Chapter 2 - My Earliest Years

It was in that same Collins Hospital that I was born on July 2, 1927. When I was a few months old, a photographer took a picture of me lying on a bearskin ~ sans clothing. That picture embarrassed me for years. If I were nearby, my brothers loved to ask their friends, "Hey, you want to see a picture of my sister naked?"

When I was a year old, mother took me by train back to the farm in Kansas. However, my earliest memory is being terrified of the seaweed at the beach. I was only a couple of years old, and my mother was always incredulous that I remembered the "snakes" at the ocean. Dad had gone to his annual National Guard encampment at San Luis Obispo, and Mom and I went to visit him. Lots of seaweed had washed up onto the beach, and I was very scared of it, because it looked like big snakes. This scene was vividly etched in my memory for many years.

I also remember playmates Jackie Brereton, with whom I visited years later when we lived in Vallejo, and they had moved to Richmond. Twin boys, Tommy and Timmy, and Vidor Bjorkland were also early childhood friends. I don't remember anything about Vidor, except his catchy name. Turlock, where I was born and lived until I was 7, had a large Scandinavian population, and I fit right in because I was a towhead blonde with a ''Dutch" bob haircut.

Every year, there were Scandinavian Days; for me, the highlight was the Maypole_ Dance in which girls in native costumes danced around the pole, weaving the colored streamers in and out. I was a tall, skinny, awkward kid and envied the pretty girls dancing so _gracefully. My dear friends, Gloria and Lou, are both Norwegian and Danish, respectively, and we have talked about attending the festival, still taking place in Turlock- maybe someday.

When I was six years old, Mother gave me a birthday party, the only one I remember during my early childhood. In those days, kids didn't have birthday parties every year, especially during the Great Depression. The theme was a "hard times" party, and we dressed in old clothes and rags. Mom probably thought that very clever, but to me, it didn't seem very "party-ish." I had no idea my folks couldn't afford to buy me a pretty party dress.

Dad owned a service station and garage downtown on East Olive. He had a shop car, a 1920s version small pickup truck with an open cab. My brother John, "Buddy" in all there younger years loved to sit in that truck and pretend we were driving. Another car I remembered was our neighbor Charlie Trowbridge's Model T, which had a rumble seat. He and his wife Claire, had no children and were our fairy godparents. Often, he would drive around the block just so we kids could ride in that rumble seat. What fun!

Our family celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, and I remember Charlie driving us around town--in the rumble seat, of course, to give Santa Claus time to put the presents under our tree at home. Sitting in the rumble seat, we had a birds-eye view of the sky and were craning our necks trying to see Santa flying across the rooftops, only to discover we'd missed him while looking in the wrong neighborhoods.

There weren't that many presents under our tree. We three children all got one main gift, plus shoes or clothes, and always an orange and nuts in our stockings. Claire and Charlie always had something for us under their tree. One Christmas, I wanted a toy tea set (real china), and I fondly remember opening a box containing an ad and a picture of a toy tea set. My dad took me downtown to pick out one the next day. I think Kathy, or one of my granddaughters, still has it today.

Whenever I would get upset at my mother, or perhaps be punished, I'd go pack my Boston Bag (like a doctor's satchel, and which once probably held my mother's nursing supplies), and I'd pout, “You're mean to me. I'm running away!" Okay, go on and go" she'd say, knowing full well I was running away to Claire and Charlie's next door. Claire would soothe my tears, and then feed me cookies and cocoa.

Evidently, I was quite an adventurer and wandered away several times. Our yard had no fence, and my mother fitted me out with a harness attached to the clothesline, which ran the length of the backyard, and that gave Mom some peace of mind. We had a beautiful Irish Setter dog, and once I followed him (or was he protecting me?) two blocks to the end of the street, where there was an empty field and a big grove of bamboo. Anyway, when J was discovered missing, they had the whole neighborhood out searching, and if it weren't for the dog barking in answer to their calls, they'd never have found me. I was having too much fun hiding from them in that tall bamboo. Another time, my aunt was visiting and took me downtown with her (downtown was about three blocks long in those days). Mother had not warned her sufficiently about my wandering ways, and I meandered off. That time, they called the police, who found me sitting calmly on the library steps.

My parents always enjoyed gardening, both vegetables and flowers. Mom was most proud of her beautiful Dahlias, which she usually entered in the County Fair. One of the few times I remember being punished involved her flower garden. Buddy and I found a couple of baby birds, which had fallen out of their nest. Perhaps my folks tried to help keep them alive, but they died. We kids decided that we'd have a proper funeral (young as we were, we knew about funerals). Mom gave us a big matchbox for a coffin, gathered our playmates, and marched to the vacant lot next door with our sand shovels. Suddenly, I remembered that you had to have flowers for the grave, so I (or we) went and cut off most of her prized dahlias and piled them on the bird's gravesite. Did I get it for not asking first! That time I got spanked, but as usual. The worst punishment was to sit in my little chair facing the wall for what seemed like an eternity, while listening to the sounds of my friends playing outside. However, I always thought it unfair that being the eldest, I always got the blame; and had to give an example to my brothers.

Mom and Dad had built our home a year or two after they were married. It had a covered front porch with thick pillars, a front and back bedroom with a bathroom in between. The living room, dining room and kitchen with built-in breakfast nook were lined up, front to back, on the other side. There was a screened back porch. Forty years or so later, your dad and I were on our way to Fresno, and we detoured going through Turlock, and I actually remembered where to find it, on Merritt Street, east of Main. As a little girl, it had seemed so big and spacious to me. The corner vacant lot, our bird cemetery, was occupied by a big apartment building which dwarfed this little bungalow next door. I couldn't believe my eyes, Claire and Charlie's house was still next door, although they had moved to Modesto not long after my folks left Turlock.

Speaking about the screened back porch, ·reminds me of the burglar story which fascinated, yet scared me. There were a lot of down-on-their-luck men in those depression days, as well as hobos riding the railroad that came through town. Knowing my mother, I'm sure my folks locked their doors (in those days, many people didn't), but the back screen door had no lock, only a hook latch, and the porch opened into the kitchen. One night, a burglar either forced the door or cut the screen, and they/she awoke during the night to· see very dimly a. figure. going through things on top of their dresser, then pull out the drawers. Perhaps. my mother was there alone, because my dad was a volunteer fireman and maybe on duty that night. Anyway, she lay so still, pretending to be asleep, afraid to cry out, the burglar got some of her jewelry. He hit several neighboring houses that night, and things got so bad that many_ of the men formed a watch committee and took turns, two by two, patrolling the neighborhood.

Perhaps that is why I've always been a scaredy-cat, both as to intruders and also fire, which terrifies me. When I was four or five, I watched a neighboring house across the street burn, and a fire at night always makes a dramatic impression. Later on, at Bass Lake, I woke up one night to see reflections of flames dancing on my wall, woke up Mother, and she ran down the hill barefoot, screaming, "Fire! Fire!" trying to awaken the people who lived there. Huddled in our bathrobes, scared yet mesmerized, we watched that cabin burn to the ground. Also at Bass Lake, we kids had to ride on the back of a flatbed truck through a dying forest fire. As a teenager, Buddy and I had to put out a fire in our folks' bedroom, which my naughty brother, Gene; started--playing with matches! The curtains had caught fire, and the whole wall was ablaze. We got the fire out, but sure did a lot of water damage.

Summers in Turlock were very hot, and my dad actually built us a little cement wading pool in the back yard. I had a red, cotton knit bathing suit with a mesh bib top. On Sundays a special treat was going to the Stanislaus River to cool off, Dad holding me tight, and dipping me up and down in the water. There was also the “Turlock Plunge”, an old-fashioned name for the municipal swimming pool. Mother was always afraid of the water, even when going out in any boat smaller than. a yacht. When she was small, her brothers, subscribing to the "sink or swim" theory had thrown her into the horse tank. However, she made sure that eventually we all had swim lessons so we would be safe in the water. I actually earned my Red Cross life-saving certificate in college.

Isn't it amazing what funny perceptions kids have? For years, I was afraid of the dark, and often looked under my bed to make sure the boogie-man wasn't there. However, I laugh at a funny notion involving my first-grade teacher, whom I adored. Maybe I thought she was a celestial being, but I remember being so surprised that she, too, had a mother and father. I must have never realized that adults also had moms and dads. I had a grandmother, but did not make the connection to my mom.

These innocent years came to an end the summer I was seven. My mother and father lost their business, the house, even the old shop car, and we moved to Modesto, into a rented house on Semple Street. Charlie T. had lost his job as a vocational arts teacher at Turlock High School, and he had signed on as a salesman with the Electro Lux Company (the latest in vacuum cleaners). He talked my dad into doing the same.

I don't remember a lot about those three years, perhaps because they weren't particularly happy ones. We did move into a bigger, brown house on High Street, the last house on the street. Beyond was an alfalfa field, and at the far side a big irrigation canal (strictly forbidden to go near the canal). I had friends named Beverly (next door) and Helen, across the street. Why does one always remember the embarrassing incidents? There was a new fad for shortening our names; Patricia became Pat, Beverly became Bev, and once I stood out by the street and yelled across to my friend, "Oh, Hel." I turned beet-red as everyone turned to look at me. I remember someone else, too, a redhead named Ruthie in my class at school. She is the villain character in a personal experience I wrote about in "The Christmas of the Shirley Temple Doll."

Mother was sick all the time, then diagnosed with TB and sent to a sanitarium up in the hills. They thought 1 had it, too, and I ended up in the children's wing at the same place. I was so lonely and homesick, I threw up every night after dinner. It seemed like I was there for ages, but it was probably only a few months before they gave up and sent me home.

Because Modesto had so much tulle fog (a damp climate that is very bad for TB patients) during the fall and winter, Dad rented a cabin in the Sierras at Bass Lake for Mom, my brothers, and me. I don't know how long we lived there, probably less than a year. Dad had to make a living, so he stayed in Modesto, sublet the house, and got himself a room. Soon, he was able to obtain the Sonora Electrolux territory, and we moved there the summer I was ten. First to a rental house way up on the hill south of Sonora, but a very long way to school and town, and Dad needed our only car (his territory went north to Jackson, south beyond Groveland, and east to the Nevada line). He certainly worked very hard to make enough to support us-just barely, I'm sure.

The Sonora years were such a happy and memorable time in my life. I always said I grew up there. My brother John and I made a trip back a few years ago. Much had changed, but at age thirteen, we found many of our old haunts and relived fond memories. To my surprise, we figured out we'd lived there only five years; five very happy, carefree years.

(To be continued)