Before the back porch was turned into a family room it was a wonderful place for storage, playing and work. We had a porch swing there that the entire family enjoyed. The washing machine was used there and wash was hung on clotheslines along the south and west of the house. If the lines were full, we used the wire yard fence to hang them. In winter we hung them out and they froze. We could sit on the porch swing and try to catch sparrows that had built their nests up under the eaves by throwing salt on their tails. (We were gullible.) After the wash was done, we used the water (nothing was wasted) to wash down the porch and cistern rock. The cistern got slick when it was wet, so we could “swim” or skate on it. Under the porch was a crawl space. Usually the kittens were born under there and we had to crawl in that spidery, snakey place to get them. One time there was a cottonmouth snake around the cistern rock. We had to be very careful after that. The gutters from the house brought the rain into the cistern rock and this was pumped up and carried into the house for cooking, cleaning and washing.
History
50th Wedding Anniversary (part 13)
50th Wedding Anniversary (part 8)
Uncle Mahlon’s Story (part 6)
Thanksgiving as a kid in the Sommerer family was just like any other dinner. There was no big shindig. Our main course was geese, I only remember eating turkey and stuffing in Jefferson City, Missouri. During World War II we had to have a special stamp to buy and sell food. I remembers eating the leftover parts of the turkey as well such as the head and feet. Nothing went to waste and we had a large garden crop for our meals. I recalls canning 75-80 quarts of each vegetable from the garden. The garden included vegetables such as: rhubarb, grapes, asparagus, potatoes, turnips, cabbage, and sweet potatoes. Sometimes the turnips would be used for turnip kraut. One time a rat got into the garden and dug a hole into a rather large sweet potato. The hole was about one and a half foot wide and equally long.
1936 (part 3)
Uncle Vernon in WW2 (part 12)
My trip home from Yokahama to the Golden Gate Bridge was uneventful in that the sea was very, very calm, with one exception. Our ship, the Fred C. Ainsworth, was an Army transportation-operated ship. It had a very light load, so the propellers or screws, as they were called, were not fully submerged in the water. Only half of the screws were submerged, while the back half of the ship was out of the water. This made for a very jerky ride. We got into the San Francisco harbor about 4 p.m. and the people on the shore didn’t want to process us, as it was nearing their quitting time, so we spent another night on board the ship. They moved the ship out far enough so no one would jump ship and swim to shore.
After we received our discharge on October 4, 1947, we were taken to the train station for our trip home. While waiting for the train, some of us went into town and purchased civilian clothes. They guy I went with was sorry he didn’t go into the service at age 17, as he spent two years in the service and couldn’t legally purchase a drink in his civilian clothes. Some of the boys did celebrate with booze and drank too much. One boy passed out waiting for the train, and his buddy had to carry him onto the train. Not long after we were on the train, the other boy passed out. Then the first to pass out woke up, and he didn’t know where he was. Ha.
I arrived home on my 21st birthday, October 8, 1949. Japan surrendered in August 1945 and the war crimes trials were already in progress for several months when I arrived there. I was credited by the Army with “wartime service,” as Congress didn’t get around to declaring WWII over until December 30, 1946 and I had already served in the Army for 8 months by then.
Until Mahlon writes the story of his time in the service this will be the first and last, because Bud and Felix left no written story.