Dad's Stories

My father lived from 1916 until 1985. I was born in 1948. Most of my grandparents were born in the 1880s and I knew them all before they passed away. My first grandparent passed away in 1960 and my last in 1978 and she was born in 1888. The last to pass away was Nana who had a stroke in 1946 and my mother told me that she became a new person. Mom thought Nana was a walk-in who raised me mostly.
Nana spent most of her time reading her Bible and praying and telling me I had to grow up to become a gentleman. So when I was 4 when people asked me what I want to become I would tell them in 1952, "I want to be a gentleman." Nana was born in the U.S. in Philadelphia and then raised in Scotland when the family home burned down when she was about 12. However, her whole family was from Scotland originally. She came back to the U.S. with her Scottish husband and raised her family in Omaha, Nebraska and Seattle, Washington. I was born in Seattle and lived there until I was 4 and then Dad moved my mother, and Nana and I to San Diego. What  difference that was!

My Dad was born in 1916 in Morenci, Arizona. Dad's name was Fred like me. His Dad (Grandpa) was an Electrical Contractor and was wiring up the miner's residences which the copper mining company was providing. Grandpa often took interesting Electrical Contracting Jobs throughout the Western States until around 1927 to 1930 when he bought a home in Seattle. Dad would have been 11 in 1927.

So, there are many amazing stories my Dad told me of this wild and wooly era in the western states mostly out in the country where Grandpa preferred to live.

One of Dad's favorite stories was about Dynamite. Grandpa had shown Dad's(Fred's) older Brother Bob how to Blow UP Stumps for people on weekends with Dynamite to make extra money (a stump is what remains after a tree is cut down). So there was a whole lot of money made then in blowing up stumps (especially for farmers) and others who wanted to get rid of the stumps. Bob was about 17 or 18 and Dad would have been about 14 or 15 at that time. Bob decided he wanted to impress his girlfriend and his younger brother and all their friends. He got a hold of 50 dynamite sticks and put them on top of a 6 foot old growth stump(not to blow the stump up but only to see a several hundred foot flame and explosion). So then he put a 30 minute fuse and connected it to the dynamite and then lit it and then took his friends to a nearby hill to watch the explosion. So, when the explosion went off everyone loved it there. But then the noise of the blast it was heard for about 50 to 75 miles. Since this was on a Friday or Saturday night no one (except my Dad, his brother and his friends were near this stump. So if you didn't see the flash you wouldn't know what it was. So, for the next two weeks the headlines of the local newspapers were, "Mysterious Blast still Mysterious". After the blast because it was just so much louder than anyone expected they all separated and went home in 2s and 3s and no one ever found out. They were very relieved. They hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. They were just having fun. But it killed chicks in their eggs(baby chickens in eggs) for about 25 miles around.

The next story was about their younger brother Tommy. Tommy was a blue eyed blonde haired boy who looked a lot like Michaelangelo's David as an adult only he was about 6 foot 3 inches tall. Anyway Tommy was 4 and Grandpa had broken one of the wooden wheels on his automobile in a rut in the road. So he was putting on a spare. There were no paved roads then outside of cities in the western states. So, people tended to travel more when the weather was good otherwise they were always getting stuck in the mud and snow with their old cars and trucks. This would have been about 1922 in Arizona. Tommy did not know what big red ants were so he at age 4 stood on the top of a red ant hill (the big ones). Soon he was screaming as they crawled up his legs and onto his whole mostly naked body and started to bite him all over. All the family members came running.

Because I lived in Seattle until I was 4 I wound up having the same kind of experience in El Cajon near San Diego. I stood on a red ant hill until they crawled up my legs and started biting me and leaving welts all over. They didn't have these kinds of mean big red ants where I lived before in Seattle.

Since other species of ants have started to take over and kill all California ants from Mexico and further south in the last 10 years or so I don't if these same red ants still exist or whether they have been rendered extinct along with all the other local species.

Another story took place I believe now in Morenci, Arizona. My Dad was 2 years old and his brother Bob was 6. The other kids hadn't been born yet (total of 5). So, anyway, Bob at 6 was trying to raise in a cage either a coyote or a desert fox. One day it got loose and bit my Dad at age 2. Bob and Dad got bit up pretty good. The fox or coyote took a chunk out of Dad's side. Later the doctor from 50 miles away said, "If it had been 1/100 of an inch further in that Fred(My Dad would have died) because it would have bitten into his kidney. Also, Bob was injured and bitten many times on the legs trying to protect his baby brother as well as the family dog fought the critter as well. The now full grown fox or Coyote got away. Though if I know my Grandpa he likely hunted it down and shot it to make sure it didn't have rabies. But in the end Bob, Dad (Fred) and the family dog all survived this incident.

Dad said without paved roads it was really awful. He said only his Dad had the Goggles and cars then were not fully sealed from the weather except on the roof and windshield. They still were more like motorized covered wagons with wooden spoke wheels and no car then in the country ever went more than 25 to 40 miles per hour because of the really bad roads everywhere except in big cities. And breaking a wooden spoke wheel was always a problem because of chuckholes and rocks on the roads. So everyone took tube patching and tire pumps everywhere they went as well as an extra wooden spoke wheel on the back or in the trunk. They tied the dogs to the running boards so they wouldn't pee or poo inside the car. If you look at really old cars and trucks they had boards outside the doors of the vehicle that people could stand on at lower speeds. Back then it was an easy way to open and close gates between farms or ranches. This way you didn't let the cattle or horses out along the way. So one person would stand on the running boards to wait for the gate then get off and open the gate and let the car or cars or trucks pass. Then he or (she) would get back on the running board if there were anymore gates to go through. Sometimes, many men would get on the running boards to go somewhere to repair something as well. This way more people could be carried in emergencies to  all kinds or situations (at slower speeds). It was a totally different experience than now under those conditions.

Dad said on the Alkali roads in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and I think the California deserts was awful because the alkali dust would get in your eyes if you didn't have goggles along with all the regular dust and make your eyes burn and it would get into your mouth and nose and create sores there from from the alkali dust. So, now that we have paved roads of asphalt and/or cement we are very lucky indeed. This removed a whole lot of pain, trouble and wasted time from our lives. However, though our lives are much more streamlined now there is something to be said for our more adventurous and much more dangerous past.

I, myself can remember during the 1950s traveling through 115 degrees Fahrenheit through the deserts of California, Arizona and New Mexico with my parents before most cars including ours had air conditioning. And I would say,"Daddy my head hurts and I think I want to throw up." and he would give me a wash cloth and wet it with water and tell me to stick my head out the window and cool down. I was about 8 years old then but the trouble with this was that though you got very cool and even cold doing this your face would get chapped from the extreme evaporation at 60 or 70 miles per hour. Also, in the 1950s we tied a desert canvas water bag to the front grill whenever we went through the desert so we always had water in case we boiled over and we also had cool water to drink from evaporation through the canvas bag. There was no antifreeze in cars yet then. Also, there were only shoe brakes and no radial tires. Shoe brakes often failed on long hills and many truckers and some people carrying loads in their trucks and cars down hill many times died or crashed when their brakes failed. So, with air conditioners in cars, disc brakes and radial tires we have come a long way even from the 1950s. Also, there were no seat belts or seat belt laws then. The first seat belt laws were in New York in 1984. So, my friend and I would lie in the back of my Dad's stationwagon in the late 1950s with all the seats down singing songs like, "It was an Itsi bitsi teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini." while my Dad drove about 60 or 70 on a long trip. He just made us put our feet towards the front of the car so if he stopped fast it was like jumping off the porch when we hit the front seats with our feet. This was all pretty normal for the times.