Sharing our Links to the Past
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Glimpses Into My Early
Years This series of articles was written by Elsie over a period of three years. Chapters 1-12 were written monthly during 1991 and compiled into one volume for Christmas. Volume 2 (Chapters 13-17) came out in December 1992. Volume 3 (Chapters 18-21) appeared in December 1993. Placing them on the Internet allows for a wider distribution. They are valuable because they contain historical information, some of which is not found elsewhere. These chapters are produced on four pages as follows: 1. My Younger Years Young
Adulthood (Page Two) The
Young Family (Page Three) Widowhood (This Page) 17. DON GETS A NEW START The summer of 1939 was over, and Don's health had not been good. Taking care of the business and handling those big drums of carbonated gas had made his heart condition worse. The doctor told him he should quit smoking. After selling the business he felt like he wanted to get a new start and get back to Church. He asked Bishop Ed Barlow for a blessing and told him he wanted to take me to the temple. He put his application in many places for work including Douglas Aircraft Co. Then we enjoyed many leisure afternoons out on the side lawn and around the fish pond drinking orange juice with mint leaves. We were living at 619 Pacific Ave. in Santa Monica. The bishop had called Don to be Activity Counselor in the Mutual Improvement Association, and we were going to Church and paying tithing. Don's Accident Halloween was approaching, and Don was in charge of the Halloween party October 31, 1939. I dressed up like a pioneer lady, and Don wore a typical Iowa hobo outfit with a string belt he made and a black half-mask. We had lots of fun and the party was a great success. When we got to bed he wanted me to rub his head which I loved to do. The next morning, November 1, when he started off, I ran out and said, "You forgot to kiss me goodbye!" We laughed. He was going to pick up my sister Mary on the way back home. We were going to have a wiener roast at the beach. He was late returning. As I was waiting for him the doorbell rang and a policeman stood there. He said, "Your husband has been killed in an automobile accident on Sepulvada Blvd." Nothing could have prepared us for this. I went about the motions of notifying everyone and took the children down to Bessie and Ern Lundstrom's while I went with Bishop Barlow to arrange things. That night Mother Von Hake (Frances Anderson's mother), Frances Anderson, and Ruby and Frank came over. But I was in shock. No tears until all arrangements were made. Bishop Rice (our former bishop in Maywood) and Bishop Barlow spoke at the funeral. Roy, (my brother) came for the funeral from Sacramento as well as my brother and sisters in the Los Angeles area. Bishop Barlow said Don was one of the bravest men he ever knew because of his decision to change his life completely. A man sang Going Home. The talk and song were peace to my heart, for I knew Don was ready and had gone home where he had another mission to fill. I Buy a Home We had a little insurance, $2,750 which was doubled to $5,500 because of accidental death. Bishop Barlow advised me that I buy a home with income property. We looked and prayed. Vernon Fairbanks, a real estate agent, found us a nice old home with a four-unit apartment house in the rear for $7,000 on a FHA loan of $50 a month. It was only a few blocks from the Santa Monica Ward meetinghouse. We had nine very good years there at 2418 Third Ave., Santa Monica. It was just a few blocks from the beach also. There were many growing-up experiences there. Good times, good friends, boarding missionaries. We even had two wedding receptions (Mary, my sister and Frances). I learned to be a tough landlady, or I did with Frances' help. We Go to the Temple By the following October General Conference of the Church in Salt Lake City, Frances, Gordon and I went to the Salt Lake Temple to be sealed together as a family for all eternity. Elvina ("Honey") and Charley Rasmussen went with us. This experience gave me the most wonderful sense of security and complete harmony with the Lord. At last, Don and I and Frances and Gordon were a "forever family." 18. FRIENDS AND FAMILY COME TO THE RESCUE We were fortunate to have long time friends around us. They helped us in our lonely life without Don. We were happy in our new home and busy with renting our apartments and thankful to be close to Church. Our Friends I think first of Bessie and Ern Lundstrom and their three boys, Harold, Joe and Dick, who lived only a few houses up from the Church in Ocean Park. Ern had worked for Don, and we often went over there and found a welcome visit and enjoyed Bessie's treats. I loved her rice custard with lemon sauce. We also went on rides with them to the beach cliffs to watch the sunset in their 1930s touring car. It was really an old car and even had vases on the inside back walls to put flowers in. I was Bessie's assistant teacher in Theology class in Relief Society and learned a great deal helping her with good lessons. The boys were all musical, and Joe often came over to play on our piano that I got for $50. Besse's' sister, Elvina (Honey), and Charlie Rasmussen often invited us up to their lovely home for an afternoon with refreshments or a dinner and fun out in their long back yard where they had a swing, gazebo with comfy seats to sit and watch the kids play. Honey's daughter, Teckla, my old friend, had three daughters, Beverly, Lois and Janice. Honey was always crocheting, effortlessly, it seemed. Charley's father who lived with them, was a carpenter and carved beautifully. He made Frances a doll house with furniture that Honey made cushions, etc. for. Later we connected up on the McNabb line with Teckla's cousin Mary Jean Lindeman who married Don's cousin, Bob Dana. We knew the Von Hakes from Salt Lake, and to our good fortune, Mother and Dad Von Hake lived about five blocks away from us. Later, their daughter, Frances, and her husband Joseph Anderson lived with them along with their two adopted children, Richard and Virginia. Richard became a great pal of Gordon's. We had many good times with them, just like family. Frances's first job was gardening for Mother Von Hake. From them we learned to make a Swedish Sweet Soup with cooked prunes, raisins, sliced orange and lemon, thickened with tapioca. Joseph was a masseur and health specialist and gave me valuable tips on posture when I would get lazy. Frances worked for Carl Von Hake, their son, at the telephone company when she graduated from high school. Block Teachers Olive and Jim Sellers were our block teachers (home teachers) and I felt like they were our guardian angels because they were always there when I needed them. They had no children of their own but mothered us and many others. They took us on Church affairs or to conferences as we had no car. They brought us gifts, and we loved having them over for meals or holidays. I made my special raisin cake for them from time to time. Later, Gordon worked for Jim in the termite business. Another friend, Anna Clark, lost her husband about four years after Don was taken, and we became great friends. Frances baby-sat for Anna and later took piano lessons from her. Gordon also took lessons for a short time. Frances and Gordon loved Anna's treats of doughnuts on Saturday afternoon. Anna and I had lots in common and used to visit on the phone by the hour and occasionally go to a movie together. I became close to Jean Adams Smith during these years and her son Lloyd who was a good friend of Gordon's in his teens. In later years we often met her at the Los Angeles Temple where she was an ordinance worker. Our Family Ruby, my sister, and her husband, Frank, now lived in their new house in San Gabriel, and it was a big occasion when we planned a trek over there by bus, transferring to different buses several times. We especially enjoyed her homey warmth and good meals on holidays, which was a real treat for me and the kids. I thought nobody could cook a roast dinner like Ruby or corn bread, pies, biscuits, omelets, snow pudding, and special cakes. Ruby was six years older than I was and more like a mother to me. Grace and Marilyn, their daughters, were good company for Frances and Gordon in their big back yard. She had a beautiful rose garden. Edna, my step-sister and Kenny Matson, her husband, came several times and took us on wonderful outings to the mountains, etc. It meant a lot to us because it was hard to go everywhere on the bus. George, my brother, and Mildred also lived near Ruby in San Gabriel, and we saw them when we visited Ruby. Reva McNabb, now a Methodist deaconess, taught at a home for underprivileged girls in Hollywood, and she came every week on her two mid-week days off. She taught Frances and Gordon to sew on an old pedal sewing machine I got for $5. She always baked up a pie, bread, rolls or cookies for a treat, and usually pop corn while we played games. We felt that she filled the place of a father in the family with laughter and good counsel. Occasionally the children would be invited to stay for a few days at her school. They would catch the bus, transfer to other buses, and get off at Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. I was a very serious, insecure person at the time of Don's death and found it difficult to cope with many things I was not trained for. Bishop Ed Barlow said at Don's funeral service that Don would be closer to us than we could know and would be watching over us. Don was given the privilege to come to me in a dream to reassure us that he was waiting in the Spirit World and we would be together again. On Sundays we would often walk two miles to the cemetery with Vic, our dog, and put the flowers Frances had fun growing on Don's grave. The children became excellent shoppers for me, trailing a little red wagon, to Safeway, a corner drug store, and a bakery. We had the Pacific Ocean three blocks away for free recreational swims and wiener roasts. 19. FIRST YEARS IN OUR NEW HOME We had gotten settled in our nice new home on 2418 Third Street in Ocean Park about March 1940. Frances and Gordon were in school at the Washington Elementary about five blocks east. We had filled the house with new furniture from Sears for every room, a luxury for us, for we had always had odd, makeshift furniture. We had been to the temple and felt reassured that Don was close by, and the Lord was watching over us. With the Santa Monica Ward chapel a couple blocks away, we had many blessings. However, we did not have Don, our wage earner. Even though the mortgage payment on the house and apartments was only $50 a month, the rents were very low. Twenty-five dollars a month for the two one-bedroom apartments, $35 for the two-bedroom apartment, and $15 for the bachelor apartment, all equaling $100 a month. This included utilities and furnishings. Needing more income, we rented first one bedroom and then another upstairs to roomers or boarders. The kids slept on the davenport or with me. We did the laundry for some of the men roomers and also for"Typing done," and got a few calls on that, and so we managed for awhile. Food Restrictions When at the end of 1941 we entered the war after Pearl Harbor, restrictions on prices and foods made things more complicated. First they froze our rent and put in other price controls. Then certain foods became scarce. They gave us rationing food stamps to keep people from buying more than their share. For several years our Church had recommended getting a year's supply of food and clothes. When I first got the insurance I took $50 and bought a barrel of wheat, dried beans and flour and cases of canned peas, string beans, tomatoes, fruit, tuna fish, peanut butter and raisins. The government asked us to declare all we had in our cupboard, and we did just that. Consequently we didn't get any stamps for eight months for fresh supplies. It was a difficult time trying to get a balanced meal with the cans on hand and lots of tuna fish dishes with peas! We traded some of our stock with other families. Meat, butter, sugar and raisins were especially scarce even with the stamps we got later. For our dog, Vic, Frances would walk almost to Ocean Park Pier to a meat market that sold horse meat. We would cook it all up for a week's supply even though it had a most disagreeable smell. Vic sure liked it, though! There was no canned dog food during the war. We remember how our California Coastal Civil Defense made every effort to keep us safe from possible bombing from the Japanese by blacking out the whole coast. Because we lived near the big Douglas Aircraft Plant, we were especially vulnerable. The government actually covered it with a huge camouflage net several blocks square which was all closed to traffic and guarded by armed guards. Also we had to keep our venetian blinds pulled tight at night, and a block warden would come around at night to see if light showed between the slats. We had a little park just a block from us which was filled with anti-aircraft guns and Army personnel. We often heard the air-raid sirens go off and guns shooting skyward but never had a real attack. We knew of one Japanese family who had a plant nursery nearby who, because of the fear of Japanese spies, were sent by the government to an alien camp for the duration of the war. Reva visited some of her former Japanese students sent to these camps and said the conditions were terrible. Plumbing Breaks Down Our income had barely met our needs when the plumbing broke down in the apartment building and the cost of repairs was too much for our budget. I went to Bishop Hammer and asked if he would back me for a loan. He said, "I know a better way." Through the Welfare Program of the Church he could send us many items of food such as canned vegetables, soups, fruit, meat and cereals that would save me money. Then he asked me to do some secretarial work for him in his business and he would pay me. Also he had me type the tithing report once a year for the ward. So somehow it all worked out that I got the plumbing taken care of, made a little money besides, and helped in the ward. We were already typing and mimeographing the program for Sunday school and sacrament meeting which we did for seven years of inky fingers. We continued to receive this supplementary food for about three years, and it was a great blessing. On Thanksgiving they always brought us a large roasting chicken. The first ones to share our home and give us an extra income were the daughters of a friend I met at Church, Eldora and Anna Marie Alexander. Their mother, Marie, worked as a live-in housekeeper and asked me if I would take care of the girls. They were near Frances's age, and I thought they would be good company for us. They did liven up our home, and we had good times, but Gordon thought three girls were too many. Marie would come on Sundays and go to Church with us and we have been dear friends ever since and write to this day. This arrangement lasted about a year, then the roomers came. On Being a Landlady What kind of a landlady was I? How did I judge who would be a good renter? I wasn't experienced in setting down rules or facing a tough situation. Bishop Hammer advised me to be business-like and tough at times or the public would take advantage of me. The first thing I did was rent the double apartment to four taxi drivers. They soon had loud parties at night until I had to ask them to leave. I rented the bachelor apartment to a man who had girlfriends come around all the time, so being sure all was not morally upright, I told him to go. I had the same problem with a very nice roomer and had to tell him to find another place. After that, I had somewhat better luck. We had a nice family in the two-bedroom apartment, and he promised to water and take care of the yard, but that lasted only a few months. None of the renters had a phone and we were constantly answering the door for them to use our phone in the big phone closet which gave a little privacy. After Frances and Wally were married, they later lived in the two-bedroom apartment, and it took them two months to clean it out and repaint it after the previous family had lived there for many years, apparently without ever dusting! We had Church members as renters. Some worked out and some didn't. Later, after Frances and Wally moved there, Wendell and Bernice Lewis lived in the apartment across the hall. They were good company for all of us. Cleaning of apartments between renters was often gross, and we resented it. One man even died in the little bachelor apartment. When doing laundry we carried it down a long flight of stairs and clear around the whole apartment house to the very back where there were clothes lines. When it was dry, there was another trip back to our home. In the foggy, Santa Monica, weather, just four blocks from the beach, it took usually 24 hours to dry. We had an apricot tree behind the apartment house which we really enjoyed. We even tried a vegetable garden near the tree, but it was a bad climate for the garden. 20. HOW WE LEARN AND EARN OUR WAY We learned from so many things in the rental business. I rented the back room in our house to a middle-aged gentleman who worked as a bookkeeper for MGM movie studio. He was very regular and courteous, but I didn't know he was an alcoholic. When I hadn't seen him for a day or so, I knocked on the door and went in. He was lying on the floor, the room in disarray, bedding pulled off, curtains torn down, and he was totally unconscious. I called the police, and they came and took him away. After we cleaned the room and freshened up everything, we were fortunate to rent the room to a nice young lady, Bea Kullman. She ate with us for awhile, and then made her own meals with kitchen privileges. She was with us for many years and a pleasure to have in the home. I still keep in touch with her at Christmas time. Rent Control Our rentals were really not enough to live on with rising expenses. One of our renters in a one-bedroom apartment brought in another family to live with them, so I decided to raise her rent $5 a month to cover extra utilities. Knowing that rents were frozen because of the war, she reported this to the Office of Price Administration (OPA). I received a letter that I must come into their office in Los Angeles and explain why I had broken the law. I was furious, because it was so unfair, but I had to go. I took Frances out of school to go the long trip with several bus changes on the way to the OPA. Later I received a letter than ordered me to pay back the accumulated increase plus a fine which amounted to $86. This was very unfair, and the OPA continued to freeze the rent for several years after the war was over. Frances did housework for different ladies on Saturdays and baby-sat. When she was 14, Helen Barlow, President Barlow's sister, helped her get a job at Kresses' Dime Store where she worked a split shift for 50 cents an hour. It was hard to get enough help at this time, and the age restrictions were overlooked. Gordon sold and delivered weekly the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies' Home Journal magazines in his little wagon. Later he had a paper route which he delivered on an old heavy rickety bicycle. By age 12, he was in the Boy Scouts and also a deacon, passing the sacrament on Sunday. I had been made a Beehive teacher in Mutual, and when Frances was 12, she was one of my Beehive girls. Teckla Baker worked with me in this calling for three years, and she was very good with the activities and camp outings. Santa Monica Ward extended clear east to Westwood where Teckla lived. Frances, after three years, advanced to Laurels and then Gleaners where she was president of the class when the boys came home from the war. Various Jobs I had always believed I should be home when the children were young, but with all these financial pressures I felt I should get a job. I applied at the Douglas Aircraft Plant and got work from 3 to 11 p.m. as a filing clerk. It just didn't work, leaving the children alone when they were home from school. It wasn't good for me, either, and I quit after a couple of weeks. I took another job as a bookkeeper in another plant that made parts for airplanes. I did not know bookkeeping, but they thought they could train me. It was supposed to be very simple, but it was not, and I left after a couple of months. Mr. Meyers, who had a business as a distributor of Nutralite Vitamins, saw the sign in front of my house, "Typing Done," and asked me to be his secretary. I worked with him half-days for a couple of years. We also started taking those good vitamins at reduced prices. Our activities were centered mostly in Church affairs. We had a few special vacations we love to remember. Edna and Kenny took us several times on trips, once in the winter so the kids could play in the snow. Clyde Roberts, a recent widower, introduced to me by the Fairbanks, came over often, and he brought some of his goats' milk which I tried to use in cooking. We didn't like to drink it, and the strong taste even spoiled the scalloped potatoes we made out of it. However, he was a specialist in photography, and we have many pictures of the places he took us. First, a lovely trip up to Bishop in the mountains where we camped by the river. Another time we camped in Sequoia National Park. This time we took Mary, my sister, so she could get acquainted with him. I remember walking up the side of the Nevada Falls, lying around at the top and then going back down with sore knees. Soon after that, Clyde was taking Mary out, which eventually brought wedding bells and a reception at our house by New Years. As money eased up after the war, we had our first real vacation on our own at Blue Jay Lodge near Lake Arrowhead. We were so excited. We stayed in a cabin and even rowed a boat on the lake. We were terribly sunburned, not realizing how effective the sun was when reflected from water. The year Wally and Frances were married, Gordon and I went by bus for a holiday in Yosemite and really had a good time 21. THE WAR YEARS AND THE MOVE TO ESCONDIDO We listened to the war news on the radio. Except for Kenny and Reed, who had enlisted in the Army, and Edna, who was a WAVE in the Navy, we had no close relatives involved. But our young friends, Joe and Dick Lundstrom, were soon part of the military. The war came close to Frances when she heard that her school friend's father had been killed in action when his ship was sunk. When Frances and Gordon were in Adams Junior High School, they walked most of the time, some 18 blocks one way, to school. When Frances was almost 12 years old, Reva took her back to Iowa to get acquainted with Don's family in Britt. She had grown four inches in one year and was very thin and seemed always hungry. In Iowa she really enjoyed Grandma McNabb's cooking and lots of corn. Her Aunt Verla, Reva's sister, was getting married that summer, and Frances was to be one of her bridesmaids, making a new dress and all. At junior high she found an outlet for her talents in art and dressmaking. It was a thrill of have a real art teacher. She made her first formal and her wedding dress. Grace, her cousin, later wore this formal at Frances's wedding reception. Our young men in the ward were being called into the service. After each left, a new white star was put on a banner in the chapel. A few gold stars for those who died appeared during the war. We were close friends with the Lundstroms, and Joe and Frances had a little romance going. Though far away in the war, I remember Frances receiving a dozen roses from Joe on her birthday while he was in the Pacific. Church Programs The best thing we had was the contact we had with the Church, its programs, and the sense of family with friends who cared for and looked after us. After three years in Beekeeping, I taught the 14-year-olds in Sunday school and sang in the choir. Frances dated several LDS servicemen and local boys (girls dated earlier then). She met Wally Easter Sunday, 1946. It was the first time he attended Church after his release from almost three years in the Navy. Wally had been converted while in the Navy in Long Beach, and he became a very important person in our home, especially to Frances. Wally was very sincere and committed to the gospel, and he joined us in our home evenings where he gave us good direction in many phases of the gospel. He was getting his degree for teaching at UCLA and working at Safeway. After they were married, he worked at the Santa Monica Evening Outlook part time. Frances had finished high school at the half-year and was valedictorian of her class. She got a job at the telephone company, and a month before she was 18, on August 29, 1947, they were married in the Salt Lake Temple. I went with them and then hurried back to get everything ready for their reception at our home. They were going to live in one of my one-bedroom apartments in the rear. Wally and Frances were to attend UCLA together, but Frances found that their classes were scattered all over the Los Angeles area because of crowding by returning GIs. She dropped out because Wally needed the car for his classes, and there was no other transportation. These classes were held at night, on Saturdays, and in buildings miles away from the university. By now I had been working at the Santa Monica Board of Education a couple of years as secretary in the audio-visual department and I worked there for seven years. Gordon got a job at Sponberg's Department Store as stock boy and later became a salesman. He was also called as assistant Scoutmaster, all this while finishing his high school. After Frances was married, Gordon became interested in the Falcon and Fawna Club. Eventually he caught his own hawk and learned to tame and feed it on a line attached to his wrist. He kept it up in our upstairs bedroom, much to my dismay. When he was really enjoying it one day, he sent it out on the line, and one of the cats around our house jumped up, caught it, and killed it. He was broken-hearted. Soon he was begging me to let him have an owl up in the spare bedroom. The owl became lonely and so he let it go. The missionary program of the Church had been held up during World War II, but now, many were being called on missions. With the Korean War the country began drafting again, around 1950, and the draft age was changed from 20 years of age to 19 for young men. About the time Gordon became 19, the Church had to cut down on missionaries again. Gordon was the last to be called on a mission from our ward and left December 1950. His call was to the Central Atlantic States. We were grateful that Bishop Brimley had called him in time before missions were curtailed. While he was on his mission I opened my house to two sister missionaries and others who lived with us while on their missions. I called these my golden years. We were working and happy. Frances and Wally were close by helping me. We had the spirit of missionary work and often knew the missionary investigators because we had cottage meetings in our home. Wally finished college and got a job in Escondido. He and Frances and their son Larry moved to Escondido in 1951. Gordon met Sally Sine soon after returning from his mission, and it was love at first sight. Within three months he was drafted into the Army to serve in Korea. He had his basic training at Fort Ord. We all made a trip with Sally to Ford Ord when Gordon finished his basic training. Gordon and I had managed to get a Chevy coupe, and Gordon drove it back and forth to Ford Ord when he got time off. Gordon and Sally planned to be married after basic training and before he went over to Korea. In the few days allowed in his last leave, we traveled to the St. George Temple and back to Sally's aunt in Santa Monica for the reception. The Move to Escondido In the last year of Gordon's mission I had health problems and found it necessary to have a hysterectomy. I was off work for about a month and when I went back to work I had not really recovered sufficiently. I tried to keep up, which brought about a break-down. I stayed with Frances and Wally after visiting them for Thanksgiving in Escondido and took leave from my job. After some discussion, I decided to sell my home and come down to be near to Frances and Wally. We bought two houses on one lot, and I moved into the cottage in the rear of their home. I sold most of our furniture, but I brought the piano for Larry. Della Heskett, a dear friend, was my real estate agent in Santa Monica. She later moved to Escondido also to be near her family. I was happy in Escondido. About a year later I got a job at Palomar College as bookstore manager and learned to drive a Chevy. Those were good years. Home Page
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