HomeThe Memoirs of Erland F. Maurer (1917-1995)
I believe it was Fran who said that I should write some of my experiences, to sort out fact from fiction. The reason she gave was that she didn't realize I was so famous, - in my own estimation!
My writing might not be as good anymore or my English or vocabulary. I'm starting this "story" at the age of 77 years in a retirement trailer park in Mesa, Arizona in 1994.
Maybe this will be of interest to someone in the future. There has been enough written about the pioneer or "early days" so I'll try not to dwell on that part of life-those days were gone by the time I came along.
I was born on April 3, 1917 in a house across the road from where I now live. The house was built by my parents, Joseph Maurer (born 1871) and Allie Mae Rote Maurer (born 1875) in 1901 All of my brothers were born there, but not my two oldest sisters, Jean Tangney and Lee Meredith.
My father's parents were Joseph Maurer and Racheal Cameron. My mother's parents were Michael Timothy Rote and Caroline VanMeter. The Maurers are buried at Riverside Cemetery in Spencer, Iowa, on the very west side. Michael T. Rote is buried in the township cemetery on the blacktop road west of Rossie, Iowa. The two markers are about 75 feet from the east gate.
I started school at the age of 5½ years at the Greenville Consolidated School in the fall of 1922. I graduated from there in 1934. In 1938 I attended Iowa State College at Ames, Iowa and graduated in July 1942 with a degree in electrical engineering.
I served 4½ years in the Army Signal Corps as a commissioned officer. When the war was over, I was honorably discharged as a 1st Lt. I farmed from 1946 until I retired in 1986. My wife and I traveled for a month or two in the winter until we bought a trailer home in Trailer Village, Mesa, Arizona in 1988.
The early years were no different from anyone living on a farm at that time. I was the last child of six, nine years younger than my brother, Wilfred (Biltz).
This was the situation I grew up in-"I was raised by five mean brothers and sisters as an only child". It was an ideal situation. If anything displeased me, I would cry or hold my breath and Dad or Mother would say "give that baby what he wants so he will shut up".
That worked well for quite a few years, so I might say in a lot of ways that I had a good childhood. One story that is true and told by Glen Mason to anyone that would listen went like this. The folks were away somewhere and I was following Glen and Biltz around, being a pest. In some way they offended me so I cried, then held my breath. One thing I had overlooked, we were right next to the horse watering tank. I remember someone said, "Let's drown the little S.O.B." I got wet. That ended the breath holding. I had no recourse, the folks weren't home.
I believe I had a pretty good childhood in the 1920s. Farm prices were good, we had good food and generally the farm community was optimistic. Then in about 1928, things started downhill, so to speak. One side light-being the youngest child in the family by nine years, I never had to wear hand-me-down clothes.
In 1922 the farmers in our neighborhood had a power line built from Spencer and it ended up on Dad's farm. You might say it was an R.E.A. without government help. The economic times were good and were on a parity with the rest of the county. We were not too primitive before we had electricity.
Water was pumped around where we needed it and in the basement was a small Olds engine that ran the pressure pump, washing machine , churn and cream separator. My mother was excellent at keeping that little Olds engine running. (It was the forerunner of the Oldsmobile.) It never lacked care because it was work saver. Dad had everything electrified that was possible, unusual for conservative German!
In 1917, Dad was threshing at Peterson. Harley Ford, the engineer and Dad were driving the threshing machine over the railroad track near Highway 10 east of Peterson. As they were crossing the track, the train came around the bend. Dad and the engineer were distracted by trying to navigate over the narrow roadway. Dad looked around to check the front. The wind blew his hat up, he saw the train and yelled. "Jump!". The train hit the steam engine, it was tipped over backwards in the ditch by the train, but no one was hurt. The engine was wrecked.
They were lucky because this was during World War 1 and the only steam engine available was at the state fair in Des Moines. They were running it as a demonstrator on a flat railroad car. It was shipped to Peterson immediately by rail before it could even cool down. Dad went to Sioux Rapids, got on the train, fired it up, unloaded it at Peterson and they were ready to go after a day and a half down time!
Threshing was a family affair. First Dad and Uncle Charlie worked together. Then Dad went on his own with a Rumley threshing machine with a swing stacker, until the neighbors bought a new Avery engine and thresher. He was hired to run it as a company machine for four years, then bought it from the company and ran it himself until 1928. It was run as a steam rig until 1932 when coal was so high-priced the steam engine was replaced with a gas 45-90 Avery tractor. The steam engine was a 20 horsepower Avery and the thresher was a 36" cylinder with a 60" straw racks. A big machine for its day, it was all made of wood, of course.
Five thousand bushels of oats a day was a good run, that is, if the oats were good to start with. I was the "water monkey" from 1927-32 and kept the big machine supplied with water. It was the steam engine that got me interested in machinery. When I was about six, my brother, Donald, was packing the crosshead pump on the steamer. It was a tight squeeze, so he asked me if I could get the packing hemp in the gland. Well, it was easy to do if you had small hands. I packed that pump until 1932.
When you were around a steam rig, you kept your eyes and ears open and also wore leather gloves. In fact, I believe that you depended more on your ears than anything else. You could tell by the sound of the engine and the rumble of the thresher if all was well.
There has been a lot written about threshing bees-the heat, the good food-, but I never read anything about the work the engineer and the water monkey did to keep it running properly. That would be a book by itself. It was just plain hot, greasy work. The 36 x 60 separator, "Yellow Fellow", was replaced in 1939 with a steel roller bearing Avery 28 x 50. That ran until 1951 when we converted to combines.
My Dad came out to watch us combine. Six of us and the two combines, plus a baler could do more per man than an eighteen man threshing crew! He looked everything over, said nothing, got in his car, and left. After threshing 60 years (he started at eighteen), it must have been an emotional change. He never came to watch again-the end of an era.
In the early days, with the exception of the steam engine, all of the work was done with horses. However in 1923, Dad bought a Fordson tractor to do the plowing. Dad thought it could be run 24 hours. Well, it worked until one night when he must have gone to sleep. He ran through the fence, across the road and straddled an evergreen there south of the Ford 80. That bent the crank so he couldn't restart it and he had to walk home. I don't think he ever drove it after that. A little later, he got another Fordson and the night shift was canceled!
I would say he was better than most farmers at that time in keeping up with the times. He worked hard and was careful with his money. He saw to it that everyone else was working. He wanted to get all the work done before it became obsolete or there was none left to do. One thing about the old times then and now: they tell about how hard the work, the long hours and the bad weather. Well, if they worked so hard, I'm surprised there is anything left to do today!
In the summer of 1929, my father retired from active farming. He, my mother, and I went on an extended automobile trip through the Dakotas, to Saskatchewan, over to Edmonton, Alberta, down to Oregon and into Los Angeles, California. My sister Lee lived there. We stayed the winter there and returned to the farm next summer. That was quite an experience, going from a school with nine classmates, to a school with eight hundred in the eighth grade at Mt. Vernon Jr. High.
The fall of 1930 I was a freshman at Spencer while my folks built a small retirement house on the farm. Ihad a good time that winter. I stayed with my Aunt Adel DeFrain in Spencer and amused myself building and flying model airplanes. I made my spending money by selling them for 25 cents.
Science and mechanical drawing classes were easy. In fact, I was placed in the sophomore drawing class because of my experience in the California school. English and math were not too great as far as grades were concerned. I just worked hard enough to get by. Drawing and science were easy and I got As. The others were low Cs. I went back to Greenville in the fall of 1931 and it was rather a dull time. The depression was on, so there was no money to spend except for necessities. Most, if not all, of my money was made by building and selling flying model airplanes to a store in Spencer, Bowman Business Supply, for 25 cents apiece. I had an assembly line worked out that would turn out about four in an evening. That was good pay at that time when a dollar a day was considered average pay for farm work and a high school kid was worth about 50 cents. My biggest sale was a 36 inch wing span model airplane with a compressed air motor. It would barely fly, but I sold it to Pete Tuttle in Spencer for $12.00. I made three dollars on the deal.
This business went on for a couple of winters. The last winter I discovered that they were buying the airplanes for the propellers, so I started carving propellers in different sizes from five to ten inches for rubber band model airplanes. They were selling for twenty to thirty cents. I would make more money selling props than building planes. This impressed my dad immensely. He made sure I was ahead on my orders and took me to town early Saturday morning to deliver the propellers. So five dollars a week was good pay. My parents were not destitute at that time, but there was no money to spare. Prices for corn and oats were so low that the crop couldn't even pay the taxes. Dad's threshing machine made some money and he had some savings to get through that time. Money from milk, chickens, eggs and cream paid for the household expenses.
We would have our high school parties of course, but the class was so small usually the juniors and the seniors would have one together. We had a couple of nice coasting parties in the snow on the hill at the river bottom farm. Dad had a small tenant house there at the top of the hill. We would warm the place up with wood and corncobs in a little sheet iron stove. This kept us warm between slides down the hill. All we has were hand sleds. No one had skis. However, I did make a pair in wood shop, but we didn't have enough snow for a couple of winters so they didn't get used a lot. We would tie a rope to the saddle horse and ski behind him much the same as water skiing today. We used the Model T too, but it took too much gas, so the horse was cheaper and he started in cold weather. Skiing behind a horse or a car made water skiing easy later. (1955) School activities were quite simple. The juniors has their class play in the fall and the seniors had theirs in the spring.
Sometimes we would have to go to other classes to get enough for a cast. There were only six seniors. Five graduated in 1934. I don't remember sending out graduation announcements. We didn't buy any class rings, just a few photographs. Not many of us got graduation pictures. We griped about the cost. I know some of the town kids were pretty destitute. Their dads didn't have jobs, so they had no spending money.
Scholastically high school was a joke in some respects. We had no dreams whatever of going to college. Two of our textbooks were the same as my brother Wilfred (Biltz) used in school nine years before me. None of the books were new, all used at least two or three times. We spent a lot of time putting cross eyes and beards on the pictures, even worms and germs had a hat and shoes. Work books at that time were unheard of and there were no mimeograph or copy machines of any kind. There was one typewriter at school and that was for the principal and teachers to use. We had one at home, but it needed a ribbon which cost three dollars. We didn't use it.
We had a basketball team. There weren't girls teams at that time. To have a first and second team took all of the boys in high school. We had fun though. It was about the only activity we had. All our games were played away from home. Greenville school didn't have a place to play games, but we did have a small place to practice. We played Webb, Everly, Laurens, Rossie, Larabee, Lake Center and Dickens. The year I was a senior, we lost every game, usually by one or two points, except the Lake Center game in the county tournament. That was a joke. I fouled out that game in the third quarter. I was a guard. My motto was "They shall not pass". I was on the all-county guard list my senior year. We practiced twice a week during study period. That is the reason we were dumb and poor shots!
The highest scoring game I remember was against the Spencer second team in 1933. We lost 31 to 30. I was a sub then for the first team. The score in most games was in the teens or maybe the low twenties. The games were time consuming. When a basket was scored the ball was taken to the center of the floor and it was a jump ball, just the same as it is now at the start of the game. This took a lot of playing time. If two players touched the ball at the same time, it was a jump ball. If you were not the tallest of the two jumping, you were out of luck and the other team would get the tip-off. Fouls were called different. You couldn't touch the other player with your hands. So the game was in most respects a lot slower. The third foul put you out of the game.
In the spring and fall we played baseball. I wasn't very good because I couldn't throw a ball very far, maybe from home to first. I could hit better that most so I played left field and prayed that they would hit it to right or center field. I usually caught the ball on the second bounce. I think I batted around .300.
For entertainment away from home, there were movies. There again it took money for admission at 25 cents and gas, so it had to be a good movie. We had good network radio shows back then-Bob Hope, Burns & Allen, Jack Benny. They were comedy shows and I'd say we had some good radio drama and music shows. They didn't cost anything if you had electricity and a radio. I doubt half of the kids in school had electricity at that time. R.E.A. was to come about three years later. No one knew how to dance. It just wasn't the thing to do in high school. I think square dancing would have been a good thing to do in high school. It would have given us a little sense of timing and rhythm. At least it might have helped us get over our awkwardness with our feet. We would have had something to do besides looking bored and eating popcorn. We didn't do any socializing as far as boys and girls were concerned. One time four of us went to Spencer for a football game. It was one of the first games under lights. It cost 50 cents apiece. That was a lot of money if you got a dish of ice cream afterwards for a quarter. That was a dollar and a half. At that time, it would buy a lot of radio parts. Maybe one reason I did not date as such was that the group of us (6) was so small, it was more like brothers and sisters.
One high light as far as girls were concerned-I had a cousin who came with her folks from Luverne, Minnesota to visit. We would dress up and go to a show. My cousin, Angela Gediemann, was one sharp looking cookie. She was nearly as tall as I was and maybe a year older, a tall, self-assured, good looking brunette. We would drive up and down the street to let anyone interested know that we were in town, usually in the big Studebaker. She would set close to me with a hand on my shoulder. We would park at least a block from the theater, then walk arm and arm to the box office.
At that time my cousin, Margaret Maurer worked in the box office, so we put on an act for her. I'll bet the next day all of the so-called "debs" in town knew there was a new girl to watch. After the show, we would go to Hammer's Cafe for a sundae or a coke, then we would walk back to the car arm in arm. Then drive up and down mainstreet twice. When we were out of town, she would move over to her side of the car and we would laugh all of the way home, wondering what the local Casanovas were thinking or talking about.
Our teachers in high school were pretty good people. They did the best they could with a group that thought studying was something you did when there was nothing else to do or think about. In their own way, they tried to teach us manners and the social graces. The only I never liked was Miss McFadden, the 7th grade teacher. She let us know that Catholics and Democrats were the least desirable people. It was election year in 1928. Al Smith was Catholic, Democrat, and Anti-prohibition (13 Amendment). He was running against Herbert Hoover, the Republican who was a Quaker. Things were quite interesting because I was the only Catholic Democrat in the whole d----d school! I wish I'd have met her again in later years to show her the error of her ways. I don't believe I ever saw her smile. We used to say, "She looks like her corset is on too tight". "Horse face" was her washroom name!
I graduated from high school in the spring of 1934. It was a hot spring. We'd get in the Model T and go swimming at the Kindlespire bridge near Cornell. It was over the noon hour. We ate fast and drove for 15 minutes each way which didn't leave much time to swim. The heat was hard on horses and people. It didn't cool off at night and the animals would still be panting in the morning. I worked for my brother, Homer, for five dollars a week.
Radio or electronics, as it was called, aroused my interest when I was studying Physics my senior year. This seemed to be the beginning of something that changed my destiny and future activities for some time. No money was spent on amusement or entertainment. It was more fun buying radio parts. By the spring of 1935, I had my amateur radio license. This was quite an accomplishment at that time. I was eighteen. By the winter of 1936, my equipment would let me talk to other stations in England and Australia. The cost of parts just about took all of my wages. Working on the equipment took most of my time and money. This was a blessing in disguise. It gave me something to do instead of running around and getting in trouble-or whatever the older boys did. Very few, if any, of my friends got into any big trouble, not with the law, at least. We didn't have a Highway Patrol until about 1934 when it went into full force. The cars didn't have enough power to break any speed laws. (40 mph) The law said "safe and reasonable" speed. If you could keep it on the road, you had no problems. I always drove Dad's cars. I didn't own one of my own until 1941.
Most of my friends who had cars spent all of their wages keeping the cars going. When times got a little better, I got ten dollars a week. Homer kept half of it for future use. Willis Shadd was a ham radio operator who worked for the telephone company. He encouraged me to try college. Of course, I would study Electrical Engineering. When my sister, Lee, heard about it she came out from California and took me to Ames to register. I don't think I would have had the nerve to do it alone. It was one big change. I had been out of high school four years. Fall of 1938, I was off to college.
Horse power was changed to tractor power starting about 1920. Smaller tractors of 10-20 horse power became available that were more economical power-wise than horses. Horses had a sentimental value that made them difficult to replace with a tractor. Dad had a steam threshing rig from the time he was a very young man, and the horses did all of the work until 1923.
He bought a Fordson tractor for plowing and pulling the oat binder. We had what was called a riding horse , part bronco, well marked and smart. Dick was his name and he knew it. Just whistle or call his name and he would lift up his head and prick up his ears to see what you wanted to do. When I was big enough to get the bridle on him, I would chase cattle or whatever adventure I could find. Bare-back riding was the way to go. A saddle was too heavy and time consuming to put on the horse. He was quite a horse. He knew what he was supposed to do. The horse and I had a few adventures after school, when I was supposed to bring the cows home from the pasture.
We had a railroad running through the farm and the pasture was on the other side of the tracks. After school I would bridle up Dick and head for the pasture. The Milwaukee and St. Louis passenger train was due by about 4:45. Dick would see the train coming and he would want to beat it to the crossing. I couldn't hold him if he decided to run. Well, the train never beat us, but I believe there was one nervous engineer at times. If Dick felt like he needed the exercise, he would take off and run a mile or so then be happy to come back and we'd drive the cows home.
One afternoon we were sorting out the milk cows when he slipped on a quick turn and fell on my leg and broke the tibia bone in my lower leg. He raised himself off of my leg. but rather than running away, he came back and stood by me until I was able to get back on him. For some reason, that horse knew I was in trouble. He stood there with his head down smelling me to see what was wrong. There have been stories about animals taking care of their masters. They seem to know something is wrong and some of them are animal heroes.
He was a sort of pet. At times in the spring when it took a number of horses to get the crops in, he had to work like a common work horse. He didn't like it, but he did a good day's work for his size and build. Workhorses required a lot of care and attention. They were a faithful lot and they did their duty.
Dick grew older and slower and by the time I was in high school, he just did cattle work occasionally. He died in 1937 after suffering eight days from sleeping sickness. I still get a lump in my throat when I think of his death. He was like a member of the family. It was probably the only time the family all had tears in their eyes at the same time. We lost nine other horses, too. They were replaced by the Oliver 70.
Milk cows didn't turn into pets. They got used to their milking and feeding routine, and they couldn't care less about you as long as they were milked and fed. If you had just one cow, as we did for years, it was a different story. They are sort of a pet, but you can't teach them tricks. They will come when called, providing it's milking time and they are hungry. One time the cow (I don't think we had a name for her) was not around at milking time. I called her, but no response or cow. After supper I went out around the buildings and finally I heard this low "mooo....." She had gotten into the chicken house and the wind blew the door shut. When I got her out I discovered that she ate about 20 pounds of the egg mash we used for chicken feed. She looked quite content and had a real full stomach. I was afraid she would get sick from it. Our vet at that time was Dr. L. Larson from Greenville. I called him as soon as possible to find out what I should do. Well, Doc's reply was rather matter-of-fact. He said, "Don't walk behind her".
Beef cattle were something else. If they are on full feed, they couldn't care less about you. But if there is a strange noise or person or anything out of the ordinary, they use it as an excuse to panic and run into fences to see how well they are built. Hogs about the same as beef cattle if they are raised in confinement. They are a bunch of scardy cats. Anything will stampede them. They will run about twenty or thirty feet, tire out and walk back to see what all of the commotion is about. It is best to stay well clear of the pens. The residue on the floor goes high and far.
Hogs as individuals are quite smart. When I was a small boy (1921-22), a little pig got her leg broke and she was raised in the house under the cook stove. When she got well, she would follow me around and seemed to like being close to someone. She was house broken. She would push the door open when she wanted out and squeal when she wanted back. We called her "Betsy". I don't know why, but I remember being told she didn't like mud and was always real clean. It was sad when we put her out with the rest of the hogs. They would fight her until Dad put her in a pen by herself.
When I was raising hogs I would bring a baby pig into the house for the children to play with. This one time I would bring the same one in for an hour or two until the children got tired of it. That pig remembered she was sort of a pet. I could walk up to her out in the yard and scratch her ear and she would follow me around. When she had her own pigs, I could get in the pen with her and the piglets. She didn't mind if I touched them.
Dad had a Tamworth hog grab him by the leg and he lost his pant leg. She was a beast. She would get mad and try to chase you even when you were on the other side of the fence. Hogs were a good cash crop most of the time, but before farrowing pens, they took a lot of time per litter and a lot of little pigs were laid on and killed by the mother pig. Some sows were real careful when they lay down, but others just seemed to plop down and not give a damn.
My equipment and sheds were wearing out about 1965, so I either had to rebuild them or quit. Well, I quit and it seems like I had more leisure time after that and a lot more money. The corn I fed them was sealed on government loan and I collected a good storage payment, seven cents a bushel.
The cattle were not my best enterprise. I had forty acres of pasture at Hargraves (Sec.11 SE 1/4) that more or less committed me to cattle. Forty head of cattle take as much attention as a hundred or five hundred head. The more you have, the more you are mechanized. It was either mechanize or get out. The market was so poor-high priced feeders-$26 and low priced fed cattle-$17. That made me quit. I couldn't afford to keep cattle around under those pricing conditions. They really stole cattle for a few years until so many farmers quit feeding, they just about lost their supply. That is why Sioux City Stockyards are nearly gone and the smaller packers are closed.
Back to animals. We had chickens for a few years, but like the cattle, their eggs wouldn't pay for their feed. The children took care of them, but when they learned how to add and subtract, it was all over. I believe that John was the last one to take care of the chickens. After a year with no profit, we sold them. That is where the livestock business went. It wasn't that I was such a poor manager. We just didn't like to work for nothing. Grain farming was more stable.
I never had a dog when I was a kid. We had dogs or mutts around, but none I could call my dog. We had one nice Cocker Spaniel, but she didn't know about traffic and got killed on the road. We had a Golden Labrador that used to belong to the Dale Schooleys. Lady was with us for many years. She did strange things, but she was a nice house dog and liked the kids. Her end was tragic. She was run over by a car.
Ann brought home a ½ Lab and ½ St. Bernard from Iowa City when she was in college. Bruno turned out to be a good watch dog and was always on the lookout if anyone was outside. He was put to sleep when he was about 15 years old, a good reliable dog.
The last dog was ½ Great Dane and ½ St. Bernard. That is not a good combination. Boris was friendly and big, but that is about all I can say good about him. He slobbered and drooled profusely, and had a bad habit of stepping on your feet. His tail was a weapon. He would wag it and it would beat you on the legs. He was a different dog, to say the least. I couldn't teach him anything. When his ankle and feet started to go bad, I had him put to sleep.
We did have cats, but no one owns a cat! They came and went, but mostly came. We had a cow so they had milk to drink when I milked the cow. One of the cats I remember was all gray and a constant hunter, Grayball. She lived a long time, but none of her offspring seemed to amount to much.
Finally, distemper got all of them and none have come around since. Dad had a cat that didn't have a tail. It was quite a curiosity. I don't remember much about it except it disappeared mysteriously after it got Mother's canary.
College years (September 1938-July 1942)
My sister, Lee, came out from California in August 1938. She must have known that I was thinking of going to college that fall. A couple of things got me going. Willie Shadd was an Iowa State College graduate and a ham radio operator-W9UOW. My interest in amateur radio was the primary reason. I wanted to know more about math, physics, and chemistry. I figured I'd try it one year. The cultural shock was eased quite a bit because of my time in California. The class sizes at Iowa State were much the same as the eight hundred in the Los Angeles school. You had to run around to different places and keep a class schedule. At any rate I owe a lot to Lee for helping me with registration and finding a place to live in a good boarding house. She knew what to look for in the housing category.
The first quarter (it was the quarter system then) was really tough. The drawing classes were easy, like high school. I tested into Sophomore Drawing 201. Fortunately, I was so dumb or rusty, I was put in a non-collegiate math and English section. This was a blessing in disguise. I got a good fundamental background for college math and English. When you are out of school for four years, you have a few experiences to write about.
As my English mechanics improved, my grades improved. Some of my stories were in "Sketch", an English magazine and read over WOI radio. The big deal was a story about dehorning and branding cattle. It was a bloody, smelly mess. One quarter I got a B in English. My grades the first quarter were about a 2.2. I was happy I passed everything.
Luck was with me my freshman year. Wallace R. Buelow was a chemical engineering student in the same boarding house who was about my age and experience. He was a smart student and helped me with my studies and attitude toward higher learning. When I got discouraged, he would give me a pep talk, then we would go to the Rainbow Cafe in downtown, Ames. We were of age, but you couldn't buy beer in Dogtown. Besides I.S.C. students couldn't drink beer-big deal. Wally worked the year before for the Greek that ran the cafe. He would take us to a booth in the kitchen and give us a beer and listen to our troubles. After the beer and counseling, we would head back and hit the books.
R.O.T.C. was required at that time, and I was fortunate to be placed in the Horse Artillery that used French "75" field guns. R.O.T.C. was easy if you studied at all. It helped if you knew your right foot from your left foot, which I learned in Boy Scouts. So the first year went by without failing any course or getting on the Dean's other list!
Sophomore year was certain because Lee dragged me to Ames kicking and screaming. The sophomore year turned out better in many ways. I took dancing lessons and started a few campus activities. This occurred when Wally joined the Adelante Fraternity. I went in as a pledge the winter quarter. The Adelantes were a serious group of fellows. The study hours and general conduct was like a monastery by today's standards. The weekends beginning Friday afternoon until Sunday at seven were for horsing around and socializing. The Adelantes were a good group to live with. We ate on time, behaved at mealtime, dressed for meals, had a definite routine and used table manners.
Our cook was Scandinavian. We called her "Thorny". Her name was Thorngrin. She was a real nice lady. Every other Friday night we had a "Fireside", which was a house dance and attendance was required, with a suit and tie. If you didn't have a date, you had to be there to be sure the guests (the brother's girlfriends) were entertained and flattered by cutting in on their dances. No booze whatever-house rules-the refreshment was punch and Danish pastry from the great "Thorny's" kitchen.
My grades improved because there was always someone around to talk over the problem. I developed good study and thinking habits. It was an ideal environment for a little ole country boy. At the end of the sophomore year the R.O.T.C. students had to decide if they would sign up for advanced training for which you received a Reserve Commission as a Second Lt. in Artillery. Wally Buelow gave me the high points. Hitler was running over Europe. China and Japan were at war and we had a gut feeling that the U.S. would be in it eventually. There were two items that were pondered-if you were an officer the pay was higher, you had a better uniform and the army would bring your body back to the States for burial, and the officers had hard liquor in their clubs instead of beer, as the enlisted men received. Wally and I decided the last reason was the clincher.
Also the draft was going on then and the R. O. T. C. students were allowed to finish their education. We had to attend summer camp at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri the summer of 1941. It lasted six weeks and was boot camp type training. Put the textbooks to work, they said! We were a good artillery outfit. We did quite well on the gunnery test and the road march, which is a story in itself. Winter quarter of my junior year I applied to the Civilian Pilots Training Program to receive flying lessons. By the end of the spring I had my pilot's license, much to my delight.
The fall quarter, another turning point, they asked senior R.O.T.C. students that were electrical engineers to take a special high frequency course and at the conclusion we would be transferred to the Signal Corps when we were commissioned. We were then to be shipped to England for more training, which turned out to be in radar. Radar at that time was so secret the word was not used. It was just "electronics" to the unconcerned.
Generally the senior year was routine as far as school went. The war was on and the uncertainty of it created some strange attitudes. We were a little more carefree in some respects and where studies were concerned, we just worked hard enough and toed the line to be sure we would graduate. This was spring of 1942, after Pearl Harbor, and we had an uncertain future. The seniors did quite a bit of "partying" for engineers. That meant more than a date now and then, at least once a week. We had a housemother that year and women were allowed in the house from 4 to 9 in the evening. Playing records, dancing, and eating "Thorny's Danish (We always ate!) were the social life.
It was the spring quarter I started to date Mary Gillette. She was a sister of Riley Gillette, a fraternity brother. We seemed to have a good time together. She was a lot different from former girlfriends. She was a good dancer, better than I. She was a sharp looking gal, with a good sense of humor and seemed to be approved of by the fraternity brothers who were the self-appointed authorities on women. They were always horning in and trying to take over my "bird". At that time I didn't realize that my future would be affected by our association. I'm not sure who tried to impress who the most. Anyway, it was an interesting (unique) time. Maybe it was the season, spring you know. Or as the French say " C'est laguerre" (It's the war).
I gave her my fraternity pin at the end of the quarter before she left for a summer in Connecticut. I was stuck in school for a short session that summer quarter for a required business law course of one hour and a one hour sophomore physics lab. The college, in its great wisdom, decreed I was to stay and take these two courses. I had three hours more than required, but I guess they wanted to hold up the "war effort".
If you were enrolled in a land grant college with those days, you were required to take R.O.T.C. (reserve officers training) Two years were the minimum and if you enrolled two more years, you received a 2nd Lt. commission in the field artillery. The field artillery at that time was horse drawn. Riding was no problem, but I was sorry for the city guys that had never touched a horse in their lives. All the horse had to do was flare its nose, snort and slobber to create quite a disturbance among the green students. The old farm boys got to teach the city boys how it was done. I always got to ride the "incorrigibles", in other words, the stubborn S.O.B.s. Captain Wood asked my opinion of one that had dumped a couple of students in the previous class. When I got done, I said if that were my horse, I'd shoot the bastard. I didn't see that horse again. Chances are he ended up at Fort Robinson, NE. It was sort of a purgatory for army horses.
I rode with the I.S.C. Cossacks for four years. It was basically a trick riding team that did stunts like the old cavalry and artillery outfits did for amusement. The team used 36 men and 18 horses, 2 men to a horse. We rode standing up, swinging off and up again, Arabian dismount and various routines.
I have included a description of the College Cossacks by George A. Buck: The College Cossacks were the only group of its kind in the United States. It was composed of those students who were outstanding in horsemanship, and who put on an exhibition of daredevil riding three times during the school year. These were at the Little International, the Military Circus and Veisha.
The College Cossacks were coached by a prominent rider, who was elected to the position yearly, and he was known as the Captain of the Cossacks. The officers who were elected yearly from the riders were the president, secretary-tresurer, captain and the student coach. There was also an officer from the R.O.T.C. unit who was designated as the officer-in-charge. They were an entirely self supporting group. The aim of the College Cossacks was to give opportunity to students who were not able to participate in athletics to take part in an extra-curricular activity. It enabled any student to become an expert horseman.
The College Cossacks were composed of members of the R.O.T.C. and veterinary students and featured dare-devil and trick riding on one, two and three horses. To prove their versatility, the riders performed two sets of acts; one while their mounts were standing still and the other while the horses were moving at full gallop. The Arabian mount, shoulder stand, front and rear shears,(turn around) mounting over the croup(the horse's rear) to a stand and mounting over the croup facing the rear were all performed at the halt. Though these tricks are difficult enough in themselves, those on and from the backs of moving horses require more nearly perfect timing and coordination between the riders and their mounts.
Using single mounts, the front man would dismount and go to the center of the arena. Upon a command he would run to the galloping horse, and by catching the mounted man's elbow, would swing up behind the rider. The front man would then dismount from the galloping horse and remount behind the man on the horse, whereupon the front man would dismount from the galloping horse and go to the center of the arena. The rider remaining on the horse would then dismount from the galloping horse, vault over the horse and back up to a standing position. While in the standing position each man would ride at a full gallop over several jumps.
There were two separate amd distinct teams. One wearing a red sash was composed of varsity men, all of whom had at least one year of experience in the organization. The other team was distinguished by a yellow sash. These men were in their first year of active work in the riding group. The men rode, in turn, on one, two or three horses, controlling all three horses while taking difficult jumps at high speed. The climax of their performance was the formation of a six man pyramid built up on three horses. This trick was extremely difficult and dangerous, yet one was never known to collapse.
When I graduated in July, I was sent to Camp Murphy, Florida, instead of England. What a difference six weeks made! I was commissioned as a Second Lt. in the U.S. Signal Corps. I was sent to Fort Des Moines in July of 1942 for a physical. The fort was a W.A.C. officer's training center. The W.A.C.'s uniforms were rather pathetic until they got them tailored to a halfway decent fit.
After a week in Des Moines, I was given a train ticket to Camp Murphy, Florida. It had just opened up as a radio training school. In four weeks I passed all the courses and was assigned to teach Elements of Radio to the enlisted men. This was something else, the only teaching I had done as such was to freshmen in R.O.T.C. gun drill and horsemanship. We went to school at night from 8 p.m. until 3 a.m. That time of day really made sharp and wide awake students. When things got too bad, I would have them take off their shoes and march around the room. I would pick out a sleepy one and have him count cadence. We had to be quiet, there were other classes in the building. The men were not supposed to laugh or snicker. At least they got woke up and had a little break and fun out of it. They were one strange outfit, sneaking around the room whispering "1,2,3,4,".
It was hot down there in Florida in July. Thanks to rum and Coca-Cola, you could get to sleep on hot days. You would feel no pain. Just when the weather became livable in November, I received orders to report to the Middletown Air Depot in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The signal section was a car dealership out on State Street. I was put in the Air Borne radio section. We repaired aircraft radios. It was right down my alley. I didn't actually get my hands on any equipment to repair, but was expected to handle all technical problems. They never stopped coming.
All of the officers ate lunch in a small restaurant down the street. I was quite surprised when they all ordered drinks at noon and rolled dice to see who would pay for it. That went real good on an empty stomach. One Saturday we had to go out to the airbase at Middletown for a promotion party. Our commanding officer told us to be careful about drinking too much. "Remember a Signal Corps officer can carry his liquor. Let the Air Force get stupid drunk." It was not a good party. I think the Air Force started following our example at the next one, at least they did for a while. No one could carry their liquor like the Signal Corps in our estimation.
My boss, Anthony Manning, a First Lt. soon to be Captain, was a decent sort of person compared to some of them. I ended up living across the street from him with some people that changed my life in no small way.
Charley and Mary Boyer, there was a pair! Living with them would make a story by itself. They had a room for us, so Mary and I decided to get married on June 21, 1943. We were very lucky to run into a pleasant situation for living space at that time during the war.
Mary Boyer was a short, husky lady. I would say she was a real tomboy in her younger days. She talked a lot, laughed a lot and had a definite opinion on everything. Charley Boyer was just the opposite. He worked for the post office and went at his own pace, even when he was drinking. We did a lot of that. We could get high just listening to the bottle cap hiss. Boyers never seemed to argue. Each one would state an opinion on the situation and then each would go their own way. As an example, she said she always kept a flashy red nightgown at the foot of the bed to use if the house caught fire. Of course, Charley said he would stop to put on his pants in the meantime. Some people!
He was drafted at the age of 39 into the Navy mail service. He was stationed in Chicago and Mary Boyer went to live with him. We had the house to ourselves until November 1944, when we were sent to Newport News, Virginia.
The work in the Signal Section was good duty. I was able to see about every airplane and engine the army used at that time. The planes would come in for an overhaul, be taken apart, have all systems checked, and get a new paint job. They were like new when they left the depot. The radio and radar equipment received the same treatment. Radar was something else, especially the first couple of years. We could not use the word "radar". The building had armed guards and special passes or badges required. The G2 pass was the highest security clearance you could have. I had 4 stars, one more than the base commander had on his badge. I don't think he liked it.
I was promoted to First Lt. in June 1943 which helped with the pay. It was $150 a month, plus $75 for dependents and quarters. We had $2500 in the bank in 1945, plus a $700 1940 Ford. I would say we did pretty well for the time. Mary was a good manager and seemed to get her money's worth. The biggest contribution I made to the war effort was in the winter of 1943. We installed a new type radar in 30 B-24Ds. They could locate a periscope or snorkel at 30 miles. The submarines were hard on the shipping lines to Europe. Sometimes half of the convoy would be lost. After about six months of active patrols, they returned to the depots for a complete overhaul and then were sent to England. I might add, the Navy got to use our planes and radar for coastal patrol. We did all of the work and they received the credit-normal.
During the time we were installing all this equipment, we were working on the new maintenance building and warehouse at the Depot at Olsted Field called the Middletown Air Depot. (M.A.D.) The name was soon changed to A.S.C. M.A.D. ( Air Service Command Middletown Air Depot) M.A.D. was nearer the truth.
I might add that the employees were all civilian. I was the last army guy in the chain of command, lucky "Pierre caught in the middle". My group of civilians were good people, we all got along especially well when they found out I was an amateur radio operator. They thought if I was an electrical engineer and an amateur, I knew everything. I sure didn't want to mislead them. By the time I left in the fall of 1944, we had 500 in three shifts in the Signal Section and about 11,000 on the Depot. It was not a large operation compared to Oklahoma City, which was twice as big. The B-24 project was the biggest single project we worked on. I was sort of shell shocked by the time we finished. There was a 24 station squawk box (intercom) and two telephones on my desk that required constant attention.
There were shaky times. Once on that project, one of the B-24Ds crashed with part of the crew. I was supposed to check the radar as usual, but for some reason I was busy and didn't go when they went up later that day. That was too close to meeting the "elephant".
On a radar test on a P-70 (A20), the propeller malfunctioned and went into a flat pitch. Major Keyes was the best of the test pilots. If it were not for him and a Pratt & Whitney engine, we might have met the "elephant". There was an old pilot's saying at the time, "But for God and Pratt and Whitney, I would not be here."
One other interesting project was in the early winter of 1942. They sent in about 50 P-40 Curtis fighter planes in overseas crates.The Depot assembled them, we checked the radios and they were flown to Langley Field, Virginia, placed on aircraft carriers and sent to Africa for the invasion. They flew right off the carriers into action, a quick deal. The Navy helped them.
Generally I'd say that the duty at A.S.C.M.A.D. was interesting, busy and comfortable. We had a good place to live. I liked to work on radios and airplanes. The paperwork load was typical of the times-at least five copies of everything. I should have had an administrative course in college to prepare me. I had a secretary who was something else! Olga Patoff was about five foot two, attractive, and could beat a Signal Corps typewriter until it smoked. I finally got a Royal Silent Writer that made her the envy of the office. She was so short we changed the desk and chair to fit her. I would tell her not to stand so close to me or people would think she was sitting on my lap. Of course, "Old Patoff", as we called her, would get steamed and would turn red. I heard about her after the war and they said she hadn't changed-still running in overdrive.
E. Merlin Thompson was another character. He was an ole time civilian employee of the Signal Section. He knew everyone on the Depot. He could walk through a warehouse and remember what was there and the stock and bin number. If we needed anything the air corps had in their inventory, he had friends that could get it in a midnight requisition. There was a B-24 flying around during the war with about 1500 feet of copper cable signed off on its work order. We used it in the shop for D.C. high current power supply to the workbenches, thanks to E. Merlin Thompson. During one adventure with E.M.T., we went on an inspection trip to Bolling Field at Washington, D.C. We went down the Chesapeake Bay on an overnight ferry boat, which was an interesting boat ride. It has staterooms and everything. Anyway, we ended up at a nightclub in downtown D.C. with Lt. Thompson. When we decided to leave all the street cars had stopped running. It was after midnight. There we were marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D. C. single file in our own private parade. If a car or taxi came by, civilian Thompson was supposed to lay down in the street, hopefully to attract attention. No one would stop. We weren't walking too good. We were picked up by a G.I. vehicle from Bolling Field. That was the only parade I was ever in all four years in the army. Lt. Thompson was the guy that ate catsup on his pie a la mode.
The Signal Corps had all types. If wars were won by weird people, "why did it take so long"? If confusion wins, "why did it take so long?"
Inspection trips were always interesting. On a trip to New York for the A.G.O., I got in contact with Willis Shad, the fellow that inspired me to go to college. He was working at Bell Laboratories at that time. Anyway, we never thought we would be walking together down Fifth Avenue in New York City five years earlier.
Another incident involved E.M. Thompson again. We were waiting for a piece of radar to finish an installation project. The invoice had the freight car number on it- all confidential, top priority- and all that stuff. They were yelling at Manning, my boss, and he was yelling at me. Thompson thought maybe it might be in the freight yard at Harrisburg. Off we went fat, dumb, and happy. It was Saturday and there was no one at the yard. In we went, located the car, broke the seal and found our equipment. We closed the door and replaced the seal as if we knew what we were doing, all in broad daylight. Manning never asked how we got the equipment or where the paperwork was that was supposed to accompany it. I think he knew something was a little different, but never asked questions, just gave me a funny look and said, "I hope you followed regulations." More "C'est la guerre", "It's the war".
I was eating dinner at the Officer's Club and happened to be seated next to the motor pool officer. Some time during the conversation, I happened to mention that I could drive anything the army had on wheels. That was a mistake. The next Monday he called and said they had an amphibious landing craft at the motor pool. Could I drive it? I thought he was pulling my leg. Anyway, about and hour later Manning called and told me we were to install two-way radio equipment in the tank so they could talk to the tower in case of a river crash. In other words, they were going to use it on the Susquehanna for a crash boat. He said "You go down to the motor pool and drive it up to the shop and install the radios. Then take it out on the river and test it". As if I did that everyday.
Now this was one big piece of equipment. It was eight feet wide and about twenty-four feet long. The tracks, like a Caterpillar tractor, stood about head high. It was big. I did some soul searching, read the book, checked all the controls and thanked my lucky stars I was also a mechanical genius. It was controlled with levers. Pull the left lever, it would turn right and pull the right lever, it would turn left. The driver's position was low in the body. I used a man on each front corner to keep an eye on the road. It was huge!
Finally, we got it to the shop without running over anything or anyone. They installed her radios, checked them out and off to the river we went-fat, dumb and happy. Now there were five of us on board, myself, of course and four civilians. We got it in the water in good shape. For water travel you ran the tracks at about twice normal speed. It would go about six miles an hour in the water flat out. The testing and checking went on as planned. Then we decided to shut the engine off and check for ignition noise. That was a big mistake. The radio sapped the power out of the batteries. The engine was a big six cylinder Chrysler marine engine, probably about a hundred horsepower. So there I sat, in an amphibious tank with a dead engine, floating down the Susquehanna River. Three Mile Island was not very far down the river. To make things interesting, there was a dam across the river. Now was the time to get organized. Did we have an anchor? No. How many could swim? Two. It was decided that Riggs and I would swim ashore for help, but what good would that do? The other three would be stuck in the tank.
In my great wisdom, I had neglected to put any life preservers on board. I had experience with engines with low batteries. We opened the engine compartment enough so I could see the fan. It was in the rear end about twenty feet away. By pushing the starter button and rocking the engine, I finally got it to turn over enough to get it started. We headed back up the river.
Needless to say, I was a bit shaky after I realized what a mess it might have been. (Three Mile Island has a nuclear plant on it now. It was in the news about twenty years back. They had a leak which caused quite a bit of excitement.) When we got back to the shop, the crew told how heroic Riggs and I were to offer to swim to shore and get help. No one could keep a straight face.
When Manning heard about it, he just looked down his nose and said we were just "stupid lucky". So much for heroes. That was the closest I ever got to receiving the Congressonal Medal of Honor. In the fall of 1944, the invasion of Europe was moving along and the activity stateside was slowing down. Work at the Signal Section was dropping off rapidly. I was sent to Newport News, Virginia to close down a Sub Depot that was not needed anymore. That was a new experience. It was more detailed closing an operation than opening a new shop of that type. Every piece of equipment had to have a stock number on it if it were to be returned to supply. If we couldn't find a number for it, it was turned into salvage. The hand tools were bought from civilian supply and how no Signal Corps counterpart. Decision, decisions.No special adventures happened there. It was quite routine. The manpower was two civilians, a secretary and two civilian guards. The two men were from South Dakota and the office girl's name was Mary Fox. She was just out of high school and we called her "Foxy". She flushed quite easily and we had to watch our language and comments about the army. They were good people. We had quite a cozy, little group. When we closed the gate the last time, Ray and George were wet-eyed and Foxy just cried and said she hoped all of the people she worked with in the future would be like us.
I returned to Harrisburg, relieved of my duties and went on a ten day leave. Mary and I drove home and she stayed with my folks and her folks. The previous summer our first child, Stephen, had been born. Mary went to the army hospital in Carlyle, PA. It was an old Civil War army base about fifteen miles out of Harrisburg. It was quite a change. I believe they kept her in the hospital for ten days or more, which was normal at that time.
My next base was Warner Robins Airbase in Macon, GA. I was assigned to the Signal Section, a place for surplus army officers. I was surprised when I reported to the personnel officer. He was Col. Nellis from Harrisburg and his assistant was Capt. Cops. Nellis and Manning never got along. I guess they were too much alike in a lot of respects. Manning always referred to him as that "damned Nellis". He was quite friendly and we must have visited about the Harrisburg section for about an hour. To kill time, I was assigned to a school for Radio Counter Measures. (R.C.M.) It was used to jam the enemy's communications and radar. Nellis and Cops told me they were trying to get me in the guided missile school. It sounded like interesting work, so I agreed. I roomed with a pilot and actually got to fly a B-24 and a Douglas dive bomber. That was a big deal.
Time went by and there wasn't an opening for three more months. That seemed like a long time to me, so I asked Nellis what else was available. About a week later he called and said there was a request for an airborne radar officer for a temporary assignment. It turned out to be a combat suitability test for the B-32. The B-32 was the same size and capacity as the B-29. General Kenny wanted a long range bomber for the Fifth Air Force. The B-32 was available, but needed development. I reported to the factory at Fort Worth, TX, where they were built. That was an eye-opener! The building was a mile long and 250 feet wide. The project called for three B-32s to be flown to Manila and to test them on actual combat missions. My job was radar maintenance. Three enlisted men were assigned to me to do the technical work.
The trip to Manila was eventful. The Pacific Ocean is one big body of water. Flying over it at night under a cloud cover is a weird sensation. No movement, just the engines grinding away. You could be setting on the ground and not know it. The project officer, Col. Cook, who incidentally flew the first B-29 to Europe and then India, did not trust the navigator and wanted to know if I could pick up the picket boats on radar. There were two boats spaced out from San Francisco to Honolulu with navigation aids. When we out to where they were supposed to be, I couldn't find one. That got my attention in a big hurry. No second boat either. The cloud cover cleared and the moon was out. The navigator said we were on course. The second boat didn't show up on the screen. I was convinced the radar was not working.
Finally a little after sunrise, I got a target on the screen that grew into the island of Oahu, where Pearl Harbor is. Later I found out the boats were pulled off of the line temporarily because of submarines. The radar was doing fine. We were delayed for three days for an engine change in one of the three planes.
This particular plane was in trouble all of its life. The flight from Hickam Field at Pearl Harbor to Kwajalein Atoll was exciting. As we were nearing the point of no return, one of the crew in the back reported the number one engine was smoking and leaking oil. Now that is exciting, to have a leaker and a smoker. The report came that number three was leaking. Its gauges said everything was okay. We had a flight engineer who was a civilian working for the Consolidated Company. He was quite interested in the engine, of course. The number four engine started leaking and smoking. His eyes lit up. Idea! Call operations at Hickam Field to see if they topped the oil tanks when they topped the fuel tanks. They had. By that time number two was leaking and smoking. The oil heated and expanded and ran down the exhaust pipes. The plane had one dirty behind when we landed at Kwajalein Atoll. The flight to Guam was routine. The navigator was right on. Cook was pleased. He would set the heading when we took off and announce the time of arrival. He never changed a heading and the E.T.A. was within 15 minutes. The navigator was something else. He looked like he slept in his uniform. He had been pulled out of the Atlantic Ocean twice. He was on loan from the Air Transport Command and this was his last flight and his time was up. He was not a happy camper. It was his last trip, over an ocean he had never crossed before, in a new and untested airplane. When we got to Manila in the Philippines, he left his parachute on the seat, picked up his bag, and walked away. He didn't look back and we didn't see him again. A very strange man, but maybe we all were.
One surprise when I landed at Fort Worth and reported. There was Col. Paul who was the engineering officer at Middletown Air Depot while I was there. He was surprised, too. He probably told Col. Cook I was a hot shot radar man. I spent about a week finding my three men and equipment. It was a nice reunion. They flew over air freight and were there 6 days before the B-32 arrived. They thought something had happened. We hauled out stuff up to the Angeles Air Strip about thirty miles northeast of Manila. It took about two weeks to get up to full speed. We did have one adventure when we were setting up shop. The building was a screened in frame type, about 30 x 40 feet. It needed protection in two sides from the rain. We got some old tents for canvas to cover the sides. In the process of unrolling the canvas and pulling the ropes out, one man (he was just a kid) pulled out a big rope which turned out to be a cobra snake. I happened to be standing on the Jeep hood supervising. The first thing I knew I had six men for company on the top of the Jeep. We were safe, but what about the snake? For weapons we had a short handled shovel and an ax fastened on the Jeep. Who was going to get it? That was the biggest damned snake I ever saw. He looked about twenty feet long with a head the size of a basketball. All seven of us men agreed, he was the biggest damned cobra they had ever seen. No one volunteered to kill the snake. I couldn't get off the Jeep with all those man around me. Finally, Lt. Potter, the group communications officer, came over to see what all the commotion was about, seven men on a Jeep. He wasn't much interested until he saw the snake. Then he was interested. He ran around to the other side of the building and in the back door. For some reason, he had a .45 pistol in his desk and a clip of ammunition. Potter was smart or at least not scared. He scratched the screen to attract the attention of the snake. It did make the snake mad and curious. The snake came right up to the screen and Potter shot at it until the clip was empty, but he finally got it. At the same time a P-51 taking off of the runway, blew a tire, crashed and hit the road grader working around the end of the runway and caught fire. Then its bullets started to explode. The P-51 was still burning and making a lot of noise. The pilot was safe, but the man in the grader was killed.
In spite of the noise and the fire close by, the men got off the Jeep and went to work. The man who grabbed the snake was really shook. He cut the snake in three pieces and buried him in three different places, cussing and crying all of the time. He was really shook up!
Then some damned fool said, "Well. where there's one snake there is two!" Well, seven men jumped on the Jeep to look around. I watched too, until I remembered I had to go to Headquarters for a meeting. When I returned, the canvas was up, the Jeep was gone and the P-51 fire was out and no more noise. So the big snake deal was over and we know that seven men can stand on a Jeep hood!
About a week later, I dropped a large 28 volt battery on my instep. The battery was used to power a converted aircraft radio to receive local music stations, two in fact. Anyway, the bone was broken just above the big toe. This started a M.A.S.H. adventure. AT the aid station while the doctor was pressing around on my foot, it made me sick and I lost my supper. They decided to send me to a local field hospital-two big tents and some cots. It started to rain. I was placed on a stretcher and put in an ambulance.
I didn't get too wet then, but when they arrived at the local hospital, the entry door was wet and stuck. While they were trying to open it, the water from the eve was running down my face. I started to cough and of course, I lost more of my supper. When we got inside, I was a mess. Everything was fairly dry except my head and shoulders and the remains of my supper. The doctor looked at me and wouldn't believe I only had a bruised foot. They cleaned me up and put on a cast the next morning. Because I was not ambulatory, I had to go to the hospital at Clark Field. It was a hot afternoon. I might point out here that they wouldn't give me crutches. They wanted to be sure I would stay put. I had to stay there six weeks. Same deal if you wanted to go to the can or the mess hall. You had to check out the crutches as it they were an expensive weapon. They were afraid I would go A.W.O.L.! To where? The hospital was much like the T.V. show M.A.S.H., no activity or a blaze of action.
I asked the nurse what happened to the guy next to me. " He got in a fight with a Filipino over a woman. The Negro spilled the Filipino's guts with a knife and the Filipino emptied his carbine, seven shots, into the Black." They didn't like each other. He was moved later. They both recovered. The other one next to me was a pilot from the Mexican Air Force. He broke his shoulder in a plane crash and so on and there I was in bedridden with a broken foot.
The atom bomb was dropped while I was there. A nurse came through that night and told us she heard it on the radio. When the war stopped all the idiots that had a gun emptied it into the air. Surgery was busy that night. There was just two of us in the convalescent tent. We piled mattresses around us for protection. The tent had three holes in the ceiling in the morning.
Shortly after that event I was returned to the 312th Bomb Group on Okinawa. The war was over then, but what a mess that place was. I guess you could call it a war zone. We were at a large base northwest of Naha, Okinawa. The B-32s was just getting useful when it ended. It's a good thing it did. The B-32s were set up for a 250 pound fragment bomb. They would explode close to the ground and act like a big lawn mower. Ten B-32s could cover about a half a square mile. It would have been slaughter!
Thanks to the atomic bomb, millions of lives were saved, in spite of what the anti-nukes say! Okinawa was comfortable weather wise. You needed only a blanket at night. We went through a typhoon. It was just like the pictures on television. Every time a tent blew down, we would grab the stakes and ropes and put it on our tent. We even had a truck parked next to it to tie ropes to. Twenty-four hour one way, about six a hours of dead quiet, and then the same thing in the other direction. During the lull in the storm the cooks gave us boiled eggs, coffee and bread. Not bad after K-rations! The camp looked like a cattle yard after a stampede. I was following a guy down to the mess hall on a plank path. He stepped off the plank and ended up waist deep in a hole. He was unhappy.
When MacAurthur landed in Japan to sign the surrender papers, three B-32s were assigned to go to Japan for communications and photo recognizance. I lived in a tent with the flight crew of one of the planes. I asked Lt. Sill if I could go along. He said "No problem". The night before the mission he told me I couldn't go. I was outranked by two captains and a major from Group. The navigator was bumped by a navigator that needed one more mission to complete his tour. That left just two of us in the tent the morning of the mission. We slept in until about six o'clock. Someone stopped by to tell us that Lt. Sill's plane had crashed on take off. We could see the smoke from out tent. Fourteen men were on that plane. The war was over. They were just going for a joy ride. We were in a stupor. Finally we went to the crash scene. We didn't stay long. It burned for 24 hours. I nearly saw the "elephant" again! He was getting close. If this had been during the war, everyone would have taken it differently, shrugged their shoulders and carried on.
The funeral was the saddest thing I have ever experienced. It wasn't unusual to see someone walk away and toss his cookies. The next thing, the navigator and I had to sort out their belongings and sell what we could. We went through their personal papers to be sure there wasn't something that would cause any problems, like letters from a girlfriend, when it was sent home. All of them were married, so we had to write a letter to their wives. That was the worst part. There was no form letter that would cover the situation. Lt. Sill was married and had one child. He was a mortician, just beginning his practice when the war started. What I said in the letter, I don't remember. We sent home one complete uniform, personal effects and money ($250) from the sale of their personal property. Lt. Sill had a radio that sold for big bucks. We had to take care of them. What a way to end a war.
I was assigned to this project for 90 days and it was completed. It took six months from the time I left until I received orders to return. One more glitch-one afternoon I was to collect my stuff and be at the field at 4 p.m. I "signed the manifest" and got on the C-47 flight to Guam, just six months after our stop over on the way. We were to leave at four the next morning. When I woke up, I was the only one in the transient tent. I dressed real fast, grabbed my bag and went to see the Charge of Quarters, a sergeant. I asked him where everyone was and why I was left there. He asked my name, looked me up (he looked puzzled) and said he had no record of me anywhere. All I had was my original orders for identification. The sergeant took me to the lieutenant in charge. He had the same reaction-"We have no record of your being here".
By that time it seemed like a bad dream and I was getting worried and afraid something was wrong. Finally after numerous phone calls, they sent me to see a major in charge of Transient personnel. Same deal-"How the hell did you get here?" I believe it was about two days before they decided that it was okay for me to go.
The 312th Bomber Group said I was assigned to them on temporary duty. They didn't know where I was but they had my departure orders. Anyway, the major got me on the next C-54 for Pearl Harbor. It was a straight 24 hour flight. At least I was headed in the right direction. Pearl Harbor and fresh milk, fresh fruit and fresh meat! Eight hours later, I was on a passenger type B-24 headed for San Francisco and home. The train ride to Omaha was a beast. The coach we were in had kerosene lights. We ran out of water the first day. They didn't even take out tickets. I paid a porter the money for a telegram to Mary, plus a tip. The message never got home. I had to call and tell them I was back.
Mary met me in Carroll, IA. Big surprise, I guess. I was tired and had lost thirty pounds. I was home ten days. Mary and I drove to Macon, GA, to what I was sure would be a release from active duty! I don't remember how the points counted up (I'll have to check my 210 file), but I had three campaign ribbons with three or four battle stars-they all counted. At least it impressed the local people. Some didn't even know I was in the service. I guess being a hot shot radar officer on secret missions for the Signal Corps is no claim to fame, especially with radar so secret. Tokyo Rose knew. She called Col. Cook by name and named the type number of the radar on the B-32. Cook was not impressed! I was released from active duty in January 1946 after four long years in the army. At least missing and unaccounted for was in paper work only!
The reasons I started farming after the war were that there were no engineering jobs available, I was tired of the city rat race, Homer's hired man was making more than any offers at that time, and housing was a problem. I guess I was just an old farm boy at heart. When I started farming in 1946, my brother Homer helped me out quite a bit because he had the machinery. Machinery was still hard to come by because of the war. As a war veteran, I could get machinery if it were available. My first purchase in 1946 was an Oliver 70. It cost $1500. That was quite a big deal to have a new tractor back then. My tractor did it's share of the work. Homer paid me wages that first year. In 1958, we combined the corn and dried it for storage. At first Riley Gillette owned the combine and I had the dryer. That worked for about three years, but we were too far apart for a smooth operation at that time.
In 1962, I bought a Minneapolis-Moline picker-sheller and from then on, I ran my operation alone. Prices were good for the crops and livestock until about 1956. Dad decided if I was going to stay on the farm, I had better buy it on contract. That took some of the fat off my bank account. There was one other set back. The Korean War started and Uncle Sam decided I was indispensable.
Anyway, I sold the cattle and Homer took my sows. After I was all set to go, the army decided anyone with over five dependents would not have to go. That was 1950. The crop year in 1951 was rather poor with any early frost and a wet summer. I bought a new A6 Case Combine that spring, so with the poor crop, my cash reserve was gone.
The Cessna 140 airplane had to go. That was a bad time to sell, two years later they were worth three times what I sold it for-$1800.
I believe it was 1954 when Dad decided I should buy Hargraves SE 1/4, Section 11. I had more to farm then, but the prices for grain were dropping due to the government farm policies at that time. The old classic, "Time to take some fat off of the farmers".
My second tractor was a 77 Oliver diesel that did all the work until I bought a D-2 Caterpillar in 1958. I had an Oliver 55 so Steve and Chris could help out. It was a 1956 model. I still have it today in 1994. The 1955 Oliver 77 diesel is still in use also. I traded the Cat for a 602 Minneapolis-Moline tractor in the fall of 1964 when Chris was at school in Bemidji, Minnesota.
I struggled along raising hogs and feeding cattle. I guess I got paid for my capital and labor, but not much. The big change in operations came in 1958 when I bought a Behlen corn dryer and started combining my own corn. I had no cribs on my farm and I had to decide which way to go. Homer couldn't store my ear corn. It was about the first operation in our area that harvested the corn without cribbing and shelling. The picker sheller was used until 1971. It was a good machine, but the corn loss was quite high compared to the combine stripper heads. The combine was a 1971 John Deere 4400, gas powered. It was replaced by a 1981 diesel powered 4400. The next year, 1982, the Behlen portable dryer was replaced with a Shivers continuous flow system. The Behlen dryer was an excellent machine. I replaced two bearings and three thermal couples during the twenty years I used it.
The combines were quite reliable. I had very little down time. Most problems were minor and I took care of all of the problems myself-maybe 5 times. Of course they got a complete inspection each season for beans and corn. I might add here the old German proverb, "If it rattles, tighten it. If it squeaks, oil it." I learned to listen to my machine, probably from the old threshing days. I didn't listen to the radio much. The beat from the music sounded too much like straw walker problems. One way or another it takes one hour of maintenance for every ten hours of operation. Do it now or do it later.
The summer of 1975, Tim went to Boys State in Des Moines. He was doing most of the cultivating that season. While he was gone, I was cultivating on the river bottom next to the river and trees. There was no wind and the gnats, bugs and mosquitoes attacked me. They got behind my glasses and created a low visibility problem. I quit and went home. For some reason, I went to town and as I passed the implement dealer, I noticed a new White 105 with factory cab and air conditioning. I stopped in and asked Bill Snodgrass how long it would take to get it field ready. He said the next morning and as I left he said, " By the way, are you going to trade anything in? Don't you want to know the price?" I was so anxious to get even with the bugs, I forgot to ask about the price.
The next morning I went down to finish the field. Well, here came the bugs and did they get fooled. The temperature was about 90 degrees and the humidity must have been 80%. If I got out of the cab, my glasses would steam over. That was the beginning of a new era-decadent luxury and comfort, long overdue!
I had good, reliable help from my family. They were careful and never messed up due to neglect or carelessness. They had some interesting adventures, but they can tell about them themselves. Stacy was the only daughter that did a lot of field work. She ran four seasons and never caught a fence or scratched any equipment. She planted beans on the river bottom. It had curved rows and point rows. She did a better job than I could. I had a flu bug and could barely help fill the bean hoppers.
Generally the family all had native instincts about machinery. You do some soul searching when you send your kid down the road going 18 miles per hour with $40,000 worth of equipment. The guardian angels were on the ball!
These dates will have to be checked. Dad sold me the home place on contract about 1952 and the Hargraves about 1954. When Mother died in 1971, I bought the River 80 and the Ford 80 from her estate. I used my share and Lee loaned me the balance for 10 years. I believe about 1980 we bought the Seibel farm. It went rather high. In fact, that land was the highest on record. All the big operators ran the price up to $3,750 per acre. Five years later when I wanted to sell the south 60 acres, they couldn't get a bid on it. Where did the big spenders go? It was about an $180,000 loss, but it gave me enough capital loss to offset any income tax payments for about six years. It didn't turn out too bad after the smoke cleared.
I shouldn't have sold it, but I wanted to be free of debt when I retired. I really didn't retire, I just quit-"Take this job and shove it." Joe LeClair, Fran's husband, and Curtis Jones, Mary Ellen's husband, are farming it and doing a good job. They should know what they are doing, if mistakes can be charged to experience.
The machinery sale in 1984 turned out better than expected. The previous fall, it was hard to get a bid on the bigger equipment. Another interesting point on the sale, only one item, a grain truck, went to a neighbor. Nearly all of it went outside the county. The plow went to Haywarden on the Missouri River.
The first real car I owned, with my name on the registration, was a 1931 Model A Ford. It was in rather rough shape. I bought it for $35. I needed a car to drive to the airport for C.P.T. flying lessons. They allowed us $40 for transportation. This was the spring of 1941. I installed a rebuilt engine, new brakes and better tires. Lee helped me recover the top and make side curtains. It was driven 10,000 miles and sold during the war for $75. When I came home to get married in June 1943, I asked Homer if he could find me a decent car. Cars were rather scarce during the war. He found a real nice 1940 Ford with good tires on it for about $900. I drove it all through the war until 1946. Homer got a new 1947 and I got his 1946 Ford. For years he had a standing order for the first new model each year. It was a good car.
The first new car I bought was a 1950 two door Ford. The family was getting bigger, so the next step was a robin's egg blue 1952 Ford station wagon. That was a general purpose car. It hauled children to school at Sacred Heart, hauled feed, and hauled water from Royal for the cistern. It was a carefree car and had 125,000 miles when it was traded in on a nine passenger Ford station wagon in 1959.
That car was a dog in some ways. It took two engines to get to 90,000 miles. A 1966 four door Ford replaced it. By this time, we needed more wheels for the sons and the daughters. High school was interesting, with activities such as debate, basketball, plays and chorus, you could always find a warm car to drive.
During those times, we had a 1964½ navy blue Ford Mustang, a 1952 black Ford two door, a 1966 blue Mustang and a 1947 3/4-ton pickup.In 1969, I rebuilt a Ford 3/4-ton pickup wreck that had only 6000 miles on it. It was a workhorse, plus a camper pickup. I sold it to Brad Maurer and he still has it at this writing (1994).
I worried when Paul and Barb were married in 1971. They took the pickup and camper to the Black Hills on their honeymoon. The camper had Mary Ellen and Curt's red 350 Honda SL motorcycle in it to ride during the day. It seemed like a disaster waiting to happen, but the worst thing about the trip was Barb telling us that "she had to crawl over a motorcycle to get into bed."
Paul and Barb had the 1966 Mustang when Barb did her student teaching in Ames and needed a car. I told her, "If you don't shift it right, there's a little man down there that will grab your leg"! She looked for him, but to this day when I try to tell her anything, she looks skeptical.
Steve bought the '64½ Mustang. John and Julie Greek bought the '66 Mustang. In 1983 along came the Ford Torino that Chris got. Then Mary got a Pinto. It made quite a target. Sarah finally wore it out. Tim got the 1982 Ford Fairmont. He drove it 120,000 miles. We drove a 1981 Fairmont that was used with 17,000 miles on it. The '69 Ford pickup was replaced by a new 1980 3/4 ton pickup.
I traded it for a 1984 Ford Ranger with a stick shift. My new knee required an automatic shift, so in the fall of 1988, a 1989 Ford Ranger replaced it. Mary slid backwards off the road through a barbed wire fence and totaled the Fairmont. The car wasn't harmed but the paint was ruined from the rear bumper to the windshield. The paint job would cost more than the car was worth.
She saw a Chevy Nova at Asher's that she liked and bought it. As of now (1994), we still have it. We started to spend out winters in Arizona and decided the pickup was not the ideal vehicle. In 1989 we traded for a Dodge minivan. That was quite a change after driving Fords for 63 years. When your Ford dealer doesn't recognize you anymore, it is time for a change.
We have a 1993 Dodge minivan now. It seems to do its job, gets good gas mileage, sits up high and is a happy truck. I miss the pickup when we are home. It doesn't seem right to use the van for a truck. I guess Stacy was the only one of the children that didn't get a worn out clunker dumped on her. The others wore them out first and then got what was left until they could afford a new car of their own!
Like most little boys the desire to fly never went away for me. I built models and had a basic understanding of aerodynamics. Flight instruction cost about $7.00 per hour in 1935. At $5.00 per week wages, there was no way I could learn to fly and support an airplane. Maybe it was a good thing. I invested my time and money in radio which changed the direction of my youthful days on the plains of Iowa.
In 1941, I entered the C.P.T. program at Iowa State College (ISC). I received my private license in June 1941. I rented planes when I wanted to fly. I was in the air with a brand new Aeronca Chief on December 7, 1941. (Pearl Harbor Day) The wind came up before I landed and it took a man on each wing to hold it down until we got to the hanger. As a radar officer, I flew about 300 hours for the air corps checking out the radar installations.
I had more money than brains in 1948. I bought a new 1947 Cessna 140. It was a nice airplane. In fact, I believe it was the best of its day. Then the Korean War came along and the poor crops in 1951. Those were good reasons to sell it. I had no airplane until 1969 when I got a hold of a Corben Baby Ace.
It was nothing more than an open cockpit, single place Cub. It was at Muscatine, IA. I flew it home from there on a nice, turbulent day, nearly across the whole state. It cost $1500 and I sold it 20 years later for $3500. I spent about $1000 on engine overhaul and maintenance. I got the most "bang for the buck" out of that airplane. It was fun, but no cross country machine.
In 1975, I bought a 4 place Cessna 170. I flew it for about two years, then sold it and bought a 1958 model Cessna 180. That was a good cross country airplane. It cruised at 150 m.p.h. which made a Dekalb, IL trip about 2½ hours. Big deal-fly over for lunch and home in the afternoon. Mary didn't mind that airplane. We could get up out of the turbulence, 8-10 thousand feet and have a real nice ride. We flew to Canada twice and Phoenix three times. It flew 65,000 miles before I sold it. Gas got to $2.75 a gallon and the insurance was $2500 per year. That took the fun out of owning an airplane. I got my money out of it and broke even, which was good.
The Baby Ace was sold in 1989. It had to be hand cranked, and with a new knee it was hard to start. I'd had my use out of it. I have a videotape of the last time I flew it. The end of another era!
Minor events have a strange way of altering our destiny. A diagram in a high school physics book got me interested in radio. That led to working for an amateur radio license, which in turn led me to the great halls of engineering at Iowa State College. "Science with Practice" was on the college seal.
That's where I met Mary Gillette and we were married a couple of years later. Steve was born at Carlyle, PA while I was stationed at Middletown Air Depot. The family grew, a little faster than normal, but I had enough dependents in 1950 to get me out of the Korean War. In the earlier days we usually had hired help for the household, but as the older four grew up they seemed to take over and help.
Two tough periods as I remember it were getting through the polio period. The vaccine came along just in time to save us more of that worry. The other period was the sixties. Strange social ideas were rearing their ugly head at that time. My children seemed to escape it or avoid it somehow. I think through those times I must have had my head in the sand. It all seems rather foggy now.
The children seemed to be able to pay their way through college with loans and scholarships - something unheard of in my time. Nine of the eleven have college degrees. Not including the 100% of their parents-maybe we should be doing better. Many times I have been asked how come our family turned out to be such good people. I can't claim much credit. I am not a social scientist! I believe they just happened to have a concerned, loving and caring mother.
The End