Choices: My Life’s Choice Points Mine and Those of Others During My First Eighty-Seven Years

By William R. Johnston P.E.

Mr. Johnston has written an interesting unconventional chronological summary of his life from birth through age 87. He intricately blends his professional and personal life throughout the book as he points out how the many CHOICES made by himself and by others have impacted his life. He reminisces about his family life, education experiences, personal relationships and work obligations. He shows how the experience of growing up on an Oregon farm provided him with life lasting teachings. Mr. Johnston describes his marriages, his children, their children and related joyous plus not so joyous experiences. He describes his various job assignments, his consulting practice, and how his work related to his personal life. Mr. Johnston’s overseas consulting exposed him to numerous foreign cultures. Those consulting experiences influenced his desire to travel and see even more of the world which he outlines in his chronology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669813460

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Copyright © 2022 by William R. Johnston, P.E.

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Rev. date: 04/12/2022

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgments

Before My Time (1931–1932)

My Arrival (1932–1937)

California (1937–1945)

Oregon Ranch (1945–1951)

Grants Pass (1951–1953)

Higher Education (1953–1959)

First Professional Job (1959–1965)

Westlands Water District (1965–1975)

Interagency Drainage Program (1975–1976)

Return To Westlands (1976–1987)

Consulting (1987–1995)

Personal Changes (1995–1999)

Travel With Work (1999–2015)

A Retirement Community (2015–2020)

The Pandemic And Later (2020–2021)

My Life Summary (2022)

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to my mother and father, who made good choices for me until I was old and mature enough to make my own, and to all others who planted seeds to help me produce my fertile life.

PREFACE

Over several years, friends and relatives have said to me, You have lived an interesting life. Why don’t you write about it? After giving it some thought, I concluded that I would create an outline and see what that would look like. The result of creating that outline is my book Choices. Everyone’s life is destined by choices made personally by oneself or choices made by others. My life story is based on my recollection and reflection on choices, first made by my parents early in my life and later by others as well as by me.

Obviously, the older one gets the more freedom one has in making choices that guide their destiny. However, there comes a time in one’s life that the decisions by others impact your life, and then eventually we may get to the point where all decisions about one may again be made by others. My book is a discussion of my life, how it unfolded, and the times when choices were made that changed the direction or path that created my life story. I sometimes speculate on some possibilities that could have evolved if an alternative path had been taken.

I spent a considerable amount of time writing during the coronavirus pandemic. I enjoyed doing it, but it was certainly not something that could have been done over a short period. I started working on my autobiography in about 2016. I had old calendars and pictures to help me better remember times and places.

I mentioned or discussed many persons involved in my story. Some of these persons have been especially important to me in my development as a person and some as professional counsel. Some have been friends, some have been colleagues, and many have been both. I apologize to any person I have forgotten to mention and to any whom I have not characterized as they may remember. Since high school, I have never been unemployed. Since I graduated from Oregon State College, I have thoroughly enjoyed doing what I have been paid to do. I have generally looked at every day as a vacation. I have moved a lot, but I do not consider myself street smart. I have been married four times. I have two children of my own and two my third wife brought into my life. I have also been fortunate to have been paid to travel throughout the United States and around the world. To many, my life may look like a travel journal. To others, my life may look chaotic.

Whatever has happened in my adult life has mostly been my choice, and for better or worse, it has been a good life. I have few regrets and many, many happy memories. I have spent many hours and days on this autobiography.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writing of my story has given me the opportunity to discuss a great deal of history with my sister Shirley as she has been involved in a significant portion of my life. Since she is eight years younger than I am, her memory works better than mine in some instances. I really appreciated having her to discuss some of the things I wish we would have discussed more with our mother or father. Throughout her life, Shirley has always been there to help me whenever I have needed assistance. Her generous help has continued through the writing of my story.

I also received some help in remembering facts from my children, Susan, Michael, and Christie. They were extremely helpful by reminding me of some personal relationships and activities in which they were involved, plus a few facts that I did not recall.

My wife, Maryann, has been a great help by encouraging me to keep at it and by telling me how much she enjoyed learning about me. She was more than helpful in making my writing better.

BEFORE MY TIME

(1931–1932)

One is frequently asked, Where did your family come from? Only four out of eight of my great-grandparents were born outside of the United States. On my father’s side of the family, his grandparents (Grandfather John William Johnston [NA–1876] and Grandmother Rachel Agnes Burns (1837–1902)) were born in Belfast, Ireland. On my mother’s side of the family, her father’s father (Hedley Vicus Bird [1856–1942]) was born in London, England; and her mother’s mother (Johanna Baumruk [1866–1966]) was born in Vienna, Austria. All other family members, from my great-grandparents down to me, were born as U.S. citizens. So that makes me one-fourth Irish, one-eighth English, one-eighth Austrian, and one-half of United States origin.

1931

In 1931, Los Angeles was a smog-free city and a leading California agricultural county. Virginia May Bird (1913–2006) was born an only child in the City of Angels on May 19, 1913, the daughter of mattress maker Robert Vicars Bird (1890–1986) and his wife, Clara Louise Sullivan Bird (1898–1984). At the age of eighteen, Virginia was a happy girl who had just graduated from Manual Arts High School. She had several girlfriends, and those girls and their families liked to go to Catalina Island on weekends to participate in the dances at the Catalina Casino. Virginia was there with them one weekend when her girlfriend’s brother, who was home from the U.S. Army with one of his army friends, happened to join them.

That brother’s army friend was Clifton Wagner Johnston (1906–1969), who was born on September 23, 1906, in Baltimore, Maryland. Clifton had just returned from Hawaii, where he had completed his service with the army, and he was about to be discharged. He was introduced to Virginia at the dance in Catalina. Clifton and Virginia seemed to like each other immediately, and they wanted to spend some time together so they could get to know each other. Clifton was almost eight years older than Virginia, so Virginia’s mother did not think her daughter should date or even spend any time with an older army soldier.

However, Clifton and Virginia did get to spend a little time together before Clifton had to return to the East Coast, where he was to be discharged from the army. While in Los Angeles, he was staying with his army friend at Virginia’s girlfriend’s home, which was convenient for visiting. After Clifton left Los Angeles, he did not forget Virginia. He was persistent and kept writing letters to her, to which she must have responded as Clifton finally asked Virginia to marry him. Clara was against this as she did not know much about Clifton. Certainly, the age difference was not a good thing, according to Clara, but she offered Virginia a condition under which she would consent to marriage. The condition was that Virginia had to obtain her associate’s degree from Los Angeles City College before she could get married. Clara thought that would end the long-range romance. Little did she know about her daughter’s determination.

1932

Parents’ Marriage

Over a year seemed like a long time to wait, but finally Virginia earned her accounting degree in June 1932. Clara’s plan failed because on August 17 of that year, Virginia and Clifton were married in the Saint John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Los Angeles, California.

This was the initial choice point for my parents that ultimately gave me my life. Virginia chose to accept Clifton’s proposal of marriage, defying her mother. Any other choice and I would have never been a thought in anyone’s mind. As I understand, the wedding was the usual Episcopal Church short ceremony, followed by a coffee, tea, and cake reception in the church.

Their honeymoon consisted of an automobile ride from Los Angeles to Baltimore with some of the Johnston family. Clifton’s family members that traveled by car from Baltimore to Los Angeles for the wedding were his mother, Rosina Wagner Beesie (1869–1952); his sisters, Angeline Griest (1902–1988) and Elizabeth Bach (1904–1990); and Elizabeth’s son, Walton Bach. They were in Angeline’s brand-new 1932 Studebaker. They had started their journey in Angeline’s older car, which was damaged beyond repair in an accident passing through Chicago on the way west. In Chicago, Angeline decided to purchase a new car so they could proceed to the wedding in Los Angeles. Clifton’s father, William John Johnston Pap (1873–1945), did not attend his son’s wedding as he apparently had to work. He was employed by the Standard Oil Company in New York City.

Clifton’s family called him Cliff or, as his mother called him, Wag for Wagner. Virginia, my mother, called him Cliff; so hereafter, in this story, I will refer to my father either as Father, Cliff, or Clifton. My mother was called either Virginia or Gin. I will refer to her as Mother or Virginia.

There was no air-conditioning in automobiles in those days, except the 4-60 kind—that is, four windows open at sixty miles per hour. I can only imagine the enjoyment of their honeymoon with six persons in a car, plus six persons’ luggage packed on and in the car, for five or six days at the minimum. It was August, when the temperatures across the California desert, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, and on through the Midwest had to be near one hundred degrees Fahrenheit every day.

Of course, Walton, being a young man, closer to the age of Cliff and Virginia, wanted to, on their several overnight rest stops, share a room with the newly married couple rather than with his grandmother Rosina Wagner Johnston Beesie (1869–1952); his mother, Elizabeth Johnston Bach (1904–1990); and his aunt Angeline Rachel Johnston Griest (1903–1988). Walton could not figure out why they would not let him stay with the newly married couple.

MY ARRIVAL (1932–1937)

Once they reached Baltimore, it turned out that Cliff did not have a job. The world depression was just ending, and no one had any money. Therefore, my parents-to-be had to stay for a while with Cliff’s parents, Beesie and Pap. After a short time, one of my father’s friends opened an Esso gasoline station in Newark, New Jersey, and he hired my father to manage the station.

1933

Hard Times

Cliff and Virginia rented a small one-bedroom apartment near the Esso Service Station where Cliff worked, and that is where I was conceived. Obviously, I remember nothing about this, but I was told by my mother that the place was rather dreary and that she never did like living there. My father made something like thirty-five dollars per week, and most of that went for rent. Making ends meet was a bit of a challenge. Mother told of cashing their last one-dollar gold coin to get something to eat and go to the movies.

1934

A Little Boy

I entered the world on November 25, 1934, in a Newark, New Jersey, hospital. I was born at 3:20 p.m., and I weighed six pounds and twelve ounces. I was twenty-two inches long. By three months, I had almost doubled my weight to twelve pounds and three ounces. If I had continued gaining weight at that rate, I would have weighed 110 pounds by the time I was five years old. Fortunately, that did not happen. I barely weighed 110 pounds when I was in high school. My first address was 431 Fourth Street, Newark, New Jersey.

That was a time when the Nazis were stirring up trouble in Europe and the United States was trying to stay out of the fray and the country was eager to get over the Great Depression. During November 1934, one of the most exciting things that occurred in the United States (except for my birth) was the finding of the famous gangster Baby Face Nelson dead in a ditch outside of Chicago.

I apparently started my travels early as I was baptized in Baltimore, Maryland, on Christmas Day, one month after I was born, at the Saint Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in the presence of my mother, Virginia May (Bird), and father, Clifton Wagner Johnston; grandmother, Mrs. R. V. Bird; my aunt and uncle Mr. and Mrs. J. Lawrence Bach; and Dr. and Mrs. Louis Singewald (my godparents).

1935

Father continued working at the gasoline station with Mother staying home with me. Mother apparently became pregnant again in the spring of 1935.

1936

Two Tragedies

On January 14, 1936, Mother gave birth to a baby girl named Mary Louise, who was born with a spinal deformity. After emergency surgery, she only lived a few hours. I have no additional information about this baby girl that would have been my sister. However, I know my parents were extremely sad and disappointed in the loss of this baby, and they talked about the loss from time to time, at least until my sister Shirley was born.

At this same time, as I learned over the years, my parents continued to have little or no money, and things were not working out financially at the gasoline station where Father worked. To add to the financial burden, my father contracted tuberculosis and had to quit his job. Father went into a sanatorium, and Mother had to find a place to live for the two of us. She ended up moving to Baltimore, Maryland, to live with my father’s sister, Aunt Elizabeth (Bess), and her husband, Uncle Lawrence Bach. Less than two years old, I had my second address: 3622 W. Garrison Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland. Apparently, Uncle Lawrence was not too happy having his brother-in-law’s wife and baby invade his small two-story, two-bedroom row house. I was told that, although everyone loved one another, it was rather crowded, and relationships most likely became a bit strained.

As this choice to move to Baltimore was made, my life outlook suddenly changed. I was deprived of growing up in Newark, New Jersey. I surmise that Newark would not have been a great place to grow up, and I could possibly have joined a gang and been killed on the street as a teenager. My potential could have escalated to being a gas station attendant or a garage owner or even an employee of such an establishment. However, we moved on to Baltimore.

Aunt Bess and Uncle Lawrence were great. They lived in a nice neighborhood. Their type of row house was one of many houses in a block, all the same, connected, and except for the two houses on either end of the block, the houses all share common walls between one another. To go from the front yard to the backyard, one must either go through the house or go around the block and up the alley to your own backyard. Uncle Lawrence liked to garden, and he was an avid stamp collector.

One amusing story is about the time someone visited Aunt Bess with a dog, and, apparently, the dog had fleas. The fleas, unknowingly to the owner or Aunt Bess, got in the carpet but did not seem to bother anyone. That was until Uncle Lawrence took his shoes off to get ready for bed. The fleas loved him and promptly hopped up his legs and bit him all over his body. The carpet was steam cleaned the next morning, regardless of the cost.

One happy remembrance is that Uncle Lawrence always prepared an elaborate garden underneath their Christmas tree. He would start at the beginning of December laying out the track for the train and assembling the buildings for the town. By the third week of December, he would be ready to place the full-sized Christmas tree in the garden. The tree would then get decorated and be ready just before Christmas.

An important historical event took place in December 1936 that had an interesting relationship to my life many years later. General Motors, the largest automobile manufacturer in the United States, had forty-five thousand auto workers employed in Flint, Michigan. On December 29, the United Auto Workers (UAW) members started a sit-down strike in the GM plants. A sit-down strike is where the union members take over the plants and refuse to work or to let any management personnel into the plant until the strike is settled. This strike lasted until February 11, 1937. It was the beginning of a long struggle between the UAW and the automobile manufacturers. The importance of this event will become relevant to my life in an unexpected way many years in the future.

1937

Moving Again

We moved out of the Bachs’ home sometime during 1937, and I had an additional address (my third) in Baltimore, on Ridgewood Avenue. Mother took a job as a clerk in a five-and-dime store to pay some bills as my father was still confined to the tuberculosis sanatorium. Other than Mother’s salary, there was no family income. I turned three years old, and Mother finally decided this is not what she volunteered for when she married my father. She decided she could no longer live under those conditions and would have to make a change. This was another choice made in my behalf, and that was to leave the East Coast and head west to be with Mother’s parents.

Just after my third birthday, in December 1937, Mother and I traveled by train from Baltimore, Maryland, to Los Angeles, California. I then had my fifth address in three years: 1607 W. Santa Barbara Avenue, Los Angeles, California. We moved in with Mother’s parents, Robert and Clara Bird. I still have memories of riding on the train across the country. That was my initiation into travel and may be how my desire to travel was instilled in me so early in my life. Mother’s choice to head for California with me in tow was the next big choice or decision that certainly influenced my future. No amount of speculation could forecast how my life would have turned out had my father found a job in the east and I had grown up in a big eastern city such as Baltimore. I certainly would not have been educated at West Coast colleges and universities.

CALIFORNIA (1937–1945)

Los Angeles

When we arrived in Los Angeles and moved in with Mother’s parents, who lived near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, they had a small freestanding two-bedroom home with an alley in back with a small garden. I believe we also spent some time living with Aunt May (Clara’s sister) and her husband, Ira B. Winbigler, on their property, the Antelope Valley Gun Club, four miles north of Lancaster. They had a couple of cows, several chickens, and a few other odd animals on a 160-acre parcel of land that did not produce much but creosote bush and tamarack trees. Therefore, Uncle Ira constructed some large ponds with duck blinds and with a groundwater well. He operated his duck hunting club to support the property, and he advertised We Always Have Ducks. He used the well water to flood about eighty acres of duck ponds during duck migration and hunting seasons. Their land eventually became part of the southwest corner of the Edwards Air Force Base property.

Mother’s side of the family had a history of long lifelines. Just after our arrival in Los Angeles, the family held a Christmas family reunion with five generations present. Those making up the five generations were my great-great-grandfather Francis Baumruk (1843–1949), my great-grandmother Johanna Baumruk Sullivan (1866–1966), my grandmother Clara Louise Sullivan Bird (1888–1984), my mother, Virginia May Bird Johnston (1913–2006), and me, William Billy Robert Johnston (1934–still writing). The Los Angeles Times reporter showed up to take a picture that was published in the LA Times newspaper.

I remember a bit about living with my mother’s parents, Robert and Clara Bird, such as going out into the small garden my grandfather maintained in their backyard. He liked to grow flowers and a few vegetables. He would show me how to pull weeds, water, and cut off the wilted flowers. Professionally, Grandpa Bird manufactured mattresses for a living in his small manufacturing plant.

I mentioned the five-generation picture earlier and remember visiting these elderly Los Angeles relatives. We would visit at Great-Grandmother Sullivan’s home. Her brother Charlie Baumruk lived with her. Great-Grandmother’s maiden name was Baumruk, and married names were Scofield and Sullivan. I remember talking a bit with Charlie Baumruk on the front porch of their home. He was deaf and spoke mostly German with some broken English, so I use the term talking loosely. We also visited Aunt Genevieve Tarpley’s home at 808 W. Sixty-Fifth Street. I don’t remember meeting Aunt Genie’s husband, Frank, who died in 1944. Their son, Donald, had died in 1933 before we arrived in LA. I also met Grandpa Bird’s sister, Ada Bird, who had never married, and his brother, Albert Bird, who operated a Union Oil gasoline station near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the campus of the University of Southern California.

This was an important year historically. It was the same year that Elizabeth’s coronation as queen of England took place at Westminster Abbey in London, England. Also, the Golden Gate Bridge opened, connecting San Francisco to Marin County in California, and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts was founded in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

1938

Father’s California Job

Fortunately, for my father, he was friends with someone who knew Mr. Charles Guth. Mr. Guth (1877–1948) was the president of the Loft Candy Company, which purchased the trademark and syrup recipe of the twice-bankrupt Pepsi-Cola Company. Mr. Guth was also president of Pepsi-Cola Company from 1931 to 1939. So, at that time, he was president of the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company. Mr. Guth offered my father a job in the casher’s office of the Los Angeles plant. Father was released from the sanatorium in Baltimore and joined us in LA right after the first of the year in 1938. He started work immediately. As I recall, my father really liked his job, which was, in part, counting all the daily cash brought in by the Pepsi-Cola delivery drivers, who, at that time, all worked for the Pepsi-Cola Company directly.

It was also interesting to Father as he noticed the different kinds of coins that were circulating at that time. Father liked to collect things, so he quickly became interested in collecting coins. He would find old and interesting Indian head pennies, Buffalo nickels, Mercury dimes, and Liberty quarters, and even on his meager salary would pull coins out of circulation and replace them with his coins. This became a lifelong hobby that served Father well. Father also noticed that every now and then, Pepsi-Cola bottles from different countries came through the bottling plant. They could not be refilled and circulated as they were different shapes and sizes from the standard twelve-ounce bottles being used in the United States. Therefore, Father asked that they be filled and saved for him. Over the time he worked at the plant, he accumulated more than a case full of bottles from different parts of the world.

Walt Disney was already an important filmmaker, and he released the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs during April 1938.

Own Apartment

My parents realized that it was very crowded at my grandparents’ home, and Father now had a job, so we moved into a place of our own. It was a small upstairs studio apartment (it had a pull-down (Murphy) bed in the living room) located at 1427 Mohawk Street, Los Angeles, California. This was my sixth address before I was four years old. We lived in this place for just over a year. Apparently, sometime during that year, my parents thought that having a pet would be a good thing for me, really not in an apartment; but, anyway, at Christmas, Santa brought me a puppy. I also received a Lionel Train, since my parents wanted to have a garden under the tree as they had observed in Aunt Bess and Uncle Lawrence’s home. In addition, my father liked trains.

Unfortunately, it was soon obvious that I was allergic to this cute little puppy, as well as cats and other dander-rendering animals. I had a hard time breathing whenever I was around our dog, and it did not take long before a new home had to be found for my Christmas present. I was diagnosed as having asthma caused by animal dander. In addition, this apartment was small, and my parents wanted more space.

1939

A larger apartment was found in May 1939, less than two blocks down the street at 2216 Reservoir Street, Los Angeles, California. We moved to my seventh address. This was a nicer apartment on the second floor with a real bedroom and an outside porch overlooking Reservoir Street. Father continued to work at the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant. Mother was a housewife.

1940

My Formal Education

I started my formal education in kindergarten at the nearby Mayberry Street Elementary School in the fall of 1940. I don’t remember anything about the school except my mother walking me to school and meeting me at the end of the day to walk me home. I do not remember getting into any fights or having any girlfriends. I received my first red wagon when we lived on Reservoir.

It should be noted that the first McDonald’s restaurant opened in San Bernardino, California, in May 1940. You could buy a hamburger for fifteen cents.

1941

My first report card shows that I received all satisfactory marks through January 1941 but that I was absent thirty days of school between September 1940 and the end of January 1941. It seems my asthma was already impacting my school attendance.

I recall very well several things about living on Reservoir Street. That is where my allergies to other animals, such as horses, became apparent. There was a man who brought his pony and his camera around the neighborhood trying to get parents to have photographs taken of their children dressed up as cowboys and cowgirls sitting on his pony. Mother thought that was a nice thing for me to do. We got the picture, but we found out I was highly allergic to horses as well as dogs.

One other thing I recall in detail from when we lived in this Reservoir Street apartment is an incident after Mother purchased a new Remington 12-guage automatic shotgun as a present for my father’s birthday (September 23). He was proud of that shotgun, and I remember sitting on our front balcony when he was cleaning the gun after a day of duck hunting. He accidently scratched the gun with a screwdriver, and I learned a few new words. It is easy to remember that day because that scratch is still on the gun, and I will always remember how and when it happened. I felt quite bad for my father, as he was showing me how to take the gun apart and keep it clean, and then he accidently put that scratch in the new finish. My father always thought that if you were going to have something, anything, that you should take care of it (whatever it might be) as best you could, regardless of how much it was worth. He also taught me that quality is always better than quantity. After he used that shotgun for years, and I used if for years, I have now passed it on to my son, Michael.

When we lived on Reservoir Street, it was about the time my parents realized that I seemed to be wheezing too much of the time, not just when I was around animals. They took me to an allergist, and I received the common scratch tests to see what else I might be allergic to. Well, I was found to be allergic to a whole list of things, from dust to various grasses and flowers, plus several foods such as watermelons and cantaloupe. The doctor prescribed daily injections, which my mother reluctantly agreed to give me. I can remember looking out the back window of our apartment at the American flag flying over the nearby hospital each time I received a shot in my arm.

Everyone felt sorry for me because I liked dogs but could not be around them without wheezing. So people started giving me miniature glass, wooden, brass, and dogs of other materials as presents, which I collected most of my life until I eventually had over three hundred.

Father’s Promotions

During 1941, my father had received a couple of promotions at the Pepsi-Cola Company, and he was now working in sales and advertising. One of his jobs was helping design the advertising layouts using Earl Carroll’s Showgirls The Most Beautiful Girls in the World at the show room and at the beach. Earl Carroll’s was a famous and expensive Los Angeles nightclub at that time, and it was rather prestigious to be working with the showgirls that performed there. Those were good years.

Alhambra

Father had probably also received a raise or two, so my parents apparently felt it was a time for a change. They moved again in November 1941, this time to a freestanding rental house that was located at 422 N. First Street, Alhambra, California. I do not know why they chose Alhambra. It could have been the price, but I liked living there as my school was at the end of our street, only about two blocks from home, and we had a large backyard. I also remember being sick much of the time when we lived in Alhambra. I had whooping cough, a disease common in persons with asthma, plus some rash that was diagnosed as scarlet fever. We were even quarantined for a month or so for those diseases. I was not bedridden and I did not have to stay indoors, but I could not leave our property. I remember liking to sit in the backyard where a swing set had been hung from a large oak tree. With nothing much to do while I was sick, I used to swing and look at the birds and the rather large trees in the yard, which provided great shade.

During December 1941, one of my father’s work assignments for Pepsi-Cola was to travel to Corvallis, Oregon, visit the athletic department at Oregon State College, and secure the consignment to sell Pepsi-Cola at the January 1, 1942, Rose Bowl Game to be held in Pasadena. The game was to be between Oregon State College and Duke University. Father, Mother, and I drove north on U.S. Highway 99 from Los Angeles to Corvallis in our 1941 Packard, through the California Central Valley, and over the Siskiyou’s, past Grants Pass, Roseburg, and Eugene on into Corvallis. This was my first of hundreds of times to ride and/or drive on this route during my lifetime. The trip was successful as Father obtained the right to sell Pepsi-Cola at the Rose Bowl Game.

World War II

We returned to Southern California on Sunday, December 7, 1941. We drove down Highway 99 in Oregon, through Cave Junction, and onto Highway 101 in California. (By the way, this was the day before the birth of my future wife, Maryann Staton in Indianapolis, Indiana.) I remember driving through Palo Alto, where Father received a speeding ticket. Father was a little upset about that as we had to drive to the police station where he had to pay his fine, in cash, before we could leave town. After he paid the ticket, we headed on south, and we noticed that the highway was packed with army trucks going in both directions. We did not have a radio in the car, so we did not know that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor until we neared Los Angeles and many of the roads were blocked by police and soldiers. We had a difficult time getting home that evening as the streets around Burbank and the Lockheed Air Terminal were closed and we had to circumvent the area to get to Alhambra. At that time, there were no freeways to avoid the local streets.

1942

As far as Pepsi-Cola was concerned, the journey to Oregon was all for naught as the Rose Bowl game was transferred to the East Coast because the United States War Department officials did not want to have large crowds assembled on the West Coast where the Japanese might be able to attack. Duke asked if the game could be moved to Durham. The state of North Carolina, Oregon State, and the Rose Bowl Committee all agreed, and the game was played at Durham, North Carolina, on January 1, 1942. Oregon State beat Duke, 20 to 16, in the transplanted game in the last Rose Bowl game until the end of World War II. Little did I know then that my first visit to Oregon State College would be, for me, the first of many visits to that campus.

I think about that trip up Highway 99 and our return down Highway 101 often as I travel around California and Oregon. I try to remember how things looked then as compared to the way the same areas look today. I can still see where Highway 99 passed through all the Central Valley communities from Bakersfield to Yreka even though most all the cities have grown and have been bypassed by Freeway 99. I remember that in 1941 when we drove to Oregon, both Fresno and Bakersfield had a roundabout on Highway 99 at the north end of those cities.

During 1942, World War II was going on full force, and it was foremost on the minds of everyone in California. On February 23, a Japanese submarine fired seventeen high-explosive shells toward an oil refinery near Santa Barbara. Fortunately, little damage was done, but it certainly reminded everyone how serious the situation was.

My Sister Arrives

Even though World War II raged on, I remember our family being happy. I do not remember any other major problems, but then I was only eight years old and sick much of the time. I probably would not have realized the importance of all that was going on, but I do recall that there was great joy regarding the addition to our family on October 20, 1942. My sister Shirley Eileen was born on Mother’s third trip to the hospital. This was a happy occasion for our family. I believe everyone was pleased to now have a pretty little girl in the family. Father’s parents came to visit, Beesie and Pap, from Brooklyn, New York. They traveled by train, and when they visited, they stayed for several months. Pap called me Willie Off the Pickle Boat, and I did not like that very much.

It so happened that everyone in the family smoked. My parents smoked Camels, and Pap smoked Wings. The reason I remember Wings is that each pack of Wings cigarettes had a small picture card of a World War II airplane included. Pap would give me the cards, and I accumulated a collection of pictures of these airplanes. I also started a collection of miniature soldiers, trucks, airplanes, and other war equipment, which I played with in my bedroom and in the backyard. I would build elaborate forts and then get upset when someone, probably Mother cleaning, would move parts of the arrangements.

My father had always been interested in sports, probably because he never had the opportunity to participate in any organized sport. He and I attended numerous sports events over the years. Other than the midget races at Gilmore Field in Hollywood, the first major sporting event I can remember attending with my father was the 1942 football game between the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on December 12, 1942. UCLA beat USC by the score of 14 to 7. That was my birthday present for that year. It was exciting, and the tickets cost $3.30 for reserved seats.

Pepsi-Cola Routes

During 1942, the Pepsi-Cola Company made some institutional changes and modified the method of delivery and sale of Pepsi-Cola from the factory in Los Angeles to retailers throughout Southern California. The company sold or somehow allocated delivery routes to independent owners. Sometime during the fall of that year, my father was able to acquire three Pepsi-Cola routes in the San Fernando Valley. He headquartered the routes from a warehouse on Lankershim Boulevard, just north of Victory Boulevard, in North Hollywood. He was then able to acquire three delivery trucks to serve the local routes and a semitruck to make daily runs hauling Pepsi-Cola from the bottling plant to the warehouse and then empty bottles back to the bottling plant the next morning. That was a time when all soda bottles were returned, washed, and refilled.

Occasionally, when my father had to substitute for one of his drivers and make deliveries. When I was out of school, he would ask me if I wanted to ride with him that day. Of course I always did because I enjoyed seeing the different parts of town and the places he delivered Pepsi-Cola. He served various markets, gasoline stations, bars, cafes, and other miscellaneous retail establishments. Father always seemed to know the owners of the businesses, and they were glad to receive the Pepsi.

I remember one afternoon when my father received a call from his driver, Bill Corey, who had been in an accident with the semitruck that was loaded with full bottles of Pepsi on his way between the bottling plant and the warehouse. Father asked if Bill was OK, and he was. But Bill told my father that he needed to come to the accident. And he added that my father would need to have a couple of the smaller trucks also come to the accident as the Pepsi-Cola will have to be transferred from the semitruck to the smaller trucks.

I rode to the accident with my father, and when we got there, we found that Mr. Corey, for some unknown reason, had lost control of the truck, and it had swerved to the right, crossed a sidewalk, and crashed through a small house. No one else was involved. No one was inside the house, which fortunately was not inhabited. The walls of the house were mostly knocked down, and the roof of the house was sitting on top of the semitruck full of Pepsi-Cola. The police were there as well as a few spectators.

The two small trucks arrived, and the two drivers, Bill Corey and my father, transferred the Pepsi-Cola to the small trucks. The semitruck was towed away to be repaired. I believe Bill Corey was issued a citation for reckless driving, but I do not know of any other consequences. I’m sure my father’s insurance company became involved. Father liked Bill Corey and allowed him to continue to drive trucks for him.

Duck Hunting

During the fall and winter of each year (duck hunting season), we would frequently spend weekends at the Winbigler’s ranch with the constructed duck club in the Mohave Desert, north of Lancaster, California. Aunt May was my grandmother Bird’s sister. It was about an hour-and-a-half drive from our place in North Hollywood to the duck club. We would go there on Friday afternoon so that the hunters, my father included, could go out to the ponds and get into their blinds before sunrise on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The ducks would start to come into the ponds at daylight, and that is when the best hunting occurred. Our family stayed for the weekend, but most of the hunters went home each evening and returned early the next morning.

I enjoyed going to their ranch as Aunt May kept chickens for eggs and meat, and a couple of cows for milk and cream. I helped her feed the animals despite my allergies. There was no indoor plumbing in the ranch house, so water had to be carried from the well, and the only toilet was out by the barn. At night, everyone got a little pot next to the bed, just in case. Baths were taken in the evening in a large metal tub in the kitchen after cooking and dishes were finished for the day. If we only stayed a couple of days, our baths waited until we returned to our home. Taking a bath in the kitchen, where the water had to be heated on the wood-burning stove and then poured into the tub, was inconvenient to say the least.

Uncle Ira and Aunt May had a daughter named Margaret, who was in high school about that time. I recall seeing my seventeen-year-old cousin Margaret around there much of the time. However, she had little to do with an eight-year-old kid (me). One of the hunters was a nice guy named Forrest Taylor. He, along with a few others, maybe ten or twelve regulars, showed up every weekend. I did not realize it then, but Margaret and Forrest were paying a lot of attention to each other.

Aunt May would fix breakfast for the hunters about ten o’clock in the morning after the morning hunt. Then the hunters would take all the birds they had shot across the road from the house and pick the feathers off the ducks before cleaning them down at the pond by the well. The picked and dressed ducks had to be packed in ice if the hunters were going to stay for the next day’s hunt, or they just put the ducks in their car and took them away.

1943

North Hollywood

In February 1943, we moved from Alhambra to another rental home located at 6064 N. Colfax Avenue in North Hollywood. This was a move to be close to my father’s warehouse on North Lankershim Boulevard. This was also a larger and more modern home than the Alhambra home.

Living in North Hollywood near the Lockheed Manufacturing Plant was exciting for a boy fascinated with airplanes. We had an arbor in our backyard, and I would climb on top of it and sit for hours keeping a list of all the different types of airplanes that I could see flying above and around the neighborhood. I tabulated the different types of planes that I observed along with the date and time of the sighting. This must have been the beginning of my attention to detail regarding research and record keeping.

We also had pens in the backyard where my parents kept chickens and ducks for eggs, and occasionally we would have one of the birds for dinner.

Because of the war, we had to be prepared at night to make sure no lights could be seen from our house. Blackouts were imposed throughout the Los Angeles area and along the Pacific Coast. We had blackout curtains at each window of our house to keep the house lights from being seen outside, but if we heard the air raid sirens, we had to turn off most of the lights to help make the city entirely black. Father belonged to the local civil patrol and would walk around the neighborhood to make sure no light was visible from any of the houses. If he could see light, he would knock on the door and tell the residents to turn off their lights. I do remember Pres. Franklin Roosevelt talking on the radio encouraging everyone to conserve and to keep lights off at night so the enemy could not find us.

Los Angeles Relatives

I recall our Los Angeles relatives visiting frequently. Aunt May, Aunt Genevieve, Grandma Bird, and their friends would come over for Sunday dinners. They enjoyed playing in our yard. Aunts May and Genevieve even tried riding my bicycle and playing catch with me. One major family activity that occurred at our home was the reception for Margaret and Forrest Taylor’s wedding on October 3, 1943. Forrest got more than ducks from his frequent weekend duck hunting trips. Many guests came to the house that evening, and my job was to receive the presents and put them on a table in the living room. The reception was after sunset, and the neighborhood kids sat across the street in the dark and watched all the guests arrive.

From time to time, we would visit Aunt Genevieve’s Los Angeles home at 808 W. Sixty-Fifth Street. She lived in a home that she purchased new with her husband in 1935 for something like $7,000 or $8,000. It was a nice two-bedroom, one-bathroom house with a large backyard, but the neighborhood was rapidly deteriorating. I never liked to stay there because she had a dog, and I wheezed every time we visited.

1944

Living with the War

Throughout World War II, most critical goods were rationed, such as tires, things made of leather, gasoline, and foods like sugar, butter, and meat. Our family was quite fortunate to have access to a commodity like Pepsi-Cola as it contained lots of sugar and was in demand. Father was frequently able to barter with grocery stores, gasoline stations, bars, and other retailers for extra rationed goods in exchange for a little extra Pepsi-Cola. We therefore never went hungry or lacked for any foods. In addition, even though we were only allotted a certain number of gallons of gasoline and tires for our single car, we always had access to sufficient gasoline and tires for trips because having a business with four trucks allowed my father access to equipment and supplies necessary to conduct his operations.

I recall one sad occasion at the North Hollywood home, and that happened when Beesie and Pap, Father’s parents, were visiting. Our parents were out to dinner, and Beesie was preparing soup in the kitchen. She must have turned away from the stove for a second as my two-year old sister Shirley reached up and pulled the pan of boiling soup from the stove. The boiling soup ran down her arm and body. Our parents were called away from their dinner, and Shirley was rushed to the hospital. She incurred third-degree burns all over her arm and the side of her body. I was sad for her as I remember her standing in her crib, all bandaged up, crying from the pain. She eventually healed, but she carries scars from that accident to this day.

Historical Days

D-Day was June 5, 1944, the day Allied Forces invaded France at Normandy to begin the fight against Germany on European soil. It was the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. Incumbent Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Thomas E. Dewey on November 7, 1944, to be elected to his fourth term as president of the United States. President Roosevelt was not well, but he easily won reelection as no one wanted to make a change during the war.

1945

Trip to East Coast

It was another sad occasion for the family but exciting for me as our family took a train trip from Los Angeles to the East Coast because of the death of Pap, my grandfather on my father’s side of the family. Grandfather Pap died on January 6, 1945, at the age of seventy-one. The funeral was in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was to be buried even though Beesie and Pap lived in Brooklyn, New York. The Bachs continued to live in the row house I remembered from years earlier.

We departed from Los Angeles Union Station, traveled through Salt Lake City to Chicago, where we changed from Union Pacific (UP) Railroad to the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad. We arrived in Baltimore at the old Silver Spring B&O Station. I remember the train ride between cities where we traveled long distances without seeing anything but open fields and mountains. This was different from what I was used to as a city boy. I enjoyed riding the train immensely as I was frequently allowed to stand in between the cars in the fresh air and look out at the countryside and see the people along the tracks as the train traveled across the country. I liked to listen to the clicking noise of the train on the tracks. It was different from riding the train now as people were not as restricted as much as they are today, in the name of safety.

On the train, Mother and Father had a bedroom with my sister Shirley, who was only two, and I had a bunk bed in the coach section. I could lie in bed and look out a tiny window and see what was going on in the stations when we stopped during the night.

While in the east, we also visited Aunt Angeline, who lived on Staten Island, New York. We had to take the ferry back and forth to Manhattan, where we passed the Statue of Liberty on each ride. While we were in New York, my father took me to the top of the Empire Building, to Central Park, and to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes. We also visited Newark, New Jersey, to see the neighborhood where we lived when I was born. All I can recall about that was that it did not look like a nice place, and we could not find the hospital where I was born. It had been torn down.

We were in the east for about two weeks, and during that period, the weather was extremely hot in New York. Then we returned to Baltimore, and it snowed. We built a snowman in the backyard of Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Bess’s row house. I remember stopping in Chicago on our trip back to California. I believe we had to change train stations, so we got to look around the city going between the stations.

Even though she was only two years old, Shirley reminds us of our stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We stopped there during the night after Shirley had gone to sleep. The three of us stepped off the train to look around, and Shirley woke up while we were out. She remembers waking up and thinking that we had left her and that she had been abandoned on the train.

Life in North Hollywood

We continued to live in North Hollywood, so for entertainment, I went to Saturday matinee movies. Most of the time, I would attend the local theater to see double feature westerns. However, sometimes I was even allowed to ride the bus and streetcar from our home, down Lankershim Boulevard, past the Hollywood Bowl, to the Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Sunset Boulevard to see special movies. Today, I probably would not let my eight- or nine-year-old son go that far to the movies, particularly in Los Angeles, but it did not seem to be a problem for my parents or me in 1944 and 1945.

I do not remember much about my school in North Hollywood. I cannot remember where the school was located. However, I do remember the day Pres. Franklin Roosevelt died, Thursday, April 12, 1945, as there was a special assembly for all students. I believe we were excused from school for a couple of days. Everyone was sad, because, even if you did not like the president, no one wanted to see him die.

I was certainly aware of the war, but at that age, I was unaware of the total impact on the world. However, I saw the maps that were published in the daily newspaper showing the movement of our troops in the various areas of the world where fighting was taking place. We continued to have a peaceful home life. I had several boyfriends, and we used to play in the yard and various places around the neighborhood. During the summer, we played in the lawn sprinklers to cool off. One afternoon as we were playing and I was standing on the edge of Colfax Avenue, a truck with a bunch of kids in it drove by. Someone in the truck threw an orange, and it hit me