( 7 )
Mover’s Medals
Vocational Valor

Look around the room where you are. Now, imagine you are leaving on an extended journey and will not be returning to this place. You had little, if any, prior notice of your departure time, but you are expected to be leaving within the next twenty four hours. Glance around the room once more, and this time, as you do, make a mental list of the things you see that you will be taking with you, and the things you will be leaving behind. There are other rooms where there are things that need to be listed before the lists are complete, and you need a list for each member of the family. Now would be a good time to mention that everything on all the lists must fit into the family sedan!

Shepherd Mead wrote a book in 1952 titled “ How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”. Please do not attempt the scenario described in the preceding paragraph with this attitude. You need the mindset and pioneer spirit of a David Crockett to try this with any realistic expectation of success. This is not a weekend at the beach or a few days to visit a favorite aunt, but a full-blown household relocation with pots and pans, ironing board, bicycle, coaster wagon, and electric train set. Actually, I’m just kidding about the bicycle, coaster wagon, and electric train set; I was never allowed to own any of them!

A priority of the highest order was to develop the ability to travel light! The next bracket on the priority list was the ability to pack everything and fit it, a place for everything and everything in its place, in the car. My dad favored large vehicles with enormous trunk space. After he bought his first Packard, that was his “tuna boat” of choice. They were wide enough that the ironing board would fit from side to side behind the front seat and still allow the rear doors to close.

We received “the phone call” (or the telegram) at some inopportune times, but it would be from Tulsa headquarters and the news was that the client had received sufficient results from the survey that work on the prospect should halt immediately and with minimum “down time’, the crew should report to (name of town) and maps and pertinent correspondence would be waiting at the Post Office; the mailing address and telephone number of the new office in (see above) should be forwarded ASAP.

One such occurrence I remember very well, in Stamford, TX, because Dad had promised to take us to the rodeo that weekend morning. Mom had served us breakfast of waffles and bacon and finished the kitchen chores while Dad had helped his two sons pull their boots on after donning their best Western attire. Leaving the house, I was lamenting that our boots were not leaving any tracks on the cement walk and it was not often that the three of us would all be wearing them. We were almost to the curb when we could faintly hear the ringing of the phone inside the house. Dad turned to go back inside and my brother and I said we would wait in the car. I could tell by the look on my mother’s face, as she said, “no, you had better wait”, she was having one of her premonitions. We never made it to the car. After we got the news, changed our clothes, and started getting the boxes out of the closets, mother called the landlady to ask her to come get the milk, meat, butter and eggs, and perishable fresh vegetables so she could start defrosting the refrigerator. Worse than the loss of the groceries and the money spent on them, was the loss of the ration stamps. It had happened before and would likely, happen again.

While Mom took care of things on the home front, Daddy had his own Company agenda. He had to make sure that each crew member was notified, each company truck was serviced, gassed up and brought to the office to be loaded and ”trailered-up” with the disassembled drafting tables, mapping and blueprinting necessities, office chairs, desks, survey instruments and tripods, bundles of survey stakes and miscellaneous supplies; and in Louisiana, boats and outboard motors! Sometimes, it seemed more like Ringling Bros, Barnum and Bailey than E. V. McCollum and Company.

It would be during these times I would begin to contemplate my future, to the extent of my childish capabilities. Everything that needed doing would get done, and for the most part, without significant participation by me, other than not bothering the busy ones and staying out  of the way.  But the question marks would begin to form in my mind and the butterflies gather in my tummy. I wonder if I will have a chance to say goodbye to friends I have made, or will I just evaporate, fade like a dream from a night’s sleep that is not well-remembered? I would have to take my pet horned toad from his shoe box and release him by the ant hill. I won’t take him along because he may have family by the hedge row where I found him, and they would miss him! There will probably be similar critters where we are going. I hope we can rent a house as nice as the one we are leaving, but that is seldom the case; housing is such a problem. They say it is because of the war. Everything seems to be because of the war, and everyone wishes it was over!

It was a fact that there was a critical housing shortage. It was true that there was little, if any, housing construction being done because of mandates similar to the rationing and other regulation by the government,. Materials and manpower and even money were in short supply. Wages were better, hours longer, but typically, 10% of paychecks were being diverted and deducted to buy bonds to finance the war effort. School children were buying stamps that were equivalent to savings bonds in certain quantities. Daddy said people were shoveling out their henhouses and renting them out for bedrooms, and even then, the “no vacancy” sign was out! Apartments were being reconfigured into “duplexes” requiring sharing kitchen and bath with strangers; a weeks groceries would disappear overnight!  My mother could make any old house into a home, but there were times, she would have to walk away from a showing, quietly telling Dad, ”I’m not putting my kids in this!”

While the home front is important, “keeping the home fires burning”, the real danger and hardship was overseas with our forces under fire! Still, I can’t help wishing there was a medal to wear besides a stiff upper lip for my mom and dad for the character they showed through the difficult times they endured, all the while keeping an attitude of “just another day at the office”. At least the office didn’t have to fit into the back seat of the family  sedan!

( 8)
Mover’s Magic  
Haphazard Housing

Most ladies, from time to time, have a favorite purse or handbag. My mother had a favorite galvanized washtub. Because of the nature of my father’s employment, the duration of our stay in any location was always in question. The contract with the client was a nebulous thing; they had an objective in mind and when that objective was reached, we were done. A job that was projected to require six months to accomplish might be extended by several weeks under some conditions. One that should take six weeks might, under the right conditions, have half of the time trimmed away. In either case, the result was the same: pack up everything we own and hit the road and get on to the next contract location, or “prospect” without delay. After nearly everything was ready to travel, except for the household cleaning supplies, Mom would clean the kitchen and bathroom, leaving them in much better condition than she found them, and her pails, cleaning cloths and sponges, cleansers, bleach, and disinfectant would be strategically packed away in, you guessed it, the tub. It would always be the last thing “on top of the load”, so that it could be the first thing unloaded at our new destination. I can remember her telling Dad, upon finding a rental that “isn’t much”, but “will have to do”, “Bring me the tub; keep the boys in the car: take them to eat or something! I’m not bringing my kids in here ‘til it’s clean”! That’s my mom!

At one prospect in New Mexico, we were staying in  hotels until suitable housing could be found. It was difficult to reserve more than a night or two in a row, so we usually had to gather our belongings, check out, and change hotels, trying to keep reservations made ahead to cover our bases. After exhausting all reasonable efforts, it was decided to take a unit in a “motor court” that had a “kitchenette”. Mom gave her “tub” announcement to Daddy and started dutifully trying to make it into “home”. She started with the floors so not to raise any dust after she cleaned the “kitchen”. Progress came to a halt when she moved the bed and found a large puddle of dried blood. Into the tub and out the door went the cleaning supplies, off to the bus station with two boys and their suitcases went the mom, Dad went back to the hotel! The war effort would have to get their oil some other way! We went to stay with Mom’s dad, our dad gave his two weeks’ notice and met us there! In a few days, we were on our way to Mississippi to open a photo studio!
 
The Company had been reluctant to accept my dad’s resignation and stayed in touch, but he had been an amateur photographer for years, several levels above a hobbyist but not sure of making a living in the business, considering the wartime economy. After a few months of not prospering in the photography business, he was contacted again, the Company made him an offer too good to turn down and we were on the road again!

Not every place we moved into was a dump. Some of them were very nice. One, in Miles City, MT, was a fully-finished and furnished basement apartment with the same “footprint“ and floor plan as the main level of the house, brand new, and we were its first occupants! It had its own washer and dryer. This was important because the temperature dropped to 38 degrees below zero for a couple of days before falling to 42 degrees in the winter of 1952-’53. Another, in Livingston, MT, we rented from my sixth-grade PE and shop teacher. It was the nicely furnished entire upper story of their large home in a very nice neighborhood. It was sixteen blocks from the Yellowstone River, about fifty-some miles north of the national park. By mid-morning I would have my chores done and could be found with my nose pressed to the window of Dan Bailey’s Fly Store, or on the river testing the merchandise for which I had blown my entire allowance, which at age eleven was $1.10 per week. 

On the other hand, while living in Hardin, MT, in a “motor court”, we had been on a waiting list for a few weeks for a nice apartment with a great landlord, and finally got to take possession of it. We enjoyed our stay there very much and became fishing buddies with the proprietor. We learned that our next “prospect’ would be Miles City, and after that, we’d be based out of Broadus, where he also owned two apartment houses, both fully occupied. Daddy asked to be placed on a waiting list for the two main floor apartments of the largest building, hoping that by the time the transfer came about, the units would be available. We would live in one side, and the other would be for Dad’s office space. Moving day finally came and the property was still occupied, so a search was begun for a temporary place to live. Every place we enquired, the reply was the same: “You might see if anyone is living in the ‘weaning house’.” which was the way the locals referred to the place newlyweds stayed until they could do better. It was a two room log cabin on the edge of  town with no indoor plumbing, electricity in only one of the rooms, cool storage for perishable food was a screened window box on the shady side of the cabin. There was a wood burning kitchen stove which heated the house and our bath water. To use the toaster, Mom had to unplug the radio from an extension cord plugged into an adapter in the single light socket. My brother could not get all the 10th grade subjects he was taking in Miles City, so he stayed with neighbors, our Scoutmaster, for the last nine weeks of the semester so he would not lose his credits. What he did lose was the opportunity to live in the weaning house, chop firewood, bathe in a galvanized wash tub, and use the outhouse until the other building became available.

Whether it was because of, or in spite of these things, our stay in Broadus was my favorite, and the longest I ever lived in one place until we settled once again in Tulsa. I finished the 8th grade and the entire 9th grade, made some good friends, including the guy who would be responsible for the Sharps rifle used in the Quigley movie, and the first girl I ever took to a movie ( she wound up as a Senator in the State Government); she was quite cute and a character; a few hayrides, ice-skating parties, chili-suppers, and a movie, I never knew she was political.