MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH DEATH

My grandparents on my dad's side of the family came to visit us when we lived out in the county near Willows, California in 1951 or 1952.  I was six or seven years old.   My parents and grandparents were out in the kitchen enjoying a drink, probably some sort of mixed drink.   I remember it being dark outside when there was a knock on the door.  It was a telegram delivered by Western Union to my grandmother.  It was very uncommon to see an adult cry back in those days or show any emotions, except maybe anger.   After my grandmother opened the telegram she went into the living room by herself and started crying.   I walked up to her and asked what was wrong and she told me her sister in Canada has died.   Without giving it much thought, I told her we are all going to die sometime.   For some reason that brought a smile to her face.  Years later, when I was older she reminded of that and how she thought it gave her a little joy during a sad time.  

GRANDSON SAM AND HIS HALLOWEEN CANDY

 After collecting his Halloween candy from hitting the streets of his neighborhood, Sam became sick for a few days and did not have a desire to eat any of it, so his parents set it aside.    While Sam was recovering his parent sampled a few pieces of his candy thinking he would not notice what was missing when he felt better.   When Sam did feel better he asked for his candy and sure enough he noticed there was some missing pieces and asked where they were.  His mother had to confess.   Sam became a little upset and with a parental tone told his mother they should have asked him first before doing what they did.  Not bad for a four and a half year old-right?  

THE PERPETUAL QUESTION WE WERE ASKED AS KIDS

What do you want to be when you grow up?   I remember being asked this question in my early years in grade school.   It seemed to be the first question an adult would ask when you first met them.   If you answered, " I don't know" they kind of frowned at you like something was wrong with you?   In my later years in grade school and high school my answer was, 'I want to be a farmer or do forestry work and that seem to satisfy them.   In my working years farming and forestry was actually what I did.  

If I had it to do over again I would say, "I don't want to grow up, just let me be a kid for now.  

GUNS, PICKUP TRUCKS AND TEENAGE COUNTRY LIFE

The culture for most teenage boys living in small farming towns across the country was and might still be all the same involving driving pickup trucks, hunting and fishing during their free time.  The small northern California town of Willows, where I was raised was no exception.   Hunting pheasants and geese was common in the fall and winter.  Fishing and swimming in the creeks and the Sacramento River were the favorite past time in the summer.   To get to all these places required a pick up truck, since we were beyond the age of riding our bikes.   With a learners permit at the age of 15 and half I learned to drive our 1951 Ford Pickup with a three speed stick shift.   My mother supervised and would let me drive it to the dump whenever our garbage cans were full, usually every two weeks.    After I got my driver license at the age of 16, I was on my own with driving, whenever the pickup truck was available.   On one occasion my friend Alan and I drove out in the hills with our .22 rifles in the truck.  We were driving up the Clark Valley Road and stopped to shot at something from the truck.   All of sudden a California Highway Patrol car pulled up along the side of the pickup and the officers told us not to shot from the truck and drove off ahead of us.   We were so stunned and relieved that we were not issued a citation.  We continued our drive and never touched the guns again until we got home.     

SCHOOL LUNCH

 The school cafeteria for the Sycamore Grammar School was located in the basement.     Lunch cost 25 cents and a girl in the upper grades would collect your money or a lunch token before you picked up a metal tray, eating utensils and proceeded to a counter where the ladies that did the cooking served you.   There were gray wooden tables to eat on with wooden benches.    The weekly menu was always the same--hot dogs on Monday, chili beans on Wednesday, fish sticks on Friday and always a small carton of milk.  Don't remember what there was on Tuesday or Thursdays, do remember sloppy joes sometimes.   Side dishes were canned fruit, canned vegetables, a chunk of cheese and some kind of dessert, such as cookies or a fruit crisp of some kind.     

When the lunch bell rang there was a mad rush to get in the line and beat the crowd.   Depending on where your classroom was determined your place in line.   Some kids would cut in line and cause a fight.  One of the girls collecting the lunch money would let me keep my quarter as I think she had a crush on me, but looking back I think she did that to some of the other boys too.  

The school had grades 4th through the 8th.   Many of the farm kids brought their own lunches, since many lived on dairy farms and had been up early milking cows and did not want to wait in line or could not afford the 25 cents.   Sometimes kids would trade food with those that had box lunches, the Hostess Cupcakes were popular as a trading item.  

I do remember a food fight once.  Some kid started throwing something, then everybody was throwing food until the school janitor ran everybody outside.   It was not a pretty scene.  

The teachers ate in the teacher's lounge where there was a glass window on the door, but the cigarette smoke clouded up the window so bad nobody could look in.  

After lunch we would retreat outside for noon recess or go use the restrooms, which were a disaster as some kids never flushed the toilets or there was a mess on the floor from plugged toilets.  It was better to use the restrooms after lunch then before not to spoil your appetite.   The poor school janitor could not keep up with it all.  

MY DAD THE SCOUT MASTER

My dad took over as scout master after no other fathers volunteered for the job.  The previous scout master had to resign due to the closure of the Sears store in Willows, where he worked and was offered a transfer to a store in another town.   My dad had never been a Boy Scout and received very little training, if any that I remember.    He was given a brief case with Boy Scout manuals, badges and keys to the Boy Scout Hall in town.  Meetings were held once a month during the school year.  The Boy Scout Hall was an old one room building with some benches, a table or two, some camping equipment and a foot locker containing boxing gloves.    My dad enjoyed boxing and watching the Friday Night fights on TV back in the 1950's.    He was known for getting in a fight or two himself  in some of the local taverns.   Except for planning the next camping trip, he usually never had a formal agenda for the monthly meetings, so he would have us put on the boxing gloves and proceed to spend the evening beating each other up.   

There is only two camping trips I remember.   One was up in the hills west of Willows at a country park next to Stony Gorge Reservoir.   The only high point of that trip I remember was crossing Stony Creek, where we all had to hang on to each others arms as we made our way across the swift current in knee deep water.   We may have been returning from the store in the small nearby community of Elk Creek.  The second camping trip was for a weekend on a ranch, I think was in the foothills of the Sierra's.  Some of the other fathers came along.   This ranch may have belong to one of them or was leased, not sure.    What I do remember, is one night the men got to playing cards and drinking whiskey in the ranch house as us Boy Scouts were out climbing around the hills with no supervision most of the night.   I remember climbing up a cliff as rocks from above were roiling down on us.   It is probably a miracle we all survived that trip.    

For a week one summer some of us went to Boy Scout Camp at Camp Lassen, near Butte Meadows.   This camp was operated by a well trained staff with an agenda, including swimming, canoeing, hiking, camp cooking lessons, earning merit badges and learning how to survive in the woods.   We slept in huts, ate in a formal dinning hall and were supervised from sun up to sun set.    There was no chaos in this camp.   By June of 1959 most of us were leaving grammar school and our days in the Boy Scouts came to an end.

LIFE THEN AND NOW

 Most of my ancestors were farmers in eastern Canada after migrating from Ireland in the 1840s.   They raised much of what they ate and traded or sold the surplus to neighbors, the local market, including the grain miller, distillery, and butcher.    They had some milk cows, a garden, fruit trees, butchered their own livestock, chickens, and sometimes feasted on wild game.    Much of the excess fruit, mostly apples were made into cider, the fermented type to add a little cheer to their lives.   Life was not easy as they usually worked from sun up to sundown.    Sunday was usually a day of rest and the only time to socially gather with others at church.  Getting there involved hitching a wagon to horses and traveling over a muddy trail to the nearest settlement 5 to 10 miles from home.   After church and depending on the weather people would assemble for a picnic, men would barter over the price of a cow, talk about their crops and maybe share some of their homemade beverages.  Women talked about when they were expecting their next child.

Women married young, had many children, and spent many hours cooking over a wood stove, washing clothes in a tub, and doing some of the outside chores in addition to tending the younger children.   The older children helped with raising their younger siblings and helped out with the milking, planting, and harvesting of crops.    

Some children never went beyond grade school.   If there was a crop failure or some family's house burned down they were at the mercy of relatives and neighbors.  There were no government social programs or insurance.

Many of the young men took up farming after leaving home, some worked in the meatpacking business, and later between 1900-1910 others went to work on the railroads in western Canada.   Visits to the local doctor were for broken bones, bad cuts, or to the dentist to have a tooth pulled.   Most lost all their teeth by the age of 50 and were fitted with false teeth.   Women usually died before their husbands, probably from exhaustion.   If a man became disabled or too old to work he was retired to a corner room in the house and dependent upon his children for care.  Most men, who were lucky died in their 60's and 70's from pneumonia or heart disease.

Today most of us have some kind of education beyond high school, worked an 8 to 10 hour per day job, 5 days a week, and retired after 30 years.   Our biggest challenge was making it through those years without losing our sanity.    We continue putting up with congested traffic, crowded markets, dodging the Covid virus, and making it home in one piece.   Many of us have not been to church in decades, socially gather at the local Bi-Mart parking lot or visit with a neighbor at the mailbox down the hill.  We have social security, Medicare, and maybe some sort of pension or IRA to get us through our retirement years.   If our luck holds out we might make it into our 80's and hopefully, our children have a corner room to put us into if all else fails.  

 

MY MUSICAL BACKGROUND

 As a young child, I don't remember much music is the home. With 6 children my mother didn't have the time to, and maybe not the interest to promote music appreciation with us.   I don't even remember a radio being turned on

In grade school, it wasn't until the 5th or 6th grade when some students had to buy these red flute instruments, called tonettes, and learn how to play them.  Our class was not included as we were considered slow learners.   On rainy days when we could not have P.E. classes outside, we had to go to the basement and dance to the songs of Pat Boone.   It was horrifying having to ask a girl to dance and then proceed to step on her feet a few times while trying to dance.  

 In my junior year of high school, there was a choral class first thing in the morning in the gymnasium.  Not sure how I ended up in the class.  The first day each student had to hum to a note the teacher played on the piano.    When it was over six of us boys were told to sit up in the bleachers, do our homework, don't cause a disturbance and you will get a C grade in the class.  We were considered tone-deaf. 

As the years went by most music I listen to was country-western or folk on the radio of whatever vehicle I was driving while doing farm work.  Most of the country-western music was about how some woman left her man and his tears were flowing in his beer, not the most upbeat.    During my two years in the Army most music was at the beer garden or EM (enlisted man's) club where they were playing songs dealing with the Vietnam war while we could not consume the beer fast enough.   

When Celia and I were living in Cottage Grove we got involved with a group of people in Eugene, many retired teachers, some musicians that needed people to form a band to play at retirement homes.  They were willing to teach us less fortunate people with no musical talents.    They even provided instruments and taught us how to read music.   Celia picked the flute and I the saxophone.    We did not become masters at it, but it filled in for what we missed out on in those early years.    

STP OIL TREATMENT

 How many remember the oil additive STP?   It was a thick honey-like liquid used to prevent engines from excessive wear and burning oil, especially old worn-out engines.   I'm not sure if it is still on the market anymore and probably not recommended for these newer engines.   

My dad bought this stuff by the gallons.   He had an old 1940's vintage used White truck (White was the brand name, not the color) used to pull a low bed trailer for transporting equipment.   This truck had a big 6 cylinder gas engine, 5-speed main transmission with a secondary 3-speed gearbox for a total of 15 spends forward.   This truck went through a lot of motor oil and my dad would pour an entire gallon of STP in it at times.       

GRANDPA'S TRACTOR

The other day I stopped by the John Deere tractor store to buy some oil and a filter for my tractor, better known as Grandpa's tractor.    There are so many interesting items to look at in the store and outside too.  Tractors of all sizes, utility vehicles, riding lawn mowers, all kinds of implements and attachments for tractors.   I felt like a kid in a toy store, it reminded me of  Zumwalt's Equipment store in the small farming town of Willows, where I grew up in northern California.   Whenever I had any extra money earned from seasonal farm jobs I would spend it on hand tools purchased from Zumwalt's.   Many of those tools from 60 to 65 years ago I still have and use.    When the grandkids were here last summer we all had a good time on the tractor, not sure who had more fun, the grandkids or grandpa.  

Slide Rule

How many remember the slide rule?   There were no hand-held calculators when I was in college (1968-70).   We had to know how to use the slide rule for field work, such as mapping and surveying, so we had a night class for one hour a week for a semester in using a slide rule.  This was after most of us had dinner and a few beers and our attention span was limited.

Did end up getting a C grade in the class and actually remember some of the functions for multiplication, division, square root, etc.   Our teacher knew our limitations at this time of night and allowed us to compare notes, especially during a quiz.   He recognized it was the only way some us were going to make it through the class.

The slide rule is better known as a mechanical analog computer.    

Early Child Development

 Found this one in my files written many years ago.  The statistics may have changed, but the need is greater than  ever. 

PAY NOW OR PAY 3x LATER

As a society we invest more money into our penal system than we do for early child development.  The first 5 years of a child’s life are the most formative, and therefore the most important.  During these early years children must receive emotional stability, security, proper nutrition, adequate health care and learn basic language skills.  Research has demonstrated that early child development programs benefit children, families and communities.   These programs must be made available to all children no matter what their ethnic, religious or sociol-economic background.  Nationally in 2001, 1 in 3 blacks and 1 in 6 Latino boys were at the risk of imprisonment during their lifetime.  In 2010 the annual cost to keep a person in prison was $31,307. 

When it comes to fixing the deficit, we must be careful what is cut.  Eliminating early child development programs now would increase a child chances of going to prison later by up to 39%.  And paying for that person to go to prison will cost nearly 3 times more a year than it would have cost to provide him with a quality early learning experience. 

Just think of the vast sums of money we pay lawyers, mental health workers, prison guards and other law enforcement personnel versus what we pay those involved with early child development programs.   My wife worked for less than $8/hour for a child development center at the U of O.  She was responsible for 5 children from the age of birth to 1 year for 8 hours per day. 

The center was a single story building with limited space for a growing clientele, with no plans for expansion.  Next door the university constructed a 1 million dollar building to accommodate law students.  Much of the money for this building came from Nike.  Where are our priorities? 

 

Maybe if we change our priorities we would not have the largest prison population in the world.

 

Willows 1947-66

Hot summer days, long dusty roads and a passing pickup truck were the familiar scene in the country side surrounding Willows.    It was usually a farmer going to town to buy parts for a broken down piece of farm equipment or more fuel for the tractor and probably a cold beer too.    Summers here were hot and usually in the triple digits by afternoon.   The foot hills west of town were brown and susceptible to wild fires.   In the summer of 1960, with the north wind blowing a power line failure ignited a range fire burning up livestock, miles of fences and ranch buildings in the hills all the way to the south county line.  As kids we either stayed in the air conditioned house, outside under the sprinklers or at the community pool during the summer.   It was so hot the flies didn’t even fly during the day.  At night when it cooled down into the 90’s the bugs were out in full force.  The only creatures that gained weight were the spiders, some as big as our hand.   My mother was not fond of living here and would say, “the next stop after Willows is Hell”.    After leaving the University of California at Davis in 1947, my dad took a job in Willows with the Production Credit Association, a farm loan company.    There was just the three of us then, including myself at the age of three.  All my other five siblings were born in Willows.   We originally lived in a small two bedroom house on Villa Street, just on the west side of town.    With a growing family dad built a large adobe house on 10 acres out of town in 1952, along County Road H.  Over time dad became a field representative for the California Rice Grower’s Cooperative and eventually got into rice farming himself.  During my teenage years my summers were spent working for my dad and another farmer, when my dad did not have enough for me to do.  The work consisted of irrigating crops, operating farm equipment, and maintaining it.    Much of what I learned was by the trial and error method. 

By late fall the rain would arrive and for the rice farmers who had not harvested all their crop they were in for a muddy ordeal whenever the weather permitted them to return to their fields.   Soon thereafter the ducks and geese would arrive from the North Country, darkening the skies as they settled on the unharvested rice fields of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge purposely planted to keep them from eating the farmers’ rice.   When duck season opened the hunters would gather along the railroad tracts adjacent to the refuge or in nearby fields to shot their limit as the birds would leave the Refuge.  It sounded like a war zone at times and would continue into the winter.  My dad had an equipment shop and 150 acres of rice just northwest of the refuge.  He had constructed a couple of blinds made out of redwood lumber and placed them in some levies where hunters could conceal themselves while hunting.   Every year we would look forward to the arrival of Great Uncle Dan from San Francisco and going hunting with him.  There were more ducks and geese in our home freezer than I care to remember. 

Winters were wet and foggy.  The Sacramento Valley was famous for the Tule fog, so dense at times the geese would land in the streets of Willows unable to navigate the skies.   Highway 99, a two lane highway was known as Blood Alley for all the head on collisions during this time and even when the weather was clear.  People drove like there was no tomorrow.     

In the spring time the hills were green, farmers were plowing their fields in preparation for planting and the weather was pleasant with occasional showers.   A few of us kids from grammar school would ride our bikes six miles out to the hills and fish in Willow Creek on a sheep ranch, where the rancher caught us trespassing as he spotted our camp fire used to cook the fish.    He let us stay, but told us to ask for permission next time at his house down the highway.  About five miles east of town were the gravel pits, where the county road department had extracted gravel for paving roads leaving many large pits that filled with water over time.   Some of the pits were used as the county dump where we would make the monthly garbage run.   Everything you could imagine was thrown in there and burned.   Some of the gravel pit ponds were a popular fishing hole for us kids.    

The business section of Willows, along Highway 99, consisted of auto dealerships, farm equipment companies, part stores, and fuel and fertilizer distributers.   Willows had a Sears, J.C. Penny’s and a Southern Pacific passenger train depot, which all disappeared by the late 1950’s.    The town had a couple of grocery stores, schools, a movie theater, bowling alley and its fair share of drinking establishments.  One that remains is a stand up bar that was called “Rabbitt’s” where people could drive up, park their vehicle, order a beer or soda and drink at a standup bar.   As a kid working with my dad I can remember him stopping there for a beer and buying me a soda.  In all my travels since I have never seen anything like it.   It has relocated off Highway 99 and is now called “The Last Stand Bar and Grill”. 

In 1966 Uncle Sam drafted me into the Army.  A few years later Interstate 5 was constructed west of town and the businesses along old Highway 99 faded away as motels, gas stations, fast food joints and restaurants sprang up west of town to serve the Interstate traffic.   The freeway is less than a quarter of a mile west of our old adobe house.  While I was in the service my dad got out of the farming business due to financial problems, sold the 10 acres with the house and moved to Stockton.    After the Army I could have returned to Willows and worked for a friend of my dad who was a rice farmer, but my interest was in forestry.   Looking back it was a good decision not to return to Willows.   

Today the adobe house is still there, surrounded by a housing subdivision on what is now called Humboldt Avenue.  All you can see of the place from the freeway is all the green trees around the house, just like in the early days when pioneers on horses could see the willow trees adjacent to a pond that was an oasis in the arid valley plains that is now called Willows.