Grandpa's Ranch

Candelyn:  Tell me about the ranch.  How did grandpa build it?  Where did the materials come from?  Did people often build their own houses?  How did he know what to do?  Did anyone help him?  Tell me about the day you got a cement floor!

My father obtained land for the ranch in four ways.  First, he homesteaded one section(1 square mile.)  Homesteading was a specific government program that allowed people to get one section of land for free if they built a house and lived on it. 

(side bar story about homesteading)When my grandparents, Byrum and Addie Pace, were first married they homesteaded some land and built a house on it near Safford.  The house was so cold and inadequate that in the winter they moved into town and lived with relatives.  Someone "jumped" their claim that winter and thus got the land, the house and everything in it for free.   I remember reading all the Little House on the Prairie books to my children and the same thing happened to homesteaders there when they moved into town for the winter.  After I retired, and was taking my dad to various funerals and Navajo County  reunions, some man came up to us and introduced himself as the son of the couple who got By and Addie Pace's homestead.  I wanted to hit him on the spot.  I am sure he had no idea how much our whole family resented  his parents who had "stolen" my grand parents first home. I don't think By and Addie ever owned their own home again.  

The second way my father got land was obtaining a perpetual lease on a section from the school board (given to them by the state to provide funds to support the school in Woodruff.) 

 Third,  he leased land from Candelaria, a New Mexico resident that acquired large amounts of land going back to a Mexican land grant (I'm not certain of details)

  Fourth, he also purchased some land.  When I was in high school the ranch consisted of 10,000 acres that were used to  raise beef cattle.  When it rained and made grass, it was great when it didn't rain and you had to buy hay or move the cattle to rented  pastures, you had to get a bank loan to tide your family and your cows over.  I don't know how big the ranch is now.  Some leases were let go, others continue, more land was bought.  I know almost none of the details.

The land my father homesteaded did not have a "river running through it." The first thing needed to make a ranch was to get water.  My dad  hired someone to drill the well, which must go very, very deep before you hit water.  You have to have pipe to line the narrow hole that is dug. It is not like the wishing well storybook type well, where you just dig a hole and can lift the water in a bucket with a rope.   He obtained 4 telephone poles for the windmill tower.  He paid  for the windmill parts that were shipped by train to Holbrook.  He used pulleys and other engineering tricks to erect the entire windmill by himself.  He may have hired someone or borrowed someone's scraper to make the pond to hold the water.  He recycled a circular section of something into a holding tank for the cows to drink from and he obtained  a steel barrel for holding drinking water which he fitted out with a faucet.  Pipes connected all of these things together and gravity was the only force used to get the water flowing where it needed to be after the windmill brought it up from the ground.

The summer after I was born, my parents lived in a tent on this land and began to build the ranch house.  My father's job with the Arizona Highway Department seemed to have breaks when one contract was finished for a certain section of the highway and before another began.  That summer he quarried the large sandstone rocks you see in the house and laid them together with mud. The ones over the doors and windows were immense, but he managed to get the walls all laid up by himself perhaps with some of my mother's help.  

The ranch house had two rooms.  There was  a fireplace in the living/bedroom and a stove pipe connection to the chimney in the kitchen/dining room.  There was a big window in the south of the living room and a big window in the east and small window(think over the sink, but there was no sink) in the west of the kitchen.  There was a front door to the living area and a back door in the kitchen. He left an opening in one wall of the living room so he could add onto this house in the future, but boarded it up securely until that time.  Along the entire front was an open porch. There was no running water, thus no sink or bathroom.  There was an iron wood-burning stove in the kitchen.  The fireplace was the heat source in the winter.  An outdoor toilet was built a good distance from the house and  windmill.

My father told me that as soon as he had the walls up, he put up tarps for a roof and moved the family from the tent into the ranch house while he finished the rafters and the roof.  The roof was made of corrugated tin which was very noisy during a rain storm and even worse during a hail storm.  The ceiling was made of plywood with battens over the cracks. The walls were plastered with red mud that is so abundant at the ranch.  The floors were packed dirt. He purchased the windows, but made the doors himself from planks drilled through with long bolts held by nuts that you could see on the edges of the doors.   He made hinged shutters for the windows that closed and locked from the same planks as the doors.  He had even made the hinges for the shutters from iron rods.

I have no memories of living in a house with a dirt floor, but I did, because I can remember having to move out, so that a cement floor could be poured.  It was probably in the summer of 1936 when I was two years old.  I can remember my dad building us a "play house" which really became a tool shed.  After it was finished the family moved into it, temporarily, while he poured the cement floor in the ranch house.  He made a trough from wood and tin to mix the cement in. (Later, we kids would use this trough as a boat when the flats were flooded.)  He mixed the cement with a hoe and hauled it in a wheel barrow.  Since he was doing all the work himself, it probably took more than a week to finish, including time for the cement to cure.  He also plastered the walls with a thin coat of cement over the mud plaster.  As little kids, bored with having to take a nap, sometimes we would rotate our fingernail on the wall until it made a little hole and out would come pouring a little waterfall of red dirt from the mud plaster underneath. Since I have a vivid memory of this, I am sure that I was one of the kids who did this naughty thing.

Furniture for the ranch house consisted of a bed he made himself from the same planks as the front door and painted with the same pink and yellow paint that was everywhere.  I think they must have bought a five gallon can of both pink and yellow paint.  We even had a horse trailer painted that same pink.  He made a folding baby bed on casters, with screened sides and a screen lid for my sister who would be born that fall.  It got painted with the yellow paint. 
My brother and I slept on folding camp cots.  We had quilts of plaid flannel with wool batting that my parents had made when they were first married. My parents had bought two tables at an auction after they were married in 1929.   A round oak center pedestal table with leaves cost $2.00 and was our dining table for years.  It was never at the ranch.  One of my brothers still uses it at this time.  The second table was  a square drop leaf table on casters for $.50.  This fifty cent table was at the ranch for years and then became our kitchen table in the Eighth Avenue house.  I have inherited it and it is still in good shape.

Milton, Rayna,& Alleen in front of the original ranch house.  You can see the windmill, the corrugated tin roof and the front porch before it was closed in.  The girls have on homemade sun bonnets..  The horse is Old Blue, a very tame and gentle horse. She was a blue gray color when she was young and then she became almost white with a few grey specks when she got older, but her named remained the same, Old Blue.  I delivered newspapers on her in 5th and 6th grade.

I can remember once, at the ranch we were riding on Old Blue and it started to hail.  We ran under the open porch.  My dad was holding Old Blue's reins and the noisy tin roof sounded just like gun shots.  It spooked Old Blue and she bolted.  My dad explained that she was always shy of gunshots, because of something to do with her previous owner.  I don't remember the details.

Eventually the front porch was enclosed to make two bedrooms, one for the boys and one for the girls.  This meant that the kitchen window looked into the boys bedroom and so the kitchen was quite dark with only the small window to the west.  We also added a narrow table with a two burner portable kerosene stove in the kitchen.  There was a small table in the corner for a big water pail and a dipper for drinking was hung on the nearby wall.  

The well had a barrel of water where we drew our drinking water.  The overflow from the barrel went into the trough which was used as a cooler for many food items. The overflow from the trough went into the pond, which was stocked with fish. My father installed a valve and clay pipes to drain water from the tank to  water the trees and a garden.  One time we arrived at the ranch and a man, that knew my father or worked with him, was there with several boys, and they had dug up all the clay pipes and were taking them.  I don't know the details of this, but no fights or harsh words were spoken.  I asked my dad about this before he died, and he remembered it happening, but couldn't remember why this man felt he could just take it.  He told me the man paid for it, but all the labor to install the underground pipes was lost. I don't think it was ever totally replaced.

Some time later, my dad dug a deep hole, made forms, and poured a cement basement or cellar to the northeast of the house. It was half below ground and half above ground.  He first used it as a smoking chamber for ham and bacon and later it was used as a root cellar and storage for bottled fruits and vegetables.  

The second year after we moved to Phoenix, My dad built a rock room above the cellar for a girl's bedroom. He put a "safe" in the wall and hung a picture over it.  The safe was really just a mason jar embedded in the wall, but it's the first thing that little kids talk about when they go to the ranch.  To get from this room to the house, you had to go outdoors  and down a few steps to get to the kitchen door.  A later summer, dad added a roofed area open on the north and west that we used like a patio, eating, or playing cards. This kept us out of the rain from the kitchen to the cellar and to the girls bedroom.  Of course, it eventually got enclosed at some point, just like the front porch did. 

 We had a removable car seat from a station wagon as a swing near the pond and another swing hung between two trees, that was made from a bed springs.  There was a rock garden where petrified wood and other rocks of  "value" were placed.  For a few years when the rain was sufficient my dad cut grass on the hay flats north of the ranch house and had haystacks of grass hay for the cows the next winter.  He made a mouse-proof grain storage shed,  barns, garages, and various other enclosures.  There was even an ice house made of railroad ties and sawdust for storing ice cut from the pond in winter and it would still be frozen during the summer.   They eventually added another bedroom and a bathroom and kitchen sink with running water.  

Whenever we had something extra or a little old and didn't need it any more, it would be recycled to the ranch.  Old towels that were a little worn, unmatched glasses, odd chairs, broken water heaters that could become watering troughs, an old car, and just any junk that was too good to throw away were all sent to the ranch.  Eventually my father had to fence in this junk yard to keep the cows from getting entangled.  

 The one thing that my children liked the most among all the accumulated stuff at the ranch was the "Gizmo."  It was some kind of large machine that originally had been working, I think.  It came to the ranch after I was older, so I don't remember ever seeing it work. To this day I don't know what it does, but over the years it has given many hours of pleasure to several generations of kids.

After my brother took over the ranch, he had to hire someone to clear away all this junk that was waiting to be recycled into something useful, but he left the "gizmo" for another generation to enjoy.  

He also added another whole two story house onto the west side of the ranch house.  They put in a piano for sing-a-longs.  He erected a high water tank so as to get water pressure for the indoor toilets and shower.  He bought a generator for electricity.  They ran a telephone wire to the ranch, just prior to the common use of cell phones. He has added a big shade for family reunions and picnics  They have moved their family swing set to the ranch  and they have motorcycles for riding.   But no horses!   

There have been a lot of kids, grand kids, and great-grand kids who have a lot of memories of this ranch.  I would guess that there will  be a  lot more grand kids and lot more memories in the future.

Your last question about how he learned the skills necessary to build the ranch is not easy to answer.  He never had any training as such, but was always curious and watched people do things.  He was not afraid to ask questions.  I have overheard many times when he is asking someone how this or that goes or what you have to fix something.  I don't think his father had skills along these lines, but maybe his grandfather, Levi Mathers Savage, did.  Someone built a wooden house out at  Dry Ranch for my father's family and perhaps he learned from watching them. 

 He had all these interests early on, because one of his sisters once wrote a little essay about the future of their family and she had my dad  becoming an engineer.  He only finished 9th grade and luckily took a shop class with a drafting component. where he learned to do the italic like lettering like they use on construction plans. This helped get him the job working for the highway department where he kept the books and oversaw what the contractors were doing. Just before he got married, he took a wood-working class at Phoenix Technical High School in the evening and made my mother a cedar chest. 

Although he was never around him until much later, he  had an uncle, who was a registered architect, and who, signed off on my dad's house plans for the Portland house.  I don't know where he learned to draw house plans, but he did. He and my mother built a small  Spanish style house in Mesa when they first got married.  This was before they built the ranch house.  He also probably learned a lot from the engineers at the highway department and from the contractors they hired to build the roads.   He never worked for anyone in an apprentice sort of way, but it was taken for granted that people knew how to build things.  People built barns  at barn raisings since pioneer times.  I imagine that as a young boy in Woodruff, he probably watched people build houses but I don't have any recollection of him talking about it.  I grew up with him knowing everything about such things and it never occurred to me to ask him, how he knew it.  
              

Man on the Moon!

Sam:  I want to know what you remember about the first time man was on the moon.  Do you remember where you were?  What was it like?  How did people feel about it?

It seems strange to me that I don't remember where I was when it happened.   I do remember reading an interview with a woman who commented, "We have enough troubles in our own country."  I guess she thought it was a waste of money or that the moon was just another country.  I often use her quote, when people totally miss the main idea.   There were lots of people who thought it was a government hoax and that it never really happened.  

 I remember watching on television, the first step on the moon and hearing the great quote, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

  I do remember exactly where I was when I heard that Kennedy was shot and, again,exactly where I was when I heard that the Challenger had exploded with the teacher, Crista McAuliffe on board.  I know where I was when I heard about the twin towers.  

That semester I was teaching at Mesa Community College and an older woman who was in my class had a daughter working in the Twin Towers.  The daughter had stayed home to go to the dentist that day and so had survived.  This woman was so shaken at how unpredictable life can be, that she moved back to New York to be near her daughter and grandchildren.

Maybe, the reason I don't remember the exact moment I heard about the landing on the moon is because it came about in stages and was no surprise when it finally happened.

I got to see the John Glenn space capsule in Manila when I was in the Peace Corps. The U.S. sent it around the globe for  exhibits.  It was in a park not too far from the Peace Corps office the summer we were working in Manila.

 I saw some space capsules at the Smithsonian and touched a moon rock there.   From an overpass in Reston, Va, I also saw the space shuttle come down the Dulles Toll Road on the back of a truck on its way to be flown back to Florida.

Sorry, Sam.  No great stories about the Man on the Moon.

Nixon?

Sam:  Tell me about Nixon.  And everything you remember about that time and his impeachment.  

I originally thought that Nixon was an okay sort of guy.  He was smart in school.  He had been raised in a minority religion and I could relate to that.  I thought that deep down he had values from his youth.  His wife was a school teacher and I could relate to that, as well.  

My family and almost all of Arizona had always been Democrats when I was growing up.  I thought of myself as Democrat but...not anything like the ones you hear and see in the party today.  After the Peace Corps, which appeared to me to be run by political pay- offs of  Kennedy with no idea what they were doing, I began to question  myself as a Democrat and, eventually, registered as an Independent.  This turned out to be really silly, since you have no say in the primary votes. Some states now let anyone vote in primaries, which creates other problems. 

 I worked several years to help Fairfax County integrate schools and to help  Head Start get going as part of the War on Poverty.  It was supposed to help eliminate poverty.  When I got invited to a big party celebrating the first graduate of Head Start to have a child in Head Start,  I was appalled that this would be something to celebrate--another generation in poverty.  My doctoral research at American University showed almost no gains for kids in Head Start over their siblings who never had Head Start.  Forty years later we continue to dump money into a program that is just another entitlement in the worst sense.  All this is to tell you how I moved from a Kennedy Democrat  over quite a few years to become a Republican. 

There was another scandal about a politician, Gary Hart, I think, from Colorado that also came from a minority religion so strict that he wasn't even allowed to dance. So when he was young he would drive out in the country to some slab of cement and dance away with his girlfriend.  Nothing wrong with that, by almost anyone's standards.   Later, he was moving onto the national scene when an almost complete  lack of morals was revealed to everyone.  This was a big insight into human behavior for me.  If person has a set of  values and he decides to step away from just part of them, then he is blowing in the wind.  Once he has broken with one of his values, he seems to lose his moral compass and begins to break more and more of his original values, many of which were very valuable in guiding his life, much more valuable than the first one that was broken.  I do think that people can grow up  and move away from their original religion and still have values, but they have to work at it and do some soul searching on their own.  They cannot rely on automatically following some standard that they no longer hold to.

Someone posted last week, something like, "Don't throw away something good until you have something better to replace it with."  I think that sums up the above paragraph.

Lyndon Johnson had some of these same moral problems.  He had been a poor teacher and worked his way up in Texas politics.  He and/or his supporters  began to use methods of getting elected that were shady.  Near the end of his term, it seems like there was an investigation and a  secretary who knew a lot of secrets, was "accidentally" killed in a plane crash in the ocean.

     

What about this John Edwards who was running for president.  I didn't see any redeeming qualities in him from the beginning, but I haven't read that much about him.  

 Back to Nixon!  Since I now identified myself as a Republican, I didn't want to believe Nixon could be really bad, but it was beginning to look like it might be.  People couldn't go after him, at first, because the Vice President, Spiro Agnew, was totally corrupt, so they had to get rid of the Vice President first before they could go after Nixon.  In the end, Nixon did not seem to have any boundaries that he wouldn't cross.  When the tapes of his conversations were opened to the public, I was revolted that he had vulgar language, as well. 

I felt so sorry for his wife and children when he had to resign.  Some of his staff members went to jail.  I felt for their families, as well.  Nixon was probably not the worst president that the U.S. has had, but he was, maybe, the most disappointing in my lifetime. 

Post Script:  Just this year I read a book about Nixon and Jack Anderson, a popular columnist who lived in the Washington, D.C. suburbs.  Nixon hated him and had the FBI or Secret Service or his own goons try to get something on Anderson's kids such as drug usage, etc.  They came back with the answer, that his kids don't even drink coca cola.  Jack Anderson was a Mormon.  Nixon or his cohorts even had a plan to poison Jack Anderson by painting a poison substance on his steering wheel that could be absorbed into the body.

Fourth Grade

Fourth Grade Memories

Miss Augusta was my fourth grade teacher.  This photo must have been taken about the time I was in her class, since it looks just like I remember her.  She was an exceptional teacher.  I have used her as an example in many classes I have taught for teachers and students planning to become teachers.  I was always going to write her a letter and tell her what a good teacher she was, but I procrastinated until it was too late.  Thinking back over my fourth grade memories, not a single one is traumatic or negative.

Our Marvelous Coat Closet

On the west wall of our classroom was a long skinny coatroom.  Many  classrooms have a coatroom, but not like this one.  In our coat room was the most amazing thing--a glass beehive with a glass tunnel that led over to the window, so the bees could go in and out.   I remember  watching the bees at work and hoping to get a glimpse of the queen bee.

Another memory of this coat closet happened one winter day
 right after lunch.  Everybody went home for lunch.   At our house, my mother always had us wear an apron to protect our clothes from spills.  That afternoon, standing in the coat closet,  I took off my coat and hung it on a hook.  A girl in my class said, "Why did you wear that apron to school?"  I give her a look.  Then she says, "Oh, did you sew it yourself?"  I don't remember what I said next, but I quickly took off the apron, before someone else saw it and hung it on the hook underneath my coat. 

The Widow's Walk

I do not know why such a house was built in Snowflake, Arizona, which is far from any seaport, but Miss Augusta lived in this house.  It had a widow's walk on the roof like a lot of East Coast houses where the husbands went to sea and the wife would walk up and look out to see if her husband's ship was returning. 

On a clear night, Miss Augusta invited our entire fourth grade class to her house. She took us up on the roof and used a flashlight  to point out all the constellations.  It is the only time I was ever on a widow's walk in my entire life. 

Frogs Eggs

One spring day, Miss Augusta took us on a walk to a pond where we found some frog eggs.  We scooped them up and the next day they were in a huge tub at the back of the room.  I don't remember that they ever hatched into poly-wogs and later frogs.  But, later, after a big flood at the ranch, my siblings and I got frog's eggs and watched then change to poly-wogs and then grow legs and lose their tails to to become frogs.

Speaking Spanish

Miss Augusta had a metal box of pamphlet size books in the classroom.  One of them was about Mexico.  In the back was a section with words to learn in Spanish.  I taught myself to count in Spanish and also phrases such as, "Usted, Amigo?"  I was probably motivated by the fact that Mexican sheepherders often drove their sheep across our ranch and would say to my father, "No savvy d'English." They would often give my father a baby lamb or a goat for the grass that their sheep would eat while crossing our land. I remember having to feed the lamb or kid with a bottle until they grew enough old to eat grass or hay.

The Bear Pit in Bern

You may wonder why I have a bear pit in Bern on my fourth 

grade  blog.  It is because our fourth grade  social studies book  had a picture of it.  Many years later when I took my kids to Europe for a summer, I remembered and wanted to show them the bear pit.  We took a special train all the way to Bern and then a local bus and then walked.  We finally arrived.  We peered down into the bear pits, but there were no bears.  It turned out that it was a Sunday and the bears don't come out on Sunday.  So although I have seen a bear pit, I still have never seen a bear in a bear pit. 

(I looked it up on the internet and it seems that Bern has  built a new bear pit.  The article didn't say if the bears come out on Sundays, now,or not.  My grand daughter, Rachael went there in the summer of 2014 just  in honor of this story)

The Kalamazoo Clu

(Also known as the Culvert Club)

One weekend, I was picking at a scab on my knee, and it began to bleed.  So, as not to waste this good blood,  I got a pen and and notebook and wrote my name in blood.  By fourth grade, I was reading a lot of chapter books and, no doubt, this idea came from one of them.  Now, that I had signed my name in blood, I decided to start a club and get other kids to join.  Of course, they would have to sign their names in blood, as well.

I wanted the club to have a really good name,   I thought and thought. In our side yard, sat an old iron stove with the magical word, "Kalamazoo," written on it.  I liked the sound of it.  What a fun name!  I wrote the new name of the club on the front cover of the notebook.

The next day at school, I explained this wonderful club to my friends and we arranged to meet at recess in the culvert that drained the playground.  Our culvert was big enough for quite a few of us to sit in, but not big enough to stand in.  There was never any water in it.  It was perfect for our secret club meetings.  Several of my friends pricked their fingers and signed their name in blood.   It seems that I didn't get far enough in my club plans to decide a purpose for the club, so after a few meetings, we went on to some other recess activity.





Imagine my surprise, years later, when I discovered that Kalamazoo was not a magical word, but was a city in Michigan and that the stove had probably been manufactured there.





)

The First Time I Tasted Spaghetti 

One afternoon, Pearl Bigler, announced to the class that today was her birthday and we were all invited to go to her house for a birthday party.  She lived a little ways southeast of the town.   A group of kids began walking down the street which was on my way home from school.  My mother was a teacher at the school that year and had to stay after school so I couldn't really ask her permission to go.  I can remember right where I was standing with this group of kids and had to decide to go up the hill to my house or turn the corner and go with the group to Pearl's birthday party.  I chose to go with the others.  It was quite a hike  and part of it was along the railroad tracks.  Maybe we even crossed a railroad bridge because I can remember thinking what should we do if a train comes along. 

This was a surprise birthday party.  That is, it was a surprise for Pearl's mother.  She had not made any plans for a birthday party and did not have a cake made, but she was very resourceful.  While we played, "Red Rover, Red Rover"  she made a big pot of spaghetti and everyone enjoyed it.  It was the first time that I had every eaten spaghetti. 

We all walked back to town together and I went home.  When I got there, Ada, who sometimes worked for us, said to me,"You are in real trouble, your mom and dad are out looking for you right now."  Sure enough, she was right.  I think this was the last time my parents ever had to go looking for me.

Perfect Attendance

At the end of the year, I got the only perfect attendance certificate that I ever received in all my school years.  I tried to figure out why.  Was it because I loved school so much?  Was it because I was extra healthy that year?  No!  I figured it out.  My mother was teaching sixth grade in our same school that year and no one would be home to take care of me if I was sick.

A Child's Memory of World War II

I promised Elizabeth to tell my childhood memories of World War II so I am writing this second blog, only to discover that I have told several of these stories as part of other blogs.  In order to make this one all encompassing, I have lifted those stories and put them into this blog, as well. Sorry if you already read them.

I was seven when the war started and eleven when it ended and these are my memories of World War II.

"Remember Pearl Harbor" 

 

My first memory of World War II was on Dec. 7, 1941.  The news about Japan bombing Pearl Harbor came over the radio and our family had heard it and talked about it that night.    The next day I was late walking the two blocks to school.  All the children were already in their classrooms.   As I was hurrying  up the semi-circle sidewalk toward the front door of the school, I heard the radio in the eighth grade classroom. This was very unusual since radios or films were not a normal part of the classroom in those days.  I recognized the distinctive voice of  President Roosevelt.  I walked over closer and stood under the window of the eighth grade classroom  and  listened as  President Roosevelt declared war.  I somehow knew that this was an historic moment and so, even though I was late,  I stayed to listen. 

 Shortly thereafter,  slogans on pins and posters popped up everywhere, saying, " Remember Pearl Harbor."  I do remember it  more than seventy years later.  

War Stamps and War Bonds

The next war related memory I have is that, Miss Flake, our third grade teacher, gave everyone in class a little stamp book.  The government needed money for the war and were selling bonds to the public.    Even little children could help by buying stamps for 10 cents each. It took 75 stamps to fill a book.  Miss Flake gave little prizes at certain designated levels. It seems like I got a coloring book, when I finally got the entire book filled with stamps.  

 

The book was turned in for a $10 War Bond, which I remember as being very fancy and official looking compared to the wrinkly messy stamp book I had been carrying around all year. You couldn't cash the bond for a whole ten years, but you felt really good about "helping win the war."  

 Winning the War, One Gum Wrapper at a Time

Another way a child could help win the war was to save the foil wrapped around a stick of gum or candy bar.  You had to carefully peel off the foil from the underlying paper and then you wrapped it around the ball of foil in the classroom.  In fourth grade we had a classroom ball of tin foil.   I think there might have been a contest to see which classroom could get the most tin foil because I remember kids bragging on the playground about how big our classroom ball had grown. 

The Mysterious, Yet Familiar, Handwriting on the Envelope

One day my father came home from the post office with a letter for me.  I think this might be the first letter I had every received, addressed personally to me.  I looked at the envelope to see who it is from.  It didn't have a return address on it but the hand writing looks familiar.  I thought I had seen it somewhere before.   I remember thinking that it might be  from  my Aunt Natalia.   She often wrote to my mother and  we considered her sort of a substitute grandmother since we didn't have any grandparents.   I tore open the envelope and out fell  the contest rules and entry form for a scrap paper contest that the Arizona Republic was sponsoring to help the war effort.  I had sent a self addressed envelope to the newspaper perhaps a week or so, before, and had forgotten all about it.  The familiar writing on the envelope was my very own.  I can still see the careful way I had written Rayna Gay Pace on the envelope in my very best Palmer cursive handwriting.

This advertisement suggests that the scrap paper could be used for paper
parachutes.  Other places say they packed parts for machines in the paper.

The contest rules stated that the total weight of the papers and books collected would determine the winner. I set to work collecting all the newspapers I could.   In Snowflake there was a ZCMI  or maybe it was an SCMI store that had become defunct by the time we moved there.  One day they were tearing it down and throwing out some very heavy account books from the store.  My father brought them home for my paper drive, because they were so heavy.  (They would be very valuable today as historic relics but they went to a scrap paper drive for the war.)   Of course I didn't win the contest.  Even if I had collected all the available paper in the entire town of Snowflake, maybe even the whole Navajo county, it wouldn't have been enough to win the contest.  A boy in Phoenix, who also delivered newspapers, won.  With the use of fliers and his father's help and a pick-up truck, they had collected thousands of pounds of paper from a wide area with hundreds of homes.  Did I mention that the prize was a horse?

Although scrap iron, aluminum, rubber, and  even rags were collected, I have no personal memory of these being collected at school or in our town. 

Milk Weeds and the War

Japan had control of Indonesia which supplied most of the kapok for life jackets and life preservers. The U.S had to substitute milkweed "floss" for the kapok.  Some schools collected bags of the fluffy seeds.  One of my teachers must  have talked about it to our class.  When I delivered newspapers, I saw milk weeds growing on a lot of vacant lots and along the side the dirt roads in Snowflake.  I remember looking at all the fluffy seeds and thinking that I should gather them up  for the war effort.  It never happened, but whenever I see milk weeds, I still remember that they could save lives.

Tin Can Tap Dancing

 In addition to those pre-school tap dancing lessons I had taken in Safford, my mother found me another teacher in Snowflake.  She lived in a tiny apartment above a free-standing one-car garage.  I remember dancing in her tiny living room.  Having poor rhythm ability and no real talent in music, this didn't last very long.

 I was never destined for a dance career, but because of the war effort to collect scrap tin cans, I got my one big chance in the spotlight..  During some school patriotic program, another girl and I had a tap dancing duet.  We tapped onto the stage to a song about saving tin cans for the war effort.  We carried in our hands a tin can with both ends cut out.  After a little bit of tap dancing, the song ended with something like, "Stomp on that tin can," or "Mash it Flat."   We lay the cans on their sides and stomped them flat.  That was the end of my tap dance career although my brain and feet still know all the steps to "School Days, Good Old Golden Rule Day."  I just stood up from the computer and did it to see if I could.   And I could!

Pennies Change Color

I do remember when pennies changed color.  Because of the shortage of copper, the government began to make zinc coated steel pennies instead of copper ones.  They might be described as silver in color, but it was not a pretty silver like a dime.  They were a flat dirty gray color.  Of course, the copper ones were still available and I even remember that once in a while you would even come across  an Indian head penny, still in circulation.  I wish I had known to keep  some of them.  However, my father realized that these zinc pennies would be collectors items and glued one into a scrapbook along with some rations cards.  ( In that same scrapbook, he had some heavy cardboard  "coins" produced by the State of Arizona in the 1930's for sales tax purposes.  There was  half cent piece and even a one tenth cent piece.  Imagine, making change for a penny and now they are thinking to do away with the penny, altogether.

Stars Change Colors

One out of three sons died in this family.

If a member of your house was in one of the armed services, the government issued you a blue star to put in your window.  If the that person died in the service, then you got a gold star.  Since I delivered the newspaper and went past every house in town, everyday, except Sunday, I would be one of the first persons to notice if a blue star turned gold.  I do, in fact, remember when one family's blue star came down and they put up a gold one. 

Gum Goes Away

My mother would always dole out a half stick of gum to each kid, but soon it became almost impossible to get any kind of gum..  Wrigley's ceased making gum altogether because they were unable to import the ingredients.  

An artificial gum called Orbit came out and, of course, with no tin foil in the wrapper.   It was not very tasty and it didn't chew that great either.  In the last few years this name has  been brought back as a new brand of gum.

After the war, gum began to be manufactured again, but it was in short supply.   I can remember a new grocery store opening, and to lure customers they offered  two free  pieces of bubble gum.  They were swamped with customers.    Everyone wanted a piece of bubble gum.

A girl in my seventh grade class at Kenilworth School brought to school a whole box of bubble gum.  Her father worked for a candy distributor and he had gotten her  a box of 144 pieces of gum meant to sell for a penny.  She sold them to my classmates and kids in all the upper grades for one dollar each.  There were plenty of buyers.  That was quite a profit, $144 for what cost about $1 wholesale.  Another financial lesson learned.  Supply and demand dictate the price of even something as everyday as chewing gum.

My Chinese Connection

One day when I was delivering newspapers to a certain house, their son, who was in the military, was home on furlough.  He had brought home some Chinese coins and he gave me one.  It was copper with a square hole in the middle and had Chinese characters on it.  I was told that Chinese kept their money on a cord strung through this hole.  I kept this coin up until my children were in school. I let one of them take it for show -and-tell along with some other coins and a piece of Indian wampum.   The Chinese coin never made it home.  When I was teaching in China I bought another one like it at a market. 

Three Stories about U. S  Enemies
(as seen by children)

One day a total stranger stopped in Snowflake.  I don't know any of the details of the adult interaction, but  all the kids at school were talking about him.   The general conclusion was that he was a German spy. 

Our family subscribed to the Children's Playmate Magazine and they had a contest to finish a drawing of a basic human figure to represent a person from a foreign country in their native dress.  I had a new set of colored pencils and thought, that I could win this contest.   My idea was to finish the figure as Hitler and put a noose around his neck going up to a wooden scaffold.  I drew a Nazi uniform, probably researched from our stash of Life magazines.  I got Hitler's hair and mustache, just right. I can still remember coloring the rope yellow.  With the money I made from the paper route,  I could easily afford the three cent stamp and so I submitted it with great hopes.  Obviously, I didn't win.

My younger brother, Wendell,  had a worn-out pair of boots that were too small for him.  My father told him to throw them in the big stove that heated our living room.  Wendell did not want to part with his boots.  So, I got the great idea to name one boot, Tojo, and the other one Hitler.  Only then, at age 3, did he agree to throw them into the fire.  I opened  the door of the stove and he threw the little boots into the roaring fire.

The Well Traveled Divinity
A Very Sad Story

Our Aunt Natalia had two sons, Gilbert, who joined the Air Corps, and Malcolm, who joined the Army.  Gilbert flew planes in Burma and China and Malcolm was in an armored division on the ground in Europe.  Aunt Natalia gave Gilbert's trumpet to my brother, Milton, and she gave me Malcolm's saxophone, which I played in  band all the way from elementary school through college.  Since both of her sons were gone, Aunt Natalia lived alone.  On the weekends, she would sometimes drive from St. Johns over to Snowflake where three of her sisters lived.

One weekend when she came over, my mother suggested that we make a batch of divinity candy to send to Malcolm.  Divinity is a light fluffy confection that requires a lot of beating, but my mother had an electric mixer that made the job easier.  We kids cracked black walnuts and dug out the nut meats, while my mother and Aunt Natalia made the divinity.  After the candy cooled, we packed it into a tin can with a tight lid.  Aunt Natalia labeled it with Malcolm's APO address and my mother said she would mail it on Monday.  We got a letter from Aunt Natalia the next week saying how worried she was about Malcolm.  That night she had heard on the radio that the 12th Armored Division was meeting stiff resistance.  That was the first time she had heard his specific division mentioned on the radio.  Shortly after that she got a telegram telling her that Malcolm had been killed in the very battle that had been mentioned on the radio.  Some time later, we went to his funeral in St. Johns and there was a military contingent there to do honors with taps and gun salute and the folded flag.  It was very sad.  When my youngest brother was born, my parents  named him, Malcolm, to honor this cousin, that we knew so well.

Some time later, to our surprise we got the can of divinity back marked, "undeliverable."   It had traveled to Europe by ship and probably all the way to the front lines and  had been returned by ship, I assume, because of the long delay.  My mother didn't want to open it.  I remember that  we took it outside and tried to eat some of it.  The nuts were totally rancid, but the divinity surrounding the nuts was still good.

  

 Other Family Members Who Went to War

Besides Malcolm Greer and his brother, Gilbert Greer, we had many relatives who were also  in the war.  My brother, Arman, is named for Col Arman Peterson, my mother's cousin.     His father, Uncle Andrew, was my grandmother Isaacson's brother and  he was a history professor at Northern Arizona State College, in Flagstaff.

Col. Arman Peterson flew 43 combat missions and was awarded the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart ,and  the Air Medal with three Oak-leaf Clusters.  He was the commanding office of the Duxford base in England when his plane went missing over Nazi occupied Europe.

My father's youngest brother, Lincoln, served in the Navy on a submarine.  We had a picture of him in his uniform.  My father's sister, Beth and her oldest daughter served in some service because we had pictures of them in their uniforms, as well.

My father's oldest brother, Wilson's oldest son  was an instructor training pilots to fly.  He died in a mid-air collision in 1944..  My father knew a Navajo woman who wove rugs and he got her to weave a small Navajo rug with a gold star to honor his death.  A book about Levi Wilson Pace, Jr.  has just recently been published.

We knew Melvin Denham, my cousin, really well, since he lived very near us in Snowflake and we spent time with their family.  He went into the Army during World War II and was sent to fight in Europe.  In one battle he was wounded in the neck and was bleeding badly from his jugular vein (I think) and a medic came by and inserted a bladder from his fountain pen into his vein and saved his life.

Aunt Ella who also lived in Snowflake, had three sons in the service, Harold, Lyle, and Herman.  Harold was stationed in Walla Walla, Washington.   As children, we thought that name was very funny and like to say it over and over, "Walla Walla, Washington."     I remember just one story from the war about these boys.  Harold was older than the usual recruit and even had false teeth.  When he was being sent overseas, he became sea sick and vomited over the side of the ship, losing his false teeth in the process.  All three of Aunt Ella's sons returned home from war, alive.  

My mother was one of ten children and there were eight cousins  that served in World War II, but I didn't know them very well.  There were several other cousins on my father's side that also served.   As near as I can remember, there were no other deaths.

The War Ends

Everyone knew that the war was ending by the  fall of 1945, when my parents moved to Phoenix.  I don't remember any big celebration at home or in our neighborhood when the war ended.  I do remember the famous picture of the kissing nurse and sailor in Life magazine.   I knew that President Roosevelt had died before the end of the war and that Truman had become president.   Everyone knew the name of General MacArthur and General Eisenhower.  But we no longer went to movies on a regular basis, so we didn't see the newsreels.  Nor, was I delivering newspapers on a daily basis and seeing all the headlines.  All the war stuff took a back seat to adjusting to a new school, living in a city rather than on a farm or a ranch, and becoming a teenager.

Happy Mother's Day from Kai

Mean Mom 

Many years ago, while I was in law school in New York City, I served as the scoutmaster for a new Boy Scout troop the South Bronx. There were 16 boys in my scout troop, ages 12 to 17. All of them were black, none of them had fathers, and they lived in public housing projects that were more than a little scary when I had to walk them home at night after our scout troop meetings were over. The boys in my troop were great kids, but for the most part, they had challenges that are common with kids from the projects. They tended not to do well in school, and had trouble reading, even the simple things contained in the Scout Handbook. Even though they were good kids, they ran with a rough crowd, and some of them were already getting in trouble at school and having brushes with the law. As I got to know them over the two years I spent as scoutmaster for that troop, I often despaired when I thought of what the likely outcomes were for many of them. They seemed to lack some of the most basic skills and traits that would allow them to make it in the world outside of the projects. 

One of the boys was different. He had no problems reading the Scout Handbook. In fact, he usually had a book with him that he was reading just for fun, much to the amusement of the other kids. He was a bright, handsome boy, and he had a self-assured but quiet air about him that contrasted a bit with the loud, harsh swagger of some of the other boys. Once, when he missed a scout activity, I asked the other boys where he was. They told me, “He can’t come because he has a Mean Mom. She won’t let him come. She’s a really Mean Mom. She won’t let him do anything.” As it turned out, this boy’s Mean Mom had found out that he was getting behind in school, and had made him stay home from scouts to get caught up on his homework. The kids were sort of right about the Mean Mom not letting her son do “anything,” although it would be more accurate to say that she wouldn’t let her son do “nothing.” She made sure he was at church, and school, and he was active in sports, but she wouldn’t let him hang out doing “nothing” in the neighborhood with the other boys. She kept a pretty close eye on what he was doing, which made her a pretty Mean Mom. 



During my time as a scoutmaster, I got to know more about this boy’s Mean Mom. She was an immigrant from the Caribbean, and her English was richly accented with a Caribbean flavor. Unlike the other boys’ mothers, she had a job, doing cleaning work in the city. When I saw her at church or at her home, she always looked a bit tired. She had a lot of energy when it came to looking out for her son, however. I first met her in person at a scout meeting before our first camping activity. She showed up with her son, and asked me a bunch of questions: Where were we going? How were we getting there? What were we planning to do when we got there? Who else was going? Who was driving? When would her son be coming back? The encounter had the intimidating feel of an FBI security clearance interrogation. I could kind of see why all the boys referred to her as “the Mean Mom.”

After a couple of years, I moved out of the city, my work as scoutmaster of that South Bronx troop ended, and I never did see any of the boys again. Sometimes I wonder what became of them. Although I hope that all of my scouts were able to avoid the bad influences that surrounded them and managed to make something good out of their lives, the only boy that I really would have bet on was the boy with the Mean Mom. That is because I was lucky enough to have a Mean Mom, and I know first-hand what a difference it can make. 

When my father left, my Mom became a single parent with two children under the age of two. At the time, she didn’t have the skills to build a career for herself, so she was forced to go back to school. When I was growing up, my Mom was going to school and holding down a job too. She took any job she could find, including jobs that the media these days say that Americans won’t do. My mom cleaned houses, worked as a janitor, and other menial jobs. She crossed union picket lines to work as a substitute teacher during a strike, delivered phone books, sold Avon, and whatever else she had to do to pay the bills and take care of the family. 

We were poor, but I always had nice clothes to wear to school, and there were always presents under the tree at Christmas and some money to buy books from the Scholastic Book Club catalog. My mother didn’t have time for herself. She didn’t date. She didn’t go to parties. She didn’t take vacations from her kids. She worked. She went to school. She took me to church. She came to my baseball games, track meets, Cub Scouts, soccer, and piano recitals. Eventually, due to her work at getting an education, her thrift, and her willingness to do whatever was needed, she raised our family from being poor to middle class. We went from food stamps and free lunch to a nice home in a good neighborhood, and a family vacation to Europe. 

Like other Mean Moms, my mother didn’t want me to do “nothing.” She thought I should always be doing something useful. My Mean Mom didn’t approve of Saturday morning cartoons on t.v. There were too many “important” things to do other than watching cartoons. I had homework. I had activities. I had chores. I had work. 

Other kids got an allowance. My Mean Mom made me work for the money I needed. No work meant no spending money, so I worked. When I was in second grade, my Mean Mom got me my first real job, working at a local shoe store. I swept the floors, I emptied and cleaned the ash trays, I wiped the windows, I vacuumed the carpets. I got paid a dollar an hour for my work. I didn’t know it at the time, but (at first) my mom was giving the store manager the money to pay my salary. (Although after a while, he decided I was worth a dollar an hour and paid it himself.) The summer before 7th grade, my Mean Mom insisted that I get a paper route. This meant that I had to get up early every morning in every weather. With her encouragement, I kept expanding my paper route activities and by the time I was a Junior in high school, I had four paper routes and was getting up at 4:00 a.m. to deliver hundreds of papers every morning. With a Mean Mom, summers were not a time for relaxing either. Even though I would rather have spent my summers doing nothing, my Mean Mom insisted that I work. She got me summer jobs doing landscaping, laying asphalt, yardwork, working at the local ice cream store, and anything else I was good for. 

The “worst” job my Mean Mom got me was one that took up several precious summer Saturdays. A friend of a friend needed people to disassemble an old steel girder building and stack the steel on trailers to be hauled away and recycled. I wasn’t interested in the job, but my Mean Mom committed me to it without asking me my opinion. When I asked how much I was getting paid, she said she didn’t know. The man who was hiring people for the job had been reluctant to take me because I was just a teenager and the other people he was hiring were adults. My Mean Mom had convinced him to take me by telling him he only had to pay me “what I was worth.” I was distressed by this, but she told me that I should never be afraid to be paid only what I was worth. The job turned out to be worse than I had imagined. The building was in a swampy area ankle deep with stagnant water, horrid smelling mud and mosquitoes, and tearing the building down was hot, exhausting, and more than a little dangerous. I did everything I could to prove I was worth as much as any other person there because I was a teen age boy on a crew of men, getting paid only “what I was worth.” At the end of every day, I got paid in cash, and it was the same as the other men on the job. When I remember how mad I was at my Mean Mom for committing me to take this job, I have to smile. I’ve never had a paycheck since that time that I was more proud of, and since that job, I’ve never been afraid to be paid only what I’m worth. 

My Mean Mom valued education maybe even more than she valued hard work. My very earliest memories are of my mother teaching me how to read. As I grew up, she spent hours making me do school work; drilling me with math flashcards, staying up late working with me on essays, and helping me memorize all the world leaders for a social studies test. There were always many other things I’d rather be doing, but my Mean Mom insisted that I not waste my time doing any of these other things. School always came first. She wouldn’t let me hang out at the mall, but there was always time to hang out at the library. We didn’t have an Atari game system in my house (my Mean Mom didn’t approve of them,) but we had tons of books.

When I was a teenager, it seemed like my mom and I had a harder and harder time getting along. I became convinced that my Mom was the world’s Meanest Mom. We fought constantly, and I ended up living with my grandparents for several years because of the friction between us. However, as I have grown older, I’ve come to love and appreciate my Mean Mom more and more with every passing year. It would have been a lot easier for her not to be a Mean Mom. She spent so much time being a Mean Mom that there was very little left over for herself. I’m sure that sometimes, given my rebellion and resistance, she despaired of raising a son who would ever amount to anything. It makes me happy to know that I haven’t been a disappointment to her and that since I’ve grown up, I’ve done some things that she can be proud of.

When I look at the lessons I learned, and the experiences that truly shaped my early life, most of them are the result of my Mean Mom. She taught me how to work. She gave me my love of reading and my appreciation for the importance of education. She taught me self-reliance. She taught me that loving your children doesn’t mean giving them everything that they want. Many of the best parts of me, the traits that have allowed me to make my way in the world, were the result of having a Mean Mom. As I look around at the seemingly insurmountable problems in our society, issues that governments, schools and other organizations have wrestled with unsuccessfully for decades, I believe in my heart that the only real solution is more Mean Moms. A mother is uniquely able to influence the lives of her children in a way that no one else can.

I was blessed with an exceptional mother. She put her children first, and loved me enough to be a Mean Mom, when it would have been so much easier to just let me do what I wanted to do. There’s never been a time that she was not willing to sacrifice her own needs for me. I’m grateful she was willing to do what was necessary to raise me the best way she knew how. We didn’t always get along, and we have had more than our share of disagreements as I was growing up, but I’ve always known that she loved me.

I love you Mom. Happy Mother’s Day