| Part IV California Here We Come |
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| We arrived in California in April 1940. We must have looked like someone straight out of The Grapes of Wrath. There were six people in all, the two people who owned the car, and four of us, traveling in a four-door automobile with all of our stuff tied onto the car. I don't remember the make of the car, however, I do remember that the rear doors opened from the front outward and back. |
| My brother, Jesse, his wife, Ole May, and their daughter, Glendene, settled on 4th Ave. in San Diego, California before we decided to go there ourselves. My sister, Irene, and her husband, Herb Price, had lived in San Diego for some time. Herb had a good job driving a bread delivery truck for the Continental Baking Company. He worked for that company until his death in 1956. |
| When we got to California we moved in with Jesse, Ole May, and Glendene under the approach path into Lindbergh Field. Because of the steep hillside leading down into Lindberg Field airplanes passed very low over the house. From where we were living you could see all of downtown San Diego. It was a long walk, but downhill; so, downtown is where I ventured. I strolled around downtown taking in the sights until I noticed a bunch of kids about my age coming out of a doorway with papers under their arms yelling, "Extra, War Extra!" I followed some other kids down the stairs into a room where newspapers were moving along a conveyer belt. There was a man taking some of the papers and giving each kid about 5 papers each. Some of the older ones he would stick 10 papers under their arm. Well, I just fell into line and when I got to the man he handed me 5 papers. I took them and turned to walk away when he grabbed me by the arm. "Hold on there kid, who are you?" he scrolled. I told him my name was Vernon and he said, "Oh God, another Oakie!" He thought for a few seconds and decided he would give me a try. He took two of my papers back leaving me with just three. He said, "Sell those and I'll give you some more. If you don't sell them, don't come back and I don't ever want to see you again." I sold the three papers in a couple of hours at 5 cents a piece, of which my share was 3 cents, each. That's how I started out selling papers for the San Diego Tribune, screeching, "War Extra, War Extra, Nazis Enter Paris!" |
| The San Diego Plaza fountain. The U.S. Grant Hotel is on the Left. |
| I noticed that all the other kids carried their papers in their left hand under their arm and carried a shoeshine box on a strap over their right shoulder. With San Diego being a Navy town, the Plaza across from the US Grant Hotel was usually full of sailors relaxing on the benches surrounding the central water fountain, ogling the girls as they passed, and getting their shoes shined. I told my father what I was doing, and about the shoe shine possibilities. With his help we built a shoebox so I too could shine shoes while selling papers. But, we could only find a can of brown shoe polish. It had just enough polish for one pair or shoes. Now, as I said, San Diego was a navy town and there were not many brown shoes around. In any event, I stationed myself on the southwest corner of the US Grant Hotel hoping to catch a civilian coming out of the hotel. Well, after a short time a well-dressed gentleman came along, bought a paper from me and allowed me to shine his brown wingtip shoes. With the dime he paid me for the shine I went across the street to the corner drug store and bought a can of black Shineola shoe polish, and I was in the shoeshine business. |
| I worked that corner for a few days. I was shinning a sailor's shoe one day when I felt a solid tap on my shoulder. I looked around and there were two burley teenagers standing over me. I was a scrawny twelve-year-old at the time. They said, "Who told you could sign shoes on this corner?" I said, "Nobody, why?" Where upon I was informed, as the sailor took off, that there was a fee of 5 cents a day to use that corner, and if I didn't pay up I couldn't use the corner, and, furthermore, they would put me out of business. I didn't pay up and they busted up my shoeshine box by stomping on it, and I was out of business--for the day. It wasn't broken so badly that I couldn't repair it. I nailed it back together that night and I was back in business. However, from then on I moved around from corner to corner always watching out for them. I was sure I could outrun them. Thank goodness I never had to try. I never saw them again. |
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| Pete's Cafe is located on Mission Blvd., at Mission Beach. Pete's Cafe was on the corner where you go into the Mission Beach amusement park right under the first section of the roller coaster. It was a very active place loaded with military and civilian patrons. Every time the roller coaster went by the whole place would shake. My father got his first job in California at Pete's. He worked 12, sometimes 16, hours a day washing dishes in that place. I don't know what he was paid, but it couldn't have been much. But, it was a job with a steady income, but far better than moving from field to field picking cotton. |
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| In 1940 San Diego had a great public transportation system consisting of streetcars and busses. An adult fair was two dollars for a week's pass anywhere in the system. I got my student pass for fifty cents per week. I could, and did, travel all over the San Diego area. At that time the population of San Diego was only 203,341. I just checked the 1990 census (Ten Years ago). It listed San Diego as having a population of 2.5 million. In 1940 the population of the USA was 118 million and in 1990 it had increased to over 249 million. I wonder how long before the population of this country will become so large that the land will no longer be able to support the growing numbers. That time is rapidly approaching. |
| Unfortunately there is a way to keep the population under control. As I continued to honk the extras of the San Diego Tribune I became more aware of the expanding world war. We were renting a house on Poke street in the North Park area of San Diego when that infamous Sunday morning news bulletin came over the radio announcing that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. |
| In the days that followed we prepared for war. We hung black curtains over the windows to keep the light from being seen by any enemy that might be coming. Automobile headlights were painted over with black paint with only a small slit left open to give minimum lighting for those who must drive at night. Gasoline became rationed to as little as three gallons per week for an "A" sticker representing non-essential driving. Car pools were formed to drive workers to the aircraft factories around Lindbergh Field. The factories themselves were covered over with chicken wire and camouflages to make them look like farm fields when viewed from the air. Food and clothing were soon rationed requiring everyone to obtain a rationing book with stamps representing items like coffee, or shoes, that had to be exchanged for the item. |
| Everyone of age joined the armed services to bring the enemy to their knees. Robert was already in the Army, and JT enlisted in the Navy. Gene was in the Army for a short time but was released after some kind of disability manifested itself during basic training. Jesse was deferred because of hearing loss from ear infections caused by the water in the old swimming pond. I, of course, was still under age for military service. With the able bodied men going off to fight. The women soon worked the war plants. Euna came out to San Diego and stayed with us while she worked at the Consolidated Aircraft factory building B-24's. |
| During the war I delivered newspapers, and worked with my father at a used [junk] furniture store. At the furniture store I worked out back in their repair yard. I would repair gas-heating stoves by repacking their reflective backs with asbestos. Metal bedsprings were sand blasted and spray painted with what ever paint I could find. Because of the many shortages anything I came across that could be repaired I would go at it. Old cook stoves would be sprayed with carbon tetrachloride and gunk to prepare them for sale. My mother did house work for women who worked for the war effort. Everything that was done was directed at winning the war. We found ourselves once again collecting scrap medal to build more airplanes. Oil drippings from cooking was saved in a container and delivered to a collection point for use in making explosives. Everything was hard to find. Automobiles were not made from 1942 to 1946, and auto parts were not to be had. Tires were recapped, retreaded, or anything to keep them in use. They could not be purchased without a special war effort ration stamp. These shortages continued until 1946 when things were once again on store shelves not requiring a ration stamp. |
| As the war droned on my father and mother saved every penny they could. They eventually bought two acres of land in the country east of San Diego at the intersection of Sweetwarter and Jamacha Roads (At this time that area is no longer out in the country, but a dense residential area). From that farmhouse I rode a yellow school bus to Grossmont High School. School closed early in 1944 to allow us older kids to obtain jobs to help out in the war effort. I got a job working for the Navy at North Island. As I boarded the people ferryboat to cross the bay to North Island for the first time it was June 6, 1944, "D" day. Everyone had been anxiously anticipating the invasion of the European Continent across the English Channel for some time. Everyone was praying for a speedy end to the war; however, it would be another year before that end would come about. |
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