A Kids Life in the 1940s, Part 4 - Comics

Collecting comic books in the 1940s was a universal endeavor. We did not think about collecting in the classic manner - we just liked to read them. In the mid-forties, when I began buying them, they cost only a nickel, but doubled price soon thereafter. I remember suffering my first shock of economic inflation when several of us boys went into Whitaker’s neighborhood grocery, each of us with a nickel in our pocket. Three or four of us went in; I don’t remember just who was accompanying Don and I, but it probably would have been either Bob Hundley, Jim Douglas, Gerald Giles or his brother Bob. Don and I could have pooled our money and bought one, but the experience threw us into a state of confused indecision, and we left in disgust.

I did not read comics during those first years of collecting, because the stories were told in the cartoons and drawings, and reading wasn’t really necessary. I was not a good reader for most of my public school years, and I use to wonder if all my early reading problems could be blamed on comic books, but in retrospect I think I could equally justify blaming Dick and Jane readers. Their stories could also be delved from the drawings, and they weren‘t nearly as interesting, so I don’t think comics really did me much harm.

As I said, we did not collect comic books in the sense of true collectors Our comic books were not stowed away in protective plastic covers. They were read, and re-read and traded with other kids in the block until covers were lost and pages were torn or missing. We kept the comics in a box and discarded old ones only with reluctance as there was always a chance of trade. True joy was in finding a kid in another neighborhood with a box of comic books that had not yet circulated through our sector of town. Standards of trade were the same everywhere. One for one if they were of equal condition; two for one if covers were missing; two for one on double sized comics; and what ever the market would bear if pages were missing. Comic book collecting waned by our early teens and we graduated to Mad Magazine, a new publication that emerged in the mid fifties. I never returned to those wonder days of Superman, Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Donald Duck, The Hulk, and The Swamp Creature.

GO TO: Part 5

A Kids Life in the 1940s, Part 3 - Prejudice

We headed south on Lafountain and passed a big warehouse on the corner of Monroe on our frequest walks downtown. There was never any kind of activity around it. It was a thing we were aware of but it offered nothing to grab our interests - no windows to look in. It was still sitting there the last time I went by it in 2008 - painted differently, but the same.

Three blocks further and we'd come onto the Christian Science Church sitting at the corner of Market and Mulberry. Don and I attended that church for about five years. It represented the only religious education either of us received in our youth, and we stopped attending in about 1953.

Across the street from the church, on the corner, sat an old house enclosed by a tall fence that bordered the sidewalk. Its windows and doors were shuttered. Weeds and brush, growing wild, had formed a tangled jungle in the yard. No one lived in the house and it had been vacant for as long as I could remember - for years. We passed by frequently but never without a sense of haunted wonder about who had lived there, what had happened, and why it was still empty.

Three of us were making our way to town one summer evening when we got our first taste of racial conflict - or maybe it was just kids making mischief. Don, Gerald Giles and I were passing through the Negro section when four black boys, about our age, suddenly appeared. The tallest one, wearing a yellow baseball hat, was the ring leader, and he walked in front of us while the others fell in behind. We never stopped walking, nor do I remember that we said anything. Yellow hat was facing us but walking backward. He was talking , but I have no memory of what he said, but the tone was mocking and it was not friendly.

We went on that was for more than a block, and had turned onto Monroe when things got more serious. Don was suddenly scuffling with Yellow hat, Gerald swung on one of the others as I was grabbed from behind, my arms pinned to my side. The littlest black boy, probably younger than I, stood in front of me making threatening faces, and shaking his fist at me. Don through Yellow hat over is hip and the guy landed on his back at the base of a tree. He hit his head and got up slowly, obviously stunned. It was over - that fast - just like that.

I remember Yellow hat making a gesture toward Don. I can’t say to this day, what it was and possibly its my aged imagination, but I think he was yielding to a superior force. Don was not a person to be toyed with - not even as a kid. Maybe Yellow hat was surprised by the sudden action. I certainly was! Maybe he had planned nothing more than a bit of intimidation, and had miscalculated. But he picked up his hat and walked back in the direction from which we had all come. The other three followed.

There was excited talk among the three of us. I repeatedly said that I could not do anything because I was held from behind. I did not tell them that I had not struggled to get loose, but stood placidly watching it all transpire. Now, missing the glory of victory I was feeling a bit chagrined that I had not joined the melee.

We never told Mom and Dad about the encounter. The incident hadn’t intimated us; we were never accosted again, and we did not stop going that way. But I had found it disturbing just the same.

Prejudice may be planted in youth through overt expressions of hatred and contempt, but it can also be inserted into the subconscious by more subtle means. I was about eight years old when we had the fight, and was still very much insulated from the world. I had only recently been allowed beyond Leornard Pennington's, a couple houses north of us (his barber pole marked my limit), and though we lived less than a block from the black district I knew no black people.

We had no black acquaintances, and the incident was possibly my first encounter. There was an established segregation, voluntary, that no one spoke of - blacks grouped with blacks, whites with whites. I was told the word “nigger” was a highly offensive term and so I never uttered it, but Grandma Frank used it. She was not meaning to be disrespectful - it was just her way. Grandma was of another generation, from the border state of Kentucky, and that was an accepted way to speak when she was growing up. I don‘t remember her ever saying anything hateful or mean about blacks, but she frequently referred to them as “niggers”.

And then there was the language. Words placed in such a way to insinuate that blacks were different, words positioned to hint that they were inferior, - words equating black with evil and white with good: black hearted and pure white, a black mood and white hope, black sheep and white knights, black widow and white dove, black hat villains and white hated heroes. Blacks always played subservient rolls in movies, they couldn’t eat at many restaurants, were not allowed to rent rooms in some hotels, and sat in the back of the bus. By the time I was eight I was prejudice and didn’t even know it.

But what about those black kids? I know that they were seeing a different world than I. Theirs was more hostile, more dangerous. They were not alive in 1930 when a mob lynched two black men in Marion, Indiana, but their parents would remember. That happened not twenty years before, and less than thirty miles away. And the Ku Klux Klan’s Malfalfa Park on the west side of Kokomo was dedicated a year before that - a shrine to bigotry. Those were a few things I did not know in 1948.
GO TO: Part 4

A Kids Life in the 1940s, Part 2

There was a pedestrian that captured our attention. Every kid on the block called him “Leatherlegs”. He walked by the house every morning going toward downtown, and returned, like clockwork, every evening. He always wore the same clothing, the most pronounced being his leather boots. They were tight laced and rose to his knees with his pants tucked into the tops. I’m not certain about the rest of his ensemble, some may be a figment of my aged imagination, but I remember he walked very fast, and never said a word to anyone. I remember a cane clicking along in cadence, though he did not seem to need it. I think he wore a vest, maybe of leather, and a surveyor’s hat with a wide brim. He was a curiosity wrapped in a mystery. We never knew where he came from or where he went.

Our little gang ranged between seven and eleven years of age, and as many as five of us might be tramping along in a pack. We made frequent excursions downtown, usually to the Fox theater for a double feature Western, or to the City Building on Washington and Walnut to attend Boy Scout meetings. The troop meetings consisted entirely of playing “Hot Butter Blue Beans” in the court room. The game didn’t seem very Scoutly because it encouraged barbaric behavior. A belt was hidden in the room, and the one lucky enough to finding it would commence chasing everyone else, and thrashing the ones not fast or agile enough to get away. The troop disbanded after a few meetings.

These days parents might be cautious about letting their children go downtown unattended, but no one thought much about it back then. Sometimes we’d follow Broadway west to Main and then on south, We took that route regularly for a while immediately after the war. The train depot was at the corner of Main and Broadway, and there were many open train cars full of surplus war materials on the side tracks for a while. Some had small cannon shell casings, others were full of helmets’ there were ammunition belts and canteens. For a few months war items were ubiquitous - every kid wore a helmet, had ammunition pockets, and a canteen hanging from his military belt.

Our main route to downtown was usually south on Lafountain to Monroe, jog west a block to Market, on south to Taylor and west to Main Street - about ten blocks total. The Negro section (Blacks and/or African-Americans became the norm some years later) of town started on Lafountain just south of Broadway. It ran south to about Monroe and east six or eight blocks . We never thought anything about going through it. The Keystone Club sat on the west side of Lafountain Street somewhere around Havens or Richmond Streets. It was a Negro fraternal lodge. Music and laughter would often be coming from its open front door, and sometimes a few guys would be sitting on the porch.

There was an open field next to their lodge. Several big tanks, propane I think, sat near the back of the lot. They were big cylinders, six feet in diameter, lying on their sides, and held above ground on big cement pedestals (somewhat like the one in the photo). A gravel berm circled them forming a small basin under the tanks. Water accumulated forming a pool a foot or so deep. We found it frozen one winter day on our way home. The ice rink was quite modest in size, but was adequate for advanced rug rats such as we. There was a dusting of snow and the ice was smooth as glass. At first we were contented to run and slide along the space between the tanks and the berm. Someone got the idea of running toward the tanks and falling on their backs and sliding under them. There was maybe two feet between the ice and the bottom of the tank - plenty of clearance, and shortly everybody was sliding. I was probably the last to go and I tried to imitate their style. As soon as I landed on my back my head whipped down, and bang the back of my head hit hard. It hurt. I studied their technique a second time. Yep, they were doing that way. I just had to hold my neck stiffer. Bang, I hit my head again. I might have tried it one more time, but decided I wasn’t having any fun. We went back another time with the same results. I conclude that either I was not doing it right or they didn’t mind banging their heads.

GO TO: Part 3

A Kids Life in the 1940s, Part 1

Kids today might wonder what their counterparts did in the 1940s. There was no TV, no video games, and no Internet. Likewise, there were no pizza joints, McDonalds, Taco Bells, or KFCs because fast food did not appear until the 1950s. So, what did us kids do in those days? Well, probably like today, there were periods where we were bored to death. There were times during listless summer days when our vitality was sapped for lack of things to do, times when other kids on the block were nowhere to be found, times when nothing new was on the horizon - especially in late summer just before school started.

Mostly we were outdoors and active. We road our tricycles in front of the house or played in Milner’s lumber barn and field. Once our gang organized a makeshift baseball game with boys of a neighboring block. We went into it very cocky, but suffered a humiliating loss of twenty to nothing - or something like that. It was our introduction to the possibility of failure. Or we played with toy cars, driving them up and down dusty roads constructed in the back yard. Our miniature road system twisted and turned around crab grass clumps, wound up and down piles of dirt, crossed makeshift bridges, and catapulted off ramps in desperate attempts to escape imaginary pursuers. Sometimes we made mud pies, or played marbles. We caught honey bees, and imprisoned them in glass jars after removing their stingers by spitting on a handkerchief and having them sting it. At night we would hunt for night crawlers and fill buckets with their slimy bodies. And later at night we might lay on our backs in the yard looking up into the starry sky, counting shooting stars, dreaming about flying over tree tops, or wondering why the Milky Way was cloudy.

Sometimes a bunch of us would sit on the front porch swing or lounge in the front yard to watch traffic go by. Amish horse and buggies, and Model-T Fords were too common to raise an eyebrow. The ice truck usually got use up and running. We had a refrigerator, but some in the neighborhood still preserved their food in iceboxes. The appearance of the ice truck gave us reason to chase after it, somewhat like dogs. We did not bark or bite at the wheels, but did snatch small pieces of ice from the back of the open truck bed.

Most everybody had roller skates - the steel wheel type that clamped to the front of shoes, and attached around the ankle with a leather strap. We carried a skate key to adjust length and lighten the clamp part. Several of us would be skating up and down the sidewalk for hours at a time, ever watching out for cracks while transmitting a racket of noise throughout the neighborhood. Some sidewalks were better than others; we used the smoother sections eschewing parts where the cement was bumpy like the one bordering North Street which had a rough pebbled surface.

GO TO: Part 2

Our Lafountain Street Home in the 1940’s, Part 2

The front door entered into the living room, and immediately to the left there was a door that went into Grandma Frank’s bedroom. It had two windows, one to the front and the other looked north to the alley that bordered the house. A second door from her room lead into the dining room. The family spent a lot of time there. Mom and Dad found a big dining room table that sat in the middle and filled much of the room. The table seemed gigantic to me though it was probably no more than 4 by 7 feet. It had a dark walnut finish and I expect antique hunters would be overjoyed to find it and its matching buffet. Don and I used to play in that room. I remember we once played “cowboy and Indians” and had a shoot-out. I was over by the buffet at our bedroom door, crouching down and shooting through the legs of the buffet. I was being killed repeatedly, and would clutch my heart and shout, “You got me, you bastard!”, and then roll over on by back and die. After the second or third time of dying, Grandma Frank ask me where I got that?? I said I didn’t know, I just heard it somewhere. She told me that “bastard” wasn’t a nice word, and I shouldn’t use it anymore. I said, “Okay”.

The dining room was on the north side of the house, and every room was accessible from it - except for the bathroom. The bath was stuck in the back southeast corner - opposite the alley. One had to either go through us kid’s bedroom, or Mom and Dad’s bedroom to get to it. Another oddity was a large closet right in the middle of the house. It was about four feet wide and ten feet long. We stored a lot things in it, including a roll-away-bed. You entered it from the dining room and could walk straight through into Mom and Dad’s bedroom. I never thought much about the strangeness of all this while I lived there. I guess I was too young to realize the floor plan was a bit impractical. I think the house was built before indoor plumbing came along, and the bath was a retrofit. There was a door from the dining room that went outside to a small porch beside the alley. It was used more than any other in the house. The kitchen was narrow and long, and on the alley side. A door from it opened onto the back yard and a walk lead under the grape arbor. Dad remodeled kitchen after the war. I still remember him standing between the open floor joists in an early stage of its work.

There was a stairway down into the basement, but for the life of me I cannot recall where it was located, and there is no one left alive that can tell me. I first thought the stairs had to be accessed from the dining room. I seemed to remember it that way, but the more I thought about it as I drew the floor plans it just didn’t seem possible. I decided to locate them at the rear of the kitchen, near the back door. Don and my bedroom isn’t quite right either, but the stairs seemed reasonable, and if historians can periodically revise history, then I should also be able to rewrite it to suit myself. I guessed at the dimensions by measuring off a Google Map photo, and then calculated the house area to be about 1350 square feet.

The house was a bit small for two growing boys, so we moved across town in 1950. I really missed the old house and neighborhood. I remember riding my bike over there that summer. I could not find any of the kids about. I peddled around the block, through the alley, and then went home. I tried it once more sometime later that summer, or maybe it was the next, but had no better luck. I didn’t try any more after that.

Our Lafountain Street Home in the 1940's, Part 1

There are some numbers that will stick with me all my life. One of those is 4859. That was our telephone number. In those days all phone numbers had four digits. The more familiar seven digit number didn’t appear until the fifties, and the Area Code expanded it to ten digits some years later. There was no direct dialing for long distance calls. A caller reached an operator by dialing zero. The person would then tell the operator, “I would like to make a ‘person-to-person’ or ‘station-to-station’ call to…” and then give the city, state and phone number. The “person-to-person” calls were to a specific person, and were thus more expensive. Long distance was relatively expensive, so it was only used for important calls - no idle chit-chat. Another number I’ll never forget is 1240. That is the address of our home on north Lafountain Street in Kokomo, Indiana. I was less than one year old in 1941 when we moved, so it is the first home I remember. Our street was lined with maple trees (green on photo below). They grew on each side of the street in an area between the curb and the sidewalk. Their branches reached to the middle of Lafountain forming a shady canopy the full length of our block. We had almost no front yard, and it took only a couple of strides from the sidewalk to reach the front porch steps. Four or five steps lead up to a covered front porch that ran nearly the width of the house. There was a swing on the right side. It was suspended from the porch ceiling, and produced a slow rhythmic grind when anyone was sitting in it. The front door was in the middle and opened into the living room.

Mom and Dad purchased the house for $1,500. It was the first they ever owned. I don’t know when it was built, but I’d guess it was sometime in the 1920’s. It was one story with a basement. There was an outside entrance to the basement from the back yard. Double doors (yellow) covered its entrance. They were nearly horizontal to the ground when closed, angling slightly up toward the house to shed rain. When the doors were swung open the steps that lay under them were exposed. This type of entrance was common in the those days, but is seldom seen anymore. There was a back door from the kitchen, and a side door from the dining room that opened to an alley that ran beside the house. They sided the house with cedar shingles and stained them gray shortly after we moved there. There was an apricot tree (orange) in the back corner of our yard, but the salient feature was a grape arbor (purple) that covered the walk from the kitchen door to the garage. It was twenty-five feet long and heavy with juicy Concord grapes at the end of every summer. I remember the arbor being filled with neighborhood kids, hanging like monkeys - with one hand full of grapes and holding on with the other. Once we returned from a vacation to find the vines stripped, and the walk stained purple by grape skins spit out by marauding grape eaters.

GO TO: Part 2

The War Years, Part 2

My first memories are intimately associated with World War II. We were in Chicago because of the war; we went to New Haven because of the war; and most everything I remember, even a train ride and Thanksgivings seemed to circle around the gravid event.

Hitler sent his troops marching into Poland a few months before my birth. Canadian troops, the first from North America, landed in England the week I was born, and Pearl Harbor was bombed the same month I turned two. The War impacted all of our lives. The Nation was rightfully convinced that we were in a struggle for our existence and everybody was in the same boat. There was a sense of urgency and commitment so pervasive that it even penetrated the awareness of a three year old.

I was too young to understand the politics, follow the battles, or even to know what was happening, but the gravity of the War was inescapable. I grew up with the war. It shadowed my early memories, always there as the backdrop to my infant life. We were nine months in Chicago because of the war and nearly a year in New Haven, Connecticut.

It seemed like everybody was in uniform. I remember brother Don and me sitting on the laps of three servicemen we picked up while driving home from Connecticut. We were in the back seat of our 1936 Ford. They were hitchhiking home on leave; two wore army uniforms and one was a sailor.The house on Lafountain was the place we came home to - Mom Dad, Don, and me. Grandma Della Frank lived with us and was there to welcome us back each time.

Grandma Frank hung a small banner in her front bedroom window. It was about 6 by 10 inches with a white background bordered in red, and a blue star in the middle. Anyone who passed knew there was a person serving in uniform related to the people inside. There were a lot of those banners in a lot of windows. Our star was for my Uncle Joe Frank. He was thirty-two when the war began so he was one of the older soldiers. Uncle Joe served in New Guinea and the Philippines, and like most Vets, he never had much to say about it.

Certain names and phrases stick in my mind even yet: Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Guadalcanal, D-Day, and Omaha Beach for a few. Some houses had banners with two and three stars. One house in Iowa had five stars. The Sullivan brothers. All five, died in 1942 when their ship was torpedoed and sank in the Pacific.

I made my contribution to the war effort in 1945. There were a half dozen boys living on our block. I was the youngest at five. There others ranged from six on up to ten, though three were brother Don’s age of seven. One of the older came up with the idea that we should collect newspapers to sell. We took our wagons and went door-to-door gathering up old newspapers, and then towed them four blocks west on Broadway to the Mervis salvage yard. On the way one of the group suggested a plan in which each of us would put a foot on the scales so we could claim a greater profit.

That seemed easy, and we entered the yard with a light hearted confidence. The scales were five foot on a side and level with the floor, so we easily pulled our wagons onto it and dumped the newspapers. Then we hovered around the edge with one foot projecting onto the scale. There were six small shoes pressing a few more pounds. I wish I had a picture of that scene. Of course we did not get away with it. The old man running the scales told us we had to back off. He was only a little gruff, but I expect he was laughing inside. War profiteering can apparently start at a young age.

The war ended in August of 1945. Everybody in Kokomo was in the streets celebrating. Mom said that people tore up ration booklets and used the stamps as confetti. We drove all around town in our 1936 Ford. The town square was absolutely packed with people. They were dancing, and singing, and some were just yelling in jubilation. Mom and Dad decided that we needed a noise maker so Dad took the metal cover off the spare tire, tied it to the bumper with a rope, and dragged it through the streets. It did a fair job of clanking and banging while it lasted, but came loose in the south part of town, but we kept going. Mom said they didn’t get much sleep for next two or three days, and the celebration when on for week. I’ve never seen a bigger Thanksgiving.

The War Years, Part 1

When I was growing up we had a big Thanksgiving dinner every fourth Thursday in November. I don’t remember any in particular. I don’t remember special guests, though I’m certain several graced our table over the years. I don’t recall a memorable event that occurred during Turkey day. No birds were dropped on the floor; no one got too drunk because no one drank that I remember. There were no fights, no extra funny performances, no sad or tragic happenings. We just sat down to a really big dinner.

The whole turkey, nicely browned and perfectly picturesque did not grace our table. The model for Norman Rockwell’s American Thanksgiving was not found in our home. The bird was transformed before it left the kitchen and its appearance was in an unrecognizable form. The poor bird had been dissected, and its parts waited to be forked and dragged to nearby plates.

The fare was traditional, and seldom varied. The most nutritious part of the spud was its peel, but custom required them to be peeled. The potatoes were mashed, and the peels discarded. It was similar to the practice of refining flour to pure white. White bread was nearly the only choices one had in a store. There was sweet potatoes or yams, green beans, cranberry sauce, giblet gravy, and oyster dressing. The recipe for oyster dressing was a contribution from Grandma Frank’s side of the family. I grew up thinking that every turkey in America came stuffed with oyster dressing, just as I assumed that everyone ate buckwheat pancakes for breakfast. I didn’t learn of the existence of buttermilk pancakes until I was thirteen, and they seemed so bland. Grandma was born to poor dirt farmers in the hills of Kentucky. It was a mystery that she should even know about oysters, but oysters were shipped to the Midwest as early as the 1830’s, and became fashionable even in the homes of poor dirt farmers - thus oyster dressing on our Thanksgiving table. Pumpkin and mincemeat pie was served after we were allowed time to digest and assimilate the meaning of Thanksgiving and its turkey. The first Thanksgiving I remember was during World War II.

GO TO: Part 2

The Things I Do Remember, Part 3 - Home to Kokomo

We returned to Kokomo at the end of 1943. I remember being on the southeast corner of Lafountain Street, a short distance from our house. I don’t remember for certain, but it was probably not long after we got back from New Haven, but I was sitting there on the curb with my feet in the gutter. I must have been small because the curb was no more than six inches high and I was not uncomfortable in that particular conformation. A gas station sat on the corner across from me. An old guy named Chester ran it. He had a German Sheppard called MacArthur. The station was typical for its day with a compact office that had a glass display counter housing a few candy bars. The small brick building had a roof that reached across to two pillars in front to support the carport. Two gas pumps stood between the pillars. The station faced North Street, a road paved in smooth red bricks. Black colored cars, many of them Model T Fords, rumbled down that bumpy street. The Beamer Baptist Church, a wood structure, sat on the corner diagonally across from me. I think I was sitting there trying to figure what to do. I don’t remember the act that caused it, but I was sitting on something mushy inside by pants, and each squirming move caused a shift in its mass, and launched a disagreeable odor . A tall man, wearing a fedora, crossed the street and came walking toward me. He said, “Hi” as he passed. I managed a murmured reply, all the time wondering if he knew about the job I had just completed. Finally I gave up and went home. I acted innocent and ignorant of the job and asked Grandma to drop my trap drawers. She complied. Grandma often used colorful language from the hills of Kentucky,. Usually they were phrases with an anal theme, phrases like, “A buzzard must have flown up your ass and died” , or “I’ll be dipped in shit”. This time it was plain and to the point “ Joe, you’ve shit your pants”. That was the last time I remember doing that particular job.

In 1944 I was standing in the alley that ran by the side of our house. I was in front, at the sidewalk edge, when two older girls passed. They seemed big but were probably no more than junior high school age. One of them ask me how old I was. I raised my right hand like a boy scout, bent my thumb into the palm, and showed four fingers. That was the first memory in which I definitely knew how old I was at the time.

The Things I Do Remember, Part 2 - New Haven, CT

Another photo is from a year later. It’s a black & white taken from the bottom of a very long, narrow staircase. The view looked steeply upward into a dimly lit void. I think we were in New Haven, Connecticut. Dad was then at Yale University, and still teaching for the military. It was probably our apartment building. There were two doors facing each other at the top, one on each side of the hall. There may have been more doors further along but I have no memory of any. I can remember standing alone at the top, anxious because I did not know the one to our place. Inside the apartment I could look out a window and down into a deep pit. The view was into a small courtyard. I could see a small grassy area hemmed in by four white walls. There was no way in or out. It scared me to think of being down there - trapped. How could I ever escape should the unthinkable happen? I think I went to that window frequently, fascinated by the sight, and then one day I saw a man down there with a garden hose.


There was a guy named Porge. I don’t know if that was his last name or a nick name. He was a student of Dad’s, and must have been rich for he had a large estate outside of New Haven at which he gave big parties. We went to several during our year in New Haven. It was a big place and there was always a lot of people, many in uniform. I don’t remember much more than that, but he had a round swimming pool with a sandy bottom. It might have been fed by a stream, because one day when I was in the pool something big came out of the inlet, and swam across the surface, exiting on the opposite side. I did not have any idea what it was but it had a lot of legs and looked menacing. I got out of the pool shortly thereafter and refused to go back.

There were some other fragmentary memories; a sailor with a rifle standing near a really giant anchor in front of an important looking building; the sight, on our kitchen table, of a sea star lying on its back, with its tube feet exposed. We were a bunch of flat-land foreigners, ignorant about the sea, and fearing a little, harmless, sea star. The four of us stood at a respectful distance, gawking at the alien creature that could not sting, but we did not know it.

Sometime during the year in Connecticut we took a train trip. There is no one any longer to ask about the trip, so I don’t know much other than it was during that year. I have a feeling it may have occurred when we were going to Connecticut. Dad might have already gone, and Mom, Don and I were joining him later. I have little memory of it save two frightful events. There was a metal plate covering the coupling between cars. It was constantly vibrating. Its shifting and bouncing was treacherous and I was hesitant about stepping onto it. An adult could probably span the distance in one long step, but I was little and my legs were short. Would I lose my footing? Would I be vibrated off the train? I don’t remember if I ever crossed it. Later I was sitting looking out the window. We were going through beautifully hilly country, a type I had never seen before. The train suddenly passed over a great void. There was nothing under us, and I looked down into a chasm to the forest floor hundreds of feet below. I know now we were crossing a train trestle, and we crossed others and some of them I must has seen as we approached on curves. I could not conceive how such a heavy thing as a train could be supported. I expected us to plunge to the bottom at each crossing. I was stoic. I never cried or said anything. I waited for the end that was sure to come.

GO TO: Part 3

The Things I Do Remember, Part 1 - My First Memories, Chicago

You could compare my early memories to photography. The first ones were snapshots, images frozen in time, with nothing before or after to provide much context. Later, they evolved into silent movies and then talkies.

The year was 1942-43 and the war had changed everything. Dad was no longer an “Omar Man” delivering bread. He was a civilian employee for the military. We were living in Chicago. I remember Mom speaking of a “Scott Field”, but that is in southern Illinois, so I‘m not sure what connection it had with his work. We lived there for nine months while Dad taught airmen how to operate and repair the radios they would be using on warplanes - most likely the radiomen were to be assigned to bombers and air transports

My first memory was in Technicolor. We had an apartment in the Near North of Chicago, close to Lincoln Park Zoo. There was a woman living in the building who babysat for Don and I. She was older, and I don’t recall her name any longer, but her apartment was a sweet delight. It was like going into a giant candy box of sugar and spice. Her place was filled with bright colored furniture splashed with flowery patterns. Mainly, I remember the color red. The sofa and chairs were big billowy things with colorful cushions. The carpet and rugs probably matched the décor. I don’t recall any particulars - maybe there was a sweet aroma to it, maybe it was her pleasant manner. It was a magic place with a sugary softness, warm and cozy to both of us.

We often went to the Lincoln Park. It bordered Lake Michigan, and there was always a cool breeze coming ashore. Mom said we hung around there to escape the summer heat as it was cooler than the apartment (no air conditioning in those days). I remember going to the beach and playing in the sand. Don and I had little buckets and toy shovels. I brought a toy revolver along on one occasion - black metal one that clicked when I pulled the trigger. I got in to digging and making sand piles, and vaguely remember burying the gun, but could not remember its location - one sand pile looked like another. We dug up the immediate area searching, but for naught. I really missed that gun - for a couple days anyway.

The Lincoln Park Zoo is another place we spent time. The main attraction for us was a visit to the Bushman’s cage. He was a giant gorilla behind thick bars in what seemed like a small cage. I remember him sitting calmly, looking through the bars at us visitors. I have no memory of being afraid of him - nor did I want to go cuddle with him. Mom frequently described how he would daintily peel potatoes with his thick fingers, and neatly stack the peels to one side. He would eat the potatoes, and then gather up the peeling and eat them. It did not occur to me at the time, but I wonder if his life might have been rather empty. I don’t recall seeing him with other gorillas. I don’t know if he ever got out of his cage. He lived twenty years, dying in 1951. I heard he died of mal-nutrition - and probably of loneliness and boredom.
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The Things I Don't Remember, Part 2

Dad taught at Harrisburg High School that fall. He was a science teacher and basketball coach. He got a job teaching at Clay Township high school outside of Kokomo the following year. They left Connersville in August of 1937 and rented a house in the countryside near the school. My grandmother, Della Frank, came to live with us just before brother Don's birth. He was born the following year on the 4th of February. She lived with us until her death. Grandma had a stroke in 1958 and was paralyzed on her right side and could not talk. She lived that way for ten years, for a while at home, and several years back in Connersville at a rest home. She died in Kokomo while staying at the Good Samaritan Rest Home in 1968. Her sad ending always haunted me.

Dad lost his teaching position after two years. He was a Democrat and the newly elected trustee was a Republican. Politics is not always helpful to the betterment of some endeavors. The practice of political cleansing seemed like and odd way to select for good teachers. He did not return to teaching until nearly forty years later. After he was forced out of the profession Dad took a job with the Omar Bread Company. The “Omar Man” drove a panel truck through neighborhoods delivering bread, pies, and other pastries directly to the door. He, the ice man, and the milk man were not uncommon sights in those days. Later, when I was seven or eight we neighborhood kids use to chase after the ice truck on hot summer days, snatching chips from the bed and sticking them in our mouths or rubbing them over our hot faces. Dad was an Omar Man until the war started in 1941.

The family moved into town in October of 1939 and rented a little house on North street. I used to pass that house while walking to Riley elementary school, and many years later I took a photo of it only to learn that I had photographed the wrong house. There were two, side by side, and exactly alike, but ours had been torn down, so I have a photo of the house on North street that looks like the one in which I was born.

I made my appearance in late December, at 11:45pm. My grandmother Frank acted as midwife, assisting Dr. Schuler. It was mainly uneventful. There was no fanfare, no complications. I was the second and last addition to the family. I have no memory of the early years. I don't remember my birth. It ushered in a long period of sub-zero temperatures, one of the coldest according to many old-timers. I don't recall the two stoves that ran fully stoked. I don't remember our small house, or it being cold in spite of having two stoves. I had olive oil baths for the first six weeks of my life. I don't remember the baths or that the floor was so cold my brother could not be on it. Don spent the season on top a desk that was covered with a blanket. It sat at a front window and provided him a view of the wintry outdoors. He was two years older than I, but I don't remember knowing that either. The following spring we moved to a house on Phillips street, and a year after that my parents purchased their first house. It was the spring of 1941. The address was 1240 N. Lafountain; one that will always stick in my memory, for it was the first home I do remember.

The Things I Don’t Remember, Part 1

I was born in Kokomo, Indiana. I have no recollection of the event, but my family told me all about it. Since then I have discovered some things that happened even before I was born.

A group of settlers left the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania in about 1835. Many of the party had lived in Ten Mile River area for several generations, near Clarksville, in Washington County. They probably floated a barge a few miles down Ten Mile to where it flowed into the Monongahela River. The Monongahela carried them 60 miles north as it snaked its way to the confluence with the Allegany River at Pittsburgh - after that it was known as the Ohio River.

The barge load of people landed in Cincinnati and loaded their possessions into a wagon for the fifty mile trip to Ripley County, Indiana. John Thomas Buckingham and John Mullan were two of the group. They were married to the Horn sisters. John Buckingham’s son, Thomas Jefferson, married Sarah Muir. The Muir and the Joseph Logsdon families had come into Indiana even earlier via Kentucky. Sarah Muir’s mother was the daughter of John Mullan, and her Great Great Grandfather was Joseph Logsdon. Thomas Jefferson’s son, John Harrison Buckingham married Dorma Manlove. Their youngest son, William Ralph Buckingham, was born in 1912. He was my father. He married Hazel Mae Frank in 1936, and I was produced three years later. Mom’s ancestors, the Jacobs, Austin, Bailey, and Thornton families had resided in Kentucky for many generations. The exception was her grandfather, George Albert Frank, who was born in France and came to Kentucky as a young man in about 1870.

I don’t expect any body to have absorbed all those names, or who was begat by who, but I wanted to make a point as to why I was born in Indiana. If I were an ego-maniac I might conclude that the convergence of all those people was for the express purpose of producing me, but I’ve lived long enough to know I was, like many of my ancestors, just another unplanned event in Indiana. Both sides of the family had migrated north to Connersville, Fayette County, Indiana by the time Dad and Mom met.

Dad’s family had moved the 50 miles distance, from Ripley County, over a couple generations. Mom’s family had bounced north from Kentucky, landing for a while near Cincinnati, Ohio. They went to Connersville in 1922, but my Grandfather, Lewis Albert (Bert) Frank, left the family shortly thereafter. He was a troubled man with a drinking problem. Mom said he could be charming when sober but became meaner than a snake when he drank. They didn’t see much of him after that, and Grandma Della Frank raised their three children by herself. She didn't get any support and had to take in boarders and do laundry to make ends meet. Dad grew up with two brothers and two sisters on a small farm a few miles north of Connersville, near the village of Harrisburg. He graduated Connersville high school in 1930, Ball State Teachers College in 1934, and then took a month to hobo across the country. He had some adventures going to California and back; then returned to Connersville in time to meet Mom. I don’t know exactly when they met, but he was teaching night school, and she was his student. I don’t know anything about their courtship, but it must have been brief, because they were married in a small ceremony in June of 1936 . My Uncle Joe Frank and his future wife, Gail Williams, were the attendants. I think they were the only ones present because the newspaper announcement stated the wedding was performed in the manse of the church. The article went on, “A high noon dinner of bridal note was given Sunday at the home of the bride’s mother for the members of the wedding party and the immediate relatives of both families. Garden flowers formed the centerpiece for the table and decorated the home.” I found the newspaper article many years later, after dad died. Mom said the part about the dinner was a fiction made up by the woman who wrote it - there had been no dinner.

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