The First Seventeen: Growing Up in Pennsylvania, 1924-1941

The First Seventeen: Growing Up in Pennsylvania by John R. Burgoon Jr.

This book is written to provide information and motivation to readers. It’s purpose is not to render any type of psychological, legal, or professional advice of any kind. The content is the sole opinion and expression of the author, and not necessarily that of the publisher.

Copyright © 2020 by John R. Burgoon Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form by any means, including, but not limited to, recording, photocopying, or taking screenshots of parts of the book, without prior written permission from the author or the publisher. Brief quotations for non commercial purposes, such as book reviews, permitted by Fair Use of the U.S. Copyright Law, are allowed without written permissions, as long as such quotations do not cause damage to the book’s commercial value. For permissions, write to the publisher, whose address is stated below.

Image of CCC Camp Ole Bull,

Courtesy of Broward County Library, Bienes Museum of the Modern

Book, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Image of Sharon, PA at dusk,

Courtesy of The Sharon Herald

Image of Sharon tracks,

Courtesy of Carol Novosel

ISBN: 978-1-952244-37-7 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-64934-037-5 (Ebook)

Printed in the United States of America.

Rustik Haws LLC

100 S. Ashley Drive, Suite 600

Tampa, FL 33602

https://www.rustikhaws.com/

To Alicia.

This is her book. She decided that my childhood was worth writing about ...I’m not so sure it was, but here it is.

Contents

Foreword

The Pioneers 1745

My Burgoon Grandparents

The Goda Family

My Beginning 1924

The First Grade 1930–1931

The Second Grade 1931–1932

The Third Grade 1932–1933

Mickey Mouse 1933

The Century of Progress 1933–1934

The Fourth Grade 1933–1934

The Barkos’ Farm 1934

The Fifth Grade 1934–1935

The Altar Boy

The Sixth Grade 1935–1936

Joe’s Farm

The Seventh Grade 1936–1937

Shoeshine Boy

The Eighth Grade 1937–1938

The Ninth Grade 1938–1939

The Tenth Grade 1939–1940

Camp Ole Bull 1940

The Eleventh Grade 1940–1941

Appendix A

Appendix B

Foreword

In 1989, with some enthusiasm, John finished writing about his twenty years in the navy. It was only after much gentle prodding that he reluctantly began writing his childhood memoirs. He ended up enjoying the reliving of his youth and best of all, he was finally able to forgive his parents for their shortcomings.

Born midway through the Roaring Twenties, John was too young to understand what the 1929 stock market crash meant. The hardships of the Great Depression were simply the norm for John, and he learned at an early age that life would be whatever he made of it.

Naturally enterprising, adventuresome, and hard-working, John had an unusual youth, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading about it.

Alicia Burgoon

The Pioneers

1745

Jacob Burgoon was born in 1715 in Alsace-Lorraine, a French province at the time, although the territory was in the hands of the Germans one day and the French another. Like other residents in the area, Jacob spoke a German dialect. When he was fifteen, he went into the French army; I don’t know if he volunteered or was conscripted into military service. As was the custom, he served for about six years.

Between 1740 and 1745, Jacob left Europe and sailed with other immigrants for Maryland. While aboard ship, he met and married an English lady named Elizabeth. It is said that his name was actually Bourgogne and that it was written as Burgoon when he registered upon entering the country at Annapolis. Because Jacob was illiterate, at least in English, the clerk recorded his name as it sounded phonetically. Probably for this reason, all of the Burgoons in the United States can be traced to Jacob because he invented the name.

Jacob and Elizabeth settled in Anne Arundel County, not far from Annapolis. It’s possible that they were indentured servants, as were many of the immigrants to that area at the time. Jacob was a cordwainer (leather craftsman) by trade. Perhaps he was a boot maker, or he might have made belts, reins, harnesses, saddles, or coats; in those days, leather was used for many purposes in the house and on the farm.

Jacob bought land in 1762 and became a legal landowner in 1771 when he was denizated. The Maryland General Assembly had passed a denization law that made it possible for alien nationals to have the same rights and privileges as those of British or Irish descent.

While Jacob and Elizabeth lived in Arundel County, they had seven sons and a daughter: Jacob, Peter, Robert, Cornelius, John, Charles, Francis, and Honour.

When they became adults, Peter, Robert, and Francis crossed the Western Mountains and the Ohio River into the Wild West, where they had to fight Indians to defend their homesteads. Peter became a Methodist minister and was killed while felling trees to make shingles. Robert enlisted in the revolutionary army in 1776. Francis eventually moved his family to Sandusky County, Ohio, in a wagon train. The town of Burgoon, Ohio, was named after one of the clan who became an official with one of the early railroads.

Jacob and Elizabeth’s other sons and daughter settled in western Pennsylvania. John Burgoon’s wife, Susannah Barlow, was a Protestant. As she lay on her deathbed, she decided she wanted to die a Catholic. A rider was dispatched to Maryland to summon Dimitri Gallitzin, the first Catholic priest ordained in this country, to her bedside. Father Gallitzin was the son of the wealthy and famous Russian General Gallitzin. Much to the chagrin of his parents, Dimitri had converted to Catholicism and become a priest. Right after being attended to by the priest, Susannah died.

Prince (Father) Gallitzin decided to establish a Catholic colony in western Pennsylvania. He and his confidant and right-hand man, Jacob Burgoon, moved into the area. Burgoon Run was later named after Jacob. Dimitri purchased a large tract of land in a valley and named it Loretto. They built a church and school, and the area later became the site of a college and a Carmelite monastery.

The Burgoon clan was prominent in the new colony. Dennis Burgoon (the son of Jacob Jr.) and Ann Kuhn had a number of children. One of the sons, Samuel, was the father of my grandfather Burgoon. A number of German families settled in that area, among them the Aarons and the Reinzels (later changed to Reinsel); they had emigrated from the Rhine valley in Germany. One of my grandmother’s grandparents was an Aaron, and her mother’s name was Priscilla Cummings. I don’t know where my grandfather met Rose Ellen Reinsel, but they were married in Kingsville, Pennsylvania, and they eventually moved to Connelsville and then to South Sharon (later named Farrell). My grandmother’s father was a constable in South Sharon and later owned a livery stable. My grandfather was a mailman for a short time.

My Burgoon Grandparents

Grandfather Burgoon was many things: a rugged individualist, a Renaissance man, a good provider, and a religious and political fanatic; as my grandmother put it one day after he died, He was a good old man. He was born in 1874 at Kingsville, Pennsylvania, one of seven children reared by Samuel Burgoon and Elizabeth Haggerty. He had black hair and piercing brown eyes that danced when he had devilment in mind, and they pinned you to the wall when he was angry. They lived in a small town in the area of western Pennsylvania where Prince Dimitri Gallitzin founded his Catholic colony.

I don’t know much about the youthful days of Robert Albert (my grandfather), except one story he enjoyed telling about himself. In the winter he supplemented the family’s income by trapping animals for their fur. On one occasion, after having trapped a bunch of skunks, he decided to play a mean trick on the town. He had his skunks tied to the sleigh and was dragging them along to hopefully lose some of their aroma. When he had left the woods and approached the town, there was a thick layer of newly fallen snow on the streets. He decided it would be a neat idea to drag the polecats up and down the streets to transfer their scent to the snow. He assumed correctly that when the snow melted, there would be an aromatic hell to pay. I guess he got away with the deed because he didn’t show any scars from a civil uprising against him.

I believe Robert got his first taste of working in a steel mill in Connelsville, probably not too long after he was married. Then he moved the family to Farrell, where he worked in the hot mill I believe that was the area where the newly cast steel ingots were rolled into bars and sheets. The wages were excellent, but the working conditions were brutal.

At some point he got enough money together to get out of the mill and buy a small pet shop in Erie. That didn’t last long. An old friend, Father Wingler, was running an orphanage at North East, a few miles from the New York State border along the lakeshore. Robert worked part time for the priest and tended his own vineyard, where he grew grapes for the Welch’s Grape Juice Company.

Dad

There was a railroad track next to the farm that was a constant worry to my grandmother. A fast New York Central express train roared by on it just before suppertime, and she worried about the kids playing on the tracks and being hit by the train. One evening my father didn’t show up for supper, and she pushed the panic button. He was nowhere to be seen. With her heart in her throat, my grandmother ran to the tracks to see if John had been hit. Neither he nor any part of him was on or near the tracks. Finally, my grandfather went to the orphanage to see if anyone had seen the boy. A search was made of the area, and my dad was found curled up asleep in one of the pews of the orphanage chapel.

Apparently, the grape business wasn’t all that rewarding, because the family moved to a farm in Hickory Township, near Sharon. At first Robert grew fruit and vegetables that he could sell to housewives in town: carrots, celery, rhubarb, radishes, onions, tomatoes, and cantaloupe. When the crops were ripe, he would load up the wagon with produce and head for town to sell it. He told me about a little song that he sang as he rode up and down the streets.

Cantaloupe, would-ja-lope,

If ya had a chance-a-lope.

My aunt Mary was born on that farm some incredible number of months premature. The doctor said that there was no hope for her survival. My grandmother made a nest for her in the oven of the woodstove in the kitchen; I guess there must have been some way to control the heat while the stove was used for cooking.¹

Grandfather found that he had a particular knack for growing tomatoes, and he was so good at it that he had more than the family could eat or sell. Somehow he and my great-grandfather put together a tomato canning plant on the farm. They cooked the tomatoes and sealed them in tin cans by soldering the lids on by hand I assume. I assume that didn’t fly too well because I never heard anyone say much about it.

Joe, Grandmother, Mary, Chuck, Grandfather, Bob, and Dad

The family moved back to Farrell, and my grandfather took a job in the rolling mill, which was a very hot and dangerous occupation. However, it did pay good money, which Robert needed to raise a family of six: John, Joe, Chuck, Mary, Dorothy, and Bob. The seventh child, Daniel, died of scarlet fever when he was a toddler.

My grandfather had received some money when he sold the tomato canning plant, but a bunch of unwise speculations ate it up. Once, I got an old, dusty suitcase down off of a top shelf in the fruit cellar and found the evidence of his get-rich hopes. The bag was full of beautifully engraved stock certificates. Some of them had pictures of burros hauling golden ore out of mine entrances, and others had detailed engravings showing wildcat wells blowing their tops with liquid gold. There were other less exciting certificates, but the suitcase was full, and it must have represented a small fortune in lost money. I also heard of a sharkskin leather business in which he had invested. There was a large sharkskin wallet in the desk in the den all that he ever got out of that project.

During the summer, the year before I entered the first grade, I stayed with my grandparents. My grandfather had become a coal prospector. I guess he had seen some indication of a coal outcropping when he walked through a farmer’s fields near Bobby’s Corners a few miles from town. With the help of Bob, his husky youngest son, he built a rig to perform the drilling operation. First he cut down a small tree that had a strong fork in it and buried the end of it with the fork up to provide the support for the drilling boom. The boom was fashioned from another tall tree trunk. The thick end was anchored in the ground, and it rested about two-thirds of the way up on the fork. Block and tackle gear were attached to the slim end of the boom so that steel drilling shafts could be attached to it. The man who lived next door, Mr. Houtz, was a well driller, and he rented the drill shafts to my grandfather, including a fixture that would take core samples as the well deepened.

I loved the few times that I was permitted to pack a lunch and join them. I even got to stand at the well opening and help move the shafts up and down. I’m sure that my efforts were more of a nuisance than a help. It was hard work, pulling the shafts down and then letting the springiness of the boom pull it back up for another stroke.

There was a small stream near the drilling site that had created a marshy area in the pasture. My uncle Bob spotted some good- sized bullfrogs in the little swamp, so he decided we should have grilled frog legs for lunch that day. After having managed to catch several frogs, he skinned them and built a small fire to cook them. There was no grill, so we used sharpened sticks to pierce the legs, and we held them over the fire. I guess the heat of the fire and the awkwardness of the operation made us impatient, because although the frog legs had been fire blackened, they were rare inside and tasted pretty bad ²

It was quite a transition, but somehow my grandfather got a job as a technician at the Westinghouse transformer plant in Sharpsville, the next town in the valley north of Sharon. As a matter of fact, one couldn’t tell where Sharon stopped and Sharpsville began.

I’m sure he had no more than a grade school education, and perhaps not too much of that. However, he was not illiterate and managed to broaden his knowledge on his own. A serious concern in the pole transformer business at the time was the occasional destruction of a transformer by a lightning strike. The incredible energy involved would generate explosive gasses in the transformer when it was struck and would blast the thing to smithereens. The old man came up with an inert compound copper oxide was one of its constituents that protected the transformer. His picture was on the front page of the company newspaper in an article that announced the written and financial reward he had received for his contribution.

Each year the Westinghouse plant had an open house for the families of the employees, and I loved going to it. My particular interest was the high-voltage demonstrations: Jacob’sladders, Oudin coils, Tesla coils, and more. The grand finale was a demonstration of their artificial lightning strike with which they tested each completed transformer. While we waited, we received a free ice creamcone. They had a huge barn that housed the lightning generator. As they pointed out, unlike the other high-voltage equipment that they had demonstrated, this device discharged an artificial bolt of lightning that had substantial amounts of current in it. On a railroad siding next to the tower, there was a special car with a transformer on it. There was a great deal of humming and generation of ozone until the huge banks of capacitors where charged in parallel. When they were switched to a series configuration, there was an awesome crack like a great gun firing, and the lightning bolt blasted the transformer with allegedly no damage. They said this was special at Westinghouse: every pole pig was tested in this manner. Immediately I wanted to build a Tesla coil. When I did so without instructions, I blew the main breaker in the house.

Grand dad was always tinkering. Sometimes his ideas were nifty, but as often as not they could result in disaster. He had an idea for a high-temperature lubricant that he submitted to Standard Oil, and they said, Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t know how true it was, but he told me some years later that they stole his idea and were making such a lubricant. He loved to paint and varnish things. He would borrow a little of the varnish that they used for transformer windings and make a concoction that he’d put on chairs and a violin case, and he even used it to hold a rubber tip on a walking cane that he’d made out of the branch of a thorn bush. The tip is still intact today.

Jack Benny had an extremely popular hour-long radio program in those days; it amounted to a variety show. One of his performers was a violinist virtuoso named Rubinoff. Rubinoff talked about his Stradivarius violin and offered to buy from anyone that might have one. He explained how to tell the make by looking inside the body of the instrument. A real one would have a sticker that said Antonius Cremonius Stradivarius with the date and place of manufacture. My grandfather had a violin in a case under the couch in the living room. He got it out, and guess what? Sure enough, it had a label that said Antonius Cremonius Stradivarius.

There was a schoolteacher who was a boarder next door at the home of my grandmother’s sister. His hobby was photography, and he had some expensive photographic equipment. Grandfather paid him to get a picture of the label, which required some tricks of lighting. Grandfather sent the photographs of the inside and outside of the fiddle to Rubinoff. In a week or so, a letter returned saying the violin was a genuine Stradivarius. But thanks to Grandfather’s tinkering, it was virtually worthless as anything but a curiosity in testimony to the destructiveness of man. One of the factors that led to the sweet tone of the Italian master’s violins was the varnish. The Westinghouse varnish he’d applied destroyed the very essence of the instrument. When grandfather was in the cellar and got bored, look out. Anything that didn’t move might get painted or varnished. It’s incredible to think that when he was a square dance caller and fiddler, he was fiddling with a Stradivarius violin that had been worth a small fortune before the varnish job. I don’t know who ended up with the faulty fiddle.

Grandfather had inherited a knack for playing musical instruments. Once he figured out the idiosyncrasies of an instrument, he was able to play it by ear. He could play the piano, the clarinet, and the violin. He also played the cornet in the town band in its weekly concerts. I don’t know what else he might have learned to play. I never did hear him sing, but I assume he could, because square dance calling required a sort of singing. He taught me to play little childish things on the piano, like Chopsticks and a bit that went with a song that started out, Mother, mother have you heard? Pa’s gonna buy me a mockingbird … I still remember all of the words.

My grandfather’s cellar would have delighted the soul of a revenuer. There were at least four oak casks with various wines in different states of fermentation: elderberry, dandelion, blackberry, and others. His cozy, well- stocked cellar was a popular attraction to his friends. His wine had quite a reputation, and he had many friends though of course, prohibition was in effect then.

Besides the wine making, there was case after case of home- brewed beer in the cool fruit cellar. Sometimes he would let me help bottle it. I would put on the caps and lower the lever to crimp them on with the cap machine. In my mind’s eye I can see the malt cans that he used: it was Blue Ribbon malt and came in a very colorful can. The beer was brewed in a large crock in the fruit cellar. His method was to let the fermentation run its course, and then with a special dispenser he or I would put a measured amount of sugar in each bottle, which would then cause the fermentation to continue just enough to provide the right amount of carbonation.

Granddad enjoyed taking me with him for walks in the woods. He would teach me how to recognize the edible and poisonous varieties of mushrooms and where to find them. He would show me where to find other goodies like watercress and the various kinds of nuts in the area hickory, butternuts, hazelnuts, black walnuts, beechnuts, and chestnuts. He tutored me in the strategies of rabbit and squirrel hunting, as well as how to make an interesting gnarled cane out of the branch of a thornbush. One day we climbed a barbed-wire fence at a farmer’s pasture to take a shortcut. He taught me the niceties of evading the horns of a furious ram while clearing the barbs of a fence. The ram had been lying down under a tree on the other side of the field, out of our view.

My dad and his brothers (except for Joe) disliked my grandfather. I guess he was too strict for them. Of course, as a grandchild I never felt his wrath or the intimidating scorn of his fiery brown eyes. I had no reason not to love and respect him. He was, to me, everything that a grandfather could be. He enjoyed teaching me how to use tools, and to save wear and tear on his own, he gave me a great little tool box for Christmas that had miniature but usable tools.

My father blamed my grandfather for Dad’s not achieving his ambition of going to college to become a chemist. My dad was an exceptional scholar who skipped two grades in school when that was difficult to do. He was a straight-A student in high school. Then he got in with some mischievous guy who got him into some kind of trouble, and my grandfather sent him to Saint Bonaventure’s College in Olean, New York, where they had a prep school as well as a college. While there Dad studied several languages, organic chemistry, astronomy, and ancient history, and he was a member of the track team. At the end of his school year there, my grandfather brought him back to work in the mill to help support the family. My father never forgave him for that.³

Grandfather never did learn to drive a car, and he hated to ride in one. However, he had confidence in my aunt Mary’s longtime fiancé, Ralph. Ralph was the epitome of the good guy, and he was always ready to provide transportation when needed. Ralph was partial to a car called the Hupmobile. One Sunday he drove my grandparents and me to visit my grandmother’s brother, Joe Reinsel, who was an undertaker in Oil City. On the way back while negotiating a turn, the right wheel of the Hupmobile came off and rolled off the road and into a field. Ralph managed to keep some control of the car. Amazingly, this convinced my grandfather that automobile riding was okay with Ralph at the wheel.

When I was in the first and second grade and was living with my grandparents, I would wait for my grandfather to appear coming up the hill from the streetcar with his lunch bucket. My grandmother packed lunch buckets that would please a farmhand. There were always two sandwiches, a piece of fruit, and some of her delicious dessert: pie, cake, cookies, or doughnuts. I don’t know whether it was intentional, but my grandfather would hand me his bucket when I ran to him, and it would always have half a sandwich or some cookies or cake in it.

If it was springtime or summer, Grandfather would go to his sink in the cellar and wash up and shave. Then he would go into the garden. He always let me have a couple of small rows to plant on my own, usually lettuce and red and white radishes. I loved watching the radishes poke their noses up in such a short time. The table never lacked of fresh vegetables in the summer. His tomatoes were plentiful. The house smelled of simmering tomatoes when the time came to make ketchup. There would be relish and chili sauce too. The fruit cellar was always full of canned goods.

In the fall and winter, Granddad would go to his rocking chair and smoking stand, which had a Westinghouse table model radio on it. He’d fill his pipe with Five Brothers smoking tobacco and read the newspaper. After supper he would be back to listen to Lowell Thomas and his news program, which was sponsored by the Blue Sunoco Oil Company. I liked his closing statement: So long until tomorrow. Grandfather usually had one chew of Mail Pouch tobacco before heading back down to the cellar after the news. He never missed the fancy, glazed crockery spittoon, which was decorated in swirling red and yellow colors. The cellar was always toasty warm in the winter and was cool in the summer. He would have a glass of wine or two before going to bed early. Although he loved his wine and beer, I never saw him the least bit intoxicated.

On Sunday after lunch, I usually found something to do outside of the house or in the cellar, because Father Coughlin’s program came on, and my grandfather never missed one of them, even if he was sick in bed. I don’t know why the Catholic Church permitted it, but Coughlin would go into almost hysterical harangues in which he would keep bringing up the money changers in the temple. He was anti-Jewish and anti–big business, and he advocated social justice. Of course, his prime-time program cost big bucks to support, so he spent some time asking for checks to be mailed to The Church of the Little Flower, in Royal Oak, Michigan. There was another activist that my grandfather followed, and I believe his name was Townsend; he toured the country touting socialism and social security in particular. Well, the democrats have seen to it that most of the socialist platforms were adopted and put