first Sergeant of the 162nd Battalion, HQ company. He reported to Captain B.
 They got to Australia and began jungle training alongside the 32nd Infantry Division, a National Guard unit from Montana and Idaho.
After attacking Pearl Harbor the Japanese Empire began expanding like a giant balloon, spreading almost to Midway island, over the Philippine Islands, over Singapore, and almost to Australia.
In the south, the Japanese began to build an airbase at Guadalcanal in order to stop flights from USA to Australia. In New Guinea they established a base at Buna on the north of the island and began moving south. Their attempts at an end around the east coast was stopped by a combined force of Australians/New Zealanders (ANZAC) and US forces in the battle of Milne Bay. They also sent troops over the Kokoda track, a mountain trail from Buna over the Owen Stanley Mountains of central New Guinea that reached 7000 feet before descending into Port Moresby, which faced Australia. The Kokoda track was narrow and muddy and steep, but the Japanese were able to reach the top and look down into the distance at their target. They were soon met by the ANZAC army and an exhausting battle began.
 Then the balloon began to puncture. The Marines attacked at Guadalcanal, the US Navy fought the Japanese Navy to a standstill in the battle of the Coral Sea, and General MacArthur sent the 32 Infantry Division from Australia to attack the Japanese base at Buna, a plantation community with a small harbor. While the men of the 41st trained they got news of the 32nd's efforts to displace the Japanese. It was wet and hot and bloody action against a well entrenched enemy. Their progress was slow and MacArthur got impatient with the National Guard and sent a member of his own staff to oversee the action. He recommended relieving the undertrained and exhausted men of the 32nd.
On New Years Day, 1943 Everett and the rest of the 162nd Regiment got on planes and flew over the Owen Stanley Mountains to an airbase then took landing ships to Buna. Dad was airsick the whole time flying but and seasick on the landing craft, but once on land he was able to lead his men in taking over from the tired 32nd. According to many reports I heard later, his Captain climbed into a foxhole and as the bullets flew over the US soldiers he began shouting for his first Sergeant to come over and tell his what was happening. He shouted orders out of his foxhole and Dad hiked around setting up his men in position. It is just like baseball, he told them, we have trained and we know what to do, so get out there and do it. They finally displaced the Japanese from Buna. The enemy attack on Port Moresby was stopped from the front and back.
After a short rest the 162nd was sent on to Salamanau and eventually to Biak, which dad described as the hardest battle of a hard campaign. The Japanese were hidden in limestone caves atop a mountain, The hike up the mountain was steep over unsteady terrain. At one point hiking along the side of a ridge the ground gave way and the men slid down the hill in a cloud of dust and gravel. They were using Springfield bold action rifles, the more modern MI's went to Europe. Their heavy weapons were a couple of BAR's. But time after time they overcame the Japanese defenses.
 Biak, he told me, was where, unable to dislodge the enemy from the limestone caves, they poured cans of gasoline into the limestone and set it on fire. He said it sounded like bacon frying.
He made a face thinking about that. After almost a year of combat First Sergeant Squires, whom the ranks all called Pop because he was ten years older then the rest, was washing his face in front of the command tent and a colonel came out and asked him how long he had been in New Guinea. "Too damn long," he replied. "We think so too," the colonel answered, "you are going home." He hated to leave the men he had cared for and comforted. His best friend had died in his arms and he had been hit in the leg with a four inch chunk of shrapnel and he suffered from Malaria most of his days in the jungle. He nodded his head and packed his gear and boarded a ship that eventually got him back to San Francisco in December of 1944.
 After getting drunk with his sister Lela and her husband he got on a train for Springfield, Oregon to see his family. He would have more time in the Army, but his war was over.