Telegraph Company

I made a friend named Al Poopidada. My sister Viola did not think much of my friend. She said, “What kind of a name is that????.”  Al had rabbits and needed food to feed them. It was his habit to go behind the stores in the dumpsters and get out the lettuce whatever the rabbits would eat. I decided that when he went to get this food I would go along with him. So this would be about 5 a.m. and I would still be sleeping. So our bedrooms were on the 2^nd floor in the house on W 116^th Street. I tied a light cord around my ankle and left the cord hanging outside window. When he came along he would pull on the cord and wake me up. I would quickly get dressed and while everybody was still sleeping I would go out with him.

Then, we decided to run a wire between his house and mine to use as a telegraph wire. He lived on the next street just about across from the house where we lived. There were telegraph poles and we ran the wire across the main street and across the big field and into my house. We managed it with some difficulty. Then we had a telegraph key that gave us the dots and dashes and we had to learn the letters so we could send messages back and forth. For the power we used a Ford coil and a car battery. Finally after a lot of work we got it operational.

At a pre-arranged time he would home and I would be at my home. We sent messages like, “How’s the weather over there?” It worked very well. But, pretty soon my father started getting complaints about static in the air and it was being picked up on the radios. We didn’t have television at that time. Everybody listened to the radio – programs like Fibber McGee and Molly. The static was our dot and dash. We didn’t realize the radios were picking this up.

The neighbors started with my Dad because they knew if there was anything going on in the neighborhood it was probably started by us. We operated our telegraph system for two full days before we were put out of business.

We were going to call our telegraph company Clyde Schumann and Al Poopidada Telegraph Company. This must have been the shortest lived telegraph company in the history of that sort of thing.

As far as I know the wires may still be up there on the telegraph poles because we never took them down.

Threshing

Threshing

My mother and father were both raised in a farming community about five miles outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Most of the farmers in that area were descendants from immigrants from Germany. The farms were small. Where my father was raised the farm was about 40 acres, which was about the same size as most farms in the area. In order to feed the family and get a little money coming in they had to use up the entire 40 acres. A lot of it in vegetable gardens. But, because they had the horses to feed and grain to be taken to market for extra income a lot of it was planted in hay, oats, and wheat. The farm my mother was raised on about a mile away from my Dad's farm.

Before the harvest there was a lot of planting and the grain had to be cut in the field and bundled and by hand it had to be stacked in shocks. In the shocks it would not rot on the ground and it would dry properly. In the autumn the shocks in the field would be dried and cured enough to be collected and put in the threshing machine. Everybody, including the boys that were old enough, worked in the field to stack the shocks on the trucks and bring them to the threshing machine.

One person in the neighborhood of all these small farms owned the equipment to thresh the grain. It consisted of a steam engine and threshing machine. To move from farm to farm the man with the equipment would drive the steam engine with metal wheels down the roads between farms at about five miles an hour. Behind the steam engine he would tow the threshing machine. When he got on the site he would line up the threshing machine and the steam engine and he had a big belt that was about a foot wide and maybe 15 – 20 feet long. He would attach the belt to the pulleys on both pieces of equipment. In the meantime his schedule was laid out. All the farmers in the neighborhood would gather on the farm that was going to be harvested and do all the work necessary to bring the grain in. They would start early in the morning to take advantage of as much daylight as there was. Hopefully in the one day that farm’s harvesting would be complete.

The women’s job was to prepare the meal and feed the men lunch and supper. The girls either helped with the meals or watched the younger kids. The evening meal included beer and hard cider. After the evening meal was done everyone would sit around and talk and joke and tell about old times. They would catch up on the neighborhood gossip as well. The kids were going to school in the one room schoolhouse. My father went to that school through sixth grade. That was the end of his schooling. What he learned afterwards was out of books from the library and by experience.

After the sun went down the fun would start on the farm at harvest time. There was card playing and singing and lots of drinking. After enough hard cider and beer and passing around the whiskey bottle most of the grown men were feeling pretty good and happy. There were always lots of kids and we would have our own games and fun. When it got dark enough we would play hide and seek. Once it got dark the kids were not allowed in the barn because fire was a danger.

I had so many cousins it was pretty hard to count. In my father’s family there were seven girls and four boys. At that time most of them had children. And farmers believed in lots of children because they needed help in the fields. The family was so large they had an outhouse that was a three-holer. In later years they did put a bathroom in the house. Even after the bathroom was put in we would still use the outhouse when we had company on Sundays.

My Street

I grew up in a fairly new neighborhood where there lots of kids. There were cars on the road – many were made by small companies that have long since gone out of business. Also, there were still a lot of horses on the road. Most of them pulled delivery wagons. There was the baker, the milkman, and one that you don’t hear ever see anymore and most people don’t even know about was the paper-rags man.

The paper-rags man would come down the street with their wagons with a single horse and the horse would walk very slowly and the man would call out “paper-rags, paper-rags” – but it sounded like “paper-rex”. People would come out with paper and rags and anything else that might have a re-sale value and he would pay a few cents to them and take them home to re-sell.

The milk man came every day. They had a route where he would deliver his milk at the same addresses every morning. Now they go to Safeway and buy it in gallon jugs, but he had full bottles to deliver and would pick up the empty bottles. Milk was delivered every day or every other day. He had his wagon full of milk with a single horse pulling the wagon. He would stop the horse and get out with a wire basket full of milk bottles and he might walk for 3 or 4 houses. When he got to the last house he would whistle and his horse would catch up to him and he would get back on.

The baker also delivered fresh rolls and all kinds of pastry. The bakery wagon always smelled so nice because of the fresh baked goods. Usually the baked goods were ordered ahead of time.

There was a little bit of rivalry between the milk man and the baker in our neighborhood. Every so often when they came to a stretch of road where there weren’t too many customers the baker and milk man would race their horses down the street. I don’t remember who would win but they were just having fun anyway.

The ice man was the other delivery man that made regular rounds. He had 100 pound blocks of ice. The blocks were scored in ½ or ¼’s. So if he was delivering 50 pounds he would break the big block in ½. He would grab the ice with his tongs and put the ice on his shoulder. He wore a leather pad on his shoulder so he wouldn’t get too wet and cold. He would take it into the house. In those days there were ice boxes instead of refrigerators. The ice would go in an upper container. The ice boxes had a pan underneath to catch the water from the ice melting. The pan had to be emptied or you had a flooded floor. While the ice man was in the houses the kids would go to his wagon and pick up the ice chips from breaking the blocks. That was a great thing for the kids to suck on the ice.

There was one wagon that the kids were all happy to see…the waffle wagon. The waffle wagon had glass sides to the upper part of it. You could see the propane flame and they made the waffles right there in front of you. When done they would sprinkle with powdered sugar. They cost 5 cents. The waffles had a sweet taste that after all these many years I have never tasted the equal of. I have had lots of waffles since the early days. Nothing has equaled those waffles.

Once when I was very young a team of horses pulling a wagon were spooked by something and they were running on the road and someone finally grabbed them and were able to calm them down. I was in an empty lot nearby when that happened. The horses were prancing around with the noise of their harnesses and hoofs stomping the ground. I was very frightened. Believe me, I was glad they got them under control. Maybe it was just my imagination, especially because I was so young, I felt that I was in great danger. And, I might have been. This experience stays in my mind even to this day.

The house I lived in with all my brothers and one sister was at the top of a hill. In the winter time when there was enough snow that hill would be covered with a layer of snow and ice. It was a great place for sledding. After supper – in those times dinner was in the middle of the day and supper was the evening meal – we used to get our sleds out and head for the street on the hill. There were so many kids in our neighborhood. We would collect at the top of the hill and each of us would take our sled and get a running start and jump on the sled and slide down to the bottom. When we got to the bottom we would start walking back up the hill for another ride. Our sleds had a piece of rope on them to drag them up with. Sometimes there would be kids that knew each other well enough that they would ride down two on a sled. Or if a boy knew a girl in the neighborhood he would get on the sled and lay face down on the sled and his girl would get on top of him and they would ride down together. There was a girl that lived about two blocks away that would sometimes sled down with me. When I got a little bit older there would be cars going down the hill and some of my buddies would hang on to the bumpers and let the cars pull us down the hill. Sometimes the cars owners would get angry and stop the car, jump out, and chase us. We were young and pretty fast so luckily we never did get caught.

The street in front of our house was made of red bricks. One amazing thing is going back to the old neighborhood after living out here in Washington we discovered that those old brick streets were still intact. Hadn’t been black topped over or even patched up too much. My daughters were really amazed. These memories of the times when I grew up are still fairly vivid in my mind. I am amazed some times at how interesting people are and how ignorant of how things were in those days. People don’t realize the kind of life that they lived through.

My First Love

My family belonged to a Catholic Church and we lived in the diocese of St. Ignatius about a mile from the school and church. My schooling from the 1^st through the 8^th grade was at the Catholic school. We had nuns for teachers. Every morning we were marched from the school to the church for services. We marched from the tune of a piano. In the sixth or seventh grade the piano player was a student about my age. She was a girl with curly blond hair. As she played the piano her head would bob back and forth and her curls would bounce up and down. I was fascinated with her looks.

One day I got up the nerve to talk to her (I was about fifteen) and ask her if I could walk her home from school. She said yes and I took her books and we started to walk. I was in seventh heaven. We talked about this and that. Finally we go to her house. She lived about a mile from the school but in the opposite direction from where we lived. As we walked she asked me, “I’m not taking you out of your way, am I?” I said, “Oh, no. You aren’t taking me out of my way.” When we got to her house I handed her back her books and said goodbye.

As I started to walk home I realized I had to go quite a long way home. It was a mile back to school and another mile back to my house. When I got back to my house, my sister, who was the cook was VERY upset. “Where WERE you?” I have to have potatoes for the meal. It was my job to peel potatoes for our large family – so a LOT of potatoes. I had to hurry up so I took my potato peeler and went as fast as I could. The peeler had an end to dig out the eyes, but this night a lot of the eyes were left.

The next day when school was out the girl with the blonde hair was waiting for me to walk her home. I told her I couldn’t because I have to go home to peel potatoes. It just wasn’t working out and that was the last and only time I walked her home. It turned out that was the end of our relationship – all because of potatoes.

In later years I told my kids that if it wasn’t for those potatoes they might all have blonde curly hair.

Hobo Final Chapter

After 3 years away I had been wondering how things were going at home. I was a little homesick. I gradually drifted back towards Cleveland. I didn’t go directly. First I went to Wakeman, Ohio. They had a river there and the farmer let us use the low lands next to the river to camp. There was one guy named Hank that we know. After I visited with him I went down by the campers and I went back to Cleveland with them.

Since I had been working with a sign painter Mmy Dad put me to work painting the house. I learned how to use linseed oil to treat the windows. I had a few ladders there and they were hard to handle but I did manage to get the house painted including up in the peaks. After the house was done, my Dad got me a job. One of the first jobs I had was doing finish work in a new house. My job was to put down the baseboard in all the rooms. I had to be careful when I used a hammer not to make hammer marks. Every time I would make a hammer mark my Dad would spot it.

When it came time for payday the contractor gave my
Dad the money that I had earned. Instead of turning over the money to me my Dad was going to give me an allowance and keep my money. At an earlier time when there were 9 kids to raise there was some reason for the older kids to kick in their money to help keep the household going. But by that time there weren’t nearly as many kids living at home. The necessity of this kind of arrangement no longer existed.

I was willing to pay room and board. Since I had been living on my own for around three years, I was used to making my own way. We locked horns and I packed my bags and left again.

For the next few years I drifted east and south. In order to support myself I was doing odd jobs. Some yard work, washing dishes, and doing a little carpenter work even though I didn’t have my own tools to do that. I went to New York City and then through some of the southern states. Usually I traveled on the trains and sometimes hitchhiking.

The War Years

When I finally came back home we were on the verge of going to war with Japan. My brothers were going into the service. My oldest brother, Ralph, was exempt because he had a family. Howard went into the Army. His job after he was in there a while was as a bartender in the officers club. Some of the officers told him he ought to apply for a commission, which he did. He went through some type of course and he became a commissioned officer. Al went into the Marine Corps. He took his course of training and became a full-fledged Marine.

Elmer was in the Air Force and one of his jobs was working on the new American bomb site in England. At the bomb site they calculated how far the bombs were from the targets. So he spent a lot of time in England. While he was there, he met this woman and he wanted to make it a permanent attachment when the war was finally over but the woman elected to go back to her husband. In the meantime, after he returned to the United States she was pregnant with Elmer’s child.

Bob joined the Navy and spent just about all of his time aboard a destroyer. Most of that time was spent in the Pacific.

Norbert joined the Army or was drafted. I am not sure.

With all of my brothers already in the service I didn’t want to miss out. I didn’t think of it as getting killed, I thought of it was the great adventure of the day. So, I joined the Navy.

There was many people joining at the same time and the biggest part of them joined the Navy because they didn’t want to go into the Army. When it came time to leave there were almost 100 from the Cleveland area that were packed aboard trains and sent to Chicago where the Great Lakes Training Center boot camp was. We were put up in barracks there. We did some marching and they gave us a duffle bag and all of our clothing that we were to wear including dress whites and in the barracks we had to learn to keep our bedding made and to clean the barracks. We were taken out and marched around. We learned how to handle a rifle. They took us to the firing range where we practiced shooting. All the time they were giving us tests. After about three months of basic training we were sent out on our next assignments. I was sent to machinist mate school which was set up in Lawrence, Kansas on the University of Kansas property. There was an obstacle course, rooms with all types of machinery (lathes, drill presses, etc.). At the end of about three months they gave us tests and I graduated 4^th in the class. This entitled me to more schooling. During this time when we were at training was where I met Ken Kalbfliesh. We became friends and we went on liberty together. We were a little like Mutt and Jeff because Ken was tall and I wasn’t. We made a great team and we had a lot of fun together.

My next assignment was to refrigeration school. This was at the Carrier Corporation in Syracuse, New York. There were about 15 in the total class that went there. We found housing at different peoples homes. In the daytime everyday we went to the Carrier Corporation buildings where our class was set up. They taught us the basics of refrigeration and then the refrigeration machinery that was being used in the destroyer escorts.

After that course, I went to Massachusetts around Boston at the Hingham Shipyards where our ship was under construction. There was a whole line of DE’s under construction. The purpose of these ships was to do convoy duty. It was all types of commercial ships going back and forth across the Atlantic, mostly to England. The reason for us escorting the convoys was because the U-Boats were very active at that time in blowing up the cargo ships. We had aboard the sonar and we carried depth charges and we carried torpedoes.

When I first came aboard my ship, the U.S. Blessman, DE 69 it was still under construction. So I showed up every day and had to be aboard for so many hours. We did fire watch – we kept an eye when welding was going on. I was there at my station very often and I watched how they constructed the coolers. There were two coolers. One was at colder temperature than the others. This was mostly for meats. The other room was at a lesser temperature for all of the other food provisions. The walls were very well insulated and there was a metal skin over the insulation and all of the joints were soldered. They had very experienced people doing that.

At the time I was sleeping in a barracks and often on my time off I would go to the Boston Commons where all the Revolutionary War buildings and lots of other things to see in Boston. Finally the work on the ship was done and we were christened and slid out from the dry docks into the water and we went on our shake down cruise.

Hobo Continued

For eating money I did try to get jobs which would be temporary. Washing dishes was one. But then when you get a little bit farther out west I went door to door to see if they had wood to chop or anything I could do. Sometimes they had jobs to do. Sometimes the housewife would give me a little something to eat.

There were times in the smaller towns there was an area next to the tracks where the hobos cooked their meals. There were tin cans that you could cook in. There were times when some of us would get together and scatter out and see what kind of vegetable meats we could come up with and bring them back to the “Hobo Jungle” and in a five gallon can with the top cut out make a “Hobo Stew.” It was always different because it depended on what ingredients could be collected. That is one way we got to eat and work together as a group. This was usually on railroad property, usually outside of town away from the yards. If the railroads knew about the Hobo Jungle they often left them alone.

Farther out west there were places at the water towers because in those days it was the day of steam. Coal was shoveled into the boilers. The water towers were to refill the water on the train. Some of the water towers were rigged so we could take showers. There was a faucet with a stream of cold water. It is pretty hard when you are traveling, especially in the soot from the trains to keep clean but that is one way that we did it. It was very refreshing to find a water tower like that.

We did carry with us a “bindle” which was a blanket and a few cooking utensils so when we went to sleep we had something to cover up with. The nicest way of traveling was in a box car because you were out of the weather. We would put our shoes under our head and were pretty comfortable. They were a little harder to get in when the train was moving. We rode in various different kinds of cars to get from one place to another.

When we got to the next town we had to get off before the station because the bulls were waiting to roust the hobos. So we would then go to the other end of town to get back on the train as it was pulling out.

I traveled as far west as Wyoming. I was in Gillette Wyoming and walking down the street when a car pulled up and asked if I was looking for work. I said yes, I am. He was a ranch owner and it was time for the harvest. I went out to the ranch. He paid me a dollar a day plus board. I worked there for about two months. There was one other hired hand. We ate with the family. But there was a bunk house. The other hired hand, who was an old timer, slept in the bunkhouse. We would go out and shuck wheat, which was hard on the hands. We would fork hay on the wagons. They had horses for the equipment. They pulled a buck rake that picked up the hay and pushed it ahead. There was another contraption that lifted up the loose hay and made it into a haystack. The horses powered this contraption as well. I did drive the team but it was very difficult. The horses were half wild as they on were only used to harnesses. He was out where there was no electricity. He had a generator and in the evening he would start the generator and there would be lights. It was a pretty remote ranch.

When the harvest was over the man drove me into town and I had enough money to buy myself a pair of shoes. When I headed back east it was on a train that had refrigeration cars. In those days the refrigerator cars had a compartment (reefer) on each end of the car and that is where the put the ice to keep the contents of the car from spoiling. These particular cars were empty. We couldn’t get into the main part of the boxcars. So we stayed in the reefers.

When we got close to Chicago I left the train and I did stop at a used clothing place and bought myself a suit coat and then I went into town and close to the tracks there were some businesses. I put the coat on and the fellow had his hand in my back andhe took me up to a mirror and the coat looked pretty good. I wasn’t looking forthe fanciest coat. It was really to keep me warm. Then after I left the shopthe coat was too big for me. He had gathered the extra material in his hand.Once I left the shop I was stuck with the coat.

I became acquainted with the owner of a sign shop. He put me up for the night. I started doing little jobs for him. In addition to signs he would pick up little painting jobs and I would do that. He had a pretty large building. It was set up with the boards where he could put his signs on it was convenient to letter the signs. As time went on I watched him letter and I thought I could do that. When no one was around I would open up the little paint cans and practice my letters. When he finally saw what I was doing he was allowing me to letter some of the rough type of lettering that the grocery stores used to put the prices on. I still couldn’t do the fancier work. I spent a few months with him. I was living in the shop and he was giving me enough spending money so I was able to buy my meals. For recreation I went to a place where they did roller skating. I bought myself a pair of skates and I even met a girl there. I was really starting to settle in. Then my boss decided to partner with another painter and my job was gone. I went back on the road again.

Hobo

Our house on 116th street was a couple of miles from the railroad yard. The trains were coming and going all the time. it is a big yard. There were passenger trains but the biggest part of the yard is freight trains with the box cars. At night I would hear the train whistles when they were moving from track to track. I would imagine far away places where those trains went.

I remember when I was about 12 years old my Mom was out in the yard stretching the curtains. In those days when you washed the curtains you stretched them while they dried. A kid that was "on the road" showed up and my Mom gave him something to eat. Her advice to him was to go home to your Mom.

When I was going into the 10th grade I was about 15 years old. I had a little problem with my father. I knew I was probably going to get beat on. I don't remember what I did. So I decided rather than go home and face him that this was the time I would go and ride a freight train. I talked it over with my friend that was the same age. He was actually a relative that lived a dozen blocks from us. We used to go camping and lots of places together. I told him I was leaving but I didn't tell anybody else. So I headed for the freight yards. I didn't know anything about catching trains or riding the rails. I had to find out in a hurry, which I did. I got into a box car and pretty soon we were off. I was off into a world that I hadn't experienced before and into the unknown. I don't remember now the early part, where we went.

I had to learn how to catch a car. At that time there were a lot of hobo's on the road because it was the tail end of the depression and a lot of people were using the rails as a way to get from one place to the other. At that time there were single men, a few single women, and families riding the rails. i was not alone. There was always somebody that could tell you what to do next. I learned how to get on a box car. You had to get on the train after they were moving because there were railroad detectives trying to keep the people off the trains. You had to get on while the train was going slow enough. There were different ways to climb on. There were ladders on the side. You had to run along and grab one of the rungs of the ladder and pull yourself up. Riding the rails can be quite dangerous. When you swing up on the ladder you could swing between the two cars and fall back on the track and under the wheels. The old hands knew how to do it. I didn't realize that and I didn't find out until some time later when I was travling that the railroad companies put out a schedule. There was a train schedule with the times and directions and tracks.

I traveled around fro a while. There were times when I hitchhiked as well. That could very interesting. That is how I started driving. I was riding with one fellow and he said, "here, take the wheel." You meet all different kinds of people.

Then there was a problem of your meals. All I had was a pocket full of change. The thing  I found the most satisfying was a bowl of chili. I could go in a restaraunt and have a bowl of chili for a dime or 15 cents. I had to stretch out what money I had. Then I would have to try to find some kind of work. The work that was most available and obvious was in the restaraunts washing dishes. I did a lot of that. I had to learn how to use a dishwasher. It takes a certain amount of caution because the water was so hot you could burn yourself. There was one restaraunt that I went in and I worked but didn't have a place to sleep. The owner let me sleep in the basement. That is what I did. I tried to find cardboard and I had aquired one blanket and I slept on the floor laying on top of cardboard and newspaper. It was the cold time of the year so this was better than being outside.

There were times that I slept in the boxcar. If you took your shoes off and laid them next to you somebody might take your shoes. So I would put my shoes together and tie the laces around them and use them as a pillow. There was more than one night where I would go to the police station and ask if I could spend the night there. These were small stations in small towns, ususally. They would let me come in and sleep in the cell and in the morning they would let me leave. There were also flop houses where they had beds. It cost 50 cents for the night. This one place the room was separated with wood petitions and wire mesh. After I was laying there for a little while something was biting me. There was one light hanging on a wire from the ceiling so I turned it on and picked up the pillow and the bed bugs were crawling all over the pillow. So I got up, put my clothes back on and I went out to the office where they had rented me the bed and I told them they had bed bugs, give me my 50 cents back. No argument. He gave me my 50 cents.