From Book 1
Christmas rolled around, the first for my little babies. They were too young to realize just what was happening, but they surely did love all that colorful paper and the pretty Christmas Tree. Ella Marie had ordered some colored electric lights to go on the tree in place of candles, from some company called General Electric. They were right pretty and a whole site safer than those candles! It had gotten so I hardly looked at the newspaper anymore, it was nothing but doom and gloom about the problems in Europe. They were convinced that war would break out most any minute. Uncle Jeff closed the books on 1913 with a profit of $4,010,500!
Chapter -1- EUROPE IN FLAMES
1914 opened with dismal weather, the river went over its banks and flooded Marysville. The Army was building a camp just outside Marysville, Camp Beale they called it. The folks in Maryville had to leave their homes, we took many of them and put them up in Blount House. It was pitiful, they got out, many of them, with just the clothes they were wearing. We provided as much children's clothing as we could, we emptied our closets of shoes and clothing our own children had outgrown. The Army folks took some of the people who lived on the other side of the river and put them up in tents.
We sent both packet boats back and forth across the river, delivering food and what clothing we could collect. Josiah was sending cheese and milk across the river every day. Our own dairy was supplying Blount House.
Major Bingham crossed on the packet one day and rented a horse to bring him to Blount Farm. He told me they were feeding 120 refugees from Marysville in addition to his soldiers and they were running short of food. He asked if we could help. I agreed to send two beeves and 10 cans of milk every week to help. I would have sent grain, but he had no way to grind it and neither did we.
It was a month before the river went down, many homes were totally destroyed and none were livable. Some folks just gave up and left, we ended up with 6 boys and 2 girls whose parents never came for them. I was surely glad we had not torn Blount House down like the county asked us!
We were late planting, the soil didn't dry out enough to plow until mid-May. The winter wheat survived the flood, but it looked like the yields were going to be way down. By mid-June, all the grains were sprouting and the fruit had set.
We had just finished Sunday Supper when Casey Barnes, one of the combine crew, came racing into the yard. He had been in Redding, he was sweet on Miss Calley Taggert, one of the school teachers, he was waving a newspaper and screaming, "WAR!" Germany and its friends were at war with England and France. Mr. Wilson declared the United States to be neutral, but one of our merchant ships had already been sunk!
That night, Karl and Gretchen Einker were burned out. Someone torched their home, leaving them and their 4 children with only the clothes on their backs! Gretchen and Ella May were friends, they came to us in the middle of the night, the children were crying and Karl's hands and face were burned trying to save their home.
Karl sat at our kitchen table while Ella May dressed his wounds. He put his head in his hands, "We are not Germans, my Daddy came from Estonia. We were all born here in America, we are Americans!"
The next morning, we put them up in Blount House and Gretchen took over the care of the children living there. Karl was a machinist in Uncle Jimmie's machine shop and Willie and Joe took him to Redding every day with them. Some fool in Redding told those boys that their Daddy ought not to hire dirty Germans in his shop. They left him sprawled on the street, missing several teeth and a sore jaw!
We cut the winter wheat, it was a short crop, but the price had risen and we more than made up for the amount lost to the winter rains. Caleb Vance stopped by several times to make sure we had not sold "his" rice to someone else. When is he going to learn that wasn't going to happen, ever! We sold the red wheat and corn, still standing in the fields. We saved out enough milo for our own needs and the Army bought the entire rest of the crop. They sent Army rail cars and men, they bagged the entire crop and shipped it from our siding.
We had reduced the number of feeder calves this year because of the poor feed conditions. We had only 2,000 and between the Army and the Ralston Brothers, who had renamed their company Manteca Beef and Brokers, they cleaned us out of feeder beeves!
Ambrose Farm was a little higher elevation than Blount Farm, the red wheat we planted there did better and buyers were out in the field trying to buy the wheat from the hands, right off the combines! Someone had told them that Josiah Fiest was a Blount and they followed him home one day from Ambrose Dairy, trying to get him to sell them some grain. He came running into our kitchen and shut the door in their faces. He was red in the face and breathing hard, they had chased him all the way from his dairy. I told him that he was to call me on the telephone when he was ready to come home and I would come up and get him in the pickup.
There were so many buyers and they were so persistent, we put up a sign at Packet Landing in the Ferry Building in San Francisco, "NO BUYERS ARE ALLOWED ON BLOUNT PACKETBOATS". That didn't stop all of them, but our Packet Captains became pretty savvy in spotting them and would refuse to let them board. The only other way to get here was by train or motorcar and there was nothing we could do to control those.
Ella May had fallen in love with a little red-haired boy, Jeffy McWhirter, who had been left by his parents during the flood. Nobody ever saw or heard from them again. He was a good little boy, 9 years old and as polite as a grown man. More often than not, he was in our kitchen and Ella May was feeding him cookies or treats. One day, she said, "Steven, I want to adopt little Jeffy and make him our boy."
I smiled at her, "Ella May, I knew you were going to say something, sooner or later." I pulled out some papers that I had Rory Travis, our attorney up in Redding, draw up. I told her, "I have already signed them, all they need is your signature and it is a done deal!"
So it was that Jeffy McWhirter became Jeffery Steven Blount! A happier child never existed, he was never without a happy smile on his face and a cheerful greeting to all he encountered. He was a smart child, too. His first report card from school was all pluses and a glowing comment from the teacher.
As fall approached, we finished the harvests and started to put the equipment away for the winter. The winter wheat was all planted, we even planted part of Ambrose Farm in winter wheat, hoping to make a good profit next year.
Each evening, when I went to pick up Josiah, he was just plain worn out. I asked him about it and he replied, "Mr. Blount, we are shipping eight crates of cheese every week now and I have been mixing the whey with milo and feeding it to the swine. The swine are gaining weight faster and will be ready for market at least two, maybe three weeks sooner than before!"
I thought to myself, "This boy is only 14?" I told him I would hire him some more help.
He grinned and said, "How about Adolph and Gustav Einker? They are my age and would sure like a job!"
We had gotten back home and I looked at him and said, "Well?"
He looked at me as if I had just sprouted a second head, "Yu, yu You mean I CAN HIRE THEM?"
I laughed and said, "Well, I sure can't, I am not the Ambrose Dairy Boss, YOU ARE!"
He lit out for Blount House at a dead run! It seems to me I remember Poppa doing something like that to me once over a cream separator!
We rushed to close out 1914, it had been a hard year for all of us and we hoped and prayed that 1915 would be better. Blount Family had grown by one small boy and I feared there would be others. There were still 5 boys and two girls being cared for by Gretchen Einker at Blount House and this terrible war was hanging over our heads like a horrible cloud.
We had Christmas Eve Supper at our house, there were aunts and uncles, cousins, sons, daughters and a few whom we were not sure of, all over the house. Our two were just beginning to toddle and their new Big Brother, Jeffery, watched over them like a warrior lion.
Christmas Morning we all went to church and then came home so the children could play with their gifts. I had gotten Jeffery a Crystal Radio kit for Christmas. He spent the afternoon putting it together and wiring up the dry cells. He looked like a Moon Man in those earphones and he started waving frantically at me to come over. He twisted one earphone around so I could hear, they were talking about some kind of new sickness in France and Spain. I didn't want to hear of it, it was Christmas Day, but they were asking for donations to help the children there. I wrote the address down and promised Jeffery that I would send them some money to help. Little did I think such sickness would come to our land, but it would.
Uncle Jeff and I closed out the books for 1914, thankful there was a profit at all. We cleared $3,967,300 for the year. I suppose I should feel glad, but when I thought of people like young Josiah, working so hard, it surely didn't seem like enough. Uncle Jeff and I handed out Foremen Bonuses, Josiah Fiest was one of them. He was so surprised, you would have thought he was trying to trap flies, his mouth just hung open! His Daddy, John, had been promoted to Equipment Maintenance Foreman, so he was standing right next to his son as the bonuses were passed out. I felt I was in danger of being hit by split buttons, John was so proud of his boy.
Chapter -2- WAR CLOUDS DEEPEN
1915 opened cold, but no floods this year. We were able to plow and get the red wheat planted in early April. We had fudged a little bit and planted the rice a week earlier, it was a gamble, but no frost hit us and we got away with it. Every bare patch of dirt was planted. Between Blount Farm and Ambrose Farm, we planted 83,000 acres to grains, with 8,000 acres in fruits and olives.
Major Bingham came nosing around from Camp Beale, wanting to know how many feeder calves we were going to start. I asked him how many did he want. He looked at me and asked, "If I told you 5,000, could you do that?"
I said, "It would be a stretch, but, yes, we can."
He just smiled and said, "Do it!"
The feedlot was full, between the calves and the 300 feeder pigs I bought for Josiah, we were overflowing! That boy never missed a beat when the wagons showed up with those little pigs, he waded in and showed the crew where they were to go. I knew he was short-staffed for that much, so the next day, I brought two young hands to him, Gordon Bly and Les Fowler. They were both 15 and eager for the work. I never heard more from them, so, if there were problems, Josiah took care of them. With so many animals, he had to work them two shifts. I rattled his bones when I discovered he was working both shifts! He could either split the shifts or delegate. He promoted Gustav to assistant foreman and put him on the night shift. I watched from a distance for a couple of days and there was no problem, so I said nothing. It was his job, he is running with it.
Spring ran into summer and we shipped the feeder pigs to Manteca for slaughter. The profit margin was not as great as that for beeves, but still, it was a good market and we will do it again next year. We cut the winter wheat and then started right away on the rice, the combines hardly cooled off. We were running short of storage and ended up shipping the red wheat right from the combines.
Uncle Jimmie's boys rigged up some big electric lights and we were able to run the combines up until about midnight each night. It was a good thing, otherwise, we would have gotten caught by the fall rains!
The corn was a bumper crop and there was not enough silo space for it, we had to ship direct from the field for almost half the crop!
Every Sunday after church Jeffery and I listened to a news broadcast on his crystal set. The war was not good and the sickness, they were calling it The Spanish Influenza, was killing folks in Europe. Mr. Wilson was keeping us out of the European conflict, but every-so-often one of our ships would get sunk anyway.
1915 was drawing to a close, it seemed like it went by in a flash. Our children were running all over, it took both Ella May and Jeffery to keep them corralled. I went over the books with Uncle Jeff, he says it is time for him to retire, that his Grandson, Tobias was going to take over. When all the bills were paid, we cleared $4,987,400 for the year. With all the troubles, we elected to increase the reserve in both banks, before counting profit. If war does come to us, we don't want any runs on the banks.
We began 1916 with tragedy, the anti-German feeling was running high in Redding and they burned out four families, only one of whom had German ancestors, Mary and Einer Bloch. All four families had nowhere to go. I sent some hands to Redding in the hay wagon and brought them all to Blount House. Whatever are people thinking of, those were all good folks and had lived in Redding since before we Blounts came from Virginia!
Willie and Joe took over management of Uncle Jimmie's equipment company, since it is part of Blount, Incorporated, the board met and approved the change. Willie would continue as salesman and Joe would manage the shops and repair business. The first thing he did was to fire two of the men who had been involved in burning out the folks in Redding. They were proud of what they had done and bragged about it!
Uncle Jimmie had just signed a contract with the Dodge Brothers to sell their line of heavy-duty farm trucks. Joe drove one home one day, it was a monstrous thing but I could see that it had possibilities, so I immediately ordered three of them for the farms.
We planted every open acre as soon as we could get the plows into the fields. The price of grain had nearly doubled and corn was rising like that hot air balloon at the county fair. It was beginning to look like 1916 would be a good year for us Blounts, all the fields were planted and the fruits had set. Josiah told me he was shipping ten crates of cheese a week and was looking for more help. He had taken over complete management of the swine and had already contracted with Manteca to slaughter them for market. The only worry we had was what we heard on Jeffery's little radio, the war in Europe was spreading as was the influenza.
TBC
Watch for the next episode as Steven Blount faces huge decisions concerning the war and guides the Blount Family and its businesses through war and plague.