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By
Harry L.
Hewitt
Saturday
June 17, 1995.
My name
is Harry L. Hewitt, I was born June 1, 1920 In Oakland California. At that
time my family consisted of my mother, Lesley Mae, father, Clifford Leroy,
older brother, Clifford Maxwell, sister Stella Mae, brother Maurice Fred,
brother James Robert and then came me. After me, came brother Samuel
Melvin.
My first
memory was a fire in our garage and house, caused by a playmate and me. I
will elaborate on this later. The next thing that impresses me is our
families move to Los Angeles. We traveled by ferryboat. I will discuss
this later. This first writing is an outline of things that impressed me in
my, so far, 75 years of life. After moving to Los Angeles, I can remember
vividly my first day of school. More later. I will also discuss the
sailplane I built in woodshop and how I lost it! I will talk about the
depression and the embarrassment of being underprivileged in junior
high school. Then quitting school, working for my father, driving the
family car, a model T, My hitchhiking trip to San Francisco to work for
brother Cliff. My first girl!! ---Censored---!
The next
big event for me was driving a neighbor, Mrs. Brown, and her 15-year-old son
to New York City In 1938. Getting stranded in New York, trying to join the
army, poison ivy in July! Completely broke, desperate. Then traveling with
June and her husband Tony and experiencing show business at its finest!
Meeting stars and a lot of what’s their names and has beens. The great
Eastern Seaboard Hurricane, the long dusty tiring trip back to Los
Angeles. Back in Southern California, working for Modern Store Fixtures
Company, another girl! I didn’t know I didn’t have to marry them! A trip
to Sacramento, joining the U S Corp. of Engineers, the war brewing in Europe
and then Pearl Harbor!! Enlisting in the army air corps, basic training,
becoming a radio operator, a control tower operator and getting on flying
status. Sam is missing in action in the ETO, (European Theater of
Operations) volunteering for the ETO and winding up in the CBI (China Burma
India) and the 14th Air Force, Claire Chenault, commanding general.
Supplying guns ammunition and food to our men behind Japanese lines,
dropping paratroopers behind enemy lines, receiving a Dear John letter.
Japan retreats, the atom bomb!, the surrender!, liberating China, the
Catholic sisters, coming face to face with Japanese solders, liberation in
Manchuria, Pieping, Shanghai, the trip home, discharge!
Returning to civilian life, back to work for Cliff, the Vallejo Boat Center,
learning to fly, buying an airplane, the moving and storage business. “ Hard
Top Racing”, my second marriage, buying my own tractor, living and working
in Fontana, Elsie, my third and final marriage, owning and operating a Union
Oil Co. Service Station. Darryl Cliff, Larry, our three sons. Always having
money problems but a happy family life. Buying homes. The many jobs I have
had and finally retirement and the move to Coarsegold. It is now June
26, and I am writing this as I think of things. It is surprising how my
memory fades on some things. I will add and subtract to this as I think
necessary and stick to the facts as best that I can.
Chapter
One
Let me
say to you who are reading this, that I do not claim to be a writer, nor am
I a good story teller. Also I wish to say that I have lived a very good
and, to me, an interesting life. I have enjoyed all the things that life
has brought to me. I consider myself very fortunate and wish I had the gift
to put it down here in a more interesting way. Some of the things in my
memory, especially the early years have faded somewhat. I will try to be as
factual as possible. “ Truth is stranger than fiction”. Sometimes!!
My
earliest memory takes place in the San Francisco bay area, maybe Stockton
Ca. I was probably about four and a half or five years old. We were living
in a wooden house with a detached garage. My older brothers had built a
paper mash village in the garage that was very realistic. A playmate of
mine, about my age and I, were admiring the paper mash houses. One of them
had a realistic fireplace in it. We thought it would be a great idea to
build a fire in the fireplace. Of course the whole village went up in
flames! We panicked and ran to hide. Our favorite hiding place was under
the house. So that is where we ran. The next thing we knew fire trucks
were coming people were shouting and the back of the house had caught on
fire! Fortunately the fire department quickly put it out. Nobody knew we
were under the house and we were very lucky to have escaped injury from the
smoke. I don’t know how we were found out but the next day a fire captain
drove up and wanted to talk to my friend and me. I ran and hid under my bed
but Mom found me and dragged me out. The fire captain gave us a severe
lecture on fire safety and the danger of playing with matches. Believe me
it was a great lesson for a five year old and has made me cautious of fire
every since.
The next
event that impressed me was the move to Los Angeles. It seems the family
was really struggling financially and dad thought he could do better in
L.A. You see, to digress for a few moments, my father’s family was at one
time considered wealthy by the standards in those days. My father’s folks
had a store called Hewitt’s Bazaar. Sort of an early variety store I
assume. They sold a great many different items. I can remember Mom had a
set of dishes with Hewitt’s Bazaar stamped on the back of them. I often
wonder what happened to them. I suppose they were broken and thrown away.
Unfortunately shortly after grandpa Hewitt’s death and about the time dad
and mom were married the family business failed. Evidently grandma Hewitt
and her boys didn’t have the business ability to run the store properly. I
have heard that Mom and Dad had it pretty tough after the store went broke.
I think Mom was very disappointed as she was used to a better way of life.
Incidentally, Mom was working in the store, which is how Mom and Dad met and
fell in love. Moms family was very well off, the McFarland’s were all in
some kind of businesses. I have been told that dad and his brothers tried
various things one of which was a bus company called The Golden Transit Co.
That was sold to a company, which was called The California Transit Co.,
which in turn became The Greyhound Corp.
Getting
back to the move to L. A., the best way to get to Southern California was by
ferryboat. I remember getting aboard the boat but I cannot remember what
the boat looked like except it seemed very big. We had no trunks or
suitcases; everything was bundled in sheets like refugees. I remember
sleeping in a cabin and enjoyed the trip immensely. My oldest brother Max
(Cliff) and my sister June (Stella) had an old car (auto) and decided to
drive to L.A., dirt roads and all! They must have had quite an adventure
with flat tires, motor trouble and all. I wish I had talked about their
trip with them but of course now, its too late. Which is why I am trying to
write this now before I forget more things.
The boat
trip took three days and two nights and it was considered a fast boat. When
we arrived in the town of Los Angeles it was bright sunny and had no smog or
haze. It appeared like a very clean town to me, a lot different than the
Los Angeles of today. It seemed that dads brother Arch, (Archibald) who at
that time was the city manager of Glendale, met us at the boat harbor but I
cannot remember what happened next or how we got into a home but I do
remember my first day of school. I can’t remember how I got to school or
what it looked like, I think mom took me but I vividly remember getting lost
trying to walk home from school. In a panic I was walking up and down
streets trying to read signs (I couldn’t read very good). One sign seem to
say garage! Which made no sense to me. I later found out it was a garage.
Finally a kindly old gentleman, (there were no degenerates then?), got me
back home.
From
that day on I have hated school and will always hate school! Consequently,
I have always been a very bad student. Schools to me were a jail I was
forced to go to each day and school was run by a bunch of wardens that were
called teachers! What a waste of time, I thought! All my teachers
automatically put me in the bottom of the class. Good thing the class was
not graded on the curve as some do today. I think the highest grade I ever
achieved was a C minus. But mostly I was stuck in the D or F category. The
only thing I liked about school was the school dismissal bell. Now don’t
get me wrong, I have since learned that to be successful in today’s world
you’ve got to have an education. Had I not gotten off on the wrong foot and
if I had gotten a better education, I might not have had to struggle
financially so much in life. Being an introvert and with very little
confidence, I thought I was supposed to be stupid.
I
remember one time our whole family was invited to rich Uncle Archie’s house
for Christmas day! Us kids were very excited as we expected we would get
expensive gifts. I had visions of electric trains, model airplanes etc.
Arch and Aunt Cly (Clytelle) lived in a very big house in an exclusive part
of Glendale. Being a politician and city manager, we considered him and his
family to be very wealthy people. His son, Les, was the sound engineer for
Warner Brothers Studios at that time. Arch and Cly also had a daughter
whose name was Nadine, I think. Both of them looked down on us as their
poor relations. Anyway Christmas day arrived and we went to their house. I
think we did have a nice dinner but the gifts were, to us kids, a very big
disappointment. For instance my gift was a very thin child’s storybook
about something I cared nothing about and I hated reading anyway! The other
kids got similar things and we all had a low opinion of our rich relatives
after that. I remember our uncle Arch used to visit us often; he seemed, to
me, to enjoy making Dad feel bad by telling him how poor we were. I can
remember him telling Dad that if he didn’t have at least a hundred dollars
in the bank, he was broke. As you may realize by now, I don’t have a high
opinion of those relatives. My father had a lot of faults I’m sure, but he
had the love of his family and he was a very nice man. Its true he never
had to work hard in his younger years and didn’t have the know how to
support a family but he tried and I always enjoyed talking with Dad, as he
could talk to you on any subject and was interesting to be around. He grew
up in the so-called horse and buggy era and had many interesting stories to
tell about those times.
There
were a few times I enjoyed school, very few! Most bad students take refuge
in the “shops”, auto shop, metal shop, and sheet metal shop. Mine was wood
shop. I was going to Central junior high school when I discovered wood
shop. Wood shop didn’t have a teacher it had an instructor! Our kindly
instructor informed us that we could pick out any project we wanted for that
semester. Like most kids in that era I was very interested in aviation.
Charles Lindberg was my hero and we followed all his exploits in the news.
Anyway my project was a large sailplane, (glider), with a wingspan of five
feet or more. With the instructors help I worked on that sailplane for
about three months. It was beautiful, one of the best things I ever did in
my life! When it was finished, I got complements from the instructor and
everyone who saw it. Finally the day arrived when I could try it out and
take it home. The first time I flew it, was on the playground. I gave it a
gentle flip of my wrist, shoulder high and it glided beautifully about three
feet off the ground, completely across the playground. It just seemed to go
on forever slow and stately.
At that
time we lived on Sunset Blvd. in L.A. Our house was about a hundred steps
up from Sunset Blvd., almost at the top of a hill. Across Sunset Blvd. was
another hill so the street was in a small valley. In fact below our house
on Sunset Blvd. was a wild beer joint called Red Gulch Inn.
Anyway,
being very young and not too bright, I thought it would be fun to launch my
sailplane from the top of our hill and across Sunset Blvd., to the hill on
the other side. I don’t remember who was with me but we went to the top of
the hill and I let it go aiming for the other hill. It started out great,
soaring like a bird. Then I noticed it was climbing higher and higher and
it kept going majestically across the Blvd., right over the other hill,
until it disappeared in the distance. All these years later I can still see
it disappearing over that hill. We took a car and looked for it on the
other side of the hill but there was no sign of it. I will never forget
that experience and I felt like I had done something great. I had built
that sailplane from raw balsa wood shaping each piece by hand and it flew
better than any model plane had ever flown before. It was the first time
that I had a real sense of accomplishment. Maybe life had more in store for
me than boring school and my daily ration of crap from the school wardens!
Building model planes became my hobby and whenever I had the money I would
buy one, (at that time they were all made of balsa wood and covered with
tissue paper). I would fly them until they were worn out and not repairable
anymore.
Meanwhile, the country was in the midst of a severe depression. Herbert
Hoover was president, unemployment was very high, food was hard to get and
our family was struggling. Dad would work at different jobs when he could
but was mostly out of work. It didn’t really affect me, I thought this was
a normal way of life. Not until one of my teachers offered me some used
clothing, (in front of the whole class), did I realize, for the first time,
that some of the kids were dressed better than me. Once again my
self-confidence took a blow and the embarrassment was very painful knowing
that it was now, very obvious, that I couldn’t have clothes and things as
nice as the other kids. Thank you, warden, for bringing to my attention
that I come from a poor family and I am not as good as the other kids. I am
sure the teacher meant well but from that day on I was very depressed to be
aware of our station in life and took on more of the character of an
introvert. I guess we all have an experience like this, at some time, to
make us grow out of our childhood innocence. This is what I call a fork in
the road of life. In my opinion, these experiences determine how you look
at the world and how you decide what course to take when you have to make a
decision. If you are an introvert and insecure you will always take the
course that will protect you as much as possible from ridicule or
rejection. This then was my first real lesson in life with many more
to come of course.
These
were the days when the whole country was in a depression and there was much
talk of a new administration coming to power to get the country back on its
feet again. Everyone was damming president Hoover and touting the new
democratic hope, Franklin Delano Roosevelt! Dad was a staunch democrat and
was excited that Mr. Roosevelt might have a chance to win the election. I
stayed up all night with dad, listening to the election returns on our
radio. He kept a chart of all the numbers and was so elated when FDR won!
Mr. Roosevelt had big plans for the country’s recovery. He put into action
many programs to help us out of our depression. Among them were the NRA
(national recovery act), WPA (works progress administration) and CCC
(civilian conservation corps.). Dad joined the WPA for a job. They built
roads bridges and many of the countries infrastructures. A lot of the
bridges and projects are still standing today. Anyway it was a job at
minimum wages plus once a week dad would go to a government store and come
home with two shopping bags of groceries. We would eat like kings the first
few days until we ran out of the good things then we would fall back on dads
garden food and dads good old chickens and eggs. Dad always managed to have
a good garden and always had a few chickens. I will never forget dad’s
delicious golden bantam corn! When we simply had to have clothes or shoes
we always bought them at what we called the second hand store.
If you needed shoes it didn’t matter if the fit was perfect as long as they
looked pretty good. I still have corns on my toes!
Brother
Fred joined the CCC for many months; it was a lot like an army camp with
uniforms and tents to sleep in. The CCC built campgrounds trails and
improvements in our national parks and monuments and a lot of those
improvements are still there! Mr. Roosevelt did many good things for this
country and was admired by most of the people, especially the working
class. A democrat in those days was a true friend of the working people.
They have gotten a long way from that reputation these days !
During
this time, sister June was starting to make it big in show business. She
and mom were on the road most of the time. I understand that June was
sending money home and helping to support the family. I was too young to
know all the details but I know that we moved into a fine new home in
Glendale. I still remember the address, 408 north Raymond Ave. Glendale
California, no zip in those days! I had many happy days in this home. A
couple of houses up the street were our good friend Willis Burley and his
sister Dorothy. He was about Jim’s age and his family raised chicken fryers
to sell. Mr. Burley had a job somewhere and Mrs. Burley took care of the
chickens. I vividly remember her wringing the necks of two chickens at a
time when she got orders for some fryers to sell. It seemed like violence
to me but she looked like it was the normal thing to do! I still feel
guilty today when I eat chicken! We could walk to the Burbank theater (if we
could con dad out of the dime) and see among other things, Ken Maynard the
favorite cowboy of that day or the many others we enjoyed. Fred was working
for a company called Du More Chairs and he had a model T pick up truck. He
would put a bunch of us kids in the back of the truck and take us to the dry
Los Angeles riverbed near by for a great ride over the sand dunes. I can
still remember the fun we had doing that. We were also within walking
distance of Griffith Park and we could walk to the Glendale Grand Central
Airport. I was still very interested in aviation. We would walk to the
airport and watch the Ford trimotors land and take off. They were the first
serious airliners of that day and carried nine passengers!
We
walked everywhere in those days even to downtown L.A.. Which is what I did
one day to see that great motion picture called Wings! I stayed to watch it
four times until the theater closed and it was really late when I got home.
I really caught hell that night! Kids in those days didn’t have the weird
people to worry about as there is today so folks didn’t worry too much when
you came home very late. However one day Jim, Sam and I decided to take a
hike in the hills in Griffith Park. It was wilder then, compared with
today. There were still coyotes and other critters, like skunks and bobcats
wandering around. We went a lot farther than we should have and it got dark
before we were halfway home. We weren’t exactly lost but it was very scary
hiking over hills in the dark and hearing coyotes howling at you. Sam got
tired and Jim had to carry him on his back. Anyway when we did get home at
last mom and dad had called the police and we heard an announcement on the
radio about three little boys lost in the park! Of course we put all the
blame on Jim, wasn’t he the oldest? Incidentally, June was home at that
time working in a show in Los Angeles. She seemed very concerned about us
and glad we had gotten back safely. We were happy in that home for a long
time. But evidently the family was going broke again and we had to move.
Somehow
dad managed to scrape enough money together to be able to put a down payment
on a little tiny place on Stingle avenue in Garvey Ca.. It had an acre of
ground but the house had only one room with a bathroom and a kitchen. The
one room was large enough to accommodate four beds, where we all slept.
However the acre was large enough for dad to have a chicken coop and a
vegetable garden. The house had a wood stove for cooking and heat. It was
us kids job to find wood to burn. We had to have a fire going when Dad got
home in the evening so he could cook dinner. Dad was the cook and he was a
damn good fry cook. I still remember his dollar size, golden fried
potatoes. He could take a pound of the cheapest hamburger meat, potatoes,
things from his garden and make a meal fit for a king. He made boiled
coffee with eggshells and salt and who knows what else that was delicious.(
I don’t think we want to know the what else!) Dad would send me to the
store often and it always included a pound of hamburger and always two packs
of Wings cigarettes. Dad smoked at least two packs a day. I can remember
his fingers were stained yellow from the nicotine; he didn’t waste
cigarettes and would smoke them down to his fingers. I didn’t have a car
then so I would take Fred’s Essex Super Eight, or as Fred called it, Essex
Super Sh----t. It had sleeve valves and constantly needed repairs. One
time I had to go to the store and I was upset because I wanted to do
something else that I thought was more important. When I turned onto Garvey
Ave., in the Essex, I pushed the throttle all the way to the floor and was
really going fast. Coming up on traffic, I got scared and tried to slow
down but the throttle stuck down and I couldn’t slow down. In a panic I
just turned off the ignition and with the engine wide open the whole thing
just blew up! I was really scared of what Fred would do to me so I told him
the engine just blew up. He took it calmly though and I don’t think I ever
told him what really happened. Dad also built a room on the back with a
shed roof to accommodate our beds. Now we had a two-room mansion!
By this
time June was married and had an act with her husband Tony Malone (Ross Wyse
Jr.) Consequently mom was home part of the time and part of the time she
traveled with June and Tony, sometimes as the wardrobe lady of the show. One
day the show June and Tony were traveling with, came to L.A. and June
invited the whole cast to our house for a party! There were twenty or
thirty people partying in that little house! And only one bathroom! Tony
called our house the cracker box. As far as I know they all had a good
time, we had an old upright piano and the singing was loud and raucous. The
party went on till daylight!
At this
time dad was building houses one at a time and us kids would work for him
after school and on weekends. We did it all including mixing cement by
hand. The sand, gravel and cement was delivered to the building site and we
would mix it one part cement three parts sand and three parts gravel, turn
it over twice dry and once wet. I don’t recall getting paid for the work
but I suppose it was all for the good of the family. At least I have a
pretty good idea of how to build a complete home. Dad had an old model T
ford sedan at that time and one day, this was before I had learned to drive,
he asked me to go with him to meet a man to talk about some kind of a
business deal, anyway, when we got there he turned to me and said for me to
drive the car home, forgetting that I had never driven a car before. Well,
I knew the basics of how a model T worked so off I went, highly elated at
the prospect of driving a car on my own. By the time I turned onto Stingle
Ave., I thought I had mastered the art of driving. To show off my newfound
talent I made a high speed turn into the driveway and in doing so managed to
take out about fifty feet of picket fence. Wow, there went my ego again!
By the way, in those times a kid just started driving whenever he felt he
could, nobody worried about drivers’ licenses then. The only people who
wanted a license were truck drivers because they were issued a metal badge,
much like a policeman’s shield that said Chauffeur on it. They would
proudly wear it on there caps. All truck drivers wore billed, military type
caps then.
I also
had a job in a grocery store every Saturday. It was a mom and pop store and
the man’s name was Motsgowitz! The store was in Monterey Park about a mile
and a half from our house, which I cheerfully walked to every Saturday. I
did the stocking of the shelves and other jobs there. Most of the customers
in the area, as our family did, had charge accounts with the store. That
was common then, to pay your grocer bill once or twice a month. Each
customer had a little receipt book with his or her name on it. Mr.
Motsgowitz must have had at least forty or fifty of those books by the cash
register. So you see, credit accounts weren’t too unusual in those days.
Incidentally I don’t think the town of Garvey exists any more.
About
this time, unfortunately, I decided that getting a full time job was more
important than getting an education. As I recall we didn’t have an awful
lot of supervision and could do as we wanted as long as it was legal. Jobs
were still scarce then and especially for someone with no particular
skills. Jim was making a little money at this time, I am sure, because he
was taking flying lessons at the old Alhambra airport where, incidentally,
Alhambra High School is located today. Indecently that is where Sam was
going to school when he went into the army air force. Jim was learning to
fly in an old Fleet biplane and I sure envied him. I did somehow get enough
money together to take a flight in the Fleet and it was a real thrill. The
Fleet airplane was a biplane with two open cockpits and you had to wear a
leather helmet and goggles when you flew in it. The pilot showed me a few
acrobatics stunts and it was a big thrill. I got hooked on flying then more
than ever.
After
fooling around for a year or two I wrote and asked my brother Cliff if he
had a job for me. Cliff and his wife Esther owned and operated a wood
products toy manufacturing company in San Francisco Ca. Cliff said he could
use me if I could get up there. This is what I believe to be the end of my
early childhood years. “Hopefully”!!
Chapter
two
The only
mode of transportation for people like me with no money was hitchhiking and
there was a lot of that in those days. I was looking forward to working for
Cliff and couldn’t wait to get started for San Francisco. I was sixteen and
raring to go! So on New Years Eve 1936 my brother Fred and some of his
buddies were driving around partying and agreed to take me as far as
Bakersfield. We were drinking and having a good time, I think the popular
drink of that time was gin, straight and we were feeling pretty good when we
drove over the old steep, narrow, twisting, dangerous, ridge route, what a
thrill that was! We finally got to Bakersfield though and they let me out
on highway 99 a two-lane road, at that time, about three am outside of the
town. It is hard to describe the empty lonely feeling I had watching Fred
and his friends turn around and disappear down the highway going back home.
It was very quiet and the highway was deserted.
Finally
after what seemed a long time I heard a car coming a long way down the
road. The sound got louder and louder and then, ignoring my thumb, it
roared on by me, noise subsiding up the road and it was very quiet again.
It is weird to stand on a deserted highway with complete silence at three am
and then hear a car coming before you could even see the headlights and then
get louder and louder and whiz past you and disappear up the road. About
the time it was starting to get light a farmer in a pickup gave me a ride a
few miles up the road. It went like that for hours, a few miles at a
time. Anyway, by ten am, I had made it as far as Fresno, about one hundred
and ten miles in seven hours. I was dropped off in downtown Fresno tired
hungry sleepy and broke. I said to myself, “self how did you get yourself
in this kind of a fix?” I walked around wondering what to do when I saw a
Western Union office. (I could read better then). Walking in, I asked the
man in charge if I could wire collect to my brother in San Francisco for bus
fare. He must have seen the desperation on my face anyway he agreed to send
the wire. I was told it would take about three hours if Cliff wired the
money right away. So I started doing my thing, walking up and down the
streets hoping and praying that good old Cliff would come through. Lo and
behold and praise the lord, when I went back to the Western Union office
there was money for bus fare and enough to buy a little food. Needless to
say my moral took a big turn upward and old Harry was happy again! I felt
like a king riding into San Francisco on the big Greyhound bus after the hot
dusty valley. The city was so cool and the night-lights were so pretty.
Cliff
met me at the bus station and it was so nice to be with a familiar face
again. Cliffs store was below a large apartment house and he and Esther
lived in the back with their two sons, Sunny and Bobby. They rented a room
for me in the apartment on the second floor. Cliff was always a salesman,
mostly on the road. He was always pretty successful and had decided to make
toys and novelties to sell wholesale to department stores in San Francisco.
After some instruction he put me to work full time using his woodworking
tools. His biggest seller at that time was a toy called Chinese checkers.
It was made with a board about fourteen inches square, which was framed like
a picture and had a series of holes in the shape of a five pointed star. It
came with a bag of marbles and was played somewhat like checkers. Another
item that sold well was what Cliff called the nut men. We would take a thin
slice off a two to three inch orange tree limb to use as a platform then
make a little man shaped out of pipe stem cleaners and nuts. Cliff bought a
lot of different kinds of nuts and he would take a dim view of me sometimes
eating them. Once assembled we would hand paint the little men’s faces and
all their parts. I enjoyed working for Cliff and I can’t remember if or
what he paid me but I always had adequate clothes and food. I must have
been paid because I went to the movies quite often. Esther did all the
cooking and I ate all my meals with them. In those days we very seldom ate
in a restaurant, that was a luxury we couldn’t afford.
There
were a women and her fifteen-year-old son living at Cliff and Esther’s
apartment building at the time that we knew as Mrs. Brown. She had a late
model ford V8 and was intending to drive to her hometown, New York City.
One day she came to me with a proposition about helping her drive across the
country to her hometown. She promised me that if I would help drive them
there, she would see to it that some of her friends or relatives would get a
job for me. This was in 1937 and jobs were not easy to get and I wasn’t
making much money with Cliff, he was struggling along with everyone else.
To a seventeen-year-old boy, it sounded like a pretty good deal. Being able
to drive a ford V8 clear across the country all the way to New York City was
too much of a temptation for a seventeen-year-old kid. I agreed to go and
we immediately started making plans for the exciting trip. Mrs. Brown said
she would pay all expenses and put me up in a room as soon as we got there.
So, one morning we packed all of the things she would take with her and I
packed what little I had into her car and away the three of us went!
Cross-country driving wasn’t done too much in those days. It was considered
a real adventure to go just a hundred miles or so. Not many people would
plan to go all the way coast to coast about three thousand miles.
Between
towns we would run into many detours and dirt roads. Some of the dirt roads
had such bad washboard ripples in them, that we had to slow way down to five
or six miles an hour. We were traveling old highway 40 which went all the
way to Chicago. When we crossed the Rocky Mountains we went over rabbit ear
pass elevation about 9000 feet. Mrs. Brown was so scared of the mountains
that she made me drive all the way over them. I of course was thrilled to
drive through the mountains and loved every minute of it. At almost every
town we stopped in, we became instant celebrities. When people saw our
California license plates they would say, “Did you come all the way from
California?” “ Do you know any movie stars?” ”Did you bring any oranges with
you? It was nice for us poor folks to be treated this way!
There
weren’t many service stations along the way and very few rest rooms. Mostly
we used the great outdoors and bushes when we had to go. The country in
those days was sparsely settled and the land was either empty or was used
for farming. For food, at first, we ate in roadside cafes. The roads were
only paved one or two miles in and out of towns. Most of the way, we were
on dirt or gravel roads. Then as time went by Mrs. Brown started buying
bread and things to make sandwiches with. She was evidently running out of
money. Sure enough when we finally got to Chicago she was flat broke! She
tried desperately to figure out what to do. Finally after hours of asking
different agencies for help, to no avail, she found a hockshop and got five
dollars for a table model radio.
Away we
went again and she stretched those five dollars until we got to the Holland
tunnel on the New Jersey side. It must have been two or three in the
morning and Mrs. Brown didn’t have the fifty cents toll to get through the
Holland tunnel. She gave the toll man a long sad story and he let us
through with the promise that she would send the fifty cents to the toll
authority the next day. It was very strange driving into New York City that
time of the morning. I was impressed and a little awed with all the
numerous very tall buildings. Mrs. Brown drove us across town and across
the Brooklyn Bridge into the borough of Brooklyn. She drove to a
residential part of town and stopped at an old brownstone walk up building,
where an aunt had a flat. Mrs. Brown woke her aunt and asked her if she
would put me up for a day or so. Reluctantly she agreed, it seemed she was
on relief and she was afraid that having me in her flat would somehow affect
her welfare status. Mrs. Brown assured her that she would pick me up as
soon as possible. Well, that was the last time I saw Mrs. Brown! Later we
leaned that she didn’t get along very well with her friends and relatives
and had evidently somehow got enough money to go to Florida! Here I was,
stranded in New York City, no money, three thousand miles from home, and
staying with a poor old lady who was frightened to let anyone find out I was
living with her. However she was very kind to me and shared her food with
me. She would send me to a store to buy day old bread and any cheap food
that was available. Meantime, I broke out with a severe case of poison ivy,
the result of my nature calls in the bushes on the way across country! It
was July, hot and humid and I remember going into the bathroom and looking
at my red swollen crotch area and I was so miserable I sat on the toilet and
cried! I couldn’t call my family, as very few people in those days had
telephones. The only way to communicate was by Western Union telegram.
Even if I had the money to send one, I knew my family did not have any money
to send me.
For days
I walked the streets looking for any kind of work. I think the unemployment
rate in New York City was, at that time, the highest in the country. I was
getting desperate and the lady I was living with was very frightened that
she would lose her welfare. I am sorry to say that I don’t even remember
her name. She was a very kind person and I don’t know what I would have
done without her help. Finally I decided to join the army! I went to the
recruiting office and applied and they accepted me. While taking my
physical, they discovered my dose of poison ivy. I was told that they
couldn’t accept me until it was cleared up. They gave me a bottle of
calamine lotion and told me to come back in two or three weeks. This was
the last straw! I knew I could not stay with this lady that long and I told
her that I would start to hitchhike home the next day. About that time a
brother of hers came to visit and she told him about me. He said it was a
shame that I came all this way without seeing some of the sights in New York
City, “here is two dollars”, he said, “the subways are only five cents and
you can go anywhere in the city on them”. I thanked him and decided to “see”
New York the next morning. I took the subway to downtown Manhattan and
started doing my favorite thing again, walking. Walking down Broadway I
came to Central Park and enjoyed the park for a few hours. I was not
looking forward to the next day when I would start to hitchhike back to
California. I thought about my sister June and her husband Tony, the last
I had heard, they were in London England playing the Grosvener House, a
theater restaurant. I sure missed my family and was really feeling lonely.
Leaving the park I started up Broadway to see Times Square, itching and
scratching in embarrassing places. I had heard that Times Square was a very
famous place and that if you stayed there long enough you would see everyone
in the world. When I got to Forty-second Street I came to a theater
restaurant called Billy Rose’s Casa Manana. Looking into the foyer at the
coming attractions, I stared in amazement, for there staring at me was my
sister and her husband’s photos. Above their pictures in large letters it
said, “Opening tonight, direct from London, Ross Wyse Jr. and June Mann”.
Talk about miracles, here I was, desperate, stranded, broke, miserable with
my poison ivy and facing a difficult hitchhiking trip to L.A.. My sister
June was here in Manhattan all the way from England! This was 1938 so I had
turned 18 but now I was afraid of what June would say about my predicament.
I also feared Tony’s reaction as I had only met him one time briefly, in
California and thought of him as a tough guy who may not take kindly to my
showing up in my situation. It was sometime in the afternoon and I decided
to walk back to Central Park and think things over. Finally at about seven
PM I decided to go to the stage door and ask for Tony (Ross Wyse) and tell
him my situation with the understanding that I would not bother June if he
didn’t want to get involved. I told the stage door man to tell him his
brother was here. The doorman came back and said Ross said he didn’t have a
brother. After I told him I was June’s brother he had me come up to his
dressing room. He listened to my tale of woe stony faced and when I got
through he said he would think it over.
Tony
told me to wait there in his dressing room for a while, as he had to go
somewhere. I waited very nervously for a while, when, suddenly, the door
burst open and in walked June! She grabbed me and hugged me and I was so
happy, it felt like a great weight was lifted from my shoulders. She seemed
glad to see me and wanted to know all about how I got there.
After we
got caught up on all our news with each other, June asked me to stay with
them for a while and maybe assist Tony back stage and do some of the driving
when they were traveling. Their usual stay at a theater was one to two
weeks and then move on to another town. At that time they had a travel
trailer that they pulled from town to town. They had a permanent home in
Ocean Grove Massachusetts that was right on the bay there. During my stay
with them we traveled to Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Hartford, and
some places I don’t remember. They were very nice to me and kept me in food
and clothing. Tony would some times give me twenty dollars, which was like a
hundred then, and have me take a day off and do anything I wanted to. I’m
sure they wanted a little time to themselves, without me, once in a while.
I would
drive for them and run errands and all I could do to help out in the
theater. Sometimes when there was a dull crowd Tony would have me sit in
the front row and laugh loudly at his jokes and lead the applause while
doing their dance routine. I really enjoyed my time with them and met a lot
of interesting people. For instance, while at The Casa Manana in New York
the show was called Fireworks on Broadway, starring Jimmie Durante. The
orchestra was Vincent Lopez at first, then after a week it was Louis Prima
and his Orchestra. Vincent Lopez and his musicians were really nice and
played very good and popular music but Louis Prima and his men were very
raunchy and crude people. One of his musicians drew a dirty picture of June
on their special sheet music. I think it was the first sax player, anyway
after the last show when Tony discovered it he went looking for him and
found him in a bar. He walked up to the sax player tapped him on the
shoulder and when he turned around he said “Hi Ross”, Tony let him have it
right on the jaw. Knocked him off the bar stool flat on the floor. Getting
up he said, “ what did you do that for”? When Tony told him why, he
apologized and said he would clean up the music and not do it again. After
that, Tony actually bought him a drink and said to let bygones be bygones.
One time
when Tony and I were talking in his dressing room, I asked him how his
family chose the name Wyse. His real family name is Malone and of course
Wyse is Jewish. He said that most of the theatrical agents and most of the
people running the entertainment business were Jewish. His father thought
that with a Jewish name they would get better bookings. As a matter of
fact, June and Tony’s agents name was Al Grossman and was very Jewish. Al
always fascinated me, as he was handicapped with just his left arm. Yet
there was nothing he couldn’t do, like dressing himself and even tying his
shoelaces. There were quite a bit of politics in getting good bookings in
vaudeville circuits. June and Tony must have had an exceptionally good act
and knew the right people because they played the “Palace”. In show
business, you knew you were a success if you were booked into the Palace
Theater. They played the Palace many times and even when I was with them.
Most superstars like Frank Sinatra got their big break after playing the
Palace.
June and
Tony’s “act” was from six to ten minutes long, depending on what the theater
manager wanted. Also, the best act of the “bill” was always on next to
closing. June and Tony were usually always “next to closing”. Their act
opened with Tony coming out on stage by himself and telling jokes and
talking about his father. He would try to imitate his father’s acrobatic
tricks and would fall, heavily, flat on his back. That would get a big
laugh of course and he tried that several times. Then he would say, “Now I
remember, my father came on stage from the left side”. He would try it
again and of course successfully do these difficult “butterfly” tricks and
knee drops and would get terrific applause. After this, he would introduce
his partner, the acrobatic, Miss June Mann! June would come on stage from
the right walking briskly, in a gorgeous floor length evening gown and a
radiant smile. One of the “tricks” that June would do, she would stand on a
regular chair, facing away from the chair back and then Tony would place a
glass of water on the floor behind her. Slowly then, June would bend
backwards from the chair, with her arms folded across her chest until she
reached the glass of water on the floor. Grasping the glass in her teeth,
she would slowly come back up, drinking the water as she came up! That
trick of course, would “bring down the house”. Then, she and Tony did a
comedy routine about “adagio” dancing. After that, June would close the act
by doing a fast acrobatic dance, which would include “handsprings”, without
touching her hands to the floor, all the way across the stage. The
orchestra, of The Stars And Stripes Forever, did this fast routine to a very
upbeat rendition. This was always good for an awful lot of applause! I
never tired of watching them do their act. They would always have two or
three “curtain calls”.
Jimmie
Durante was a very nice man I liked him because he had a nose almost as big
as mine and it didn’t seem to bother him! Once he said he met a girl who
asked him, “Is that your nose or are you eating a banana”?! The first time
I saw him back stage; he was peeking through the curtains, out at the
audience, just before the show went on. He turned to me and said, “ That’s
not a bad crowd for an afternoon show”. In case anyone reading this doesn’t
know who he was, let me say he was a very famous and popular comedian, at
that time and very well liked. He really did a good show and always
received a standing ovation after his act. There were many acts in the cast
besides him and June and Tony. One was named Nick Long Jr. who was a tap
dancer and comedian. He had a stooge to help him and feed straight lines to
him and his name was Danny Kaye! I don’t think many people remember Nick
Long Jr. but who doesn’t remember Danny Kaye! He had a long and illustrious
career.
I met
many famous people while I was with them and I am sorry I don’t remember all
of them. One person that stands out in my memory is the famous orchestra
leader and clarinet player, Artie Shaw. It was at the Earl Theater in
Philadelphia that June and Tony was on the same show with him, as one of the
supporting acts. When the show opened, Artie Shaw and his orchestra were
hidden on a disappearing stage that rose up to stage level when the curtains
opened and they would be playing his famous rendition of Begin The Beguine.
This always brought out an enormous amount of applause, as it was very
dramatic. Artie Shaw always seemed nice to me and one day, at my request,
he gave me an autographed picture of himself, which I still have. Of course
June and Tony knew an enormous amount of show people, famous and infamous.
One of Tony’s drinking buddies was a man named Jackie Gleason. “How sweet
it is”!
Show
people at that time looked on themselves as a large family. If you were an
entertainer you were part of the family. It was really fun traveling with
June and Tony and I enjoyed every minute of it most of the time. Part of my
responsibility was taking care of my niece and nephew, Bessie and Tony Jr.
At that time they were about four or five years old, I believe. They were
good kids and I believe we got along all right. I think they were afraid of
their father as he had no patience with kids and was very strict with them
and at times very mean. Part of my job was to take them to dinner at a
nearby restaurant while the show was going on. Getting kids that age to eat
the right foods is a real challenge. However, I like junk food too so we
often compromised. Traveling this way and living the kind of life we were
was fun and I did enjoy it.
One time
they had a one-week engagement at Fays Theater in Hartford Connecticut.
Incidentally the show was starring Sophie Tucker; know as the “last of the
red hot mammas’. So we stayed at their home at Ocean Grove Massachusetts.
It was within driving distance so they would commute to Hartford and
sometimes stay there over night. One day at Ocean Grove we heard that a
hurricane was brewing and headed towards Long Island which was not too close
to us, so we were not too concerned about it. The next day, after June and
Tony had left for Hartford, we noticed that the wind was coming up pretty
good, so some friends of mine, who had a small sail boat, thought it would
be fun to sail in this high wind. Leaving the two kids with friends, we set
off into the cove. We were going very fast and we were way out away from
the cove and into the open sea, before we realized the wind was getting much
stronger. Coming about, to head back to shore, the boat was healed way over
and it looked like we might capsize, or the main sail might get carried
away. So the boy who owned the boat quickly lowered the main sail. By
this time the wind was blowing so hard, the boat was going as fast with just
the jib as it had when the main sail was up. We were a little scared but
much relieved when we got the boat tied up and we headed for home. By this
time it was hard to stand upright against the wind which we thought was
neat. Soon there were shingles and debris flying through the air and we
were having a great time. Glancing over at a large one-story building,
where dances were held, we saw the whole roof lift up and go flying away.
Now we were getting scared! I went back to the house and closed all the
doors and windows. For a time I thought we would be all right but then it
really started blowing harder and harder, shaking the house and rattling the
windows.
Grabbing
Tony and Bessie, (she hates that name!), I carried them down into the
basement in case the house blew away. Then I realized the house was built
right over the seawall and I could hear the ocean crashing on it. Now what
to do? It came to me then that the only building in the village that was
really strong and substantial was about two blocks away. It was a two-story
brick building that is the grocery store run by a family who lived
upstairs. Thinking we didn’t have a chance at the house if it got worse, I
took Bessie and Tony each under an arm and made a mad dash for the store two
blocks away. I had never been in a wind this strong and I could see
buildings disintegrating all around us. Believe me it was very frightening.
Arriving
at the store the owner helped me bring the kids inside. I think the whole
population of the village was there. We spent the night at the store
sleeping on the floor. The owners were very nice and kept us in food and
drink. The kids and I stayed there until June and Tony finally arrived,
very worried, from Hartford. It took them all night and most of the day,
because most of the roads were blocked by fallen trees and debris. It
turned out to be one of histories worst hurricanes. When we went back to
the house we found that the seawall had indeed collapsed and the house had
tilted into the water. Of course it was a total loss. I felt very bad for
June and Tony. They seemed to take it in stride and of course I suppose
they had some insurance. This hurricane has gone down in the history books
as the worst one to hit the Atlantic seaboard in recorded memory. They
didn’t name hurricanes in those days so it was just known as the great
Atlantic seaboard hurricane.
We were
soon back on the road again and I was about to tire of this kind of life. I
was quite young, its true but I was beginning to realize that without any
talent in this business, you just couldn’t survive and you could become a
bum! We were in Chicago when I asked June if she could help me get back
home to Southern California. She and Tony agreed to give me bus fare and
expense money to go back. So some time in October or November they took me
to the Burlington Trailways bus depot in Chicago and sent me on my way home
Chapter
three.
This was
in 1938 and busses were the main means of transportation for ordinary
people. The passenger trains were expensive and didn’t take as long but I
thought the bus trip would be more exciting. The first thing I noticed was
that you rode brand new busses when you were near a large town like Chicago
but as soon as you got to a small town a few miles away they would transfer
you to an old beat up bus to continue your journey and the new bus would
head back to the big city. It was a hot dusty ride over lots of detours and
dirt roads. The bus depots on the way were not very good and I had no place
to take a bath and not much of a place to wash up. The trip took five and a
half days and I had to sleep on the bus of course, so I was pretty ripe by
the time I got to So. Cal. Its a good thing I was young and healthy then, I
would not like to do that now. When I got back home the family had a
welcome home party for me. I was kidded a lot as I had picked up the show
people speech in my conversations. Every other word was “You know what I
mean?” Or, “You know?” Show people talk was very infectious. Something
like the kids of today.
One of
the guests at the party was a girl they had picked out for me. For some
reason I just didn’t like the idea of them picking out a girl for me so I
ignored her all night. In fact brother Fred had to take her home. Her name
was Louise Cary and is now my sister in law so I always wonder what went on
when Fred took her home! They had me as their best man at their wedding,
which I am proud of, and I gave the toast at their fiftieth wedding
anniversary.
It was
nice to be home again but the family, in fact most people were still
struggling financially. It was a little better in 1939 but still, money was
very scarce and jobs were hard to come by. I was very lucky to land a job
at a company called Modern Store Fixtures Co. I started working there for
50 cents an hour. That was pretty good money at that time. Before I left I
had been given raises until I got one dollar an hour! For this kind of work
that was top pay! They made wooden store fixtures for five and ten cent
stores which were popular then because you could get things pretty cheap at
those kind of stores. Two Mormon brothers, Martell and Everett Devy, owned
the company. Martell was the administrator and sales head while Everett ran
the shop. I worked on most of the wood working machinery and my favorite
job was running the table saw and doing all the ripping.
Lumber
trucks would drop a load of lumber, usually one by twelve inch pine; behind
my table saw and I would rip it up to the required sizes. I really loved
that job and prided myself in working fast and accurately. I ran wood so
fast through that saw, Everett had to hire two helpers to tail off and stack
the wood. I had a few close calls on those saw’s but never a serious
accident. There were quite a few siblings in Everett’s family. Two of his
brothers worked in the shop with us and they were nice guys. We were
building fixtures for a five and ten cent store chain called Coronets five
and dime. They were almost as big as Kress, then, Kress being number one at
that time. Whenever
Coronets
decided to open a new store they would have us build the fixtures, out of
wood and then we would haul the unassembled parts to the new site. Once
there, we would put them together, stain them and set them up and get it all
ready for the grand opening. I would always look forward to those trips as
they usually took three or four days to complete. One store we opened was
at Mt.
Shasta
city, in the mountains, in northern California. I had gotten quite friendly
with Everett’s younger brother, about my age, named John, I think. Since we
had arrived on a Saturday and
Everett
would not work on Sunday, John and I decided to climb Mount Shasta. At
daylight Sunday morning we drove the truck as far up the mountain on dirt
roads and trails, as we could and then started climbing. We had a great
time and to this day I don’t know if we really got to the top. I know we
got on a peak where the view was fantastic and considered that as the top.
It got very dark hiking back and we had a hard time finding our truck.
Needless to say we were very tired the next day and couldn’t work very
hard. At least I have been able to say that I climbed Mt. Shasta. Another
trip we took was to Buckeye Arizona, which is south of Phoenix near the
Mexican border. That was a very hot place to work and I remember that the
whole town would shut down at one or two in the afternoon, until it cooled
off some. John and I decided to go to a bar and get some “hard liquor”.
The
bartender informed us that they would not serve whiskey on hot afternoons.
He said it would kill us to drink whiskey and then go out in the hot sun.
There were no air conditioners then. Our motel just had inefficient swamp
coolers that smelled moldy, and didn’t do much good to cool the room down.
John and I took our mattress out on the flat bed of the truck and slept out
under the stars. Incidentally, the truck was a homemade affair that the
Devy boys had made out of a big old car. I don’t remember the make but it
would over heat on grades and when it started steaming real bad we would
have to shut it off and wait until it cooled enough to add water. If you
added water when it was hot there was a danger of cracking the engine
block. Since all cars had cooling systems that were not too good, the state
highways usually had old fifty gallon, steel barrels of water located on
most of the grades for overheating cars.
Everett
Devy was a very devout Mormon in fact he was a bishop in the Mormon Church.
He was a very fun guy to work for and we got along very well together. In
fact he invited me to his house on a number of occasions for dinners and
parties. His wife’s name was Pearl, a very nice lady and she had a sister
named Bonnie. Although Bonnie was ten years older than I, we became good
friends and started dating. I would visit her while she baby-sat Everett
and Pearl’s children. As we became more acquainted, it became apparent that
she was a lot like Viola Parret! I was just eighteen then and I didn’t mind
that a bit. Bonnie had several children, I learned later. Everett’s brother
Martell adopted all of her children except, a five-year-old boy. I became
very serious about Bonnie and asked her to marry me. People told me I was
crazy to do that but I was over eighteen and by God I knew what I was
doing! My friends said, “not to buy a cow when you can get a quart of milk
at any grocery store”! Anyway Everett was very happy about it and gave me a
bonus and even let me borrow his car so we could drive to Las Vegas and get
married! Bonnie and I rented a small house in Alhambra when we got back and
we were very happy there for quite a while. At first, my mother would not
speak to Bonnie and she accused her of robbing the cradle. Bonnie wrote Mom
a long letter explaining how happy we were and Mom grudgingly, finally
accepted Bonnie as part of the family.
Sometimes we would have a party on Saturday nights. In those days we worked
six days a week that was the normal thing then. Saturday night was always
the big party night as not much was done on Sunday. Church was the big
thing on Sunday, all stores were closed and about the only thing open were
theaters in the afternoon. Bonnie would always invite her sister Pearl and
of course Everett. We would always have root beer for Everett, as he would
not touch liquor, being the devout Mormon that he was. One night I began to
spike his drinks with whiskey, a little at a time. I know this was a dirty
trick but I was hardly twenty then and it seemed like a lot of fun to get
the “boss” drinking hard liquor. He got quite high and was the life of the
party and he kept asking for more root beer!
Everybody thought he was a lot of fun and he really seemed to be having an
exceptionally good time. On Monday morning he told me what a fun time he
had at our house and wanted to know what kind of root beer I had served
him. He said it was the best root beer he had ever had.
Chapter
four
Those
were really innocent times! This was some time in 1939 and there was more
and more talk about trouble in Europe. A man named Adolph Hitler had become
the chancellor, or really, the dictator, of Germany and was defying the
whole world. The people called him Der Fuhour. He was becoming very
belligerent and threatening other countries in Europe. The news on the
radio was all about his new army and the modern air force he had organized.
We laughed about his ranting and raving and we weren’t too concerned about
him then. I remember saying that we would send Charles Lindberg over there
and shoot down his air force. Newscasters on the radio would belittle him
and they called him Shicklegruber. It was my impression that the general
population of the United States was too busy with their own problems and
they had no fear of a foreign country. There was no doubt in people’s minds
that we could win any war that any nation wanted to start. Besides, we had
the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans to protect us from any foreign
aggression. As time went on however, Hitler started invading smaller
countries and was threatening France and England. It seemed that he was
unstoppable and our president, Mr. Roosevelt, started the so called lend
lease program to supply England with war materials including tanks,
airplanes, guns, etc.
There
was great controversy about getting involved in a European war. The
isolationists in the US wanted no part of a war in Europe. Besides the
trouble in Europe, we were in a trade controversy with Japan. Nobody I knew
took Japan seriously. Here was a country that made pure junk that they
tried to sell to us. The quality of their products was very bad and if
something had “made in Japan,” printed on it you could bet it wasn’t very
good. They even renamed a Japanese town Usa in order to make you think it
was made in the USA. So you can imagine the surprise and consternation when
we woke up Sunday morning December seventh 1941, to the news that the
Japanese navy had bombed Pearl Harbor! This was impossible! Nobody could
do that to the United States! As the day progressed, the news was getting
worse. The loss of life was staggering and the loss of the naval fleet was
unbelievable. I can still hear Mr. Roosevelt’s address, coast to coast, to
the nation, in which he said words like “This unprovoked, sneak attack” and
“This day will live in infamy” and the final words “I have asked the
congress that since this dastardly attack on Pearl Harbor, a state of war
has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire” and “we will
gain the uppermost victory, so help us God”.
Ever
since about 1940 or so, the country had enacted the selective service law
which made it mandatory for all men eighteen to age thirty five to register
for the military draft because of the threat of Hitler and the tension with
Japan. Married men were exempted at that time, lucky me! With the surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor the whole country came together with one thing in
mind. Annihilate the Japanese! The feeling in the country was, the only
good “Jap” was a dead “Jap”! On the west coast, fear of a Japanese invasion
was real! Our pacific fleet was in ruins; the county was wide open to an
invasion. Our military might was pure fiction. There was panic and
blackouts on the coast. Our coast defenses, such as they were, would panic
at times and fire at imagined targets. Rumors, some real, some not, of a
Japanese “fifth column”, Japanese spy’s and traitors in Hawaii and the west
coast were on the radio and newspapers every day. Both Hawaii and the west
coast had large populations of Japanese citizens and immigrants. At that
time, with the fear and hatred of the Japanese, none of them could be
trusted. Remember, “The only good Jap was a dead Jap”! The congress and
Mr. Roosevelt decided that the only way to be sure there was no more
sabotage against us was to intern all people of Japanese decent in camps
away from Hawaii and the west coast.
That
decision was justified!!! Acts of sabotage ceased almost completely. The
internee’s were not put in prisons. There was not time to attempt to
separate the good from the bad. They were in camps with food clothing and
all the things needed to survive until some security against Japanese
invasion could be maintained. True, they were greatly inconvenienced,
uncomfortable and probably bored. True, some lost possessions and property.
True, many were patriotic citizens of the United States. Some were not. In
the present emergency how could you tell? They were not bombed like some
citizens in Pearl Harbor and many, many other cities. They were not treated
like the Japanese treated the poor people of China. Those atrocities were
unspeakable.
Their
property was not bombed out of existence. This was an all out vicious war,
which the Japanese started and war is Hell!!!! The Japanese started it!
We, in the US, were dedicated to finish it!!! And we did, with the “help of
God, we gained the uppermost victory”!!!! Because of Mr. Roosevelt, Harry
Truman and the people of this country, Japanese is not a mandatory language
here!!! Or German or Russian or even Italian!
Because
of the war, businesses like the one I worked for suffered from lack of
materials to work with. All materials were rationed and were focused to the
war effort. Consequently Modern Store Fixtures was not doing much business.
Most of us were laid off and we had to search for a job. Bonnie and I drove
to Sacramento to look for work. Unfortunately when the country is at war
there are many jobs to chose from. We took an apartment in Sacramento and I
found a very good job with the United States Department of Engineering. The
country was really moving and gearing up for an all out war. I worked for
the USDE out at the Sacramento Weir on the Sacramento River. The US was
building air bases all over the country to train men for the Air Force. I
was with a crew that was sent to these bases to inspect the construction of
the runways. The construction companies were working twenty four hours a
day, speed was necessary, we had to keep going non stop in order to create a
military force to fight a world war. We had since declared war against
Hitler and Mussolini because of their alliance with Japan.
Our job
was to test the soil compactness to make sure the runways would stand up
under the weight of many training planes landing and taking off. We would
drill down several feet and take a sample of the soil and test it for
compactness. Most contractors were honest and did the work right but of
course there were always a few who would try to get by with shabby work and
we were there to catch them. Sometimes we would also test the asphalt
paving to see how much weight it would stand up under. There were times we
had to test the runways while the planes were flying and landing right
alongside of us. We had a lot of near misses and sometimes the pilots would
shake their fists at us as they went by. I, of course, loved being that
close to aviation. We made a lot of trips like that. Meanwhile, the news
about the war was mostly bad. The US was getting their butts kicked both by
Japan and the German Submarines in the Atlantic Ocean.
The
draft boards were now taking married men without children. I told Bonnie
That I wanted to enlist before I was drafted so that I could get the branch
of service I wanted which was of course, the Army Air Force. She agreed with
me so I gave notice at the USDE and went to the dept. of employment in
Sacramento to enlist in the Army Air Corp. As it was know as then. I was
accepted, passed my physical exam. And was put into a group of volunteers to
go to the Army camp at Monterey California. We stood around a long time in
the employment office and I remember the man in charge of the office raised
hell because we weren’t taken care of immediately. I remember him saying,
“These are volunteers, the least we can do for them is get them some lunch
and get them on their way!” We were treated like heroes then and we felt
proud of ourselves. Then they bussed us to Fort Ord, near Monterey and
believe me, I am glad I volunteered. We were treated much better than the
draftees and sure enough were assigned to the branch of service we chose,
even my military occupation. I was very interested in radio and thought I
would qualify as a radio operator on flying status. At Fort Ord we had just
four weeks of basic training. This was war and the government had to rush
everything. They trained us a little bit in military discipline, articles
of war, what the war was all about, history of the Army and a little
marching. We were issued uniforms and some equipment and in four weeks,
almost instant GI’s (government issue). From then until discharge
everything we owned or wore was Government Issue. We were even insured by
the government for ten thousand dollars. Of course, at that time, I named
Bonnie as my beneficiary. Incidentally it was about this time that I found
out that Fred, Jim and Sam had all joined the army air force at about the
same time as I.
Chapter
five through Eight see
Harry Hewitt and the Fourteenth Air Force
Chapter
nine
Sunday,
November 26, 1995
I have
to pause here and report that today; I have received the sad news that my
brother James Robert Hewitt has passed away. His daughter, Andrea, informed
me this morning that Jim died peacefully in his sleep at one AM this
morning. Because of Jim’s terminal condition we all know that it is best
that he went this way but you are never prepared to lose one as loved and
well liked as he is. When I think of my brother Jim, words like loyalty,
integrity, and honesty come to my mind. Jim liked almost everybody. If he
didn’t have a good word for someone he would not say anything. During our
lifetime together, he came to my rescue on more than one occasion. I will
always be indebted to Jim for all the help that he gave me in our time
together. Jim, in my estimation, was the personification of what a human
being was supposed to be. God rest his soul and as I told him last week, we
are just a few steps in life behind him. May we have the grace and courage
he had, when we too, walk through the shadows of the valley of death.
Saturday, December 2nd, 1995
Elsie
and I went to Santa Maria last Thursday and attended the services for Jim at
the Bethel Lutheran Church. The church was almost filled and I am happy
that it was so well attended. Elsie and I met many relatives and friends
that we hadn’t seen in a long time. Jim Hewitt Jr. gave the eulogy and was
kind enough to read the above paragraph for me. I am not able to speak in
front of a crowd without getting choked up though I wanted everyone to know
how I thought about my brother Jim. I am grateful to Jim Jr. and I thank
him. The services were well done by Andrea and Becky and their family and I
am sure Jim would have been proud of them.
Now, to
resume:
It was
really a miracle that although Sam had been a POW in Germany, Fred was in
England, Jim, a pilot of the B29 bomber ready to go overseas and I had been
in China, that we all got home safely with a whole body and good health.
When you consider all the men killed or maimed all over the world and four
of us in one family got out safely, we were really lucky. Except of course
the terrible experience that Sam had as a POW in Germany. The war was an
era that although, I hope the country never has to go through it again, it
was also an era that was remarkable in that the country was so united and
had a patriotic spirit that was unbelievable. I wish the country could get
that way again without having to go to war. I suppose we lost an innocence
that made us the way we are today. I also hope that my life story does not
get too boring to the reader. Unfortunately, my life probably will not be as
exciting without the war experiences. But never the less, I will go on and
hope this will interest most people.
Speaking
of boring, it didn’t take me long to get bored living at home with my
parents. I tried several things including going into the meat business at a
local mom and pop grocery store. I think my main interest there was the
good-looking daughter of the storeowners. We had a few dates but didn’t
“click”. So after a few months, I again contacted Cliff at his Vallejo Boat
Center in Vallejo and he once again said he would put me to work if I drove
up there.
So, one
day soon, I took off in my Nash sedan for Vallejo. Well, I got as far as
what is now Magic Mountain and broke a piston! This was in 1945 and that
area was not populated then. So, as most people did in those days I got out
what tools I had and without much more than a pair of pliers and a screw
driver I proceeded to remove the oil pan,(without losing any oil),
disconnect the wrist pin from the crank shaft and then, the piston wouldn’t
come out past the crankshaft, I removed the spark plug and left the piston
in there up high so that the crankshaft would not touch it when the engine
was running, all this without removing the head. You know with innocence of
youth there was not much that you could not do. By the time I finished
doing this it was nightfall and you know what? That Nash ran almost as good
on seven cylinders as it did on eight I could detect just a slight miss at
slow speeds but none at the higher speeds. It went over the grapevine just
fine and I drove all night and arrived in Vallejo some time the next morning
tired but happy.
The
Vallejo Boat Center that Cliff and Esther owned was on the Napa River on
Wilson Avenue right across from the submarine base on Mare Island Naval
Shipyard. During the war, the boat center had burned down and Cliff had
rebuilt most of it along with his two sons, Sunny (Cliff Jr.) and Bobby. A
wooden wharf started at Wilson Ave. and extended about a hundred yards to
the main part, which consisted of several buildings, a motorized way’s to
haul out boats and the main docking float. He had about forty berths for
boats and yachts extending out left and right from the main float One of
the buildings had a store and restaurant where Esther cooked sloppy but
delicious hamburgers. The store also sold charts and boat hardware. Cliff
and Esther and the boys lived in a beached houseboat on the bank and I lived
in a smaller one up by Wilson Ave.
They
seemed to have a very good business as all the berths were rented out and
they had a fleet of rowboats that we rented out to fishermen and duck
hunters. We also were kept busy hauling out private boats and yachts and
repainting and refinishing them. My main job was to scrape off barnacles
and repainting the bottoms of the hulls that got fouled up with barnacles
and moss. I also got pretty good at painting the water line stripe on.
That was considered a delicate job, as you had to paint so that it just
showed above the water when the boat was launched. The work there was hard,
healthy and most of the time, a lot of fun. We had to get up before sun up
to get the boats for the fishermen and duck hunters. When the fishing was
good, most of the boats would be reserved ahead of time. Sunny, Bobby and I
had the job of renting the rowboats and the cleaning of them when they were
returned. Sunny and Bobby were pre teens then and good kids. They worked
hard and took a lot of ribbing from me in good humor. Some times the early
mornings would be so cold that the wharf would be covered with frost and
some times ice. But usually the customers would be in good spirits and we
enjoyed them most of the time. Two of the customers were a married couple
named Karl and Betty Tout whom I became good friends with and in fact they
used to invite me to there apartment for dinner some times. We were friends
for many years after that and shared many experiences, which I’ll go into
later. I think of them often and am sorry I lost contact with them.
Working
for Cliff at the Boat Center was never boring as there was something
different happening all the time. It was fun learning all the in.’s and
out’s of running a small boat harbor. Cliff always dressed like a navy CPO
with a tan billed cap and the tan trousers and shirt that the Navy Chief
Petty Officers wore. He had a lot of influential friends from the Vallejo
Yacht Club and business people from Vallejo. He became very active in the
Rotary Club and went to all the functions held there. Cliff and Esther had
a very active social life and could often be found with friends at the
Trocadero Club in Vallejo. Cliff was also a very avid amateur photographer
and took a lot of black and white movies of the boat center. He took a lot
of them of me working around the boat center, which I hope are still in
existence somewhere. They would be a lot fun to see again today and I think
some of my “off springs” would enjoy seeing them to.
One of
Cliff’s customers and friend was an attorney named Ray Bruce who really
liked to drink and fish. That is a bad combination. Ray had a speedboat
berthed there and went out often to fish. We always worried about him as he
usually went alone and was always drinking. He did have a buddy that also
had a boat there named Joe McManus but unfortunately he also liked to
drink. Joe was a retired bosons mate and they say once a bosons mate,
always a bosons mate. He was loud, good-natured and it seemed to me to
always be in a good mood. When Ray and Joe got together, there was always a
good time too be had by all. However, one day Ray went out by himself in
his speed boat and I guess he was drinking as usual. He hit a thick piling
sticking out of the water head on at full speed. Cliff and I took one of
our boats out and rescued him, we were able to get the speedboat towed back
without taking on too much water and we pulled it out and were able to
repair it. There were a lot of characters like that at the boat center, for
instance, one fellow had the biggest boat there and called it the, Humuhumunukanukaapawaa.
(We called it the Humu for short). In Hawaiian that name means a tiny
tropical fish about one and one half inches long. His boat as I said was
the largest there, about 35 or 40 feet long. But it had a large cabin and I
lived aboard it sometimes.
There
were two fellows from Oklahoma that bought a small cabin boat from Cliff.
(Cliff was a licensed yacht broker). These two guys worked on that boat for
several months remodeling and refurbishing it. They even had us haul it out
and completely repaint it top and bottom. When we finally launched it back
in the water the two fellows were just elated and they came into the store
and ask Cliff for all the charts they would need to sail to their home back
in Oklahoma! They were certainly disappointed when Cliff informed them that
Oklahoma was land locked and there were no water ways leading to there home
town!
One time
Cliff was demonstrating a 28-foot Hunter cabin cruiser to a prospective
buyer and he ask me to go along to help him demonstrate the boat. We sailed
all the way to the Golden gate bridge and were headed for the Farallon
Islands. The swells outside the bridge were getting pretty high and Cliff
decided that we should turn around and go back to Vallejo. I was piloting
the boat from inside the cabin up front and Cliff and the customer were
facing aft, sitting in the rear deck. This was my first experience piloting
a boat in the bay and it was great fun. Getting close to Alcatraz Island, I
noticed a large freighter heading towards us and I assumed headed under the
Golden Gate Bridge. Now this freighter was going quite fast and looked like
it was heading to intersect us but I was sure that I had plenty of room to
get pass his course and it would pass behind us. Not wanting to ask Cliff
for help I just kept on going at full speed. I realized by this time that
we were closing fast and I started to worry. Well, that ship passed so
close to us that I could see men way up on the deck shaking their fists at
me. When it passed behind us, Cliff let out a yell, Holy S—t!!! He had no
idea what was happening until it passed behind us and he saw it for the
first time. About that time the ships wake hit us and we almost capsized.
When we finally settled down in calm water, Cliff lectured me the rest of
the way on how to tell who had the right of way and how to estimate other
vessels speed and course. Believe me, I never forgot those lessons!
Another
time I got a scare was when Cliff sent Esther and I with the 35 foot “Humu”
to pick up a 35 foot surplus landing barge that one of our customers had
bought to make into a fishing boat. The barge was moored a few hundred
yards off the rocks in Richmond, about 25 miles from Vallejo. Esther and I
took off early in the morning and stopped by a marine station to pick up
some diesel fuel. The Humu was equipped with a Gray marine diesel engine.
The fueling nozzle just fit tightly into the pipe and I pumped about 25
gallons in before I realized that it was not venting. When I pulled out the
nozzle the fuel squirted out of the tank into my face and all over my
clothes. Not a good start. Finally reaching Richmond and locating the
right barge, we pulled along side and put a towline on it. There was an off
shore wind blowing pretty hard and when Esther released the barges mooring,
the wind began to blow us toward the rocks. With the high sides and flat
bottom of the “Humu” and the square sides of the empty barge I had one hell
of a time turning into the wind and it turned just before we got blown into
the rocks, It was really scary to us and we thought sure we would lose both
of the boats. Once again, when you are young and innocent, it seems like
you can do anything. Anyway, we got the barge back to Vallejo with out too
much more excitement.
I kept
myself busy with all kinds of things. I got interested in photography and
made a dark room in the old houseboat that I lived in and took many pictures
and made enlargements right there. Also, I acquired a small speedboat and
got a large outboard motor for it. I think it was about 70 or 80
horsepower. It was a new hull, mahogany and about eight feet long. It
really went fast with that size motor and I really had a lot of fun with it.
However, one day I let a friend use it and when he made a high speed turn,
the motor twisted off the transom and was lost in about 40 feet of water.
Of course, none of us was very well off financially, so I sold the hull and
got out of the speedboat business.
For us
“veterans” the congress had passed the GI bill of rights, which meant that
you could go to a trade school and learn anything you wanted to. So, being
young and still somewhat stupid, Instead of getting a good education, I
elected to go for my first love, flying! Close to the boat center, along
the Sears Point road was a tiny airport called Knights airport. There was a
flying school there that qualified for the GI Bill and I chose to learn to
fly. They had several small airplanes made by Aeronica. The Aeronica was a
two-place tandem (one seat behind the other), high wing airplane with a 65
horsepower Continental engine with dual controls. The Aeronica was a good
airplane for basic flight training. With Uncle Sam paying the bill, I joined
up and started in the school. The basic course was 20 hours ground school;
30 hours dual instruction and 10 hours solo flying. Including several
hours’ dual and solo cross-country flying. It was a small school but very
efficient and had excellent instructors. The ground school consisted of
aerodynamics, engine maintenance, navigation, weather and CAA rules and
regulations. The school was held at night at the local high school. I
managed to take an hours flying lesson about two or three times a week, or
when ever Cliff would let me go. Was flying more fun than dating girls?
I’ll have to think about it! Of course once in a while I thought of making
a career out of flying, like an airline pilot or something but after the war
there was a glutton of ex air force pilots and to be perfectly honest, I was
in it for the sheer fun of it! A waste of government money, of course but I
gave the government over three years of my life and this was like a pay back
thing. Or so I thought at that time.
My
instructor was named Bob Borton and was a very good instructor. We started
dual instruction with him sitting in back. It wasn’t long before I felt
very confident flying the Aeronica Champion and very soon we did our dual
cross-country trips. One day after an hour of vertical banks and various
maneuvers I landed the airplane and taxied up to the ramp and as I started
to turn off the motor, Bob said to wait. He climbed out of the back and
yelled to me to go up by myself and make three good landings! What a thrill
it was to know that I was to fly the airplane all by myself! With the
adrenaline flowing and my heart beating fast, I taxied out and took off.
The first thing I noticed that without Bobs 200 pounds in back, the airplane
literally jumped off the ground. It climbed rapidly and I had to force the
nose down to keep it from climbing to fast. After trimming the plane, it
was much easier to fly. At 800 feet, I turned on to the downwind leg and
for an instant I forgot everything about how to land! Fortunately it came
back to me in time and when I turned on base leg I cut the engine, glided
down to final approach and made a very smooth landing, in fact, those three
landings I made when I first soloed, were the best I ever made since.
Unless you have experienced this yourself, it is impossible to express the
fantastic feeling of your first solo. When I went into the airport office
building, I had to buy all the drinks for everybody there, to celebrate my
first solo, as was customary.
After
about eight hours of solo and a couple of solo cross country trips, Bob
Borton said that I was ready for the check ride from the local FAA inspector
in order to get my private pilots license, Sunny, (Cliff Jr.), rode with me
to the airport on the appointed day. I went to the airport and met the FAA
man that was to give me the check ride. He was a very quiet man, about 35
or so and without hesitation or further talk he got into the back of the
Aeronica Champ and told me to start the engine and he would tell me what to
do when we got into the air. Of course this was a big day for me and I was
very nervous and prayed that I would do everything as it should be done
without making any mistakes.
After a
normal,(I hoped!) take off, he yelled, (the Aeronica is very noisy) to climb
to 3500 feet over the practice area. When we got to that altitude, he said
to make a vertical 720 degree turn to the left and then to the right and
come back to the same course as I was flying If you do a vertical 720
turn, in calm air, you will hit the turbulence from your own prop wash on
the second time around. It happened on both left and right turns! So far
so good! After about 30 minutes of doing different maneuvers, he asked me
to make a spin to the right and recover. This was my favorite thing to do
in the Aeronica. First I made sure there were no airplanes below me, and
then closing the throttle, I pulled the nose up slightly and the plane
slowed down. Just before it stalled, I gave it full right rudder while
pulling the stick all the way back. The plane went into a right hand spin
and I kept it in for three complete turns. Neutralizing the rudder and
pushing the stick forward, we came out of the spin at about 1500 feet and
right back on the same course! To do this successfully is no easy task and
I was very happy about it. I know that to some, this may not be all that
interesting but to anyone that flew in that era, you know the thrill it
gives you to fly correctly with a CAA man as your passenger. All this time,
the inspector hardly said a word except to tell me what to do next.
Finally, he told me to go back and make a normal landing. I was wondering
if he thought the spin was too much and I worried that he would fail me.
After landing, I taxied to the parking ramp and started to kill the engine
when Sunny came running up to see how I did. The inspector asked who he was
and when I told him he was my nephew the inspector got out and put Sunny in
the back and told me to take my first official passenger for a ride!! I had
passed and was now a licensed pilot!! Once again I felt like I had
accomplished something and my self-confidence was up again.
I flew
all the time that I could get away from work and when ever I had the money.
At that time I think the Aeronica cost about 8 or 10 dollars an hour to
rent. I even flew at night some times, that’s when the air is usually nice
and smooth. It was a lot of fun to fly and I enjoyed taking passengers for
rides. Cliff was a member of the Vallejo Yacht Club and they had annual
boat races on the San Francisco bay. One day he asked me to take him up in
and Aeronica so that he could take pictures of the boats coming back from
the race. We flew down the Napa river to the bay and saw the boats just
coming abreast of Pinole. Pinole had some kind of factory, which had a
brick smoke stack that was at least two hundred feet high. You could see
that smoke stack for miles away. I was flying very low so that Cliff could
get a good movie of the yacht race and we were both looking at the boats.
When I looked forward, there was the smoke stack dead ahead of us! Making a
sharp turn we just managed to miss it!
I
usually flew very cautiously as I had a great respect for the dangers of
flying privately. When I took passengers up for a ride I always flew
straight and made gentle turns. I only did stunts when I was alone or had a
passenger with me that wanted more of a thrill. One time, I took Junes
husband, Tony, up, and we did spin after spin, as he really seemed to enjoy
it. Another great thing about flying was meeting the girls that loved to
fly. One of the girls I was going with was named Jackie and we used to make
trips together, like one day we flew to the Sacramento fair and spent the
day having a very good time. On weekends a bunch of flyers would get
together and fly, like to Chico or somewhere and have lunch. It was a lot
of fun then as it was reasonably economical in those days to fly to many
places. Wanting to get into better airplanes, I joined a flying club at
Knights airport and had access to three different airplanes. A four place
Stinson, a Feet bi-plane, with open cockpits and a Luscomb Silvair two-place
side-by-side plane. The Luscomb was my favorite airplane. It was all
aluminum and much faster than the “Air knocker” that I had been flying.
I made
many trips in that airplane and one time, I took Cliff Jr., with me to visit
my folks in Southern California. The route we took was from Vallejo to
Bakersfield, where we landed to refuel and get a cup of coffee, then over
the Tehachapi Mountains to San Bernardino and on to a small airport in
Arcadia. I crossed the Tehachapi’s at about nine thousand feet and when we
got on the other side, Cliff ask me if we were going down. He pointed out
the altimeter that was unwinding rapidly! As we crossed the mountains into
the desert we got into a terrific down draft. I could see great columns of
dust rising off the desert and could tell that it was very windy. No matter
what I did, we dropped three or four thousand feet and when we got to the
bottom of that down draft, the plane almost turned upside down. That made
me a “little” nervous but the air calmed down after that and we continued on
through the Cajon pass and followed foothill Boulevard to the airport at
Arcadia. I had never seen the little airstrip at Arcadia and was surprised
to see how small it was when we flew over it. The dirt runway was not only
short but also it started right adjacent to the wide concrete Foothill
Blvd. It was a very hot day and the airplane would just keep flying or
floating over the highway and would not stop flying! I made three passes
before I finally had to force the wheels onto the ground and even then we
rolled into the soft sand they thoughtfully had put and the end of the
runway for people like me. Although I took many of the family, like Sam,
for rides during our visit and Jim flew the Luscomb himself. We never did
feel comfortable landing on that runway.
Another
flight I remember quite well was when a friend of mine that had a jewelry
store in Vallejo asked me to fly him and his four year old boy to Southern
California. He wanted to let his mother take care of the boy because his
wife was sick. The morning we took off, it was very foggy in Vallejo and we
waited for it to lift so we could leave. It hung around for a long time and
finally it started to break up and I decided to go. I figured that I could
climb up through the breaks in the fog, until I got on top. Well, as we
were climbing, the fog closed in on us and I suddenly found myself flying
blind! This Luscomb had no blind flying instruments on it and for a moment
I didn’t know what to do. Then I remembered what my instructor, Bob Borden,
had said one day. Harry, the airplane will fly better by itself than a
person can fly it. Since I had the plane trimmed for a gentle climb, I
forced myself to take my hands and feet off the controls and sat back and
let it fly itself. Although it was cold in the airplane, I was sweating.
My imagination would make me think we were diving or turning and It took all
my will power to keep my hands off the controls. All I could do was watch
the tachometer and airspeed indicator and hope for the best. Bob was right
and what seemed like hours but was just a few minutes, it started to get
lighter and all of a sudden we broke out on top of the fog into bright
sunshine! What a relief! On this trip I had decided to go the coast route
and would refuel at the King City. Airport. Landing at strange airports
always made me nervous so I was concentrating on landing and was on the
final approach at about two hundred feet when this little boy, who was
sitting on his fathers lap, decided to get sick and throw up!
Consternation! I was committed to land and the kid was throwing up all over
the cockpit! Well, it was a rough landing but we made it OK and his father
cleaned it up before we took off again. The trip was uneventful after that
and I remember that I would only charge my friend for my actual expenses.
After we got back to Vallejo, I added everything up and would you believe
that it only cost $13.50 for the three of us to make the round trip. Like I
said, flying was cheap then.
Meanwhile, since my social life was expanding, I found that there was a need
to make more money. I can’t remember just how I decided to leave Cliff and
the Vallejo Boat Center. I used to eat at a restaurant a few miles away run
by a women named Ruth Kelly. Her cooks name was Palidino and every one
called him Pal. One of her regular customers was a fellow name Herb Buder.
He and I became very good friends and he lived in a government housing
project called Roosevelt Terrace. Herb was separated from his wife and
lived there with his two sons, Ronnie and Joey. He invited me to move in
with them to help with the expenses and I was tired of living in the old
houseboat so I moved in with him. Herb was a machinist at the Mare Island
Naval Shipyard, which was why he was eligible to live in government
housing. Economically, things were booming after the war and I applied for
a job at the shipyard and was accepted as a boat builder on a six months
temporary status. I was assigned to the boat shop where we worked on small
boats and captain’s gigs, and etc. The first thing I noticed was that there
were three or more men for every job! My “snapper” would assign us work in
the morning and no matter how insignificant it was, it had to last you all
day. They had an enormous head, (men’s room) close by and it was always
crowded with guys smoking, reading the paper and generally goofing off. To
show how ridiculous the work was, one day the “snapper” gave me a six inch
square piece of sand paper and told me to use that one piece to sand the
gunwale of a thirty foot captains gig, all day long!
During
this time, I met a girl that I became quite friendly with named Ruth
Graham. She and her four-year-old boy, Donnie lived across the way from us
in Roosevelt Terrace. She was separated from her husband, who was a
musician and I gather led a pretty wild life. Anyway, Ruth and I had some
great times and the three of us made many trips together, like up the coast
to the redwoods and various places. Herb and I and our girl friends would
often go to the Napa airport where there was a large hanger that had been
made over to a dance ballroom. It would accommodate at least five hundred
couples and every Saturday night there was one of the big bands of that era
playing there in a one-night stand. The whole town would go and I can still
see all these couples jitter bugging in unison to Glen Millers “In the
mood”. I can remember bands like Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Ted Wilson, Benny
Goodman, Harry James, Paul Whiteman and many others that I cannot remember.
I was in my late twenties then and really enjoying life, except that I
didn’t know it then. You never do till later. Life was really good and the
music of that time was perfect for our era. I can still see Doris Days
pretty, smiling face as she sang, in that perfect voice, songs like,
-----------You sigh, the song begins, you speak and I hear violins, its
magic. How else can I explain, those rainbows without rain, its magic.
Without a magic wand or mystic charm, fantastic things appear when I am in
your arms. When we walk hand in hand, the world becomes a wonderland, its
magic. ---------- Or Bing Crosby and his unique voice singing------- When
the blue of the night meets the gold of her hair. --------- Connie Francis,
Vaughn Monroe, Peggy Lee, Spike Jones, Rosemary Clooney, Teresa Brewer and
so many others.
About
this time I thought I would like to buy an airplane and began to look around
for a bargain. I could not afford to buy one at all but that didn’t stop
me. To me, money was something to use to buy instant happiness with.
Brother Sam and his friend David Bruton called me a hedonist. The future
was too far away for me to worry about and if I wanted something, I usually
tried to acquire it. There was a used car salesman named Sullivan, everyone
called him Sully, who had an airplane for sale that I really liked. It was a
Stinson model 105 and really neat looking. It had seats side by side in
front and a small jump seat in the back so that you could fly with three in
the airplane. It was a high wing monoplane and had wheel pants and was
really a nice looking plane. The engine was an 85-horse power Continental
and although it was slow, it was really easy to fly. It was a very
forgiving airplane, if you pointed it at the runway and idled back the
engine, it almost would land by itself. I still have pictures of it
somewhere. This plane was licensed and flyable with nothing major to do and
it was just sixteen hundred dollars. So I put a small down payment on it
and tried to make the monthly payments on time. This was a problem for me,
as I didn’t make much money. I had made friends with a fellow at the boat
center who had a boat there and he was interested in flying too. His name
was Ray Kramer and he was probably ten years older than I. He was a very
nice man and we got along very well together. It also would relieve some of
my financial worries. So, I took him in as a partner in the Stinson and
although he couldn’t fly, I agreed to teach him. We agreed that we would
have access to the plane every other day. This worked out very well and we
enjoyed the plane for many months.
My six
months probation period was up at Mare Island and my supervisor called me in
and told me that I could get on a permanent status, if I wanted to. I
declined as it was very boring working in the boat shop and I asked the
super why they had so many men for so little work. He explained to me that
at the end of a fiscal year, when they had so much money left, the navy
would have to spend it or else have their budget cut for the next fiscal
year. He said the best way to use up all the money was to hire a lot of
workers. This seemed to me a poor way to manage their budget. Spend
surplus money in order to get more money for next year. This was my first
taste of how our government wastes the taxpayer’s money. No wonder so many
people are poor money managers, (including myself), when our government sets
such a poor example. Of course later on in life I learned that our
government is the biggest waster of money in the world. It is really
unbelievable how our politicians can so blithely spend money so foolishly.
The government has got so top heavy with “officials” that it is evidently
unmanageable at this point. Every election year, I keep hoping that we will
get some one with intelligence and have the guts to get us out of this mess
and back on the right track. However, every election, the one with the
greatest promises gets elected and promptly goes back on his promises and
starts playing the dirty game of “politics as usual”. I hope some of you
young people reading this will come to the countries rescue and make the
government what it is supposed to be. My personal belief, and looking back
at history, I am afraid that it may come to a bloody revolution some day. I
sure hope not but sometimes it takes drastic measures to “get the
politicians attention”. My intention is not to be so negative in this
writing but the country is in very bad shape and it needs good peoples
attention immediately.
Chapter
Ten
After quitting Mare Island, I
started looking for a job. I heard that the local Mayflower agent, Chipman
Van and Storage, in Vallejo, was looking for men. I applied and was hired
by the dispatcher, a man named Andy Colwell. This moving company had a lot
of business with the Air Force and moved a lot of the personnel at the
Fairfield Air Force base. Fairfield was about thirty miles east of Vallejo
on old highway forty, (now I 80). After a few days, I was hired as a
regular employee and had to join the Teamsters Union local, in Vallejo. I
applied and received a chauffeur’s license and was soon driving a moving
van. At first of course I drove the bobtails and then worked up to driving
“semi’s”. That is a tractor and trailer. I liked this job very much and
really tried to learn all the many things to make a good furniture mover.
Many of the guys working there were really professional movers and we got
along good and they taught me many of the tricks of the trade. Of course
truck drivers were also very hard drinkers and loved to party a lot. I did
my share of partying but I was never too found of the drinking. I did a lot
but not like some of the guys. I remember one Christmas, the owner, Art
Chipman, had a company party at a large bar at the corner of old highway 40
and Benicia road. As they say today, we would party hardy and I got too
drunk to drive my car home. I asked one of the guys to drive me home and
locked up my car in the bars parking lot. Of course this friend was drunker
than I but I didn’t realize it at the time and he got me home all right.
The next day we had to work, hangover and all, when I got back to the office
Andy Colwell said that a captain of the highway patrol had called and he
wanted me to call him as soon as I got to the office. When I called him
back and told him who I was, he said, “Mr. Hewitt, can you tell me why your
car was parked and locked up in the middle of the intersection of highway 40
and Benicia road at four a m in the morning in the middle of a rainstorm”?
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! Here I thought I was doing the right
thing by not driving drunk and now this. Then I remembered that my Nash had
overdrive and although it was in gear, it had rolled out of the parking lot
and into the intersection. After explaining this to the good captain he
told me where my car had been towed and I would be able to get it after
paying towing and storage charges. It cost me about forty dollars to get it
but I think I was really lucky that the car didn’t cause a serious accident.
One of
the popular sports at that time was car racing, that is, what we called
“hard top” cars. They were called hard tops because some of the cars of
that era still had fabric tops and only late model cars had metal tops.
Chipman Van and Storage co. sponsored a hard top racer that was driven by
our mechanic, Phil James. I was part of the pit crew and we raced every
Friday and Saturday night. We raced at a quarter mile dirt track just
outside of Vallejo. A straight eight cylinder flat engine powered the car.
The body was a Plymouth two door coupe, I believe. As part of the pit crew
we would change the tires do the fueling and all those things. It was good
fun and kept us busy on weekends. This was about the time that California
was beginning to get too much of that hazy stuff which someone called smog.
Meaning a mixture of smoke and fog. There was a great controversy about the
cause. Some people blamed industry and some blamed the automobile or both.
At the race track, after ten or so races, you could see a layer of
smog hovering over the track. So there was no question in my mind that the
automobile was a great contributor. Especially since most cars were
straight eight or, later, the big V-8 engines. Most cars got a whopping ten
to twelve miles a gallon. Of course gasoline was only ten to fifteen cents
a gallon then too. I well remember the gas wars in those days when a gallon
sold for just the tax that was five or six cents a gallon. The main gas
stations of the time were, Associated, “Lets get Associated”, and Gilmore
gas, “Put in your motor and you will go so fast” ‘There were many other
small gasoline companies then but were all swallowed by the giant, greedy
oil companies that you see today. Sometimes progress is not always that
great is it?
One time
at the racetrack, before the races started, Phil James talked me into
driving the car around the track. He carefully explained how to take the
curves on the track at high speeds and talked me into trying it. Well, to
make a long story short, after a couple of laps I got over confident and
took the next turn at about sixty miles an hour and promptly slid sideways
and right through the wooden wall. Everyone got a big laugh out of that but
needless to say, that was my last time to drive that car. It was a great
thrill to drive a race car and I can see how some people can get hooked on
racing but I don’t think it was my thing to do.
Herb
Buder, whom I was living with was also a musician and played the clarinet
and saxophone very well and sometimes played in local bands on weekends at
small dances and it was fun to go to these functions with him. Herb had two
clarinets. One was a b flat and one was a c flat. He of course played the b
flat as that was the most compatible with a band. The c flat had to be
transposed too much to harmonize with other instruments. Anyway, he gave me
the c flat and taught me how to play it. I was never very good but I did
learn the fingering and Herb and I would play duets there at the house. By
the way, the fingering on the clarinet and saxophone are just about the
same. The saxophone takes a lot more wind to play. I think that my
experience with Herb really stimulated my love for music. Herb formed his
own band at one time and I built the music racks for him. They even had
separate lights. His band never got as popular as Harry James of course but
there were many “gigs” around the local area. Incidentally, I came up with
the band name. We called it the Golden Budda band, because of Herb’s last
name of course and I even painted a Budda in gold glitter on the music
racks. I wish that I hadn’t lost contact with Herb and his sons the year or
so that I lived with them was very enjoyable. Herb had to move out of the
government housing and I moved in with Phil James and his wife Connie. That
was when Television was getting popular and I bought the first TV set in our
circle of friends. It was a table model with a “huge” ten-inch screen.
Phil and Connie and I would have people over almost every night to watch.
The big star then was Milton Berle, Mr. Television. There was only one
commercial every half hour and most shows were “live” which was more
spontaneous and much more entertaining and fortunately, the “laugh track”
had not been thought of then as people would not need artificial stimulation
to make them laugh. There were not many “superstars” then and not the high
salaries to make the entertainers as arrogant as they are today. There were
no Rosanne Barr’s or Howard Sterns to pollute TV then. What a sad thing
when so called “talk” (sleaze) shows took the place of “situation
comedies”. What sleaze or pollution there were then was kept under wraps
and was private which is much better than the “Let it all hang out” policy
of today. I know a lot of people will not agree with me but they will when
they age and hopefully mature. Now who is being arrogant?!!!!
One
evening, while living with Phil and Connie James, our employer, Art Chipman,
came to the house with a proposition for me. He said that one of his long
distance drivers had blown up his engine in Ely Nevada and since he was fed
up with this drivers drinking and poor work record he wanted to know if I
would like to take his place and drive intrastate for him. I, of course,
was thrilled. I loved to travel and I loved to drive trucks. So, the next
day or so they picked up a new engine at the White truck company in Oakland
and put it in the back of a new station wagon that the company had and Phil,
the mechanic and I took off for Ely. When we got there, we located very
nice gentleman who owned a two bay garage there and he agreed to rent one
bay to us long enough to change the truck engine. It took us about three
days to change the engine and at last we started it up and with only minor
adjustments took off west on highway six. About halfway to Tonopah Nev. the
old head of the engine cracked! We managed to nurse it into Tonopah and
called the company. Art Chipman then got a new head and had a friend fly
him to the little airport at Tonopah where we proceeded to put on the new
head. At last everything was working OK and so I took off alone for L.A. as
that was the destination of the shipments aboard the trailer. What a mess
when I got to L.A.! Not only were the shipments ten days late but also the
driver had four shipments of household goods in the trailer and none of it
tagged and not much of an inventory. I had four irate people to deal with
and straighten out what belonged to what. So, my first experience at long
distance driving wasn’t all that great.
Chipman
Van and Storage was an agent for the Aero Mayflower Transit Company and
after I returned to Vallejo I would both drive local and some long
distance. Sometimes I would drive a 35-foot flat bed and haul bulldozers
and heavy equipment. One time I was sent to the Fairfield Air Force base
with my flat bed semi. This was during the Korean War and I had to unload
boxcars at the tracks and put them on my trailer to haul them to cargo
planes, which would fly them to Korea. These were aircraft missiles used to
bomb enemies in Korea. There were two to a crate and I stacked them six
high on my trailer. To save time (time must always be saved!!), I didn’t
think I would need to tie them down, as it was only a mile or so to the
airplanes. Unfortunately, I drove over uneven ground and a whole stack of
the crates fell over onto the ground. This scared the hell out of me, as I
didn’t know if they were armed or not. Since I am writing this, you can
guess that they were unarmed. Also, I learned how to tie down cargo swiftly
and tightly after that.
All the
guys were talking about the pretty “sexy” girl at the Teamsters Union that
we all paid our union dues to. Her name was “Wicky” Scott about 26 or so.
Either the guys were afraid to ask her out on a date or she turned everyone
down but nobody had dated her. One Friday I was running late at work and
had to work at the races that night. After work I rushed down to the union
office to pay my monthly dues and Wicky was just getting ready to close the
office. While paying my dues, she asked me where I was rushing off. I told
her about our racing car and the fun we had at the track. I asked her if
she had ever been to a car race before. She said, “no I haven’t, why don’t
you take me?” I couldn’t believe what I heard!! Wicky asking me to take
her out!!!! You can’t imagine the thrill I got when we walked in arm in arm
and all the guys got a look at “Harry’s date”. For days after that,
everyone I worked with would ask me how I managed to get a date with her.
Well, we started dating on a regular basis and (Here I go again), I asked
her to marry me. That of course was a big mistake. That marriage ruined a
good relationship. The marriage lasted only three or four months. I was so
depressed that I quit my job and went home to Fontana where Mom and Dad had
a home on five acres of grape vines. Once again brother Jim came to my
rescue. At that time he and his family were living in Bakersfield. Jim
loaned me some money opened a checking account for me so I could pay my
bills in Vallejo. I moved in with him and got a job at Baker Moving and
Storage co. in Bakersfield. They were also agents for Mayflower. Once
again I was doing what I knew best, moving household goods and heavy
equipment. George Baker owned the company and he had a son working there
named Darryl Baker. He and I were both single (divorced) and we became
great friends. Darryl knew a lot of people in Bakersfield and we would go
out almost every night. We had favorite bars and would usually close them
up. One of the people he knew was a woman who ran a house of prostitution
outside of town. When the bars closed up, Darryl would drive me to the
whorehouse and we would sit in the kitchen eating fried chicken, and
drinking whiskey. The prostitutes were usually through with their “work” at
that time and would sit around the table with us and we would have great
conversations on all topics. Usually politics as politicians were as
unpopular then as they are now. No, we did not use their services! We were
there as guests and not patrons. I gained respect for those prostitutes.
Many of them were supporting parents or kids and believe it or not, they
worked hard and considered their occupations both legitimate and very
necessary. Prostitution is as old as civilization and far be it from me to
judge them.
Darryl
was also a very talented golfer and played in many amateur tournaments. He
won many of them and was always in the top ten. I would caddie for him and
that is how I acquired a taste for golf. So between working at my favorite
job, playing golf and carousing around with my buddy Darryl I was once again
enjoying life. I also bought an accordion and aspired to be another
Lawrence Welk. I drove Jim and his wife June crazy practicing “The
Sidewalks Of New York”. But, as usual, I just couldn’t stick with it long
enough to be any good. The accordion wasn’t all that popular anyway. Golf
was popular with a lot of the men that worked at Bakers moving company and
when we had slow days sometimes we would go to a golf course and play a
round or two. Four of us were playing one day when the devastating
earthquake that severely damaged Bakersfield hit Looking down the fairway
during the quake the grass looked like rolling swells in the ocean and we
could see telephone poles swaying back and forth. Cows grazing around the
hills by the golf course were braying in fright. We called the office and
were told to come to work immediately as all the storage was on the ground
and the plate glass windows on the building were shattered. The quake did
much damage to downtown Bakersfield and the power was off for many days for
some areas. There were many aftershocks and believe me it was very scary
and it was hard to sleep at night for a few weeks.
I guess
I stayed a year or so in Bakersfield and enjoyed Jim’s family although they
were probably very tired of me. I also had a great time working and playing
in Bakersfield.
Friday,
May 5th 1996,
Once
again I have to pause and report that on this day Elsie and I drove to
Bakersfield to attend the funeral rites of our sister in law Esther Hewitt.
She was buried in a beautiful casket next to brother Cliff and in a very
beautiful spot in the foothills overlooking Bakersfield.
Esther
was a “one of a kind” type of person whom I was very fond of. She and I
always got along good and seemed to understand each other better than other
people did. I always thought she was a wonderful mother to her sons, Cliff
Jr. and Bob. I enjoyed our long family relationship and have happy memories
of our “Vallejo” times together. Cliff and Esther raised two fine sons in
Cliff and Bob and I really enjoy talking to them on the rare occasions that
we are able to see each other.
I
certainly hope that I do not have to interrupt this Bio too many more times
for this reason and hope I finish this Bio before it is too late! We have
lost Cliff, June, Jim and now Esther. I miss them all very much. This just
leaves Fred, Sam and I in our immediate Family.
Chapter
Eleven
After Bakersfield I returned to my parents home in Fontana. I decided
to use my California GI home loan and bought a house on Ceres street for Mom
and Dad. The house was almost new and Fred and I built an unattached garage
in the back. I immediately found a job at the local North American Van
Lines agent, Fontana Van and Storage. This company was owned and operated
by two Irish brothers, Pete and Walt Hickey. Pete and Walt were real
“characters” and I could write a story about them alone.
They had
a very successful business and managed to keep out all competition in
Fontana. I believe they knew just about everyone in town, including the
local Judge and the police chief. Both of them were tobacco-chewing addicts
and they had coffee cans in all there trucks for spittoons. Pete Hickey and
I did most of the moving jobs and Pete would always have a huge wad of
tobacco in his jaw. When the customer asked a question of Pete, he would
have to step outside and spit before he could answer the question. Needless
to say, there were not, very often, lengthily conversations.
One
morning, Pete and I had to drive to Paramount to move two women to Fontana.
They were, Minnie and Elsie Payne, mother and daughter, who had lost their
husband and father shortly before. They seemed like very nice people and I
was immediately attracted to them, especially Elsie. They had quite a lot
of household goods, as they were called, and filled our bobtail van pretty
full. We moved them to a small place in Fontana and the move must have been
good for them as a short time later. They called and wanted to be moved
again to a small house in San Bernardino near the runway at the Norton Air
Force base there. Among their household goods was a spinet piano and I
learned that Minnie was a piano teacher and was looking for students to
increase their income. Although I had not said much to Elsie, I somehow
knew that we were going too much more of one another in the future. No. it
wasn’t because she had a hole in her pants and I could see her pink
panties! I felt a little sorry for them because they didn’t have anyone to
set up their furniture or put up their television antenna etc. So when the
truck was empty. I offered to come back after work and do some of those
chores for them. Alter work I went back and set up their beds, mounted the
TV antenna and did all I could to get them settled.
Not
knowing how to ask Elsie for a date, instead, I told Minnie that I had
always wanted to play the piano and could I become one of her students. I
felt in that way I could become better aquatinted with them, so after a few
lessons I felt more at home and more at ease. Elsie of course didn’t know
if I was married or single so, in order to find out, she asked me if my
“wife” would want one of her cat’s kittens. That day I asked her out for
our first date and much to my surprise, she accepted. Pete Hickey and I
belonged to the American Legion in Fontana and I asked Elsie to go to a
dance with me there, on Saturday night. I found out later that she called
her sister Ruth and asked her if she thought it would be OK to go out with
an older man. I was thirty-six then and Elsie was just twenty-four. Ruth
told her that age should not make a difference as long as we enjoyed each
others company. So, Saturday night, I picked up Elsie and took her to the
Legion hall in Fontana. As we drove to the hall, I proudly told Elsie how
nice the people were there and how good the live music was. When we went
into the hall we found a table and ordered beer. The band was playing one
of the popular songs of that time which was “Unchained Melody” and it later
became “our song”. I was not and have never been a good ballroom dancer but
I tried and we struggled through a few dances. One of the popular dances
then was the Cha Cha Cha, a Latin dance craze at that time. The band was
playing Perez Prado’s Cha Cha song, “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom Time” and
Elsie and I were making an effort to do the dance when all of a sudden a
fight broke out on the dance floor and then an ensuing brawl started with
chairs and bottles flying through the air. What I had thought of, as the
peaceful American Legion Hall was turning into more like close combat of
world war two. Of course the combatants had been drinking a lot stronger
drinks than beer. I managed to shelter Elsie out through a side door and to
the car and we got away from there very swiftly. I was much embarrassed by
the event and worried that Elsie would think badly of my friends. However,
Elsie took it well and I believe we went to dinner and had a good time after
that. We started dating often after that and had some very good times.
Minnie was very understanding when I gave up the piano lessons.
Working
with Pete and Walt Hickey was fun as well as work. They were both
hard workers and hard drinkers and always kept a bottle at work. I, of
course, took my part in the drinking as well. Socializing in those days
meant that you smoked and drank and if you didn’t there was something wrong
with you. People in those days would sometimes brag about how drunk they
were when they drove home from a party. I never and I don’t know of anyone
who ever got into trouble as they do today driving drunk. I guess the old
saying is true that God takes care of damn fools and drunks. Or maybe they
drink more today or the whiskey is stronger or the body is weaker.
The
Hickey boys had a very good business and had pretty good equipment to work
with. They were well off financially too. I wonder if it was because they
never gave the customer a receipt for the move unless they asked for it
especially if they paid in cash. I worked for them for many months and
learning of my moving experience interstate they asked me if I would like to
drive for their company, which was North American Van Lines. Because of my
love of travel and I was single I quickly accepted their offer. They bought
a huge International tractor and I bob tailed it to Fort Wayne Indiana to
North American Van Lines headquarters and picked up a forty-foot furniture
van.
These
were some of my happiest days. Traveling constantly, always with money in
my pocket I drove all over the United States and into Canada. Part of my
money went to Mom and Dad and they seemed quite happy in the house on Ceres
street. Mom bought some new furniture and a new bed for me in my room.
They made the house very nice to come home to.
I had
many “adventures” while on the road, too numerous to cover them all in this
“Quick Look at Seventy Five Years. It was fun for me to go to a different
place almost every day and I enjoyed the work very much. It was hard work
and always a challenge to “get it all loaded on” without having a leave over
which every one hated. I also took much pride in loading it at least seven
pounds or more per cubic foot and therefore making money for me, the Hickeys
and the van line company..
I met
many good guys in that business but the average truck driver was dirty,
uneducated, loud mouthed and usually thought they were Gods gift to every
women that they came across. I hope that wasn’t my description as I though
of myself as quiet, clean and frightened of the average woman.
To be
continued I hope.
Uncle
Harry Passed away in March 1999 before he was able to complete his story.
James R.
Hewitt Jr.
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