The Story of a Family
1946-1950
by Helen Erwin Campbell
Nineteen forty-six: The United Nations General Assembly held its first session in London on January 7, President Truman created the Atomic Energy Commission, returning servicemen triggered the postwar baby boom, Benjamin Spock’s book Baby and Child Care was on the best seller list, and Admiral Byrd made his fifth expedition to the South Pole. Also, that year popular songs were Zip-a-dee-doo-dah and 0le Buttermilk Sky, the population of the United States reached forty million, a 16-ounce can of Hershey’s Cocoa cost ten cents; a 2½-ounce jar of Bordon’s Instant Coffee was thirty-nine cents, two packs of Raleigh cigarettes could be purchased for twenty-seven cents, and Bud got married.
Bud finally got out of the Marine Corps in February when his four-year-enlistment was up. On July 7, he and Delma Boria were married in a ceremony in Delma’s Catholic Church in Madera, California. Dad and Mom did not attend the wedding. Dad’s excuse was that he was “not going to a Catholic wedding.” We all thought that it was not religious prejudice that kept them from the wedding, but more likely a feeling of inadequacy in the social situation and the fact that neither had proper clothing to wear. Certainly, later both – and especially Mom – were very approving of their new daughter-in-law.
Dad and Mom were still on the dairy farm, but getting restless. Even though they had done reasonably well during the war years, they were never content living in California. Bud and Don remember them often talking about going back to Kansas. It was a case of the grass being greener back where they had come from – at least in their minds.
Dad used about half of his thirty-two acres for pasture and the other for alfalfa. He also share-cropped some other alfalfa-acreage with an owner some eight miles distant. Don recalls that they would drive the team of horses with a flat-bed trailer to and from the alfalfa farm.
From a small child Don loved to read, just as Flossie and I did. And he, also like the two of us, was berated by Dad for “always having his nose in a book” Dad thought reading, except perhaps in the evening after supper, was a waste of time.
One of Don’s duties on weekends and during the summer, was to watch the irrigation water to make sure that it was running correctly. Don liked to take a book out with him, but Dad objected to that, saying that he “needed to keep his mind on his business.” Don, on the other hand, figured that he could – in fact – multi-task.
In the middle of the pasture there was one lone cottonwood tree. Don discovered if he sat up in that tree he could read, watch the water, as well as keep a wary eye out for Dad’s approach. That worked pretty well, and only once did Dad catch him. That time Donnie had become so engrossed in his story he had missed Dad’s approach.
“There you are with a damned book again! Get down here and watch this water! You can’t do your job from up there!”
Dad always believed in physical punishment for his children, and he did not spare the rod with either Bud or Don when they were small. About this time Don was in the eighth grade, getting close to fourteen, and was growing in height and weight. After one such whipping Don rebelled.
“You’re not going to whip me again,” he announced.
And Dad never did again or even threaten to, although he was still free with his tongue-lashings when he felt Don’s perceived misdeeds warranted it.
Flossie’s daughter Joanne recalls visiting her grandparents in California when she was ten or eleven. She remembers the cows they milked and the calves they fed, the ripe blackberries that were so sweet they didn’t need sugar, and the vineyards across the road. What especially sticks in her memory was the process of irrigation and the irrigation ditches. That wasn’t done in Kansas, at least where she lived. It seemed to her at the time to make a lot more sense than just waiting for it to rain like in Kansas.
Joanne also remembers visiting her Uncle Bub who was in charge of the water in the commercial irrigation canals.
In 1947 England’s Princess Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten, The Diary of Anne Frank was published, popular songs were, Papa, Won’t You Dance with Me? and Almost Like Being in Love, a United States airplane first flew at supersonic speeds, the transistor was invented, Henry Ford died, and Flying Saucer sightings were reported in this country. Also, that year the New Look dominated female fashions, more than one million war veterans enrolled in college under the G.I. Bill of Rights, and Don graduated eighth grade.
Don was one of thirteen students to graduate eighth grade from rural Arcola School, just south of Madera next to US99. At that time, he was a budding musician, and played a clarinet solo as part of the graduation program. He had some fantasies of becoming a professional musician and following in the footsteps of Grandpa Hayworth, but his life was to go in another direction.
In the fall Don enrolled in Madera Union High School as a freshman. He remembers it as a memorable period.
“I got my first driver’s license. I was fourteen. I got my first car, a 1930 Ford Model A Sport Coupe with a rumble seat. I got drunk the first time. It was on “Dago Red” that one of my buddies had stolen from his Dad’s cellar. I didn’t drink again until I was twenty-three years old. I also got the mumps the last week of school that year.”
Don remembers a time when his ingenuity got him out of a day’s work. When Dad went started using a tractor in place of horses, he shortened the tongues of the mowing machine and the hay rake so he could pull them behind the tractor, but this made raking the hay a two-person job. It took one person to drive the tractor and another to sit on the hay rake and operate it.
There came one particular Sunday when Don wanted to go to an event at the high school, but Dad planned to rake the hay and he needed Don on the hay rake.
“No, you can’t go. We gotta’ rake that hay.”
Don had been giving some thought to the hay-raking and thought he might have a solution, so he approached Dad.
“Now, if I can figure out a way that a person riding the tractor can operate the hay rake as well, will you let me go?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.”
Don took a rope, tied one end to the handle that tripped the tines, then brought the other end to the tractor seat. The driver of the tractor could yank on the rope, which tripped the tines, thus releasing the hay. He could then relax the rope, which let the tines fall back to the ground.
Don got the day off.
In 1948 the free world cheered the Berlin Airlift, Harry Truman was elected President, James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific became a Pulitzer Prize winner, popular songs were All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth and Buttons and Bows, and the LP record was invented. Also, that year Safeway advertised a one-pound carton of Parkay Margarine for thirty-nine cents, a twelve-ounce package of Globe A-1 macaroni for fifteen cents, and one pound of Nob Hill coffee for forty-three cents, J. C. Penney sold their 81×99 Penco sheets for $2.79, and Mom and Dad moved back to Kansas. Don was now fifteen years old.
It was in the spring they sold the farm, the cattle, the farm equipment, and everything except what they could carry back in Dad’s Jeep station wagon and Don’s Model A. Mom’s 48-year-old Singer sewing machine was one of the things that went back with them.
Dad had bought the thirty-two acres in 1942 for $2,250. He sold it six years later for $13,000. They didn’t have to camp out on the way back to Kansas; Dad now had money in his pocket.
They left for Kansas after school was out. Don recalls it took six days for them to drive there, most of the time at 30 or 35 miles per hour. It normally takes three days of relaxed driving to make that trip. He remembers that Dad was a typical older driver, driving a lot of the time on the shoulder of the road, thinking “it was safer.”
Dad and Mom told Bud about the trip. Whenever Don was able to get in front they drove faster. Don would be barreling along at 40 miles an hour, and as Dad remembered, he would be “really a ‘drivin,’ tryin’ to keep up with him.” Mom said they’d see Don go around a curve in the road with the canvas curtains in the back of the Model A “a flappin.” Dad said he always tried to stay in the lead of Don to slow him down, and, of course, Don attempted to get in front in order to speed Dad up.
Joanne remembers when her Grandma and Grandpa Erwin came back. They arrived at her parents’ (Flossie and Oren) house just before a storm came across from the northwest. She recalls Mom (her grandmother) seemed pretty worried about it and thought they ought to do something. It was a bad looking storm, but everyone else was quite calm and relaxed, and just watched it come. Joanne believes her grandmother soon got used to wild Kansas storms again and was able to just watch without anxiety as Joanne and her family did.
That first summer in Kansas Don worked for Flossie and Oran on their farm near Sedgwick. He received room and board and spending money, plus a chance to drive Oran’s big new John Deere tractor, an exciting opportunity for any fifteen-year-old. Don, however, promptly drove the tractor through a hedgerow. Oran was by nature even-tempered, but he was still pretty irritated until he discovered the steering had failed and Don was not really at fault.
Joanne remembers when Don stayed with them. Don was just two years older than she, but she was, nevertheless, impressed by him. He had a CAR, and he’d driven it all the way from California. Joanne recalls that several times Don – on a Sunday – took she and her sister Donna to Sedgwick to the movies in his Model A.
Joanne further reminisced: “He wasn’t used to living with small children, and I don’t think he enjoyed it much.”
Don says of that time:
“I really enjoyed that summer. I was intrigued with my new-found independence, with the smells and sounds of living on a Kansas farm, and with the sense of being a ‘big brother’ to Flossie’s large family.”
When the folks arrived back in Kansas, they bought an 80-acre farm, but were not able to take possession until January 1. They waited out the time in a rented house in nearby Altoona. Meanwhile, Don drove the eight miles to and from his new high school in Neodesha.
In 1949 the Berlin blockade was officially lifted and the Berlin airlift ended after 277,264 flights, the Apartheid program was established in South Africa, the musical play South Pacific opened in New York, and an Air Force jet flew across the United States in three hours forty-six minutes. Also, that year some popular songs were Some Enchanted Evening, Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend, and Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, radio listeners were enjoying the weekly antics of Amos ‘n Andy, and Mom, Dad and Don were living on the 80-acre farm.
Dad had paid $5,000 for the farm, and with some of the cash from the sale of his California dairy farm, he bought a brand-new Case tractor, which was his pride and joy even four or five years later.
Joanne Hutchison remembers her grandparents’ house:
“I remember a kitchen on the north with a porch on the west where we came in. There was a wood stove in the kitchen and a sink in the corner with a pump. The cook stove was in a smaller room on one side, and there was another porch on the east with a cistern pump at one end of the kitchen counter. I know there was a living room because we have pictures taken there. We had family dinners there with Helen, Clifford, Clyde and Darrell, who lived a mile or two north on another farm. I remember family dinners there as well. We must have been well fed.”
Bud remembers that he and Delma visited Mom and Dad on this farm during the rainy season. Bud recalls:
“The road was very muddy that one time I went to town with Dad. Dad was driving and talking and chewing tobacco and spitting, and the back end of the car was just going from one side to the other, but it didn’t seem to bother him at all. He was telling me some wild story, you know, and spitting tobacco juice out the open car window.”
Clyde remembers the 1936 Ford pickup his Grandpa Erwin had on the farm. He remembers that Don wasn’t allowed to drive it, but mostly he remembers how it was sticky with tobacco juice on the driver’s side.
In 1950 the infamous McCarthy era began, development of the hydrogen bomb was begun, United Nation forces wantto the aid of South Korea against Communist North Korea, the UN building in New York was completed, and antihistamines became a popular remedy for colds and allergies. Also that year, the U.S. population reached 150,697,000, there were 1.5 million TV viewers in this country, popular songs were If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’ d’ ‘ave Baked a Cake” and Good Night, Irene, Nob Hill coffee was now sixty-three cents a pound, Skippy peanut butter in the fifteen-ounce jar was forty-three cents, a Buick four-door sedan sold for $2465, and Don joined the Marines.
Don recalls during the winter· of 1949-1950. A combination of influences and frustrations convinced him and his best friend Jim Lour that they should leave school and seek their fortunes in the big, wide world. At the time, military service was one of the few options open to seventeen-year-olds. Jim’s mother was an elderly widow and she readily signed the necessary papers to allow her son to join the Marine Corps.
Dad and Mom, however, were a greater problem. As with Bud a few years before, their answer was a solid “no.”
But, after three months of nagging Don wore them down. After all, Don suggested they consider, there was no war at the time. They finally gave in and signed the papers.
Before Don left, he sold his Model A for $50. He and his friend Jim went to Topeka, where they stayed with John and Goldie, and on Don’s seventeenth birthday, March 12, they enlisted in the Marine Corps. Within a few days they were in boot camp in San Diego.
Don looks back at the boy he was then:
United States Marine.
“For a seventeen-year-old fresh off the farm who thought he had a temper and a mind of his own, Marine Corps boot camp was a shock, to say the least. I quickly came to the wise and obvious conclusion that I had best keep my mouth to myself and not attract attention. The twelveweeks that it took to go through the wringing out process of Marine Corps basic training had a tremendous impact on me. I took the physical training seriously and I believed, and still believe, the verbal indoctrination. I went to San Diego as a soft high school kid and emerged twelve weeks later as a proud adult with direction. I honestly feel that those twelve weeks were probably the most important in my entire life.”