ATTENTION-GETTERS
One day several of us were walking across the grinder in training camp when we were all called to attention by the loudspeaker, for an address by President Truman.
He said that we had just dropped a new kind of bomb on Japan, and if they didn't quit quick, we were going to drop another.
They didn't, and we did, and then he made another speech over the loudspeaker saying it was all over. It was really hard to believe, but, Lord, we were happy.
~~~
Jim and W. E. Woolet, Hollywood 1945
at Sunset and Vine
Except probably for the people who built the atomic bomb, VJ-Day came as a bit of a surprise. There were a lot of servicemen overseas, getting ready to go onto the Japanese beaches.
A lot of cities back home wanted to celebrate, with parades and such, and they had a hard time rounding up enough servicemen.
Calls were made to the training camps, and a lot of still-raw recruits like me, who had absolutely nothing to do with winning the war, were pressed into duty to carry flags and wooden rifles and march down streets among throngs of cheering Americans who probably were misled into believing that we were some kind of heroes.
It was kind of hard to do at first, thinking about Morano and Nick and the others, but after awhile we got used to it. What the heck. We had OFFERED to help.
~~~~~~~~~
ON THE ROAD
I hitch-hiked home in 1946 from Los Angeles CA to Ahoskie NC, most of the way on U.S. 66. I left California with $500 in my pocket and arrived home with $480.
The trip took just five days, less time than the train trip the other way had taken a year before, but I did get to make a side trip to see the Painted Desert and to attend the wedding in Jackson TN of a couple who wanted to get married in a hurry and needed a witness ~ any witness.
~~~~~~~~~
THE RE-GREENING OF OKLAHOMA
When I was very young, I had heard a lot about the "Dust Bowl" and what a terrible place Oklahoma was to live. When I hitch-hiked across the United States in 1946, it seemed to me that Oklahoma was one of the prettiest, greenest states I saw.
~~~~~~~~~
COOKING WITH OIL
I was determined that when I got home, the first thing I was going to do was buy my mother an oil cookstove, so she wouldn't have to keep cooking on a woodstove like she did all through the depression.
I went straight to the store and paid $50 cash for a new oil stove.
I had noticed that while I was gone, somebody had put electric lights and running water in the house we had lived in since 1933. But I didn't learn that there was such a thing as an "electric" cookstove until several months later.
By that time, my money was all gone, and my mother was stuck with a new oil stove in the new age of electricity.
~~~~~~~~~
INSIDE JOB
I was born in 1927. My father was ruined financially in the economic collapse of 1929-33, and bad health, advancing years and general hard times kept him from ever fully recovering.
When I was 12 years old, shortly before he died, he secured for me a position as a printer's devil in a newspaper office, so I "wouldn't have to spend all my life working outside in the rain, the summer heat and the winter cold."
In the printing shop, I quickly learned that I was some distance behind the starting gate in the coming race to catch up with the world.
~~~~~~~~~
BAD DEBT
When my father died, he was $100 in debt to an Ahoskie NC businessman.
My pay at the printing office was $3.50 a week for a 28-hour week, hours that I put in after mornings in school.
The businessman came to my boss at the newspaper and wanted him to withhold that $100 debt from my pay at the rate of at least $1 a week.
Even though it cost him advertising revenue, my boss, J. Mayon Parker, told him to go to the devil.
~~~~~~~~~
A COCA-COLA AND A PACK OF NABS
When I went to work in the print shop, there were seven other people, one a woman and one a black man, who worked regularly in what was called "the back shop," that portion of the newspaper where the inky work was done.
In addition, we also had a fast-talking office supply and advertising salesman (he also wrote a column for the paper) who came into the back shop to help out part-time when he was off the road – if we needed any extra help.
They all were good folks, these young, middle-aged and elderly printers, and even the tight-fisted salesman-columnist – Alvin R. Bowen – could be honored with that accolade. His expertise at hanging onto a dime was legendary not only at the newspaper, but all around the town. However, it still was the depression, and not many people were inclined to hold a bit of excess thriftiness against anyone, particularly anyone as good-natured as A. R. Bowen.
Bowen (I'll call him that because that was what everybody else called him) was one of those rare men who could do just about everything any other man could do ~ and after just one or two get-acquainted sessions, he could do it better and faster than the others. That made him pretty stiff competition for other men.
He could write, and he could set type by hand and on the Linotype. He could "make up" pages and run presses. He took quality pictures with primitive cameras.
And, Good Lord, he could sell ~ he sold advertising, newspaper subscriptions, small printing jobs, and office chairs and typewriters when on the job for Parker Bros. Inc., and he bought, renovated and sold old houses for himself during his "off" hours. He could talk the side off a barn. And he did all this with a big grin and the stump of a big cigar bobbing above his bow-tie.
But he was tight with a dime.
One day, Bowen called me over to him while he was tapping away at a Linotype and handed me a dime.
"I'm hungry," he said, "take this and run over to Sessoms' drug store (two blocks away) and bring me a Coca-Cola and a pack of 'Nabs'." (This was before the days of vending machines, and Cokes at the drug store were a nickel and Nabs were a nickel.)
Hungry myself, but ever anxious to please my elders, I was headed toward the back door when I was stopped by an exclamation from Charles I. Pierce (no relation), the youngest "grown" man in the place. He probably was all of 22 years old. He walked me over to Bowen and said:
"Bowen, you are not sending this boy anywhere to bring you a Coca-Cola and a pack of Nabs . . . . unless you give him another dime to buy himself a Coca-Cola and a pack of Nabs."
The usually fast-talking Bowen was momentarily stricken speechless. He didn't even bother to stammer.
It was obvious to everyone watching (and they all were) how much it was hurting him to do it, but Bowen slowly reached into his pocket, pulled out some change and tentatively fingered another dime in my direction.
I took it, bought myself a Coke and some Nabs and then made the delivery to Bowen.
The name Charles I. Pierce, and what he did for a hungry, inky-faced rag-tag printer's devil was indelibly burned into my brain that afternoon in 1940.
That summer, he and another printer ~ Lee Gatling ~ left to operate their own printing shop in Ahoskie, and shortly after that he went into the army. He later was hurt around the time of the Battle of the Bulge. When he was coming home, I was leaving, and I didn't come into contact with him again.
But I never forgot his name or his face, or the fact that there was at least one person walking around my old hometown to whom I owed one heck of a big thank-you.