HARD TIMES FOR THE CLARKS

We had been married about 2 years, and decided to move to Hillsboro, Oregon. Before that we had been in Sweet Home, Oregon where Bob started the learning process to be a baker while working with my dad in his bakery. We found out that he could go to work in Portland in an apprentice position in a bakery under the G.I. Bill, and draw a small salary while learning. This sounded good to us, and we decided to take a chance on it. We were so poor that we had no funds in the bank, and had to be very careful to make it from pay day to pay day. Being right after the war, there were no houses or apartments to rent, so we decided to see if we could buy one. We found this little tiny "chicken coop" of a house, so we sold our old car to make the down payment. The seller of the house was going to carry the papers, and told us that our payment would be $145 per month, plus a percentage per annum. Both Bob and I thought that percentage was once a year on the balance. Ha ! It was every month on top of the $145. I can remember crying the first month when I took the payment to the landlord and he advised me that I owed another $40. He was a kind man and waited until we could scrape that $40 together.

Bob was working 30 miles away in Portland and we had no car, so he had to ride the bus to and from work each day. In our house we had an unfinished kitchen with a sink and one cupboard in it. There was no cabinet below the sink. I got some material and hung a skirt around it so that it was not open for all to see. There was linoleum on the front room floor, and a little tin stove in that room. It gave very little heat.

We had lost a full term child our first year while we were in Sweet Home. Now we were expecting another child and this house was certainly not a good place to be. Some friends had an 8 x 10 rug and gave us that to cover the floor. We had an antique electric stove that we had previously purchased, but the house was not wired for 220, so we could not use it. Friends had a 3 burner gas stove that we were using. I was working for the gas company, and when we got enough money to bring in the 220 wire so we could use our electric stove I nearly lost my job with the gas company. They felt I should have been faithful to the gas company.

Pretty soon we were able to scrape together enough to buy an old Hudson car, and were we ever proud. We had only had it a couple of days when we went to pick up our friends Glenn and Liz to take them for a ride. When we were taking them home, some kids crossed the highway and hit us, turning the car over on its side. I was hysterical because I was so afraid I would lose this baby too. Liz was also pregnant and had a bad bump on the head. I had a broken arm, but was OK otherwise. Now we are again without a car.

In January our beautiful little daughter Linda was born and only a week or less after that, the bakery that Bob was working for laid him off. business dropped suddenly after Christmas and they didn't feel they needed him. Times were tough ! Bob's Dad had an old oil heater stored in a shed at their house and brought it over for us to have some good heat to keep the baby warm.

Eventually Bob did find some work and we were able to save enough to buy a refrigerator to keep Linda's milk cold. I had no washing machine so each day would fill up the wash tub and with a scrub board would do the daily diapers and hang them out on the line to dry. After about 3 months of that my sweet aunt Agnes came over one day and was shocked to see me washing on a scrub board. She said she had an old ringer washer in storage and would get it out and give it to me. What a blessing that was !

Not too long after that Bob went back into the Navy because the Korean War was on, and he felt he would be drafted. He had been in the Navy Air and wanted to get back into that. Things went some better after that for this family. We knew what it was to be poor, and always appreciated what we had when things got better for us.

WORLD WAR-2

Having lived on this earth for 81 years I have seen a lot of changes . During world war-2 we could not buy meat, canned goods, butter, cheeese, or even shoes without producing stamps to purchase them. Each family was authorized a certain amount of blue stamps for canned goods, and red ones for meat or dairy products. As I recall, we could have two pair of shoes a year, but most of the tops on ladies shoes were made from cloth, not leather. My dad worked in the shipyard, which was considered an essential job, and he was allowed stamps to purchase gasoline for his car so that he could drive back and forth to work from our home in Hillsboro, Oregon to Portland five days a week. If he carried passengers he received some bonus stamps. We did a lot of walking in those days, and only used the car when it was absolutely necessary.

Dad's real profession was a baker, so when Bob and I were going to get married dad was going to decorate our wedding cake for us. We decided to let the local baker make the cake, but he did not put the icing on it. In order to get him to bake our cake we had to furnish the eggs, shortening and the sugar to make it. We skimped on sugar for other things for a long time prior to the wedding so that we would have enough sugar for all the decorations. Dad raised about 10 chickens in a coop in our back yard, so we always had nice fresh eggs.

As it got dark in the evenings we had to draw all shades on the windows so that no light would shine through. People in the neighborhood took turns being "neighborhood wardens". We would have an assigned section of the neighborhood that was walked every evening, and if we saw a glimmer of a light we would go to the door and alert the residents to get that shade pulled properly so that there was no light shining through. This , of course was so that if any enemy planes were to fly overhead at night, they could not see the cities below.

Most people had minimal training so that they could sit in the air-raid post too. When you were on duty you had to be sure to stay awake, and if you heard any plane fly overhead, you tried to spot it. We had diagrams of the various types of U.S. military planes, and we would try to see how many engines were on those planes for identification. If it was too dark or cloudy, the little building in which we served as spotters had a phone, and we would call in to report the direction the plane was flying so that people who knew what was up there would know if it was enemy or friendly.

I was in high school during those years, and girls in high school all wore anklet socks, never hose. That was because we couldn't find any to buy. One time I went to a senior tea in which we were instructed to dress up in heels and hose. I recall that because I didn't own any hose, I borrowed some from my mom, and she always wore a corset (another thing of the past). On the corset she had suspender-type things to hook onto the hose to hold them up. I was very thin and couldn't wear the corset, so she made me some garters out of elastic. I'd pull up the hose and make a roll with the socks. The elastic band inside that roll was to hold the hose up. I think that miserable experience was what convinced me to never again wear hose. The few socks that ladies would find to buy were made of silk. It was after the war that the first nylon hose came out, and ladies used to line up to get a pair of those beautiful inventions.

If you had a car with worn tires, you were pretty much out of luck. There were no tires to be purchased. That was the case for 2 or 3 years after the war ended, and did become quite a problem for people who needed replacements. That was the time when the retreads came out. You would take in your old worn tires and they would put new tread on them. I can remember seeing the first new car after the war. It was a 1946 Chrysler. Everyone wanted to see and touch that beautiful piece of machinery with so much chrome that when the sun shone on it, it nearly put your eyes out.

Some of you youngsters probably don't even know about what we went through during those days, and many of the older group has forgotten some of the trying times we had. But everyone was very patriotic, loving their country and the military personnel who were risking their lives for us, and we did not complain. We are so lucky to live in the good old U.S.A. and maybe this little story will remind us how fortunate we are .

EARLY ALASKA LIVING

For years Bob and I had our own Bakery in Juneau, Alaska. We grew from a tiny little "hole in the wall" to a two oven, two mixer large bakery. We were sending bread to neighboring islands , and supplying a good share of the homes in Juneau. Bob learned to bake from my Dad who was a top notch baker. We were in business when you did everything from scratch. There were not all of these mixes that bakeries use today. If you've never eaten real danish pastry, you've missed a lot. Dad invented a danish donut that was the best thing you ever put into your mouth. When Dad was out of the bakery, Bob continued to make those danish donuts one day a week. They were so much work that he only took the time to make them once a week. People would stand in line to get those donuts.

Bob was also a good cake decorator, and did many wedding cakes and other special occasion cakes for our city. Linda was very young then, but would stand on a box beside her Dad and watch him decorate. Bob would turn a cake pan upside down and let her ice it and decorate it like a real cake. She was very good, and in no time could decorate better than many who call themselves bakers.

Our bakery had a large, full basement that was always damp. When the tides were high, some of the sea water would leak through cracks in the basement walls. This was a perfect enviornment for unwanted pests. We kept on our payroll a man that we called the "rat man" because that was his only job. He used to sleep under the docks, and learned all about rats and termites. He had a key to our place and would come in a night or two every week to keep the rat population down. This probably sounds pretty gross to those of you who have never lived on the water front. But, in Juneau, the whole town was built up on piling and the water was under the streets and buildings of the entire down town. If the tide was out, you could go down under there and walk the "beach" under all the stores. No one would do that for fun, because the odors were not good.

We had a good old friend who brought Bob a gift one day. It was a little sawed off pistol that he said would fire very quietly. Some times the rats would get brave and come up out of the basement and we would see one in the shop. When that would happen, Bob would get that little pistol, and would signal me to get ready. You need to know that we had a restaurant too, and there were always people in there having coffee and eating some of our goodies. When Bob would signal me to get ready, I would get a stack of 3 or 4 full sheet pans, which were very large, and I would stand holding them until Bob would fire that little pistol at the intruder. When he fired, I would drop that pile of pans at the same time, and everyone in the shop would jump and wonder what happened. I'd just pop out into the area where the people were trying to see what happened, and I would say," I just dropped a pan of empty pans, everything is OK. "

We moved to Juneau in 1957, before it became a State. We used to keep a stack of counter checks beside the cash register, and people would come in and write a check for their purchases. You might be surprised to know that we never had bad checks. Some time, toward the end of the month when finances were running short, we might get an NSF check, but after the 1st of the month, we'd run it through again and it would be good. Most people were not excited about becoming a State. I recall that after we were officially named the State of Alaska the people built a huge bonfire at the area we called the sub-port, and that night hundreds went there to take part in the bon fire " celebration." We all stood around the fire, holding hands, and it was like a wake. People were not talking or singing, but acted as if an old friend had just died. There was a lot of sadness that night. We didn't know what to expect now that we would be considered officially one of the States.

Living in Juneau in those days was certainly different than it was a few years later when it modernized with the times.

MY MOTHER

My Mother came to the United States when she was about 2 years old. Her Father came before she and her mother did. He had to work and make enough money to bring the family from LaHarve France . Mother's mother, Adeline passed away soon after they made it to the United States. Mother's sisters, both older than she, married and were on their own but were also living in Kansas. That was where the family settled because there were many coal mines, and these head of household males were all uneducated and spoke little or not English, and they could get menial jobs.

My mother, Rose went to school through the 3rd grade, then she was pulled from school to stay home and keep house and learn to cook for her dad. Life was not easy for this little girl because her dad would hit the bar when he got off work, and rarely arrived home in a sober state. He had an old horse and buggy, and the horse knew the way home. He'd just tell the horse to "giddeup" and the horse would take him home.

Rosie would have coffee and bread to eat, and rarely had much more than that. One day she decided she could make some bread, and got busy doing what she thought was right. When the bread was finished it did not rise, and it was extremely heavy. When her Dad got home he laughed at her efforts and took a nail and hammer and put it on the wall for all to see. Of course it broke her heart to see that failure displayed so prominently.

When Rosie was allowed to go to a movie on a weekend, it only cost 5cents, and she went whenever she could. She would sit with her feet tucked under the seat so that 0thers could not see that she had no shoes on her feet.

Despite all the drawbacks she grew up to be a very pretty young woman, and when she was 22 she married a fine gentleman and was extremely happy. They left Kansas and went to Oregon where he worked in the logging industry. When my mother was 25 she gave birth to me, Margaret, and was a proud, happy lady, until when I was 15 months old my father was killed in a logging accident. Not only was Rosie devistated to find herself alone, she had no education and did not know how she was going to take care of me. In those days there was no such thing as welfare to help in such a situation. She found herself doing what she knew best, cleaning and cooking for others. She took in washings for the loggers, and did ironings for anyone who needed her help. This is where she met another fine gentleman who married her. His name was Ivan and he cared for me as if I were his blood child. When I was 4-1/2 they provided me with a baby brother, and I loved him so much.

As a family we made many moves during my growing up years. I rarely went to any one school more than a year, and sometimes not even that long. It was depression times and Dad cooked for the logging camps and had to move as the camp work was relocated.

In 1942 Dad was working on the island of Dutch Harbor, Alaska teaching sailors to bake. It was good money, and he liked doing that work. My mom got her first real job working for Birds Eye frozen foods in Hillsboro, Oregon. She worked nights, and I was responsible for watching my brother in the evenings. When I was 16 I was allowed to date, but I could not go out to a movie or any other place unless I took my little brother with me. My first real boyfriend had an old car with a trunk seat, and he got to ride out there while we were inside the one seater car.

This was when my mother started studying for her citizenship. I used to help her memorize the things she had to know when she went for her test. She worked very hard on learning the facts about our government and when she took the test...she passed ! She was so excited to have made it and to be a U. S. Citizen after so many years.

She later took some adult classes to learn basic math problems, and was always able to get a job to support herself. Dad passed away in 1964, but she was able to take care of herself and was proud that she could .

I look back now and think of the days when I was a high school student who thought she knew all about everything, and I used to correct her english from time to time. I recall that she would say that I had the opportunity to go to school and learn those things and she did not. Because I was a "smarty" high school kid, I didn't realize that I probably hurt her feelings many times being that know-it-all girl.

My mother lived to be nearly 90 before she passed away. She lived a good life, even though she worked very hard at times, and we always wondered how someone who was raised on bread and coffee could live to be such a healthy older lady. She defied all the health rules about eating a proper diet.

ALASKA VACATION

When you are a baker, you are lucky to get more than 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night. My husband, Bob used to get up at 2 or 3 a.m. to start his day, and many times he was still working at 6 p.m. One year Labor Day was approaching and the employees were asking to have Saturday off so they could have a long weekend. I talked with Bob and asked him what we were going to do without enough help to operate. He grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen, and on it he wrote GOING FISHING. CLOSED ALL NEXT WEEK. He pasted it on the glass door of the shop.

He called a pilot that he knew and asked him if he could fly us up to Young’s Bay for a week. He said he was available and would carry us up to the mountains, and would pick us up the following week. I had never done anything like that, so it was a real adventure for me. When we got there it was a charming lake with a canoe waiting for us to row it. The Forest Service had this pretty little A-frame cabin for us to stay in. When the pilot flew away we were left there as the only people on the mountain.

The front of the cabin had a huge plexi-glass window, and I found an old bed sheet up there which served as a curtain to cover that window. Bob thought I was silly because there was not another soul anywhere near, but I felt better having the window covered. When I crawled into my sleeping bag,I was located on one side of the room, and Bob was on the other side of the room. It was just a flat board on which we slept—not really a bed.

The table was at the foot of my bunk and I could her little mice crawling in and out of the box of food we had brought for the week. I was determined to be a good sport and not complain about it, so I just buried my head in my sleeping bag and finally fell asleep. Later on I awoke hearing what I thought were mice chewing in the walls. After awhile I realized that there were no double walls. I knew this because before I went to sleep I could see through the cracks. So what was that noise ? I leaned over the edge of the bed and pulled the sheet back to peek outside. THERE was a bear clawing on the walls and looking at me nose to nose. I could not speak out loud I was so frightened, and I could not wake Bob up. He had a gun right beside his bed. I finally got up and went over to his bed and shook him. I was not nice ! I said “some protector you are. You don’t even hear me when I cry for help.”

Bob got up and stepped outside, but saw no bear. Later that night the bear returned and was fiercely tearing at the walls. I put up my cry for help again, and Bob got up again, but each time I looked outside, the bear would jump off the porch and disappear. We finally carried our sleeping bags to the loft. There was a ladder through the ceiling to the loft. I felt much safer sleeping up there the rest of the week. In the morning we could see the claw marks on the wall, and knew why he was doing that. I had put cantaloupe, bacon, and other smelly things in a cooler box fastened to the wall. This was enticing the bear to try to get it.

Each morning we’d go out in the canoe and fish for trout, then come in and fry them up. They were so good. Then we’d nap until late afternoon when we’d go back out on the lake again to fish for some more food for our supper. We caught up on lots of sleep that week, and it was wondeerful. When the sun shines in Alaska, it is truly beautiful, and enjoyable to be able to bask in it.

There was an outhouse some distance from the cabin, and Bob had brought a gun for each of us. I was told to not go up there without my gun. The first day I ignored that order, but after seeing the bear for myself, I learned to shooot that gun, and carried it with me.

That was one of the best week vacation we ever had. It was so wonderful to sleep and eat, and get up when we felt like it. The week went too fast, and the plane was soon there to pick us up. That meant going back to town to work many long hours in the bakery again. The best part of the week was the memories with which we were left.

MOVE TO ALASKA

Our family was living in Salem, Oregon and Bob was working in a downtown bakery. One day we got a letter from my mom and dad asking us to come to Alaska. Dad was having problems with his eyes, and he was going to just sell the bakery for “peanuts” unless we could come to help him out for a year. He wanted to go to Seattle and have surgery on his eyes, and have the rest of the year to rest up from working so hard. Dad had no help in the bakery, except my mother who took care of all the business of dealing with customers. The food business is a difficult one to find competent help. Anyone can fry a hamburger, but not just anyone can make bread or decorate cakes. Consequently he just had to do it all himself.

We decided to go for one year. We stored our household goods, rented our house, and left our car sitting in the yard of a friend. It was the first new car we ever had, and when we contacted AAA about driving to Alaska they discouraged us by telling us how terrible the Alcan highway was, with large boulders in the middle of the road etc. This was in 1957 and the highway was rough, but they certainly exaggerated the driving conditions, but they scared us enough that we decided to park the car and fly to Juneau, Alaska.

When we got there dad wanted Bob to buy the shop so he would be completely out of the business. We had no money, and didn’t think any smart bank would loan us that much money. Consequently Bob worked for Dad that year and drew no pay for his services. If we found ourselves in need of money we could make a payroll draw, but we tried hard to not draw from the fund that was building up. I worked for Northern Commercial Company and was making $350 a month. From that we paid the rent on our 1 bedroom apartment, sent a car payment, and bought groceries. We ate a lot of beans and spaghetti for an entire year, and never once had a hamburger in a restaurant.

Linda was in the 3rd grade at this time, and she was not used to living like this, and she told her teacher that she didn’t have her own bed. She would start out in our bed with her daddy who got up around 3 a.m. to go to work, and when mama was ready for bed, Linda was carried out to the sofa bed for the rest of the night. Teacher thought she should maybe report this little child’s living conditions to the welfare office, but she investigated us more, as we became friends, and saw what we were sacrificing to pay for this business.

At the end of the year we had a good down payment, but not all the money we needed, when one of the salesmen came into the shop and Bob was telling him how we had been living to buy the shop. He said, “take off that apron and come with me to the bank.” Bob went with him and he agreed to co-sign on a loan so that we could borrow the rest of the money from the bank. We were in business.

At the end of the day if we had some cash profit, we would go over to the shipping dock and buy a sack of sugar or flour to operate the next day. That was how we managed for quite awhile, until we finally had some money in the bank.

While we were there we moved the bakery location from the original spot to two other spots. Each time we grew and it was no easy job moving those ovens and huge mixers

across the street to the new location. We lived in apartments above the shop until Linda was in the 6th grade and I wanted her to have a home to go to, not an apartment on one of Juneau’s streets, so we found a house and bought it. Finally we were home owners again.

Not only did we have a bakery, but we had a small eating establishment associated with the bakery, and we both worked very hard to keep things going. After 3 years with Northern Commercial I finally had to give up my nice job and work in the shop because we could not get dependable help, and I was doing double duty already.

Remember that we went there to spend a year, and here we were owners of a new business. This all took place before Alaska became a State. We did well, and worked hard and finally found our way out of Alaska to return to Oregon 30 years later.

BEGINNING A NEW LIFE

All of you young married ladies probably think it is a chore to cook dinner when you come home. When I was first married, I knew nothing about cooking. I mean truly NOTHING. We moved to our first home in Walla Walla, Washington where we had a basement apartment. After World War-2 rentals were very difficult to find. You may know that materials were scarce, therefore building came to a halt. Also, the men who might be your carpenter were likely still in the military service. Consequently, we thought we had a jewel in our little three room, one bath basement apartment. The first thing that I had to learn was to cook with coal. Let me tell you, for those of you who know only electricity or gas stoves, there is nothing like trying to cook with coal. I had seen my mother cook with wood, but not coal.

One morning, Bob was going to show me how to quickly get that black stuff to catch fire. He went to the bathroom and came out with some rubbing alcohol, lit some paper, then shook the alcohol out of the bottle. It lit so quickly that he suddenly had a bottle full of fire in his hand. One thing I learned was to not do that again ! Of course we had to get this fire going in order to have any hot water too. The stove had coils in it which when heated, produced hot water. That was a lot of fun in the summer time when the Walla Walla heat would register around 100 or more degrees.

Our windows were ground level, and there was a mulberry tree outside our bedroom window. There were earwigs in the fruit of the tree, and they could crawl through our windows when they were totally closed. We had only an ice box instead of a refrigerator, but most of the time we didn't have enough money to buy ice for the chest. We used to keep things that needed to be cooled, sitting on the kitchen window. We would push a cardboard lid onto the milk bottles, then turn a small glass upside down and let it rest over the neck of the bottle, but those earwigs could even get through that. We had to be super careful that we did not have earwigs in what we wanted to eat or drink.

One day we had the opportunity to move into a nicer basement apartment, and we did not hesitate to accept the offer. We still cooked with coal, but did have some nice quarters, and made good friends with the family that lived upstairs. When we moved in they told us that no children were allowed. I didn't tell her that I was already pregnant, and thought we'd face that when the time came. Actually, the landlady was no dummy, and she figured it out right away. When we got the courage to tell her, she told us that she already guessed .

Bob and I worked for Birds Eye Snyder frozen foods. At that time (1946) it was the largest frozen food plant in the U.S. Bob was a lift truck driver who worked in the huge freezer area of the plant. I worked in the office, starting out as a telephone switchboard operator. In the summer time we worked as many hours as we could stand, including weekends. We had little or no time off. There was no such thing as unions in the plant, and we thought we were very fortunate to have jobs. Many of the workers in the plant were homeless, or winos that Birds eye could pick up on the street. They insisted on being paid every day, so that kept the office workers busy as bees.

Finally, my dad was going to open a new bakery in Sweet Home, Oregon, and he thought this would be a good trade for Bob to follow. I was not sure about that, because as I was growing up in the back end of the bakery, I saw my mother work very hard to support my dad in his business. But, because Bob did not have a trade at that time, we decided to go back to Oregon and give it a try. This led to many other stories , and I will tell you some of them at a later date.