Donald

By Donald Anderson

A story with many facets: a country bumpkin who grew up during the great depression of the 1930s to face events that will bring you tears of both sadness and laughter. His beloved wife slips away in his presence and his wonder if she really did come back to say goodbye. Laugh with the Barbary apes of Gibraltar. The challenge of teaching a first aid c lass on childbirth to mothers, a priest and teenagers. A singing marriage proposal delivered at a cruise ship talent show. Flew 22 combat missions on a B-17 bomber in WWII. The battle for legislation requiring training in life support for ambulance personnel. A close-up visit with polar bears near Hudson Bay. High tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, B.C. Own and operate a radio station. Play the piano for fashion shows. Singing in a barbershop harmony chorus. Standup comic and MC. Dealing with bloody breakfast eggs in Fiji. Near disaster with a home-built gyrocopter. What he claims are the worlds best radio commercials. His invention of a cannon that shoots horse manure. Creating successful school programs in fire safety education. The appendix with stories about the worlds worst fire and worst U.S. fire (not Chicago or San Francisco). His sermon for a Lutheran church Laymens Sunday service is a poem on how the fire department saved the day for Santa Claus. A photo of his crying pumpkin baby at Halloween. The secrets of his hilarious magic act. Lots of aphorisms, recipes and other wastes of time. This guy has been busy! This is a fun read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493186976

Donald Anderson

Donald Anderson is the director of the creative writing program at the US Air Force Academy. He is the author of Gathering Noise from My Life: A Camouflaged Memoir. He is also the editor, since 1989, of War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities.

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Copyright © 2014 by Donald Anderson.

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Rev. date: 03/17/2014

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CONTENTS

IN THE BEGINNING

WW II

EARLY DAYS

OUR OWN RADIO STATION

THE REDMOND YEARS CONTINUE

TENDING BAR

HELLO, TUALATIN

OFF TO EUROPE

POLECAT

PENNY

A WEDDING IN FIJI

EXPERIENCING FIJI

YOU THINK PINEAPPLES AREN’T DANGEROUS?

I STILL WORRY ABOUT MARY

THE BADGER

ALASKA

ODYSSEY

POLAR BEARS

AROUND CAPE HORN

HOONAH

OFF TO MEXICO

G’DAY MATE

CONNIE

TIME TO SAY GOODBYE

JOAN—PROLOGUE

THE PROPOSAL

EPILOGUE

SO NOW WHAT?

DORRIE

PANAMA CANAL

CANCER

MEDITERRANEAN

PUERTO RICO

TRAPP FAMILY LODGE

APPENDIX

IN THE BEGINNING

I T STARTED IN the eary1920s as a simple flirtation, and escalated to a full-fledged love story. Hazel was a good looking waitress in Arlington, Washington with a sparkling personality and a sassy response for every smart mouth that came in. They would ask what kinds of pie she had and she would rattle off about a dozen choices so fast it sounded like one word. This always got a chuckle and was often repeated.

A customer named Art Anderson became very interested in her and began to get serious about a relationship. Art was good looking, well dressed and witty. He had been a cook in the army and told great stories about the San Diego Exposition grounds and the Mexican border.

Hazel was perplexed. Settling down was a tradeoff of security for independence. She was a small town girl with little experience in matters of the heart. She didn’t know what to do, so she quit her job and went to Juneau, Alaska to work in her sister’s restaurant. But Art was really smitten and took a ferry up there to resume the courtship. That gesture of devotion was just too much, and they were married in nearby Douglas in 1923 and returned to Washington to begin their new life. I was born in Arlington in 1925 and spent my first 18 years within 20miles of there.

The area had a large Scandinavian population. My father was born in this area and the family spoke Norwegian at home. He didn’t learn English until he was six years old, and always carried a hint of the mother tongue himself.

They were a thrifty, hard working people who operated a dairy farm and learned to do almost everything themselves. Both my mother and father were one of eight children, all clever with their hands. The men could pull the head of a car engine and grind the valves or put in new piston rings. Some could even do welding in their basic blacksmith shop.

Women had their own fields of expertise. Left over from bygone days was equipment for carding wool. This was something like a ping pong paddle with hundreds of metal projections, like nails. These were used to form wool into round tubes, perhaps a half inch in diameter and eight inches long. These were fed into a spinning wheel which twisted them into wool yarn. From there, various complex knitting systems produced socks or whatever was needed. Quilting frames were common in back rooms and held everything in place for the laborious process of making a quilt All this and more plus maintaining the house and baking bread and preparing all the meals. This must have been the time when someone noted woman’s work is never done. They were amazing.

NORWEGIAN ANCESTRY

Three of my grandparents were born in Norway. They must have had wonderful stories to tell, but as a child I never thought to inquire about their past. I have regretted this very much. I have wondered if they had brothers and sisters. I would like to hear stories about them growing up and going to school, why they decided to leave Norway and did they stay in touch with relatives in the old country.

I never knew either of my grandfathers; they both died before I was born.

Michael (Mads) Anderson was born in Norway in 1853 and died near Silvana, Washington in 1919. His first name was evidently Michael but I don’t know where the name Mads fits in. I haven’t been able to learn much about him. I seem to recall my dad saying he had fed his father, which makes me wonder if he was disabled in some way. There may have been some incident involving a fall, possibly off a barn roof, but I don’t really know.

Anna Johnson Anderson was born in Norway in 1868 and died in 1946. I called her Cocoa Grandma when I was little because that’s what she served when we came to visit. She lived near Silvana, some 50 miles north of Seattle and had a dairy farm. She had eight children, my father, Arthur, her fourth child. She was a devout woman and going to church was the highlight of her week. There was a strong Lutheran membership in our community and I was baptized in the Silvana church. Her two youngest sons, Alvin and Walter, helped milk her string of cows by hand, before milking machines were available. Also helping was Jim Erickson, her grandson whose mother was Clara, my dad’s sister. Jim was born with a deformed ear and was the object of ridicule in Arlington schools so was raised by his grandmother. My dad was born near Silvana in1899.

Gunerius Gustavson, my maternal grandfather, was born in 1851 in Iowa and died of stomach cancer in 1915 in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada and is buried there. He is said to have been an excellent violinist. Known as Gus, he became interested in participating in the gold rush up north. By 1910 he and Amelia were divorced and had gone to Dawson City.

Amelia (Gunda) Olson was born in Norway and died near Entiat, Washington in 1943 at the home of her daughter, Effie. She was Grandma on the hill when I was little because you had to drive up the Burn Hill to reach her place, located four miles from Arlington. The area was known as the Burn Hill and my parents eventually bought a place about a mile from grandma’s, and we lived there for many years. She had a few cows, a large vegetable garden and raised hay. There were no children at home, so she always had a hired man who lived at her house and drove her Model A Ford roadster to town once a week to do shopping. There was no electric power there so everything was done by hand and kerosene lamp light. Amelia had eight children and my mother, Hazel was the youngest, born in 1903.

My grandmothers were vastly different. Anna Anderson was devout and a sharp business woman who operated a successful dairy farm. Amelia was not a church member, but loved to do humorous things. She soaped her own windows at Hallowe’en so neighbor kids wouldn’t smear wax on them which was very hard to remove. It really wasn’t much of a problem because neighbors were at least a mile away and they were not malicious in any way.

I finally got to visit Norway with cousin Bud, but neither of us spoke Norwegian and we didn’t know where to look for any family history. It wasn’t until later that genealogy would provide a lot of information on our forebears. But over time we learned to like Scandinavian food and dances like the schottische and polka. And of course, make fun of Swedes whenever we could.

I grew up in the Great Depression era of the early 1930s. Many were out of work and money was very hard come by. People had to make do with what they had because there was no money for replacements. If something got broken or wore out they would mend or patch it if at all possible. Families canned fruit, vegetables and even meat. Men hunted deer and birds. Once in a while a group would sneak out to a river at night and use nets to illegally catch fish, which were preserved by smoke houses built in secluded area

Prohibition was in effect so liquor and beer were not available for purchase, but there were plenty of bootleggers to provide white lightning in gallon jugs. My dad would buy a jug occasionally and it has been said that some naughty teen-age boys would sneak a little of this liquid dynamite into a jar and have his own party. With this stuff, a little goes a long way. Especially with teenagers. People made their own beer, potent home brew bubbling like a witch’s cauldron in ceramic crocks out of sight upstairs. They had equipment to bottle the beer and occasionally a bottle would explode if the yeast was still working. This led to some interesting patterns in the ceiling wallpaper on the floor below.

We lived on a well traveled highway and hobos often stopped in, asking to do some task like splitting wood in exchange for something to eat. These were not bums… just decent men out of work and trying to survive the times. People rarely locked their doors but there were no problems with burglaries. The men were polite and grateful for anything they received.

Uncle Arthur once stopped by our house when we were gone, and he let himself in to fix a snack. There was a knock on the door, a hungry hobo. Arthur invited him in and fixed him a snack, too. People didn’t have much, but would always share what they could. Especially if it belonged to your sister.

Kids mostly made their own fun and even their own toys. Hours were spent making kites and hours more flying them. Boys sawed profiles of cars and trucks out of scrap wood, and not knowing how to make wheels, just scooted them along the floor. Girls collected flower petals and made sachets to put in closets or dresser drawers. Magazines had paper dolls to cut out and all kinds of outfits to dress them. Kids clothes were often hand-me-downs and overalls patched. Shoe soles came loose and would flap when you walked. Stores sold inexpensive systems to glue them back on, but this never seems to work very well. Most families coped with the same problems.

We lived near the bottom of a high bluff that had trails to the top and climbing the hill was a great adventure, with beautiful little Sunday Lake at the top. A group of us kids once managed to work a 36-inch wheel off an abandoned wagon and aim it at a tree over the edge of the bluff. Unfortunately, it missed the tree and careened down the vertical slope, picking up momentum until it crossed the busy highway, ripped through barbed wire fences and finally stopping in George Engebretson’s field. The steel rimmed wheel must have been going 80 miles an hour when it crossed the highway and would have been a terrible disaster if it had hit a car. We were in big trouble for this stupid, but not malicious, event.

Uncle Alvin and his brother Walter were getting dressed to go out for a Saturday night of fun. Both young men were still living at home with Grandma Anderson and I was an exuberant 5-year old running in and out of their upstairs bedroom. Alvin asked me to stop doing that and I ignored him. He reinforced the warning with a threat that if I did that again, he would fart in my ear. I just laughed and ran through the room again but suddenly felt his hand on my shoulder. I learned from that experience that Uncle Alvin always means exactly what he says.

I started school in an area known as Norman, consisting of a post office and general store. The Norman school had only two classrooms with an enrollment of some 50-60 children, depending on the year. Grades 1-4 were taught by Miss Larsen and grades 5-8 by Mr. Scamfer. In Miss Larsen’s room, first graders got to hear the lessons for fourth graders every year and by the time they reached that level were well prepared. Repetition is probably a good thing for the learning process. I never heard of any problems with student achievement. My parents once commented that by the time I reached the third grade I could read or sound out most of the newspaper. And I wasn’t even one of the smart ones.

I learned about embarrassment when I was in the fifth grade. The school bus dropped me off in front of our house. It was a nice day so my parents were sitting on the front porch with Grandma and Aunt Effie, among others. They had to wonder what the laughing on the bus was all about. As I walked toward the house, red faced, I saw why. Nobody had noticed that also on the front porch was little Ardis, a toddler with her bare butt sitting on a potty chair.

Some lessons in life are very subtle. When I was a kid trying to learn to shoot my Remington .22 caliber rifle, I put an envelope on the cherry tree and used it as a target. My dad came along and shot the stamp on the envelope. So success has to do with what kind of target you have in life. Any damn fool can hit an envelope. Another lesson took me a few years to figure out. An outspoken old man appeared one day with the fly of his pants unbuttoned. Someone commented to him that the barn door is open. He observed that if the horse can’t get up, it can’t get out.

We didn’t have electricity so water was pumped by hand from a well. Lights were provided by kerosene lamps, Coleman gas lanterns or the more elegant Alladin mantle lamps. Kerosene lanterns could be hung on a nail in the barn. My responsibilities increased as I grew older. Men who worked with dad would dump a log by the driveway, and he cut it into 16 inch slices with a dragsaw. Then he was done. It was my job to split it into stove wood with a maul, wedges and ax, move it all by wheelbarrow and pile it neatly in the woodshed. Then every day I was to split wood and kindling and carry it to the woodbox on the back porch. Another new job was milking the cow (or cows) every evening and run the milk through a separator to get skim milk and cream. And then wash all the parts and put it back together again. Mom did the job on school days because she didn’t want me to have to go to school smelling like a barn. A good mom is thoughtful. Living in town must have been boring. No wonder so many of them became thugs.

Grandmother Gustavson was a widow and lived a mile from us. She and her hired man would go to town on Saturdays, and once in a great while the hired man would get raving drunk while grandma was shopping. She had never learned to drive her Model A roadster, so somebody would drive them home and I would have to go over and help milk her string of cows.

I experienced the most frightening occasion of my life when I was about 8 years old. One night I was awakened by the sounds of KLUMP KLUMP and it seemed somebody was coming up the stairs to kill me. I couldn’t yell for help because my parents slept down stairs. It was puzzling because the intruder would take a few steps, then stop a while before resuming. I was still pondering this mystery the next morning, sitting on the back porch. The clothesline was attached to the corner of the house and a pair of bib overalls with two metal suspender buckles were swinging back and forth in the breeze, hitting the house with a KLUMP KLUMP.

My mother had a cheerful disposition and worked diligently at maintaining a vegetable garden, flowers everywhere, was a great cook and took care of a myriad details involved with taking care of her house and family. I was about 11 years old and hated working in the garden, but mom asked me to help her hoe the vegetables. After a short period of this, I began to sing a song, making up the words as I went along. It was about this wonderful boy who lived on a hill, a wonderful blue eyed boy who was so kind and good, but whose mother was very mean to him;