[or-roots] Father's memories

[Stephenie Flora]

I did an interview in 1986 with my father regarding numerous topics.  
Here are some abstracts from that interview that may be of interest.  I 
recorded them and then typed them up in his own words.  I apologize for 
the length and have cut much of it out.

   "The next place that I remember after Spokane was Portland.  We were 
living there during the big spanish flu epidemic.  Boy, people were 
dropping like flies.  There were as high as 400 bodies stacked up in 
Portland and there were a steady stream of funeral processions going up 
Division Street.  It was about a block and a half from our house.  They 
were all dragging tin cans and stuff behind to warn people to stay 
away.  Everybody was walking around with a face mask on but it didn't do 
any good.
I was in bed for 21 days with it.  It was nip and tuck for dad and I.  
The only thing they knew was quinine and spirits of niter.  Mom would 
take a quinine pill and put it in a prune and give it to me.  Mom and 
dad were both down with the flu and I was out playing.  All of a sudden 
I felt like the devil with a headache.  I went in to mom and said `I 
don't feel good'. She just threw back the covers and said `climb in'.  I 
don't think I got out for 21 days.  Alot of people who had the flu and 
survived it, died afterwards from going out and overdoing.  Their lungs 
were thin from the flu and would hemorrhage."
  
   "On holidays we would all get together somewhere.  In those days they 
had alot of pie socials and stuff like that.  The whole community would 
get together and meet in the school house or somewhere.  They'd bid on 
each others lunch boxes sight unseen.  The women would make up a lunch 
box and decorate it and then the men would bid on them.  Sometimes the 
woman would hint which box was hers to a special person and then that 
person could bid on her lunch and win the privilege of sharing it with 
her.  If there were two interested parties the bidding could get pretty 
spirited.
   We had alot of wieny roasts and bon fires too.  Out at grandad's down 
by the timber he would build a great big bon fire and we would dance and 
play games around the fire.  You had to make your own entertainment back 
then.
   Whenever I was out of school or had time off, I always headed for 
Grandad Bartruff's farm.  That was my fun.  The horses were the big 
attraction out there.  When I was twelve years old I was doing some 
plowing.  I'd go plow with my hands clear up by my ears on the handles.  
I'd get up at four o'clock in the morning and go down and feed the 
horses and be out in the field at seven o'clock riding the harrow or 
doing something like that."

.   " My folks weren't real strict though.  I split and carried in alot 
of wood.  Mom said I started to answer to the name `wood' because they 
were always saying `wood' to me.  But dad, he always let me drive his 
car around. I remember the old Model T of Willie Bartruff's.  We were 
out working and they sent me home for breakfast in the old Model T.  It 
was the first time I had driven a Model T but I made it home.  Aunt Mary 
like to have had a cat fit, sending a kid home in a car like that.  She 
was still horse and buggy days.  We used to go over to Sheridan alot to 
visit Uncle Willie."

   We didn't have alot of conveniences that people have today but we 
always had a phone as far back as I can remember.  Grandad even had a 
phone out there at the farm.  It was one of those old crank phones.
   The first radio we had was out at Chemawa.  As a matter of fact, it 
was only about the second radio in that area.  It was a battery operated 
Etwater-Kent Super Hetrodine radio.  Dad bought a wet battery with a 
bunch of glass cells and a deal to plug in to charge it.  We kept it 
charged.  It had an A and B battery.  I had that in Montana and when I 
left there I left the radio right there in the room and that was the end 
of that.
   We listened to the Hoot Owls and the Orchestras on the radio.  Before 
we got a regular radio and before anyone in the area had a radio, I 
built a crystal set with Babe and Ira Turner.  It had earphones and we 
would  listen to Nashville Tennessee every night until 3:30 in the 
mornings sometimes.  It would come in as clear as could be.
   The only other entertainment we had were the old silent movies but 
you had to read everything on the screen.  The first `talkie' I remember 
was at the Elsinore.  We used to drive up to Portland to the Broadway 
sometimes and watch vaudeville.  And the old Liberty theater here in 
Salem had stuff like boxing, kangaroos, bears to wrestle and bucking 
horses to ride.  I tried them all."

   "The clothes we wore in High School were about the same as you see on 
alot of kids now except in my Senior year, white cords were the thing.  
Nobody was allowed to wear them unless they were a Senior and the 
dirtier the cords were, the better.  In fact, we'd take a brand new pair 
of white cords and rub dirt in them before we'd wear them.
   There wasn't much unusual about our life.  I do remember a dust storm 
that we had here.  It blew in out of Eastern Oregon and turned day into 
night for about three days.  And I remember when the State Capitol 
burned.  Old Ray Bedwell and I dashed in there to watch it.  It was 
quite a fire. That copper dome at the top burned green.  It was really 
something to see. I also remember the Willamette River froze over and we 
walked across it."

  " Ferry Street downtown [Salem] used to be China Town but they all 
moved down to San Francisco.  The Japanese had a settlement down around 
High Street but World War II wiped them out because they were all 
bundled off to detention camps.  Lake Labish was all Japanese too 
because they had a 99 year lease on the lake out there which became void 
due to the war."

  
   "Through the years I've driven and owned numerous cars.  That car we 
had on Winter Street when I was going to school was a Dodge Sedan.  Of 
course, that was Dad's but I drove it all the time.  Then I bought my 
first automobile, the last four cylinder Buick made.  The next car I had 
was a Model T pickup that I paid $18 for.  That was in 1935 when I went 
to work for the paving crew.  That same year we bought a Model A 
Roadster that had been repossessed by the Buick garage for $135.  We 
traded that in on an Oakland Victory Six.  That was the one we were in 
when two drunks pulled out in front of us on Fairgrounds Road and we hit 
them broadside and demolished their homemade Maxwell with the tongue and 
groove lumber for a cab.  Boy, it just flew apart.  One guy in there 
just went straight up in the air still in a sitting position and came 
down on the pavement on his butt.  No one was seriously hurt but it was 
quite a sight.  I traded that Victory Six in on a `36 Ford.  I didn't 
have enough money to buy a license so it had to sit in the shed there 
until payday.  We could go out and sit in it but we couldn't drive it.  
We had that until I went in the army."
  
"We were living out at Roberts when the war broke out.  We moved in to 
town because we could see how things were going to be.  About that time 
I decided to enlist because I felt like I had to do my part.
   To begin with I took a test for the Navy ship repair units and was 
assigned to First Class and went to Portland and took a test for Chief 
Petty Officer and passed that.  I was waiting for Glen Shedeck, who was 
having trouble passing the exam, when Bill Bihl, my brother-in-law, 
talked me into going into the engineers with him.  The Highway 
Department had an agreement with the Army Engineers to refer any skilled 
labor or operators of equipment directly to the engineer corps.  So we 
went in on special assignment through the Highway Department.  I had 
orders to wire my serial number to headquarters in Columbus, Ohio the 
minute I got it, which I did. We were bussed from Salem to Fort Lewis on 
about the Fourth of March or along there.  We were there about two weeks 
when Bill Bihl was assigned to Oklahoma.  So much for our staying 
together.  About a week later I got my orders from Columbus, Ohio and 
the 9th Army Command in Utah confirming that I was assigned to the 
1257th Engineer Combat Battalion in Camp Bowie, Texas.  I was assigned 
to headquarters and service company, which is the motor pool. There were 
two battalion mechanics and I was one of them.  The other four companies 
had company mechanics.
   I was there until around the first of June when the CO gave me a 
chance to go to school at Fort Crook, Nebraska, which I accepted.  I got 
out of alot of tough basic training besides a chance to go to school.  I 
was signed up for the wrong course, or so the instructors told me.  I 
should have been in the advanced course but they gave me alot of good 
instruction on the side so I got alot of goood out of it, especially on 
electrical, carburetors and diesel engines.
   After June, July and August at school I came home to Salem on a 10 
day delay enroute and then went back to Fort Crook and on to Camp Bowie, 
Texas again.  We were there repairing equipment for overseas and getting 
ready for shipping out when along in October we boarded a troop train 
and wandered around twelve states on our way to New York and back down 
to Camp Kilmar, New Jersey, where we boarded an English ship.  It was a 
400 foot diesel, one of the biggest diesels afloat.  We headed for Europe.
   To beat the submarine pack we went down the East coast, within three 
miles of the Equator, and across to Africa, and up the coast to England 
from there.  We landed at Plymouth, England and bussed up to a little 
town called Exeter, in Debon county, where we collected some more 
equipment and toured around England looking things over.
   We were there until New Years Eve, when we boarded an LST from 
Southampton,  England and crossed the English Channel into France.  We 
landed there New  Years Eve in the snow and cold.  The night was spent 
wrapped in a blanket,  sitting there in an open three quarter ton, 
trying to keep warm.  The next  day we went on to a little place called 
Forges-Les-Eaux, where there was  about eight inches of snow.  The 
troops were in pup tents but the motor  pool had a little barn.  We were 
in the loft with a pot belly stove so we  didn't do too bad.
    We spent our time there gathering more equipment from Brussels, 
Belgium  and around.  I was hauling ammunition from Swissel and France 
up to the  front until they got more equipment and drivers.
    The line company was clearing out mines from Omaha Beach and a 
little  town called Fecamp and the surrounding country.  From there we 
were on the  alert a half a dozen times for reserve troops for the 
Battle of the Bulge.
 We would load up, then they would call off, and we would unload.  Then  
we'd load up and they'd call it off again.  Finally, they decided they  
didn't need us so we went above, North of the Rouen, to a big field 
where  we built a Camp Lucky Strike as a kind of a reassignment center 
for inductees  coming in from the states as replacements.  We were there 
for a month, maybe,  and then moved on to a place called Maria Loch.  It 
was just a big lake with  an orchard around it with meadows.  We camped 
out there.  Up above us on a   hill was a big hundred year old 
monastery.  We were there working over our  equipment until we finally 
left there and traveled around the country.  France and Germany and all 
of them were just like being in Oregon, as far  as I could see.  France 
was nice open country with timber.  Their timber  was replanted, though, 
and it was growing in rows like orchards.
    Traveling through the Argon Forest I could see the World War I 
trenches  still there and artillery pieces sitting around rusting away.  
Nobody had  ever cleaned them up from World War I.  We went through the 
Black Forest  where there were second growth trees growing just as thick 
as hair on a dog,  until it looked black.
    Germany had asphalt roads with timber and hills and open farmland.  
It  was just like traveling around through Western Oregon.  It was 
pretty  country.  We traveled around and went through a castle at 
Cologne (Koln),
 Germany, where we stayed awhile.  There were about 300 prisoners in a  
stockade there that we were guarding.  We moved around to two or three  
locations and finally we were assigned to third Army for Aurora 
crossing  for Bailey Bridge work.  We got there and they didn't need us 
and loaned  us to the Ninth Army who, by the time we got to them in 
Belgium, didn't  need us either.  They sent us up to Holland to the 
British Second Army and  the Canadian First Army, taking orders from 
American Combat Group.  We were  special troops like that all through 
the war, never assigned to any division,  only bandied around to whoever 
needed extras.  We got to travel alot of  country that way.  At one time 
or another I belonged to every Army in  Europe except the Fifth Army.  I 
belonged to the 36th Division and the  First and Third Army, the Seventh 
Army, the Twelfth Army, the Fifteenth  Army and the 23rd Corps at 
different times.  From Holland, we spent our  time building and 
repairing roads up to the front lines for ambulances  and ammo wagons 
traveling back and forth.  The Colonel made me a special  traveling 
inspector to travel around to our three different line companies  and 
inspect their equipment to make sure they were taking care of it to  
suit the old Colonel.  These unites were about twenty miles apart doing  
road work.
    In the meantime, he was scavengering up an old steam engine that he 
had  me build into a shower and hot water heater as well as an asphalt 
plant and rock crusher that we set up to help our road work.
    After we left Holland, we went back to Belgium and Germany again.  
We  landed in Germany in a little town called Donn, where we were with 
Patton's  outfit.  He was traveling so fast that they just called us off 
and we sat  there repairing our equipment and waited for further orders.
    About that time, the war ended and we moved from there to over on 
the  Rhine River and two or three locations around a town called Neweid 
and  Erlish and from there up into a big field near a place called 
Obermorlen.   It was just flat, open country with lots of grass and 
shrubs.  It looked  like central Oregon.
    From there we started breaking up our outfit.  I stayed overnight 
with  a group in a stockade with barbed wire all around.  It had been an 
American  Stockade.  From there I went to a forestry company in Zuchien, 
Germany in  a castle.  It had belonged to an old Baron.  They had kicked 
him out and  took it over for a barracks.  I was the only one in the 
motor pool who had  moved in there on points average.  I was stuck for 
the whole motor pool,  cleaning up their excess equipment and getting 
rid of the stuff.  I had  quite a time getting rid of the extra trucks 
and equipment.
    From there I went down to Bulvaria in Southern Germany to the 36th  
Division to ship home.  It was around November and they were supposed 
to  guarantee everybody there that they'd be home by Christmas.  About 
that  time they had a bottleneck in the port and cleaned out a 
regiment.  I was  sent back up to Weinheim, Germany and a railroad 
switch yard with a sausage  factory and a farm implement building that 
we used for a motor pool and  barracks.  I had a room in an office in 
the farm implement building.
    There I stayed, working on and processing equipment for occupation  
forces.  I sorted it out, stacked the good stuff and junked the bad 
stuff.  It was an ordinance outfit--the 84th Division.  I came home with 
them on the  30th of December.
    We shipped out to LeHarve, France, where we processed and waited 
for  about nine days to come home.  On the 8th of January, we boarded a 
7000 ton  ship that built as a passenger liner for the New York to 
Puerto Rico run.  It was turned into a troop ship.  It was a pretty 
small boat for overseas.   We came home by the North Atlantic.  We hit 
storms the first night out and  it stormed all the way home.  About 800 
miles from France on my 35th   birthday they had the worst storm to hit 
the North Atlantic in history,   according to the old stewards that had 
been shipping out for years and some of the old sailors."

-- 
Stephenie Flora
http://www.oregonpioneers.com/ortrail.htm

Researching:
Acuff, Bartruff, Bewley, Ellis, Green, Lewis, Modlin