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During the 1990s, a few years before my father, Dave, passed away in December of 2000, he wrote a 35-page autobiography. Excerpts from it will be published here, as companions to the diaries my mother, Dorothy, kept in 1945 and 1946—the year she met Dave. My dad was born in 1927, in Hamilton, Ohio. The family eventually moved to the south side of Chicago.
Part 7
The Big City
The one-room school I was now attending was about a mile from my sister Ruth's cabin. The Tippecanoe River ran right by it, which was convenient for my first business: catching fish, and then selling them in and around the nearby town of Winamac, Indiana. I also got a job working ten hours per week at a local nursery, potting plants and generally cleaning-up. My paycheck: $1.50.
It was now 1940, and I was going on 13. Ruth's husband Bill had finally given up on the animal-carcass trucking, having heard that better wages could be made in Chicago. The three of us—Bill, Ruth and I—hit the road for the big city in our old Model A Ford, a trip I remember well. The radiator leaked so badly that we had to stop every ten miles or so to get water from whatever source we could find. Often it was a roadside ditch. Gas stations were not as commonplace as they are today.
A Ford Model A
Nevertheless, we finally arrived in Chicago after our 100-mile journey. We stayed a few days with my older brother, Oregon, who was now married and living at 63rd St. & Wentworth Ave.** After a few days there, we moved into a two-room, furnished garden apartment at 64th St. and Yale Ave.** Our new home was remarkable, in that the toilet sat atop a built-up box. Because it was three feet above the floor, it had to be “accessed” by walking up a set of stairs. A very regal experience indeed.
Unfortunately, my brother-in-law was unable to find the work he expected to. Not much later, we were back in Indiana, this time in Crawfordsville, with Bill still in need of a job.
It was a farm—not a farm in the true sense, but a chicken ranch. The newborn and older (three month) chicks were housed in long buildings. Bill contracted with the owners to raise the chickens and sharing in the profits when they were eventually sold. My chore was to help clean out the chicken coops each Saturday. Plenty of shoveling and hauling, as I recall. I also had to remove the ones who'd died.
Meanwhile, us three—Bill, Ruth and I—would often play poker for pennies or matchsticks. We all cheated by hiding cards, stealing each other's money, or whatever method it took to win. Ruth and I were the worst co-conspirators, giggling when Bill got mad and hollered at us, which, of course, made us laugh even more.
After just one growing season at the Crawfordsville chicken ranch, we were once again on the road to Chicago. With my older brother helping us again, we moved into a furnished place at 63rd St. & Parnell Ave.** Through my step-dad Clark and my brother Charlie, Bill found employment at the Link Belt Company. Link Belt was producing tank treads that were shipped to the Chrysler Corporation in Detroit. President Roosevelt had made a deal with Great Britain—the Lend Lease Act—to manufacture and deliver the supplies they needed to fight the war against Germany and the Nazis.
Kershaw Public School
As for me, I was now a seventh-grader at Kershaw Public School, at 65th & Peoria.** However, my time there was mostly spent not being present. Now that I was in the big city once more, I felt at home and began to roam the town. In the morning, I would head towards school, or perhaps even show up there. But by noon, I was back on the street or on the streetcars that ran up and down the busy Halsted thoroughfare. My sister was visited by truant officers a few times, but they were fairly relaxed about the whole thing.
Mom and my step-dad, Clark, by now had also moved back to Chicago, and lived over a tavern in a small apartment at 43rd St. & Halsted, across from the Stock Yards and the Amphitheater–a large indoor arena. I visited them only a few times. I mainly remember the smells, the diapers, and the dampness.
Over on the corner of 63rd & Parnell was Gus's, a soda fountain where us neighborhood kids hung out. There, I met my new friends Bud, Don and Chuck. The three of them attended Catholic school, and therefore were not ones to join my hookey-playing adventures. Being at that in-between age, we'd still be playing cops-and-robbers with “guns” that we'd made from rubber inner-tubes we'd found on the street, or football, tackling one another onto the hard pavement.
Red Nichols and His Five Pennies
From time to time, I would talk Bud and Don (never Chuck) into ditching school, hopping on the “L,” and going downtown to see a movie. The theaters opened at 10am. For only 50 cents, we could see a first-run film and a stage show, and maybe one of the big bands—Gene Krupa, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, or a big local band like Red Nichols and the Five Pennies. Vaudeville was big—in all the show palaces like the Oriental, the State-Lake, or the Chicago. Five acts, women in scanty costumes showing almost everything–things we'd only dreamed about!
Pixley and Ehlers, a downtown automat, was our favorite place for a meal. A quarter bought us each a plate of franks and beans, with two slices of white bread, plus coffee. Refills were just a nickel, and made us all feel very grown-up.
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End of Part 7
**All of these locations were in my mother Dot's neighborhood, where she was living with her parents and siblings during the same time. --David
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