ooking back from a lifetime of events, December 7, 1941 did not affect our lives as much as it could have. I had helped my father put up a Christmas tree and we put some lights out along the railing that enclosed a wide porch that went around the front and sides of our old farmhouse. After church that day, I helped him take them all down and he was shipped out to Hawaii a week later!
Living on a farm, we didn't suffer the privations that affected most of the country. My Mother was a compulsive canner, in later years my Dad would complain that the nails were still smoking in the shelves he built when Mom was putting jars of canned fruits and vegetables on them.
Her jams and jellies were to die for!
We had chickens, two cows and a large vegetable garden along with a family orchard to keep us supplied. It is true that even now, I have problem eating chicken, but when my cousins talked of food shortages and "mystery meats" they had lived through in the cities, I guess we had it pretty good.
Mom got in trouble with the Ration Board when she gave an old lady down the road from us, a pound of butter and a dozen eggs. The poor old lady was very ill and Mom thought the butter and eggs would help her.
Richard was my very best friend, we did everything together. Uncle Dick said that he sometimes wondered whose boy belonged to whose house!
Along about the third grade, Richard started to grow tall, he was head and shoulders taller than the rest of us, some smart mouthed boy named him "Hatrack" and it stuck. He was Rack for the rest of his life.
Toys and bicycles and things like that were just not available during the war, but like every old farm, both our places had a "junkpile". Rack and I spent the summer pulling pieces of old metal junk out of those piles until we had enough parts to cobble together two bicycles. They weren't very good, they were more rust than metal and the tires were rotted. We wound old cloth electrician's tape around the tires and they would hold air for a few hours.
There weren't many cars on the roads, gasoline was rationed and many of the men were off to war. It was not common then for a woman to drive, my Mother did, but she was an unusual woman. With so few cars, the roads were reasonably safe for two young boys to be riding their bicycles, not that there was any place for us to go.
The summer between the third and fourth grade, I was 8 years old and we thought were immortal! Mr. Leuhman, down at the end of the county road, had been telling us boys to stay out of his apples.
He had a whole orchard of golden delicious apples. His own sons had been drafted into the Army and he was farming his place by himself and one hired man.
We could see those apples from our wading pond, I don't know who first thought of liberating a few of those captive apples, but the longer Rack and I thought about them, the sweeter those apples sounded. He surely wouldn't miss a couple, would he?
One summer afternoon, we slipped under the wire of Mr. Leuhman's fence and grabbed enough apples to fill the front of our shirts.
We ran like bunny rabbits for the fence, just as we ducked under the fence wire, there was an awful bang and I felt like I had been whacked with a club.
Old Man Leuhman was screaming like a madman about staying out of his apples and waving a shotgun in our direction! Blood was running down my leg and so did Rack.
We got no sympathy at home and I bear a scar of that rock salt to this day, almost 70 years later.
My Mother became active in a ladies group, it was probably the USO. When wounded soldiers started coming back from the War, military hospitals soon became overcrowded.
My Mother offered our equipment barn for those soldiers who needed recovery, but did not need to be in a hospital. It was a huge old redwood barn with oak flooring, the Army sent a detail of soldiers to clean it out and set up cots.
There was a toilet and bathroom in the hired man's apartment, he moved out into one of the picker's cottages and his facilities were made available to the soldiers.
Staff Sergeant Ben Manning arrived with twenty walking wounded soldiers, marines and sailors. At first, there was going to be an Army Mess, but Mom took one look at what they were going to feed "those boys" and she, with help from neighbor ladies, started feeding them.
I remember that some officer from the Army tried to argue with her, I had already learned that was a NO-NO!
Those soldiers had been hurt, inside and out, many would cry all night long. Rack was at my house as often as I was at his and we would lay in my bed listening to those young men crying and sobbing, some seemed hardly older than ourselves.
It was summer and we had all the windows open, sometimes Rack and I couldn't stand it, we would get up and sneak out the window. We would go to the barn and hold their hands as they cried out their terrors.
Sergeant Ben was supposed to chase us away, but those soldiers would hang on to us, Rack and myself, afraid to be left alone. Ben would just turn away and pretend he hadn't seen us.
My Dad came home for a short stay in the spring of 1944. It was great, I was 7 years old and trying to become a big boy. We played ball, went fishing and did all kinds of DAD-SON things!
I was heartbroken, in two weeks he had to go back. Uncle Dick did what he could to console me and so did Sgt Ben. I guess it was Uncle Dick who first told me about the responsibilities that a man took on when he became an adult and a father.
I wasn't supposed to ride Old Jake, our horse, but Mom allowed it if there was a soldier walking beside me. They all helped me feel better because Dad had left again.
My sister was born in September of that year and that was a big change in my life.
We had a big crop that summer, the Gonzales' were with us until almost Thanksgiving, trying to get the last of the grapes picked.
Dad was promoted to Major and transferred to Camp Stoneman, near Pittsburg, California. It was close enough that he was able to come home about once a month.
In spring of 1945, Mom was asked to take more soldiers, we suddenly had 60 wounded soldiers and sailors living in our barn. Dad was home for a couple of days and told us that the war in Europe was nearly over, shortly after he had to go back to Camp Stoneman, we heard on the war news that Germany had surrendered.
It really did not mean much to us, Dad was still away and there were still signs on billboards warning of THE YELLOW PERIL, It would have a comic strip Japanese man listening to a group of people talking and a line about Loose Lips Lose Ships on the bottom.
All through the war, we had air raid drills and we had to practice hiding under our desks at school. Mom always told me that, if I was in town, to run to Aunt Ruby's house.
Aunt Ruby was my grandmother's sister, she was a widow and lived alone.
The Napa Box plant had a huge steam whistle on the roof that was also the town's air raid warning alarm. In August, 1945, I was in town with Rack, we each had a quarter and we were going to go to the movie.
It cost a dime to see the movie and a nickel for a bag of popcorn. That would leave us a dime for some candy drops, if they had any.
We had just gotten out of the movie and retrieved our bicycles from the rack, when the steam whistle started to blow. We jumped on our bikes and went racing up the street to Aunt Ruby's house.
People were dancing in the street and singing, nobody seemed afraid. When we got to my Aunt's house, she told us that the war with Japan was over!
Rack and I high-tailed for home, Uncle Dick and Aunt Emma were at our house. Uncle Dick had broken out some of his wine he had hidden under his barn and was serving the soldiers in our barn.
Mom was cooking a turkey in the old wood stove and the ladies who helped Mom feed the soldiers were bringing cakes and pies.
Mom told me to go round up "the boys" and tell them supper was about ready. I found them all, except for Joe Tinker. Joe had been a radioman on a torpedo boat, he was the only survivor. He had lost his left leg and was on crutches, he was only 19 years old at this time.
I finally found him out in the vegetable garden, sitting on the ground and crying. He looked at me and cried even harder, "They are all gone" he kept repeating. I was 8 years old and not very big, it was all I could do to get him up and on his crutches.
Sgt. Ben came out and helped me with him, we got him back to the barn and washed his face and hands.
I carried a plate to him, I even snagged a turkey drumstick for him.
Joe was one of the last to leave us, he stayed until almost the summer of 1946. He married a girl in Vallejo, about 20 miles away.
Dad stayed in the Army until the spring of 1947. I was 10 years old and we were all anxious for Dad to be home. One of the first things he did was to tear down the old house. We moved into a trailer while the new house was being built. Over the years, the well had gone dry several times, so he also had the water tank torn down and a new deep well drilled.
The construction went slow, getting good carpenters was almost impossible and Great Uncle Henry's health was failing, so Dad had to take up farming again almost the minute he got home. We spent Christmas in that trailer and by Easter, Mom had all the trailer she was going to stand for.
Even Rack found someplace else to be when my Mom was on the warpath!
They tacked up old bedsheets on the studs and made rooms. The night before Easter Sunday, we slept in the new house for the first time.
As the war years closed, rationing ended and consumer goods began to flood the markets. The last years of the 1940s and first few years of the 1950s were good to us boys, Rack and I got new bicycles and Dad introduced me to reading - he bought me a set of the Hardy Boy's Mysteries. I was hooked; I could hardly lift my nose out of those books!