Month: March 2014

The trip from Missouri to Delaware was not particularly memorable. In fact, the only thing I recall was driving through Pennsylvania on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was my first encounter with a limited access highway and with a toll road. I think the thing that fascinated me most was the gas station/cafés in the islands in the middle of the road.

I’m not sure what Dad did at Chrysler or, for that matter, what Chrysler did in Delaware, but Delaware was our new home. We moved into a duplex in Wilmington on Van Buren Street and when summer was over I started school at P. S. Du Pont, which was a high school then. There were more kids in my class than there were in my whole school in Blue Eye.

When we left Missouri, school was already out, but it wasn’t in Wilmington. Mom and I went to P. S. Du Pont and set up my schedule for the coming year. Because Blue Eye didn’t have algebra for the ninth grade, I was a little behind. I decided it would be best for me to catch up. I signed up for algebra and geometry for the tenth grade. The counselor wasn’t optimistic, but signed me up anyway. Then I went on summer vacation.

While the other kids my age were still in school, I wandered around becoming familiar with my new environment. Wilmington was the first city I had ever lived in so it was intriguing. One of my excursions took me down Van Buren Street to Brandywine Park. Somewhere near where the zoo is I found an odd treasure, a collection of foundations where the building(s) had been demolished (or that’s what it looked like to me). All of these concrete or stone relics stood out in a kind of bowl where grass had overgrown everything. I encountered a policeman there. He asked me why I wasn’t in school, and I told him. He took me at my word. I’m not sure whether he believed me because I didn’t have a Wilmington accent or he decided my explanation was too good to be an excuse for playing hooky.

That summer I met Edwin and his cousin Michael (I think). Edwin and I became close friends for a while. They lived next door to each other on Elliott Place so they were really less than a block away. I can still vaguely recall a kind of ball game we played. Across the street from them was a multiple garage structure (still there) so we didn’t have to be concerned about breaking windows. We took turns throwing a rubber ball at Edwin’s front steps. The only objective I can remember was trying to hit the edge of the step so the ball went up like a fly ball. Because of daylight savings time we could be out playing after 9:00 o’clock. One other thing about Edwin, his family had the smallest station wagon I have ever seen, a Cushman four-seater.

Across 25th Street from Edwin on the corner of Monroe Street lived Carol Ann and her sister Nancy. Carol was as tall as I was and a little thin but good looking. I can remember seeing her (across Market Street) several years later. She was wearing a gray suit and looked like a professional model. She and I became close friends.

On the corner of Van Buren and Concord pike there was a deli (still there, although I believe they’ve changed the name). I’d save up my money and as often as I could afford it, I’d go there for goodies like apple pie a la mode and chocolate sundaes when I’d saved up enough money.

I walked to school that year. We didn’t have a lot of money because Dad got laid off and was job hunting much of the time, so when it was mildly cold I wore Dad’s sports coat to school. It didn’t cover me a much as my cold weather jacket. About half way to school an Irish setter would bark at me. I wasn’t afraid of dogs, and I would just walk on by. Then one day he changed his tactic. He sneaked up on me from behind and nipped me on the back side where Dad’s Sport coat exposed me. From then on I didn’t trust him and was careful to walk by his house on the opposite side of the street. I also kept my eye out for him.

When I got to Delaware, I joined the Boy Scout troop in our church. I worked my way up to First Class but stalled out there because I had to contact someone to be my adviser for the merit badges I needed. I was too shy to do it. The one thing I remember was in one of our meetings four of us got together and formed a quartet. To my ear we sounded good, but that was the one time we did it.

While we were in Wilmington, Richard got into some kind of beef with the pastor of the nearby Presbyterian Church. I think it started out as a disagreement with his sons. The upshot was the pastor punched Richard and broke his jaw. While he was recuperating I picked up his job as a paper boy. The route wasn’t that hard, but at one point I had to collect and my shyness got in the way again. I had a dickens of a time just knocking on his customer’s doors.

We only spent about a year in Wilmington. I want to cover one more item and move on to Clayton.

My Boy Scout troop went on a bike ride in rural northern Delaware where it’s really hilly [The highest point in the state is fifty feet above sea level]. We were riding in a wooded area on a cobblestone road that led downhill to a creek and a stone bridge. On the opposite side of the bridge the road took a sharp right, and a rock retaining wall blocked any possibility of going straight ahead. As I started down the hill, the brake locked up. Only this time it locked up the wheel to the sprocket which meant that the pedals were turning with the wheels. The pedals knocked my feet clear, and they were turning so fast I couldn’t get my feet back on them. I remembered the bike on Guam and bailed out. This time I landed without getting hurt.

The bike was one I had borrowed for the ride. Once I walked it down the hill, I was able to jump up and down and put enough weight on the back pedal to break it loose. I was able to finish the ride, but I was very careful on hills and at stop signs. An interesting sidelight of this incident is that after the ride was over, I bought the bike from my friend for two dollars, learned how to work on the brakes while I was fixing it, and used it for several years.

Next up, we move to Clayton.

After Denver we drove across eastern Colorado and Kansas, stopping once to visit one of Dad’s friends who ran a motel. I think he had some kind of wild animals in a tiny zoo. I vaguely remember feeling sorry for the animals, but we were only there overnight.  We drove through Springfield on our way to Branson. Our objective was to buy a farm where Dad could find a job in construction. Table Rock dam was scheduled to be built soon, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity. It felt like there was a sign for a realty or real estate company every ten miles or so on the roads we took. One of them was a big conglomerate that had offices everywhere we looked. We had a catalogue from the company, and we made our way to the office in Branson.

I should mention that in those days Branson was not the entertainment hub of mid-America. It was a good sized town that was the supply center of farming country.

Dad checked in with the realtor and somehow (I think the realtor new someone) we ended up in a trailer park for a few days while Dad and the realtor looked over properties. Eventually they found the perfect place: 104 acres with a house and some outbuildings that would have frontage on Table Rock Lake when it was full. The house lacked a few amenities, like electricity and plumbing, but that was not uncommon in that area at the time. The cost? A mere $4000. I suspect that if the property were still intact, you couldn’t touch it for one hundred times that much now.

The land has changed significantly since we left but I believe I’m in the right area. My best guess is that the farm was along what is now Route UU

We did get electricity installed but we settled for the existing outhouse and a cistern that collected rainwater from the roof as our plumbing. We got a horse for riding and a pig for eating and we were set.

The horse was named Myrtle, if I remember correctly, and we called her Myrt. Richard took to riding her right away, but she sensed my unease and would never go faster than a walk when I rode her. I don’t recall exactly how it happened, but Myrt was involved with us meeting our neighbors, two kids about our age who lived on the adjacent farm. They rode two draft horses, bareback. Strangely, I don’t remember having a whole lot to do with them.

Our school was in the border town of Blue Eye. I was in ninth grade there. The biggest disappointment for me was I expected to take algebra in ninth, but there weren’t enough students in my grade to have more than one math class, so that’s what we had – math. I did get to participate in glee club, and I still like to sing (despite my voice tending to give out). I think the biggest influence on me was our social studies teacher. He was the archetype conservative. He even advocated that the first ten amendments should have never been adopted. While I didn’t always agree with him, he definitely indoctrinated me into the concept that the government should keep its hands off anything that could be done by private citizens (I added “without harming other private citizens”). He also got me interested in history, where I had always considered it to be boring.

We always seemed to have pets in the house. While we were in Missouri, we got a kitten. I don’t recall having a dog. I remember the cat for an odd reason. Sometime in the middle of winter I caught a particularly nasty bug. I was in school when I came down with chills and fever. I was so out of it that I snuggled up to one of the radiators in the school library to keep warm and ended up in bed for a few days. While I was recuperating, the cat slept with me on the bed. As I began to feel better and was getting bored, I did a pencil sketch of that cat. Mom thought it was so good that she kept it from then on. I remember seeing it at her house in Glenmora, but I don’t know what happened to it when she died.

I did have occasional flashes of brilliance with art. Going back to Guam, I baby sat for friends of ours one night. This being before the days of widespread television, I read magazines to keep busy. I stumbled on a photo of Marilyn Monroe, and did a sketch of her. It was the same quality as my cat sketch.

While we were in Missouri, Dad kept waiting for the dam project to get underway, but it was delayed. Since we were living on our savings and had a $2000 payment due in July, Dad started looking for other jobs, first close to home and then farther away. When he finally found one, it was in Wilmington, Delaware. We reluctantly packed up and left.

Next arriving in Wilmington.

Before I get started, I’d like to welcome any new readers. I started this blog primarily to discuss what I have written and what I am currently working on. I discovered right away that I wasn’t going to be able to post once a week if I restricted myself that much. After much interior discussion I realized that the one thing I could write about on a regular basis was me. I’m not claiming to have an exciting history, but members of the family had urged my mom and my wife’s mom to record what they could remember from their childhood and on. Neither of them did, and that part of the family history is gone forever. I decided to rectify that situation and had a blog in place that was going virtually unused. Thus I started recording what I could remember of my past.

Recently, I wondered if anyone who stumbled across my book Peacemaker might be interested in my life and what led me to write. I figured I could make it available. It couldn’t hurt. I also plan to throw in some comments about Peacemaker and my work in progress, Teleportal.

This is what you are looking at now. It is July of 1952. My family has just returned from four years on Guam, and I have just turned fourteen.

Since my last post I looked up the General A. E. Anderson. She turns out to have been put in service hauling passengers around the Pacific in October of 1949. Since we went to Guam in September of 1948, she had to be the ship that took us home rather than the one that took us to Guam. There are several write ups about her on the Internet, if you’re interested.

The trip to Guam had been non-stop, but going back to the States we stopped at Wake Island, a coral atoll so low that a small tsunami would have completely flooded it, and at either Midway Island, home of the Gooney Bird (Laysan Albatross) or Johnston Atoll, which barely has room for a runway. We didn’t dock. Instead, we sent a tender ashore with mail and what-not at each location.

We also stopped at Oahu, and I immediately fell in love with Hawaii. We stopped long enough to do some touristy things. We visited an orchid hot house (yes, even on Oahu they protect these special flowers when they grow them). I was fascinated by the incredible variety. We stopped at a hotel for lunch. I ordered a cheese burger. I know, no sense of adventure. This place turned out to be a pretty high class establishment. When my sandwich arrived, it was open-faced. The cheese was a sauce. I was supposed to eat it with a fork. Instead, I closed the sandwich and ate it what I considered the normal way. I dripped cheese sauce all over. I believe it was on this trip that I first saw the Upside Down Falls. Somewhere on the Pali Highway in the mountains outside Honolulu there is a view of a waterfall that when the wind blows strongly enough starts down but gets blown upward so hard it turns around and doesn’t reach the bottom.

One of the passengers on the ship was a redheaded army brat named Iris. It was love at first sight — but I was too shy to even talk to her. We crossed paths while touring Oahu, and I couldn’t even wave. Oh well, it would never have worked out. She was headed for Kansas, and I was on my way to the backwoods of Missouri. As we were driving through Kansas on our way to Missouri, I could swear I saw her in a school bus we passed, but I’ll never know. I even worked up the courage to wave. And then she was gone.

Our next stop after Honolulu was San Francisco. Before we left Guam we had ordered a new Ford. It cost us all of $2400, and we picked it up in San Francisco. From there we visited my new Aunt Ruth’s family and drove through Yosemite National Park. I don’t know which came first. The only thing I remember about Ruth’s parents’ home was that while we were there, the Seventeen Year Locusts were out and incredibly loud.

I suppose I should digress briefly. My uncle Pat came to work on Guam while we were there. He met and fell in love with a pert redheaded company nurse, Ruth. They got married while we were on Guam. One thing I’ll always remember is that Ruth gave Susan a shot in front of the rest of us. She was so nervous (family presence, I suppose) she had a hard time giving the shot. At one point the syringe came loose from the needle with the needle stuck in Susan’s arm. She did finally get it done.

I remember one thing about Yosemite and that was driving along a stretch of road that had an incredible drop off on one side. There was a wide valley below. I could swear it was over a thousand feet beneath us, but I suspect it just seemed that way.

Our next stop was Denver. Our friends from Guam, the Cooks, had returned to the States before we did. They had a home in south Denver, which at that time bordered farmland. The house and the farmland are all gone now. We spent several days with them visiting the mountains and getting to know something about this beautiful state. Strangely enough that had nothing to do with us settling here when I retired.

Our next stop was Missouri. More on that the next time.

In case you’re interested, I have a website that right now focuses primarily on Peacemaker, gordonsavage.com.

I’m sure there are many things about Guam that I’m not remembering right now. I’ll come back to them when I think of them. For now I’ll cover what I have on my list.

At some time during 1951 the company finished erecting new housing at Camp 1, and we moved there. I don’t remember much about the new house. It had vertical walls like the Butler buildings in Camp 2, and I’m fairly sure it was made of metal. The one thing I do remember is that in addition to a regular refrigerator the company provided what we called a reefer, a double-sized refrigerator without a freezer compartment. Why I remember that I don’t know.

Camp 1 was on the west side of the island, somewhere near where the Builder’s Club was. Stanley Brown’s family moved about the same time to a private home near the camp. I rode there on my bike once in a while. One time some local kids were out with their dog. It came up behind me while I was riding by and bit me on the heel. That was the first time a dog had ever bitten me. It wasn’t a big deal, but for some reason I remember it.

I also remember a kapok tree on the route. It was the biggest (real) tree I had seen on Guam. It had been so long since I had had a tree climbing fix that I had to climb it. I picked some of the pods and examined them. They were full of white cotton-like fiber, which now makes me wonder if they are related to cottonwood.

I became a Boy Scout while I was on Guam. I got my first taste of camping out while I was in the troop. There was a stream a few miles east of Apra Heights north of what is now route 17. At one point it widened into a small pond, smaller than the swimming hole at Camp 2 but large enough to swim around in. My first camp out was there. The weather on Guam was so mild that my camping gear consisted of an oil-cloth table cloth and a bed sheet. My breakfast consisted of eggs and fried spam. Don’t laugh. It was actually good.

The navy ran a snack bar called the Canteen somewhere around Apra Harbor. The whole family was out for a drive one Sunday, and Dad had elected to not wear a shirt. Who needed one, right? But then he ran out of cigarettes. He pulled up at the Canteen and because of not having a shirt recruited me to go in and buy him some cigarettes. First of all, as I mentioned earlier, back then I was pretty straight arrow, and I was sure I wasn’t supposed to buy cigarettes. I tried to talk Dad out of it but to no avail. Eventually, I went inside. I told the clerk the situation as it really was, and, of course, he turned me down. I suspect he thought I was a kid trying to get myself some cigarettes and had come up with the most unique story he had heard.

Sometime while we were on Guam I got a snorkel and began to try to use it for surface diving. I believe it was at the Builders’ Club that I dove into a coral branch. It poked me in the chest, and a tiny piece broke off. As far as I know that piece is still circulating in my body — at least that was the old-wives’ tale I was told about coral. Of course the branch was dead, and being a calcium compound, it has more likely been absorbed. I carried the scar for a long time but can’t even find it now.

Dad was an estimator while we were there. One of the projects he had a part in was building the dam that now hold the Fena Valley Reservoir. We drove up there at least once to see the progress. There was a cave near the dam that an underground stream came out of. I suspect that cave is under water now but it was interesting at the time. We tried to get a close look, but it was a hive for mosquitos. Patty Cook was with us and she and one of us (I say Richard. He says it was me) were covered with mosquitos and bites. I mean really covered.

We took more than one trip to the South End of the island. We went by Talafofo Bay each time. We’d stop at an overlook and take in the view. At that time there was a Japanese ship, the Aratama Maru, sunken near the entrance to the bay. Her masts and the wheel house were above the high tide mark so we could always see her, and I always wondered what her story was. There is now a monument with a picture of her (the wreck has been removed from the bay) and some kind of description (Unfortunately the photo that Google has is too fuzzy to read the details, but other sources say she was abandoned by her crew when a torpedo from an American warship struck her amidships and ignited her cargo of gasoline. She drifted for seven days before coming to rest on a shallow shelf in Talafofo Bay).

Dad had a game he would play while we were there. The overlook had a steep drop. When one of us kids would get close to the edge, he’d come up behind and yank us back while shouting some kind of warning. Talk about getting your adrenalin pumping.

One time we stopped somewhere along the route, Talafofo I think, and paid for water buffalo rides. The two things I took away from that were that these big work beasts were surprisingly gentle – and their skin was incredibly loose. If you weren’t precisely on center, the skin would move so far you couldn’t stay on.

A narrow dirt road was the only way to get to the South End back then so we usually went as far as Inarajan or occasionally Umatac and then turned around to go back home. One time, however, we continued on from Umatac up the west coast to Agat and on to home. I notice one thing looking at recent photos. When we were there, all these villages were almost at the thatched hut stage, now they are surrounded by modern homes.

I’m sure there were other things about our stay on Guam I could talk about like Christmas without cold. However, this will have to do for now. I do remember that the whole time I was there I kept lamenting about not being home (the States). Now I’d like to go back and see how much it has changed.

We left Guam so that my fourteenth birthday took place onboard the ship (the USS General Anderson, I think). More about that next time.