A Dime’s Worth of Paper Plates: One Young Man’s Journey from the Great Depression Through World War II

By L.D. (Duke) Hobbs

In A Dime’s Worth of Paper Plates, the author calls himself “a typical guy who became a teenager during the Depression years and became a man during World War II.” Duke begins with his ancestors’ history in Norway and their emigration to Iowa in 1892. His grandfather acquired a number of farms in the Norwegian community in central Iowa, and the author lived on one of these farms as a child. His childhood is idyllic, though the Depression and the Dust Bowl years take their toll on the adults in the community. His stepfather takes a job in Pecos, Texas in 1936 and the family adjusts to a new life in this little “cow town.”

Following a year of college, Duke joins the army in 1944 and after training at Ft. Hood is sent overseas for two years. He serves in Company “F,” 314th Infantry, 79th Division in the European Theater. After the war, he returns to Texas A&M to complete his degree. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the air Force, he serves four years as an intelligence officer during the Korean War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Mar 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483465395

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A

Dime’s Worth

of Paper Plates

One Young Man’s Journey from the Great

Depression through World War II

L.D. (DUKE) HOBBS

Copyright © 2017 L.D. (Duke) Hobbs.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6540-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6539-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017902510

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 02/24/2017

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Prologue The Norwegian Connection

Chapter 1 The Early Years

Chapter 2 The Rootless Years

Chapter 3 A Dimes Worth of Paper Plates

Chapter 4 The Old Cow Town–Pecos, Texas

Chapter 5 Becoming a Texan—As War Clouds Gather

Chapter 6 War!!

Chapter 7 Aggieland

Chapter 8 You’re in the Army Now!

Chapter 9 Introduction to the European Theater of Operations

Chapter 10 Fox Company

Chapter 11 Axis Sally Knew

Chapter 12 The Battle of Kempen

Chapter 13 Shirley Temple’s Birthday Party

Chapter 14 The Ruhr Valley–Hitler’s Armory

Chapter 15 The War Ends!

Chapter 16 Central Europe

Chapter 17 Facing the Russians in the Hills of Bavaria

Chapter 18 You’ve Had It Joe!

Chapter 19 The Sojourn in Switzerland and Italy

Chapter 20 The Good Ship Maritime Victory

Addendum The Grodem Connection

DEDICATION

To my forbearers, who made the journey possible,

To my descendants who made it worthwhile

And to my dear Laura who still makes the journey fun.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to my dear wife Laura for initial reading and editing and for nudging me along to finish this project. Also, Thanks to my kid sister, Sara for her suggestions concerning the inclusion of footnotes. Finally, my profound thanks to my son David who initially suggested writing the book, prodded me when necessary, aided immensely with research, assembled pictures for inclusion, and did the final editing prior to presenting it to a publisher. Without David’s invaluable support and assistance, the book never would have been written.

FOREWORD

I wrote this book for two reasons; first, so my children and grandchildren would know more of their family history and second, an attempt to help any interested person to understand the generation that grew up during the great depression and the World War II years. It is not my purpose to make this a book about ME or to set myself apart. Far from it. I’m just a typical guy who became a teenager during the depression years and became a man during World War II. I know this person better than anyone and I think his story, my story, can illustrate the lives and events that shaped many of that generation whose story I want to tell.

America of the 1920s and 1930s was largely rural with most Americans living in small towns or on farms. Many were first or second generation Americans whose parents or grandparents emigrated from Northern, Eastern, or Southern Europe. They often lived in communities of the same ethnic origin where their elders were more comfortable speaking the language of the old country. They were not widely traveled and seldom ventured more than a hundred miles from home.

Then came World War II and their world changed–never to return to the tranquil years of pre-war America. This story traces one family torn from its roots in rural Norwegian Central-Iowa, transplanted a thousand miles by the Great Depression and later scattered to the four winds in the aftermath of the War.

PROLOGUE

The Norwegian Connection

Shaping each of us are the people who have gone before, not only our parents but also those who preceded them–our grandparents and their forefathers. The greatest influence in my early life was my grandfather, Grandpa Pearson. To tell this story, I must start with the real beginning, the Norwegian Connection–our Norwegian heritage and that part of our family, the Grodems. Mother’s parents, Marselius Grodem and Anne Bergitte Olsen Heggheim came to America with a wave of Norwegian immigrants in the last quarter of the 19th Century. He came as a young man of eighteen and she with her parents as a three-month-old baby.

For some reason, the surnames of most 19th century immigrants to the United States were Americanized so when Marselius’ older brother Christen arrived several years earlier, his name was changed from Grodem to Pearson, possibly a contraction of his grandfather’s name Peder.

When Marselius arrived, he adopted the same surname name and Marselius Grodem became Marshall Pearson–Grandpa Pearson to me. When I was a little boy, Grandpa Pearson told me bits and pieces of the story of Norway and his forbearers. However, I learned most of the Grodem story many years later when Laura and I visited our Norwegian family in Norway and when they visited us in Texas.

The major source of Grodem information has been Kristoffer Grodem, the oldest son of my second cousin, Reinert Grodem. When Reinert retired in 1991, Kristoffer took over the family farm, our ancestral home in Norway. He is the great-grandson of Marselius’ sister Anna Karine and third cousin to my children and my nephews and nieces. Kristoffer has researched the family history extensively and has a set of books titled Folk of Strand which traces the families of Strand (A political sub-division of southwestern Norway near Stavanger) back to the Middle Ages. One section of the book is devoted to the Grodem family and another to Heggheim, the family of Grandma Pearson.

Not only is Grodem the name of the family, it is the name of the small community located on the farm. Although the property has been the family seat for at least five hundred years, the state church of Norway, the Lutheran Church and its predecessor, the Catholic Church, owned all such property until about 1850. At that time, the church was divested of ownership and title was transferred to those families who lived on and had operated the farms for generations.

The Grodem name originated as Grjot Heim or something similar, meaning stone home referring to the typical construction dating back to the Viking era. That early construction most often featured the foundation and lower half built of stone, wood planks above and topped with a roof made of sod, slate or peat). Names ending in a contraction of Heim are among the oldest in Norway and quite probably the name Grodem dates to the days of the Vikings.

Grodem is located on the shores of Ardalsfjorden, a few miles north of Stavanger in the fjord country of southwest Norway. Dominating southwest Norway from Stavanger on the south to Aalesund on the north are rugged mountains laced by hundreds of narrow fjords leading to the sea between walls of two to four thousand foot cliffs. This is the most historic part of the country, the heart of the Viking homeland and home of both the Grodem and Heggheim families.

In 872, Viking Chieftain Harald Harfagre (Harald The Fairhair) brought the warring tribes together by defeating them in the naval battle of Harfagrefjord. He then formed the Kingdom of Norway. The battle site is marked by a spectacular monument of three huge stone Viking swords protruding from the sandy shore of Harfagrefjord within sight of present day Stavanger. Following the battle of Harfagrefjord, Harald established his royal residence on the tip of Mosteroy Island, a strategic point overlooking the entrance to the major waterways including the fjords leading to Stavanger and Grodem. Mosteroy remained the Royal Residence until 1264 when King Magnus Lawmender founded the monastery Utstein Kloster on the site. Cousin Kristoffer arranged for a tour of the ancient stone structure when my wife Laura and I, with our son and daughter David and Sharon, visited Norway in September, 2006.

Harald’s son Eirik, known in American history as Erik-the-Red, but known in Norway and in the Viking Epics as Eirik Blodoks (Bloody Axe) for killing his brothers to insure his inheritance of the Kongsgard (Kings Farm). Eirik’s Kongsgard was about ten miles from Grodem near the present town of Tau, the ferry landing from Stavanger. Cousin Kristoffer speculates Grodem may have been a Kongsgard also and possibly an early Grodem ancestor was one of the Viking Chieftains vanquished by Harald at the battle of Harfagrefjord.

We know Eirik sailed to the Viking settlement in Iceland sometime after he earned his infamous sobriquet. His father probably banished him to Iceland as punishment for his bloody deed. Later Eirik established Viking colonies in Greenland and his son Leiv (Leif) Eiriksen discovered North America and attempted to settle Vinland, present day Labrador. It is interesting to speculate that some of our ancestors may have sailed with Eirik to Greenland and possibly with Leiv to America.

Another adventurer, Thorfinn Gangerolf (Rollo), a Viking leader from the present day Aalesund area, led his sleek longboats down the coast of Norway, across the English Channel and up the River Seine. He established a series of settlements on and near the site of present day Rouen and continued up the river to lay siege on Paris. In 911, the Frankish king Charles the Simple conceded defeat. In lieu of a monetary tribute, Charles surrendered Northern France to Jarl (Earl) Rollo and named it the Dukedom of Normandy in honor of the Norsemen conquerors. Jarl Rollo became Rollo, the First Duke of Normandy. His great-great-great-great grandson William, the Seventh Duke of Normandy, won additional fame and fortune when he conquered Saxon England in 1066. Eight centuries later, the Norman city of Rouen recognized the Aalesund connection by commissioning a statue of Rollo, The Founder of Rouen and placing it in a mountainside park overlooking the Aalesund harbor. Coincidentally, an ancestor of Laura was a Huguenot from Rouen named Hardin who settled in Charleston, South Carolina in the mid-1600s. So, Laura is a Norwegian too.

*******

Millions died when the Bubonic Plague struck Europe in the 14th century leaving entire villages dead in its wake. It reached Norway in about 1350, decimating the population. Kristoffer told a story about the plague which had been passed down through many generations. The story probably was true and happened repeatedly during those dark days.

A man left his village when many villagers were sick or dead from the Black Death. He established an observation point high in the mountains overlooking his village and from there he watched the fires and candles flicker out in the houses below. Several weeks after all lights disappeared, he safely returned to the empty village. Everyone was gone–either dead or had fled.

Hundreds of villages were wiped out and thousands died during that terrible period. Only a few monks and other churchmen could read and write so the pages of written history remained largely blank for many years following the devastation. A few stories such as that told by Kristoffer offer clues to what happened.

Population rebounded slowly and growth was negligible until Martin Luther’s reforms were introduced during the last half of the 1500’s. Reading the Bible was no longer solely the province of the priests. The ministers admonished their parishioners to read The Holy Word and as ordinary people learned to read and write, they understood more about basic hygiene and health problems. More children lived to maturity and the population grew rapidly. By the early nineteenth century, the population had exploded. Many large farms had been divided so many times it became impossible to divide the small plots any further. With no land remaining to support them, young people from the east often crossed the mountains looking for a place to live and a means of support by either farming or fishing. Those Ostfolk became husmannfolk who exchanged their services for a place to build a small stone shelter on a rocky hillside of a larger farm. The remains of several Hussmann shelters built by people from east of the mountains can be seen on the side of Grodem Mountain. Emigration to America finally brought relief.

*******

The earliest mention of a Grodem by name was Per Grodem who paid one dalar property tax in 1563 (A dalar at the time was worth about one fifth of a cow). Kristoffer speculated the land was abandoned for some 200 years after the plague had run its course and Per Grodem reestablished the farm as the population began a slow rebirth.

The reference book, Folk in Strand leaves a void between Per Grodem in 1563 and the listing of Ole I. Grodem in 1591. Possibly Ole was the son of Per’s daughter whose unnamed husband took the name Grodem as did Ole’s son-in-law Kristoffer Thorsen Forsand in 1628 when he married Ole’s daughter Ingeborg Olsdtr Grodem. Their son Thore, born in 1630 (great great grandson of Per) was Marselius Grodems great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Although primogeniture usually determined land ownership or control throughout Norway–then and now, there have been numerous instances of property passing to a daughter. Marselius’ great grandmother Kari Pedersdotre Grodem was the third woman to take over the farm. She married Christen Pedersen Viga in 1778. He took her name and left his Viga home to join Kari at Grodem. (Laura and I visited Viga farm with Kristoffer and Kitty Grodem in 1999. The Viga Farmstead about twenty miles north of Grodem, has been preserved as a state museum illustrating farm life, crops and traditional apple, pear and plum orchards of the 17th and 18th centuries.)

Peder Grodem, born to Christen and Kari in 1791 was the next to inherit the farm. He married Anna Jansdtr Runstad in 1810 and they became Marselius’ grandparents. Peder probably was the namesake of the Americanized Pearson.

The Grodem farm originally included all of Grodem Mountain extending nearly to the shores of Ardalsfjorden. Although landlocked, Grodem had piers on the fjord and a connecting road provided access to the sea. Over the years, it was subdivided into three farms and in 1851, it was further divided creating farm number four for Peder and Anna’s son Christen Pedersen Grodem and his wife Christine Christensdtr Selvag Grodem. Farm number four encompasses approximately 100 acres, extending from the peak of Grodem Mountain to a point about a quarter of a mile from the fjord. The lower half of the farm is meadowland with hayfields, gardens and homes while the upper half is a rocky mountainside, suitable for grazing sheep but not for growing crops. The soil is thin, rocky, and covered by mountain grasses, wild flowers, berry bushes and small trees, such as birch and juniper. Several small brooks bubble out of the ground and crisscross the mountainside. Near the summit is a bog where years ago the family gathered peat to heat their homes. In 2004, Kristoffer built a cabin near the bog and dammed a brook to create a small pond that provides fresh drinking water for the cabin.

By the time Christen Pedersen Grodem and wife Christine retired, three of their sons, including Marselius had immigrated to America so the farm passed to their daughter Anna Karine. Following custom, Anna Karine’s husband Halvard Kristofferson Kjolevik took the name Grodem. She was my great aunt and the great grandmother of Kristoffer Grodem, my second cousin once removed, who currently owns the farm. His oldest son, Nils Reinert Grodem probably will inherit Grodem from Kristoffer.

*******

Marselius Grodem was born 20 September 1862 and was the eleventh of twelve children born to Christine and Christen Pedersen Grodem. Marselius was eighteen when he left Grodem to join his older brother Christen in America. Christen had immigrated to the United States several years earlier and owned a farm near Streator, Illinois about 75 miles west of Chicago. Borrowing passage money from Christen, Marselius sailed from Stavanger on 4 June 1881, never to return to his homeland. After what must have been a long torturous voyage of several weeks, he landed in the United States, probably in New York at Port Castle Green located at or near Fort Clinton and the Battery on the southern tip of Manhattan. Port Castle Green was the forerunner to Ellis Island, processing immigrants from about 1820 until The Ellis Island Immigration Center opened in 1892.

Evidently, immigration officials thought new arrivals should have names that sounded more American so they often persuaded the newcomers to Americanize their names. Consequently, the older brother, Christen Grodem changed his name to Christian Pearson and when young Marselius processed through immigration, he became Marshall Grodem Pearson rather than Marselius Grodem. No one seems to know why the name Pearson was adopted as the family name. Usually when a name was changed, the immigrant simply took his father’s name and added sen or son to it. Their father’s name was Christen Pedersen Grodem so logically the new name should have been Christensen. However, logic didn’t seem to matter; perhaps the officials thought Christian Christiansen would have been redundant or maybe they thought there were enough Christiansens already, so they went back another generation. Christen and Marselius’ grandfather’s name was Peder so Pearson could have been a contraction of Pedersen.

We do not know how Marselius got from New York City to the Chicago area but we can speculate. Although the transcontinental railroad was completed and he could have traveled by train, he was not familiar with that mode of travel and possibly had never seen a train. Having lived all his life in the fjord country of Norway, the logical choice probably would have been water. As an added factor, there were Norwegian communities in Kendall County in upstate New York on Lake Ontario, largely settled by immigrants from the Stavanger area of Southwest Norway.

The father of Norwegian immigration to this country was Kleng Peersen who led the first group from Stavanger to Kendall County in 1823. He later led other groups from Stavanger to the mid-west and eventually even to Texas. Peersen died in Norse, Texas in 1853 and a monument marks his grave in the Old Norse Cemetery.

Marselius may have followed the route established by Kleng Peersen, up the Hudson River to Albany, the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario and on to Kendall. He probably would have found family friends there that could help the young adventurer who had no knowledge of English or the culture of this new land. From Kendall, he could have sailed the Great Lakes to Chicago or gone overland from the west shore of Lake Erie.

*******

After working for his brother the first year to repay his loan, Marshall Pearson struck out on his own. For the next ten years, he worked on various farms, saved his money, learned about crops, and farming methods, which were different from those in Norway. He studied hard. With only minimal education, he had to teach himself to read and write in a new language and to master the knowledge and the mathematics necessary to conduct business in a new country.

One of my prized possessions is a little book titled Ray’s Practical Arithmetic which my grandfather referred to as my education. The 336-page book begins with simple arithmetic, ends with geometric progression and includes everything in between; fractions, decimals, interest rates, discount rates, profit and loss statements, weights and measures, and more! It even has a section on Partnerships! Much of it was written as practical problems so to master the book, Marshall Grodem Pearson had to master English. He was a fast learner and soon was ready to become his own boss. In July 1892, he moved to Iowa with his bride of a year, Bertha Olson Pearson, and bought the first of his seven or eight farms near the Norwegian communities in Central Iowa.

Grandmother Pearson’s Norwegian name was Anne Bergitte Heggheim. She was the daughter of Berta Thorsdtr Kjolevik Heggheim and Teodor Olsen Heggheim of Heggheim, Norway, a community and farm located a short distance east of Grodem Mountain and Grodem. The name Heggheim, like Grodem, was one of the older names in Norway. Roughly translated, Hegg is the name of a hardwood tree and Heim means home. Also like Grodem, the earliest record of a Heggheim was in 1563 when Halvaard Heggheim paid the dalar tax on the farm.

Anne Bergitte was born in Heggheim 28 June 1867, the oldest of ten children. In the early fall of 1867 Teodor and Berta and their three-month-old daughter Anne Bergitte sailed to America. They Americanized their names to Bertha and Theodore Olson (his father was Ole Heggheim) and baby Anne Bergitte Heggheim became Bertha Olson. The Olson family first settled on a farm in Kendall County, Illinois. Later they moved to Nettle Creek Township, Illinois, and in 1883 bought a farm near Christian Grodem Pearson’s farm outside of Streator, Illinois. There she met Marshall Grodem Pearson, an ambitious young man who worked on several neighboring farms. They married on 25 March 1891 and the following year moved to Iowa and bought their first farm near Garden City where six of their nine children were born.

In 1904, Marshall bought his second farm about five miles from the first and located about a mile from McCallsburg, Iowa. Marshall and Bertha moved their family to farm number two and rented the original property to another farmer. Eventually, their oldest son Clarence moved to the original farm following his