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.