Alaska Street

As I said more to follow. I recall that Mom lost another baby while we lived in that house. We were living on Hudson street when World War II broke out. I remember walking home from Church and hearing the radio announcements from various houses as we walked by. During the next 6 months or so, Boeing started rolling out B-17 Bombers it seemed by the dozens and often times they would fly over our house in huge, at least they seemed huge to me, formations. In June of 1942, Dad and I were on Rainer Ave in Columbia City and busloads of Japanese were passing by, as I found out much later they were on there way to Relocation Camps. Many people condemn that action now, but I personally think given the circumstances at the time it was the correct thing to do. The only thing I disagree with was the confiscation of their property. It should have been held in trust for them. However I do not think it was fair that later on, I believe in the 1990's those Japanese were paid for their relocation. The reason I don't think that was fair is because American Servicemen and women who were taken captive by the Japanese and forced to work in the worst conditions, with very little food and no medical care in the coal mines and other labor intensive areas, were not allowed to seek recompense for their labors, by our Government, from such companies as Mitsubishi, Honda and Toyota. In fact the Filipinos who fought so bravely for not only their Country but also our own, were not even paid for their service and have just recently been recognized for their sacrifices. All in the name of politics.
Off my high horse.
Sometime during, I believe 1942 we move to Alaska Street, just up the hill from Uncle Charley and Aunt Clara. This is where things started happening that I do remember from my own feeble mind. This is the start of my five mile walk to school, although this was just about 3/4 of a mile one way, downhill to school and uphill to home, but it was in the snow. This was a very large house, 2 floors and a full basement. We started out with a coal fired furnace that was converted to sawdust to support the War effort. Everything in those days was to support the War effort. Food was rationed, gas was rationed, everything was rationed. The rationing of Gas didn't bother us too much as we didn't have a car during the War years, it did affect us in that everywhere we went, we went by bus and every bus, and bus stop had the sign "IS THIS TRIP NECESSARY", maybe that's the reason I like to travel because I always felt somewhat guilty whenever we did go anywhere. On Alaska Street, both Bob and Bill were allowed to have paper routes. That lasted for about 2 months. Bill got tired one day and dumped all his papers in Lake Washington, I'm not sure what Bob did but I know they both quit delivering papers about the same time. They also were allowed to have bicycles, Bill sold his and Bob wrecked his somehow. I was never allowed to have a paper route or bicycle, and they say the youngest has it the easiest, bull. We did have some fun on Alaska Street, at least we thought it was fun while we were doing it. One of hours neighbors raised chickens, I think for eggs rather than for dinner, anyway, Bob and I thought it would be fun to chase the chickens catch them and see what would happen if we did various things to them, such as twirl them around so they would get dizzy, try to hypnotize them by drawing a line in the dirt and placing their bill on the line, some time it worked and sometimes it didn't. Of course the nosy neighbors saw us and we caught hell when the chickens owners came to see Mom and Dad. As families as large as ours were are wont to do we fought. One time I felt I was being picked on a little too much and told my brothers and sisters I was going to run away. They got a box and packed what few clothes I had, put it on the front porch, pushed me out the door, locked the door, and said goodbye. That ploy didn't work at all. Another time, we had a fight and I ran and hid. We had an old fashioned ice box, not a refrigerator, but an ice box that you put real ice in to keep cold. I crawled in that box, shut the doors and sealed myself good. Just by the pure luck my sister Eileen found me just as I went unconscious, so I guess I owe my life to her. At the time I didn't care cause she made me pay for scaring her. As I said earlier, food was rationed. Instead of sugar on our cereal, we used Karo syrup, all of us kids preferred the light colored to the dark on our cereal, especially oatmeal and Cream of Wheat. We never had butter, what we got was oleo-margarine. In those days you didn't get the margarine already mixed, oh no, what we got was white margarine with a little orange gob, I don't know how to describe it, that you had to squeeze and work into the white lard until it almost looked like butter. Of course this was rationed also, so what I would do, is after Mom or someone would butter a piece of bread for me, I would scrap as much of the oleo off and put it in my cereal for added flavor. Mom was not the greatest of cooks, but in her defense, she worked full time and was usually pregnant, and her oatmeal and cream of wheat was usually lumpy. I hated the lumps. We got pasteurized milk delivered to home in a bottle. For those of you who don't know, the difference between pasteurized and homogenized is that the cream in just plain pasteurized milk separates from the milk and rises to the top. The cream was poured off and Dad got the cream, the rest of us got less that 1% whole milk I guess that is why I don't like milk on my hot cereal to this day. It was kinda neat in the winter, the milk would freeze and the cream would be out of the bottle, made it easier to separate. Everyone now-a-days talks about conservation, and recycling, those were the recycling days. All of our milk bottles were recycled, absolutely no waste there. We were on Alaska Street for two winters. One winter we had an extra heavy snow storm. Uncle Charley was quite a carpenter, so he undertook to build a bob-sled for us to go down a very steep part of Alaska Street, I remember bugging him to hurry up and get it done before the snow melted. He did, and when we put it at the top of the hill, it was apparently too heavy and wouldn't slide down that damn hill for nothing. He worked his behind off on that thing, I did felt as sorry as an 8 year old could feel for an adult. One summer, as I said Mom was working full time, and Dad was at one of his many jobs, he couldn't hold a job to save his soul, I was sent to summer school, or what passed as summer school. We spent all day on the playground. I was chasing another kid and he ran up a teeter-tooter and I was right after him, the only problem, he was a lot heavier than me and when he got to his top my end went up and of course I landed on my face and chipped both of my front teeth in a perfect V. Stayed that way until I got them knocked out in High School. Now that would be grounds for a lawsuit.

Its been awhile since I last added anything to the Blog, so I guess I had better get started again. But, before I do, awhile back, I received, quite unexpectedly a telephone call from my Brother Bills daughter, Deborah Wolfe. Deborah lives in Florida and we have never met. I notified most of my children of this contact and two of them being of suspicious natures wanted to check he out, just in case she was trying to run some kind of a scam on us old folks. Turns out she is not a scam artist at all but the real deal. We have not had much, basically no contact with Bill or his family since he left for the Army at the beginning of the Korean War. That was a kinda interesting thing, both Bob and Bill belonged to the same National Guard unit, Bill was sent to Georgia and Bob remained in Washington State, and was sent to guard the Hanford Atomic works in Eastern Washington. Bill was sent to Germany and ultimately ended up in Georgia where he married and remained for the rest of his life. Anyway, Bill and I did not get along very well when we were at home, so our parting was not on the best of terms. I have responded to Deborah and have tried to be honest with her but I may have scared her off, I hope not as I have nothing against her at all. There are some things her Dad may have not told her about his life before he married her Mother and I am not sure if I should be the one to tell her either. I can understand her desire to learn more about her Dads side of her family, the very little I know about my side is mostly from what Joan has dug up in her genealogy searches.

From Illinois to Seattle

Back at the computer. As I promised the next part will be what I remember and some stories I was told regarding our trip from Illinois to Seattle.

I'm not sure when we left Illinoisbut I think it was in the spring of 1940. There were seven of us packed into a 1936 Chevrolet four-door sedan with everything we owned. In those days the running boards were exposed and ran from the front fender to the rear fender. There was a device that could be attached to the running board that would allow luggage to be placed on the running board. Of course when this was done you could only enter and exit from one side. In our case the device was on the driver's side, which meant Dad would have to climb over the floor-mounted gear shift every time we stopped. It was an interesting trip.

Of course Mom and Dad pushed to go as far each day as possible, and one of my memories was all of the kids pointing out motels that we could stop at, but we just kept on going. When we did stop, not all of us would get to stay in the motel room. Generally, Marie the eldest and Bill who was next would end up sleeping in the car, leaving Mom, Dad, Eileen, Bob and myself in the room.

We, the kids, were allowed to take turns riding in the front. I didn't get too many turns up front. On one of my turns, I was playing with the gear shift and managed to take it out of gear. Apparently Dad didn't realize what had happened when the car lost all power and we coasted to the side of the road. When he finally figured out what had happened that ended my turns up front.

Another event, and I think this one was told to me, but I do seem to have some memories of it. We were visiting a National Park or some other type of place and it was called Hell's Canyon, and as we were leaving Dad backed very close to the edge of the Canyon and everyone was freaking as we all thought we would end up at the bottom of the canyon.

Arrival in Seattle was interesting. We stopped on the west side of the original Lake Washington floating bridge; Mom and Dad got out of the car and spent a long time looking back at the lake and talking. As I was told later Dad was promising Mom that he would quit drinking and other things. That lasted for a while.

When we arrived at Dad's brother's house, Charlie Dale, Dad made Marie go and knock on the door to make sure it was in fact his brother. Of course Marie did not want to be the one to have to do that but Dad was very persuasive. We stayed with the Dales for some period of time, it was a very small house, I think there were two bedrooms upstairs, one down stairs, a very small living room, kitchen and dining room.

The Dale family was Charley, Clara and four daughters, so with our seven and their six it had to have been quite crowded. Just for clarification, Charley was adopted at a young age thus the difference in his and Dad's last name. As I said, we stayed there for some period of time, the Dales eventually moved out to a house on Alaska street in Seattle. An interesting note about the Dales, eventually the Howes' house on Hudson street. I met Rae in that house in the spring of 1953. Her brother lived across the street from that house, and one of my best friend's girlfriend lived there.

More to follow.

Life in Illinois

I don't recall if we had electricity, in Illinois, but for some reason I think we did. I do know we did not have indoor plumbing, primarily because of the incident with the corn cobs.

The seven younger siblings, I always thought there was just one set of twins, but now I have been informed that there were two sets, none of the babies survived for more than a few hours or days.One set of twins were boys, Brant and Grant, again this is something I did not know until now. My mother was a very religious person. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but I was led to believe she was planning on becoming a nun at one time. I guess my dad had something to do with that not happening. We went to Mass every Sunday, and every Holy Day where it was required. As to toys, don't recall toys in Illinois, will speak of toys later on. More on how I was treated by my siblings later on, let's just say for now it was not pleasant.

Before we leave Illinois for the Pacific Northwest a little bit of what I know about my parents. My dad, Walter Dwight Howe, was born in Illinois somewhere around 1900 (just pick a date, any date will do). For most of my life I thought it was March of 1900, but after much research, my daughter Joanie determined there were several different birthdates.

The confusion starts because he was orphaned at a very young age. I can remember him mentioning at one time spending some time as a very young boy on the Olympia, WA, waterfront. I know he had relatives in southwestern Washington, because he and I went to visit two old women, don't recall what the relationship was. Joanie found that his mother was buried in Elma, WA. A Baptismal certificate was located indicating the March 1900 birthdate; I believe he lied to enable him to enter the Army during the First World War. He did serve honorably, and was awarded a Silver Star and was declared 100 percent disabled due to the loss of his left arm. Incidentally, unfortunately, he was left-handed.

He never graduated from any kind of school and could barely read or write. Whenever we asked about our ancestry, we were told we were Irish. Scotch, Bohemian and skunk, mostly skunk. I never got a straight answer from him on that subject. As I said Mom was at one point supposed to have been a nun. She was born in Mildmay, Ontario, Canada of German parents February of 1905. She was one of 12, not sure where she stood in the hierarchy, oldest, middle or youngest. How her and Dad met I never learned. Her father was a saloon keeper and as a consequence, according to Mom, they moved quite often. Her father was the only grandparent I ever met, more on that subject later.

Enough for tonight. More to follow.

In the Beginning...

In the beginning ... my isn’t that deep? I was born at the Cottage Hospital, in Galesburg Illinois Feb 28, 1935. I was told that I was named after the mailman -- maybe that is the reason I don’t resemble any of the rest of my family. And here’s where it starts getting screwed up. In 1954 I, along with several shipmates, were sent to what the Navy called QM(A) school from San Diego, CA, to Bainbridge MD, by train, and as the train passed through Galesburg, we stopped at the train station which just happened to be across the street from Cottage Hospital. Now wasn’t that an interesting tidbit?

At any rate I was the fifth of what turned out to be a family of five, three boys and two girls. My parents actually had 12 children but I guess I broke the mold, because all that came after me died a short time after birth. I actually have no knowledge of how long any of them lived. We actually lived in Birmingham, IL. I have really no recollection of my own from my life in Birmingham, so what follows is a couple of stories that I was told. I have no reason to disbelieve them.

The property we lived on also contained the one-room Schoolhouse where my brothers and sisters began their education. By the way if you are interested, my oldest sister, Marie, was seven years older than me, next came my brother Bill, who was I think six years older. Eileen came next and she was four years older and the final was Bob who was three years older. One of the stories my oldest sister told was of the time I was a baby and all of the kids were waiting in the car for our parents for some unknown reason, and while she was trying to either entertain me or kill me, not sure which, she was tossing me in the air and tossed too high and she claims she knocked me unconscious, which might explain the condition I find myself in now.

Another story, and this is one I have a faint memory of, is my oldest brother Bill conning me into dumping all of the corncobs into the outhouse pit and filling up the holes, requiring a new outhouse to be dug. This explains the picture of me at a young age where my Mother wrote on the back, “the meanest, rottenest kid that ever lived”.

One other thing of interest . . . Grandma Howe's birth certificate shows her name as Eveline Marie Beitz, her baptismal certificate shows her name and Evelyn Mae. I believe, correct me Dad, that she actually used Evelyn as the spelling.
Yes, Mom always used Evelyn, didn't know about Eveline until you told us.
Dad always called her Evie.

Also, sorry, to correct below . . . according to the census and border xings Wendel was a hotel keeper not a saloon keeper. I misspoke below.

No apology necessary, Mom always said he was a "Saloon Keeper". I'm not sure which was the more proper or better thought of title. I suppose in this day and age "Inn-Keeper would be more PC and higher class.