Old-Time Wagons

Easpen-shed like H.S. Wade's
Peler Shetler Wagon
Oliver Wagon
Studebaker Wagon

THE WORMY CANDY

Back in the early 1930's Herman and I would go to Gilmer to hunt Coke bottles and never find one. They would bring 1 penny down in Silver Alley. An old Jew man in a shoe shop payed 1 penny for a bottle I think to help poor kids. We would search all over town and never find one Coke bottle any place. Not one cent was to be had in those days. People loved the money that had it and sure wasn't going to share it. Poor people was out of luck. No way to get a penny. Herman would prowl in every box behind every store near the Gilmer Drug which was a variety store. They put boxes out in back with candy with worms in it. Herman ate some and give to me and I of course as a small kid ate it. People now don’t have any idea how hard things was back then. Especially for kids that did not have a thing in the world. People say I know about those things and most of the time they don’t know a thing about the things in that day.

CUTTING WOOD ACROSS CYPRESS CREEK

Daddy and Mr. Harm Goodson had plans to cut wood across Cypress Creek one day. Henry and I were out of school and that meant it was Saturday. I prided myself in being able to drive the two mules and the wagon. Mr. Goodson and my Dad in one wagon and I and Henry in the back wagon. When we got to the creek I thought to myself "that scares me to death." Mr. Goodson had already forded the creek with his wagon. The water coming up on the mule's stomach and it looked a mile wide. In reality I guess it to be 35 to 40 feet wide or 60 feet from slope of the bank to the other slope. I was scared when I looked at the large hole of water, thinking how can I get across.

Dad came back, crawled up on the spring seat, put his right foot on the brake handle, took both hands holding a leather line to guide the mules in each hand. He talked to the mules, applying the brake just right, water up about in the bed of the wagon, crossing with the greatest of ease. Dad knew how to handle the mules, handle the brake, talk to mules where it was easy for them. Pulled out on dry land with seeming much ease.

Now so many times in this life things look so big to us, not knowing how to get across the swollen deep stream of life, but the Master above takes our little wagon in hand and guides it to the safety with ease. Makes us wonder why all the doubt.

Daddy went to ride with Mr. Goodson in the lead wagon and I was still driving our wagon and mules. A little down the road we came to a fork in the small road. Henry said to go to the right, I said we need to go to the left. Henry grabbed one line and pulled the wagon lines to the right, I grabbed the left line and pulled to the left. You would guess it. In about a minute the wagon was right straddle of a large pine stump.

We could not go left or right. I still remember it, it was as though a moment ago.

Dad came back with his ax, lay down in the mud and cut the stump off under the wagon, took the mules and pulled them over and I drove on to cut wood.

But the thing that stayed in my mind all these years, Dad never said one fuss word, not one unkind word, not one word of scolding. But with patience lay in the mud and cut the stump. Hard as everything for him but not an unkind word. Never in my life did he curse.

Isn't that like our loving Lord that helps us so many times, helps us out where we cannot help ourselves. Such a precious friend to call on when we need help. How much each of us in these days need a wagon load of patience as my Dad had and as our Lovely Lord has toward us.

The Wash Pot on the Neighbor's Pole

Back just after the turn of the century before I was born in the Latch Community some of the neighbor men came to Dad’s house one night and told him how funny it would be to carry this wash pot which belongs to your neighbor to the west out here in front of your house down to the next neighbor to the east and climb a pole and put that pot on that high pole. Dad liked funny jokes and agreed to do this stunt. He went out in front and carried it himself and climbed the pole at the neighbor’s house on the west and put the pot firmly on this pole up high in the air.. The next morning and the joke was that the neighbor men had told each neighbor the same thing and each man had carried his own wash pot on his back to his neighbor’s house, climbed the pole at the neighbor’s house and put his own wash pot on this high pole. Of course the men never got over the joke they had played on themselves.

A HILL NAMED "HARVE WADE"

Below our house at Latch was a very steep slick hill in my early childhood. My dad pulled so many mail carriers and other model-T cars up that slick hill with his team of mules until it was known as "Harve Wade Hill" 60 or more years later. I remember in later years that Uncle Clyde Lowe told me of a true incident on the hill. He and Aunt Glad were hauling a bale of cotton to Pritchett with their 2 babies on top of that high bale of unginned cotton. Now think of a wagon about 5 feet off the ground where the bottom of the bed was. Then 2 feet frames on top of this, then 5 more feet of frames on top of this making this very high and an old-time wagon was only about 6 or 7 feet wide. They started up Harve Wade Hill, the mules could not pull the family of 4 people, 1300 lbs. and sometimes 1500 lbs. of unginned cotton, plus the wagon weighed several hundred pounds. About half way up the hill the mules could not pull the heavy load. They began to let the wagon and the Lowe family go back down the hill. The wagon got faster and faster and keep in mind that you don’t guide mules and a wagon backward as you would a car today. The wagon turned over, throwing all the family off in the dangerously awful muddy scary place. The babies and Aunt Glad going all sorts of ways from the top of this high bale of cotton.

To say that they were scared to death was no way to describe it. But after it was all over the babies were ok but scratched up. Aunt Glad scared in an inch of her life and Uncle Clyde likewise.

Dad would often pull people up the hill.....

MY FIRST CASH PAYING JOB

I started school at Latch as a small boy. I don’t know how it ever came about for my cash paying job. The school had a pig that was fed from the scraps that the children threw away from eating at school. I guess they had to feed other than that, I don’t know if so or not. But after I started to school Mr. Bert Elder, Superintendent, asked me and another child to pick up the scraps on school yard each day at noon and we would make 5 cents a week for the job. I thought I would be rich. I did the work and best I can remember I went to the store across the road and got candy with the nickel—an enormous amount of wealth I had honestly attained. I don't know how long I did this job but I remember it as tho just a minute ago when I had my first 5 cent that I earned all by myself. Mind you for a week of work. People now can in no way possibly on the face of the earth know what a nickel was and what it meant.

THE FLOOD AT LATCH

Ellis and LaNell went to school at Latch and Mr. Bert Elder was the Superintendent and Mrs. Ruby Floyd was our teacher. One afternoon when we was in the Baby Ray Primmer it came a flood of rain. The creeks was all out of their banks and running all out in the roads and bottoms. Mr. Burckett came to school with his wagon and mules to get his children and Leon got on the old mule-drawn wagon with Mr. Burkett, about the 4-door neighbor, about two miles from our house where he lived. Dad and Mom thought that Leon would see that little Brother and little Sister would be cared for by big brother Leon, nine years older. But he went in the wagon leaving us two small children to walk in the drenching rain. When we got to the first creek it was all up out of the banks and over the road, the next creek just as high and raging with water. Two bridges being in the curve of the road and 75 to 100 yards apart and water all over the road between the two bridges. The two small children discussed what to do. They said we must get home. They held arm and arm and went 150 yards or more in a curve in the road over two creeks with swift water all around, holding arms. Two children guided as the Bible says by their guiding angel and went safely across the long distance of deep dangerous water. Climbed the Harve Wade clay hill slick with mud and water, blinded by the hard rain and arriving home. Mother almost died. She thought Leon would see about us. But through his neglect and our guardian angel we got home safe. Mother put warm clean dry clothes on us and we were two happy children you must know. Mother was always fearful all our days what could have happened to her only two children that she had at that time.

THE OLD TIME CHOO CHOO TRAIN

People in the early days 60 years ago went to town on business once in a while to borrow money in the spring. The banker was a gangster. He charged 10% to renew the note, 10% interest on the $100 loan and with cotton 5 cents to maybe 10 cents there was no way to win making 3 or 4 bales of cotton for the average family. The cotton gin got $8 and many times $9 and even more. The land owner got, I can’t remember if it was 1/4 of the cotton or 1/3 of the corn or the other way around, but no way to pay out each year.

Anyway, going to town as a small boy Dad would say "stand up here on this spring seat and maybe you will see a train." And once in a while I could see a train. Wasn't many trains in that day and time.

I can still see it coming and it looked to me like lightning puffing black smoke in my day from mostly coal. And making the most racket I ever heard in my life. Then the power of all the 10 or more box cars (mind you 10!) go rambling down the track. Oh, I would be excited beyond words. The old whistle would go "woooh woooh" and could be heard for miles. On certain weather condition days you could hear it clear from Latch to Gilmer. Dad would hear the sound of the whistle and tell what the weather would be.

A SACK OF FLOUR

I am not sure if it was 48 lbs or on sale sometime for 98 cents for a sack of flower. A bushel of large sweet potatoes was 10 cents here and when I was in service in World War II I asked the Mess Sergeant one time what he paid for the jumbo sweet potatoes. He said $12.50 per bushel. People like J.R. Penn and people like that got immensely wealthy off the poor old farmers that could not help themselves. Many times, in fact all the time, there was a line of people grading potatoes for the farmer and almost nothing passed as #1. Another line of people twenty feet away regarding the same potatoes for shipment from old thief Penn and almost every potato was #1 and being shipped at a very large price indeed. A thief and robber if there ever was one.

COTTON BUYERS

J.R. Penn and Wiley Wall and of course others was the cotton buyers and, of course, purchased the bales of cotton from the poor old farmers. They would take the sample that was pulled from the bale, about six inches in diameter and fifteen inch long rolled in a brown cover or plain wrapping paper, pull the beautiful long staple cotton between two thumbs and two forefingers. "This cotton is awful trashy, but I will give you thus and so." Or "this sure is dirty cotton but I will give" and was almost nothing for beautiful long stape cotton, never so pretty in the world.

THE BLACKSMITH

The leading blacksmith shop in Gilmer was Reeves on the corner where Modern Cleaners was for many years. On the corner East of Arnold’s Furniture where the Chamber of Commerce is now was a place to tie the mules and wagons to stay as well as a small mule lot for trading mules. Very few horses was used because they required many a times the amount of feed as a mule to be cared for. As you went into shop from the side alley (east side), now behind what was then Douphrate Hardware Store and just up next door or two now is Gilmer Drug and also at Gilmer Drug was a Mr. Arthur Mulinax there that Dad went to school with. Many times a druggist was almost as good as a doctor. Back to the shop, inside the door was the large place where the extra large bellows blowed the air into the center of the coal in the forge and make the plow point white hot. The smith could weld with the old-time forge. He could weld a new point on a plow point. He could shoe a mule. How they could hold the hind leg of a kicking mule between their knees and hammer a horse shoe was and is still a mystery to me. I loved the smell of the coal smoke. I can still hear the ring-a-ding tap, a tapp tapp, ring-a-ring-ding tune that the smith made with the hammer on the old anvil. They had some how a power hammer, I don't know how they were powered, to operate.

But most likely by the long power shaft that operated the Gristmill. But when the power hammer beat out hard to beat plows that was a tremendous beating on a plow point. The smith could put an edge on the plow and put the metal temper in it where it would stand to cut into the ground through the whole farming season. I can still see them. They got the plow sharp, then white hot in the bellows-blown coal and then beat it sharper to a point then white hot again, then dip a little into the old wooden barrel of water nearby. Sometime a 1/2 barrel for him to use easily. He knew how to dip once lightly, next a little longer, then several dips into the water at the correct intervals and put the blue color right out on the end of that plow point. He knew how to do it. The heal sweep was the wide or various sized wing say pieces of steel with a scooter point in the center of the heal sweep. Sometime a narrow 2 inch scooter or maybe up to 6 inches wide scooter point. This cut the way, opened the way, where the sweep could shovel the soil right up under the cotton or corn. My dad used 4 plows on a 2 mule cultivator that plowed each side of the row and plowed the middle out all in one trip up the row of cotton, sweeping up that cotton or corn where I or my sister, Nell, had lots less hoeing to do to keep out grass and weeds with the old goose-neck hoe. He really knew how to plow. Many people plowed one side, then the other side with the little single mule georgie stock and plow out the middles with a larger sweep and scooter plow to clean the loosened dirt in the middles for corn or cotton or other farm products.

GOING TO THE GIN

Going to the gin was a lot of fun. After a bale of cotton was hand picked, Dad would let me go to the gin with him to get the cotton ginned. I suppose we went to Pritchett Gin while at Latch. However there was a gin just in front and down the road toward Gilmer 100 yards from Tom Petty’s later store. I cannot remember any events there. At Simmons County Line we went some of the time to the Grayston Gin owner northwest of Ashland. I remember it was a fairly good-size town. I was small. The gin owner was peeling an apple and I guess I looked toooo hard as a 9 or 10 year old child because he cut it in half and gave half of the best apple I ever had in my life.

The old gin owners up in Gilmer would give the farmer a free lunch ticket for his dinner because it usually took all day and into all hours of the night to get home after getting the cotton ginned. The old-time gin owner I suspect was a crook. They had cotton seed, and cotton running at all times into another part of the gin building from a farmer and not going into his cotton seed part or his ginned bale of cotton. Take for example 1,200 lbs. of cotton and many times 500 lb. bale of cotton and 400 lbs. of cotton seed. Where did the other several hundred lbs. go? The gin owner said oh that was dirt. Not so, because people picked cotton clean. They would say hulls. Not so, because no one put hulls in the cotton in that day and time.

To put our head up in the 14" suction pipe that pulled the cotton into the gin would pull all your hair straight up and the kids would like that. The farmer got his lunch order for a 15 cent bowl of chili at the restaurant. Once where Nelms Novelty and Gift Shop is now, another one where Western Auto is now. I was in them many times, even tho I never got a bowl of the wonderful chili. The old time cook knew what to do and how to do it. It was out of this world. It was a very large bowl. With crackers and catsup. The building was about ten or twelve feet wide and about twenty-five feet long.

Always a tin building and hot was no word for it. No ceiling as a rule. Single plank 12" plank walls. Tin top and hot with the wood cooking stove in the rear. As you would enter there was a narrow walkway. Simple stay-in-one place stools with no back on them along a wooden counter and behind it was room enough for the restaurant owner to talk and maybe have a make-shift shelf or two behind him with maybe candy. The old-time sody pop was good. Cold! They had 2 ice plants, one in front of Economy and later one where Gilmer Feed and Fertilizer was located in later years. A big bottle of sody pop as known in that day was a nickel. It was all the average man could eat.

Some restaurants had stew but they could make that at home. I suppose they served coffee but they wanted something they could not get at home. A very large bar of candy Three Musketeer with three colors, three flavors and three separate bars were so wonderfully tasty for a nickel. Later years had a bakery next door to the youth hall where the First Baptist has a two story building now. They had three cinnamon roles for a dime. Piled it seemed an inch high with icing and the best thing anyone ever eat. In later years when I went to CCC I would go there and get three of them for a dime and go to the picture show for a dime and have a nice time. Before that I never had a dime scarcely in my life. Money was unheard of by children and scarce for everyone.

Going to the Grist Mill

One of the most wonderful things we ever did back on the farm was going to the Grist Mill after shelling the corn. Back before I was large enough to use the corn sheller I went with Dad to Reaves Blacksmith Shop where the Grist Mill was located. I was a very tiny child. Round the corner was Douphrates Hardware, in front of where J.B. White Co. is now is still a high walk way and down near where Modern Cleaner's was for a very long time in front of Nelms Music Store. Somehow as a tiny child I wandered up those high steps and got somewhere up that very long distance toward Douphrates. Gilmer Drug was 1st or 2nd door down from Douphrates so you see it was near the corner across in front of where the First National Bank was located for many years. I wandered up those high steps and got lost from Daddy—Mother may have been along although I can't remember that. Any way, I was lost. I cried and was scared to death. I don't think I was more fearful in my life than this experience as a small child, probably one of the earliest things I can remember about my youth.

My Dad and My Football at East Mountain

What my Dad did back in the fall of 1937 was utterly unheard of in that day and in that time. Farm people had to use the children to get the cotton planted and all the way until it was completely picked and ginned and sold in the fall of the year.

In the fall of 1937, East Mountain School Principal D. T. Loyd came over and I suppose others and told Dad that I could sleep in the school, or in the gym, and they would give me a job on Saturday making I think it was ‘bout $10 a day and free food at the little cafe just down from the old Teacherage at the school. I had any food I wanted and within a short time when we weighed in for football I weighed 168 which was unheard of for me. Before that I was skin and bones.

I got a football letter and played on the first team for the 1937 season but for the 1938 season a much larger, taller, heavier Lamont Henson played my position as right tackle. The first game I had, a thin pad came out of my uniform and almost time for the game to start. Coach Buchanan sent in Henson and I just barely lettered my Senior year had it not been for Henson sick for the last game giving me 4 quarters. We had to have 20 quarters to letter.

But back to Dad. He stayed on the John Lantrip place in lower Mings Chapel community and picked cotton with my sister after school a little, gathered the corn, did all the work so I could play football. That was never heard of in that day and time for a farm family to do this.

After football season I would go to the typing room and take typing lessons on my own. The book was there. Then when I went in CCC I did same thing whenever I could take extra typing lessons on my own. Then when I went in the Air Force in World War II I got an office job, and probably had it not been for Dad sending me to East Mountain to play football and lots of other things I would have been in the walking army and, of course, almost none of them returned home. So after it was all over the whole thing and the Lord saved my life no doubt.

THE FUNNIEST THING

My brother, Truman, here a few days ago told me this story. I was in the Air Force in World War II. Dad was night watching for a big swabbing truck working just a small distance west of our house at East Mountain. One night it came a hard rain. The swabbing truck did not have a regular windshield. Dad went a small distance up the way to a small house on the premises of the cemetery half a mile west of our house. After the rain ended Dad came out of the cemetery and just as he rounded a curve in the road a little distance from the swabbing truck another man was rounding the curve way late at night near the cemetery. Seeing Dad come out of the cemetery he was of course scared half to death. He stopped and looked at Dad. Dad stopped and looked at the man in the crook of the road. Finally Dad waved his arms upward and you never saw such running in your life as this poor man did, as he would guess a ghost out of the cemetery was about to get him. Of course, Dad loved to joke and enjoyed telling this later.

Another time a prowler was trying to steal gasoline from the swabbing truck. The war was on and no one had gasoline. Dad eased around where he would get a nice piece of wood and banged with all his might the large metal container at the oil well that held a lot of fresh oil out of the oil well when working. When Dad hit the metal tank with all his might the man made tracks and tore up the place trying to make tracks. He did not know there was a night watchman on the job. Dad would tell of this and laugh about scaring the man almost to death.

WORKING MP DUTY ON THE HIGH SEAS

I was chosen as Sergeant and a minor few other boys were selected as MP on the huge ship going overseas. This was the luckiest thing that could happen to me. I could roam that extra large five deck ship day by day, any place I wished to go. Otherwise I would have been confined to one part (L) side of the aft deck as the only view of the water. Sometime it was glassy still. Looking like an endless beautiful mirror that never had no end. Many times as MP I stood on the bow and watched the sail fish.

They would rise out of the water by the hundreds and looked as if they would sail 200 or maybe 400 yards long out of the water, three feet above the water. I judged them being the size of a man's hand. They were jumping like hundreds of grasshoppers, a beautiful sight to see.

I never once understood it. It is said that the sail fish has no wings. They get such extraordinary speed swimming they can fly about the water. Once I saw a large fish, only part of his back. It was larger than the top of any large auto. And mind you, this was just part of a large fish.

We narrowly passed the Hawaiian Isles. I wished then I could have seen the islands. We docked at French Haven, maybe Hoven (the way it sounded) Harbor at New Guinea. All I could ever see was a mass of jungle. Surely some place out there was a road. But did not show from the tiny port. One small motorboat (sea faring) came up to the ship. As far as I could tell no one got off the ship or on the ship. I am sure they were waiting to see if we would go on shore there.

We stayed as best I remember at French Hoven Harbor a day or day and a half. As we sailed up the northern way we had no way of knowing where we were going. In a few days we passed Corrigedor Island. This was the most severe bloody battles in the Pacific in World War II. We had a 1st Sergeant that was there. This made it of interest to me since I worked a bunch of air bases in the office of this Corrigedor Charlie as he was called, and he would talk of the battles from time to time.

Manila Harbor is just right there a mile, I guess, from Corrigedor. As the huge ship entered the extra large harbor of Manila the ship had to zig-zag to miss the endless sunken war ships and ocean-going ships that were sunk in Manila Harbor. It looked to be maybe a hundred or more. Some standing on end, part sticking out of the water. Some on side partly afloat. Endless ways the large ships were sunk in the extra large harbor.

The ship was anchored some 300 or so yards in Manila Harbor and there were several small home-made kayak boats below with Filipino men making a killing from the ship. The Filipinos would do their best to sail or throw a banana upward to the man on deck that throwed him a pack of cigarettes. I did not smoke but to us they were 5 cents a pack. The Filipinos could get at least 50 cents or more for that pack. He got endless packs of cigarettes because each one wanted the banana and it was a thing of skill for this little man to throw the banana up to the giver of the cigarettes. He did his best to give to any that gave to him. It was something to see.

MEMBER OF NEPTUNE

When we crossed the equator going over seas we were issued a card saying we were a member of the "Club of Neptune." In olden times when the men crossed the equator they initiated them something fierce in order for the card to be given. In fact they beat the poor fellows almost to death in some cases, saying it was all in fun. I never saw any fun in doing something that caused excess pain to another man. When we crossed the sun was so hot because we were so close to it until a man just about could not stay outside in the burning heat. I don’t think I ever felt more burning sun heat. But with over 5,000 Air Force men, 500 or more nurses on board the huge SS Lurline, the few hundred sailors could hardly initiate us boys in original manner to the Neptune Club.

OVERSEAS AT MANILA

When we landed at Manila in the Philippines the fighting was only seven miles away. We could see the planes diving down just over the mountain a very short ways away. We could hear the guns very plainly. I don’t think I was as brave as my Dad. I did not go to the front line to see the action. Even though some of the soldier boys did exactly that. But if I had went to the front to see the war it would be a direct violation of orders. We were expressly forbidden to do this.

When we got to the little camp just outside Manila, many of the boys started to look around the campsite. And of course right there at camp were bones of the dead Jap soldiers. The bulldozers had worked at it but quite a lot of the bones were still laying exposed. Maybe a leg bone here, an arm bone there and on and on. But the thing I never did understand was that the Japs slipped into the camp each night to steal food. Our side knew this. Still I don’t remember ever seeing a single guard on duty. But back in Biloxi, Mississippi there was a guard on every corner, near the quartermaster and all the supplies for the air base. But there at the action in the Philippines not a guard any place. And us sleeping in open-sided tents each night.

I may have been a poor soldier in some ways but I am sure of one thing. I never knowingly or willingly disobeyed a direct order. In the first place, they could strip your stripes so quick a Sergeant wouldn't know the stripes went. In the second place, no use to invite trouble. There was trouble enough without inviting extra trouble.

Speaking of trouble. I almost always made payroll for officers and in many cases for enlisted men. Officers never once gave me the slightest trouble. But the enlisted men, boy they were trouble in the camp, especially if a mistake was made in their payroll.

The ship was possibly half a mile out at sea. A smaller ship or boat carried us to shore at Manila Bay Harbor. Along the sea had a concrete wall to break the waves as they come in from the ocean. Purchased, of course, before the war with U.S. dollars. We all hovered round as best we could looking all about. A quick shower of rain came quickly upon us. We reached into our two barracks bags that carried all in the world that we owned and got out our ponchos. That was a flat large piece of waterproofing that had a hole in the center to stick your head through. Nearby was some bar ditches alongside the street. Many of the endless Filipino children were swimming naked in the water. Later months I saw an elderly woman in town with nothing above the waist. I saw two grown girls from a distance once that had no cover on top. Once I saw a hunting party of old men, young kids, children—looked like perhaps 15 people. They had some makeshift knives, home-made bows and arrows. No firearms. The city of Manila was ravished by the war. I saw concrete slabs, long and large, side to side as a whole city block that originally was a roof of a government building lay flat on the ground. What was trolley cars were destroyed, with each tiny splinter of wood chipped out by hand to cook on open fire in bamboo huts. The corner poles were large, making a framework. Enough room underneath for Caribou, chickens, hogs, or carriage or whatever they might have. Using bathroom above and falling through the bamboo floor on the ground below. Rooms were about twenty feet square with no headboard for a bed. No furniture. Cooked under open gallery or porch in an open campfire arrangement up on the bamboo floor five feet above the ground. No soap unless begged from a GI soldier.

Washed clothes in open running, shallow water small streams.

If there was soap using it, then beating the article of clothing on a rock stream. Turning the thing to be washed, dipping into the water and beating with a home-made paddle until it was clean. Some of the boys sent laundry to be washed. They got it clean. But even so, disease was so prevalent until they contacted disease even in the wash. The place they washed and the place dipping up water to drink went right into the same little stream. I saw an old fellow on the streets right in downtown Manila one man haul out his privacy and wet the street in front of all. Another time in the air base a woman was in the center of a large bunch of men and within ten feet I am sure. She spraddled slightly and wet the ground. I said to myself this just can’t be what I think it is. I walked over and the ground where she was was wet. Some of the boys told of how of times they sat on the outside toilets and a Filipino woman came by and talked to him as he used it. They live different to say the least. Many times when we were just out of Manila about three or maybe four miles, men and sometimes women would pass the camp with what we would call a small pole or switch with a very large bundle over his back or on his head carrying it in a sort of trot and if heavy they sorta bounced up and down as they would go in a slow run carrying the extra large bundle of sticks for cooking their food in the city. I first saw it and did not know what on earth it was and why.

One girl told us one time that she would be rich when she got married. Her dad was to give her a caribou. This nice animal pulled the plow, pulled the home-made bamboo carriage with extra large wooden wheels, which we saw very few of after the Japs left there. Very few cars. An old jalopy came down the street in Manila one day with beautiful mahogany planks as sideboards. I almost died. As our truck convoy drove most of the day winding up and down Luzon the day we left there we passed endless miles of the most beautiful mahogany trees, tall and straight. Someone after the war went in there and made a killing on this timber. It was beautiful beyond words. When I was on the Island of Luzon there was almost no work animals such as caribou, hardly any chickens. I don’t think I ever saw a pig. The Japs took everything, giving invasion money for all. When I walked the streets of Manila I could have picked up a barrel of the invasion money. I did get some, but afraid of disease for much.

I tell the world, I never did a thing I could not sit down and tell my dear mother about. I never once went downtown Manila at night. I was told that there was children all over who would approach soldiers, sailors an say "screw my sister 10 pesos"— $5 and likely in most cases it was his mother he was a pimp for. I was told that some of the most well-known soldiers would line up a block, city block mind you, to get into a whore house. Oh what if I had been one of those bringing a disease back that would pass on to my precious children here. Or what if I left behind one of my own children. A son or daughter to be raised in that mess.

I went overseas leaving April 17 from the San Francisco Harbor. 1945 was the year, being late in he war. I lived in a great deal of fear in those early years of going overseas. Then when I went overseas I don’t think I was ever one time fearful. I was too terribly lonely to be afraid. The fear was pushed out with this empty feeling of utter loneliness.

After we left Clark Field going several miles, quite a long distance up from Luzon to another air base, I was making payrolls of course as most of my time in the service. The Pay Officer took me a long distance up to the finance office.

I am sure he had a driver for the two of us. I don't seem to remember but I am sure he and I had heavy gun belts and a large pistol as we went to the finance office a long several hours from our base. You see I was a non-commissioned officer. He was a commissioned officer. He did the actual handing out the money from the payroll, figured the finance office, after I typed it up. But as we traveled we went through several small towns. Also one very large town. It was good. Because nothing was cold back at camp. On side of road was little stands with the most beautiful hand-made small cedar chest, probably mahogany chest, most beautifully decorated, all by hand. Many other hand-made items. While at the finance office I got real Jap, Chinese, Australian coins and money in exchange for my money and, of course, I still have these coins. Maybe worth a great deal of money even now.

The endless children, the starving children always coming into camp begging for anything we had left from eating. A gristle of meat that we did not want was a feast to the little skeletons. It finally got to be such a disease threat they carried the garbage cans down a half mile from the camp. I would see, looked as if a hundred of the little starving skeleton children running back and forth with cans discarded from the camp as their eating vessel. It was a pitiful sight to see.

Sergeant of the Guard

I was working as Sergeant of the Guard at our squadron one night. I don’t know just how this happened for me to be doing this. I seldom worked MP duty. There was a shot in the near distance from our camp. Remember, the war was on and the hills and jungle were full of scattered Jap soldiers and if they could have regained any strength at all they would have come in force at us, of course. Anyhow, the Officer of the day (commissioned officer) gave orders to hand out the rifles to each man. I was really handing them out in haste. And in haste I was pointing each rifle straight at each of our men as I handed it to him. That, of course, was bad judgment. The officer was very kind, instructing me to hand with two hands across his breast and for him to receive the rifle with both hands. Afterwards I thought how foolish I was to do this this way. But as it happened Filipino Home Guard went arms length from each other and went all around and around the camp searching for the source of the shot.

One afternoon after work a few of the boys said lets go to the whore house at the edge of the camp. Explaining none of us would go in. You bet your life none of our bunch went in. Why we ever did this I will never know. We was about 8 strong, maybe 9. We went up the bamboo ladder to the floor part, five or maybe six feet off the ground. We sat on the edge of the bamboo ledge around the porch section. We would see ten feet away where they cooked on a tiny campfire so to speak, open-flame on the bamboo floor with dirt over bamboo. One of the ugliest little girls come out and kept trying to kiss one boy. He always pulled away. Her teeth and mouth was pitiful to see. She needed endless dental work. But the boy sure pulled back. One chinese girl came out of one room and greeted a soldier boy going into her room. He was too fine to be there. The girl was very nice looking. I will never on earth know why we went down there but none of our bunch went in. Went only to look. Why? No one ever knew why.

Leaving Manila

We got up early, packed and went down to the civilian tiny little choo choo train to ride up to Clark Field to be stationed there. We rode in these tiny cars with plank seats, no padding. Very slow. Anyone could have trotted on foot and about kept up with the train.

We went winding through much dense endless jungle and bamboo villages and houses like thousands of years ago. One Filipino man had a small baby boy with no clothing. He stroked the baby's penus, I guess most all the day to keep the baby still. What a custom they have!

Clark Field is probably the most publicized air field in the world in many of the years since World War II. We was in tents on the edge of Clark Air Field. We lived along side by side the bamboo huts. One tent or maybe two and a hut and on and on. They came to our tent one day asking for volunteers to work KP. Probably would have gotten us even if we didn't volunteer. I sure was proud for the trade. The cooks as was promised to us in advance gave us fresh fried eggs and all the nice things you can think of to eat each AM, while other soldiers had sort of a get-by things to eat. We went a while and worked a while at each of the three meals each day. I really was proud of this trade. Worked out great. Never would I ever think I would like working KP.

Back in Biloxi, Mississippi we worked KP from 3 AM until 9 PM one Thanksgiving. It had to be in 1941. My job was to keep a burning fire out in the all day-long rain to wash mess kits and scald after each meal. This KP wasn't so much fun.

The Philippine girls would bring nice bananas to our camp and sometimes give a small one and say "this is for friendship."

STORM ON OKINAWA

After we left the Philippines we went to Okinawa about 300 miles from the mainland of Japan. One night there came a bad storm in the night. Seems that all things that happen always happen at night if it is bad. They call them a typhoon over there. The wind did blow something fierce. The only name I can come up with is Sgt. Okeef. He and I set out to save our large tent, where about maybe twenty men would sleep at night. The storm was awful. We would go out in the blinding rain and terribly strong wind and reset the stakes that held the ropes for our tent. Finally it looked as tho’ the tent was going over in spite of all. We set out to dig a hole in the center of one end of the tent that held the main part of the tent in the center. This pole was leaning awful bad and next would pull out our ground stakes that held the ground ropes and stakes that held the large tent. We really dug. Once I screamed for another man or two to come help dig this hole to keep the center main pole upright to save our tent. I don’t remember ever screaming at any man any other time, even tho' I was a sergeant. We finally got the center large pole stabilized, then looked just as tho' the main stakes outside would pull out of the ground. We rushed out in the terribly bad rain and wind. Putting up the new stake positions. Just as we returned inside the tent an extra-large piece of sheet metal came across flying like a bullet. Hitting on the side of the tent just exactly where we had just been working. No doubt could have crippled us for life.

After the storm was over a young soldier boy asked if he could sleep on the foot of my bed, with his head about half way up the cot and his feet hanging off the ground. Isn't it nice to share after the storm passes by?

The next morning out of hundreds of large tents in the area ours and one more was all that was standing. Quite an accomplishment for us two mainly that saved our possessions, pictures, etc.

After this many of the boys built a pole barricade inside the big tent covering it with the old torn up tents, leaving it well posted into the ground and extra ropes well secured in case of another typhoon.

Acts 27 Chapter, Apostle Paul tells of the storm. After the storm all was safe. The storms may rage in this life but with the captain Jesus on board all is safe and secure and what comfort it brings at the end of the dangerous storm.

When there is no way to see one’s people then the pictures of the loved ones become very precious. Who knows what will happen overseas, and never return, then the pictures become more valuable than any other thing. Any tangible thing.

WHEN ALL HOPE IS GONE ACTS CH. 27

POEM BY ELLIS W. WADE

We're often tossed on life's troubled sea
And fall on troubled knees,
Adrift as the restless tide
Not knowing the direction of life’s tide.

Then the tide of life draws us out with the wave
OUT-OUT we drift not knowing how to be saved.
Troubled with the heavier waves
As we are adrift with the hopeless waves.

As we drift—"A-HOY" is the voice
Jesus is walking the tumult waves
A-Hoy, quite welcome aboard He calls.
We listen! YES it IS THE MASTER.

We say welcome aboard KIND MASTER.
Take our ship in toe,
Take us safely to the shore
NOTICE! LISTEN!!! THE GREAT CALM.

Yes there is PEACE ABOARD
Calmly He guides us back on board.
THEN at last SAFE back to shore.
ALL BECAUSE THE GREAT MASTER CAME ONBOARD (our boat of life)