Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: March 11, 2014

Things were getting rather hectic in the Coos Bay area for grandpa and things were settling down for mom and pop.  Grandpa had to get false teeth and he went to the dentist and said he wanted all his teeth pulled just now.  the dentist tried to discourage him, but he wouldn’t be discourage, he said he planned to sit in the chair until they were all gone and so the dentist pulled them all out.  That was old Doctor Montgomery.  He was also our first dentist.  He was originally from Brooklyn and I still remember his saying:  Now, I don’t want to hoit you, tell me if it hoits.  He later took on a partner, Dominic Megale and Dominic brought his sister, Pauline, in as a dental hygienist.  But that was later.  That dumb idea almost killed grandpa, but he survived it.  He was also making friends with a number of people out there in Coos River including the Burnell boys, ambitious boys who spent a lot of time with grandpa talking about the future and how they should plan their own careers.  As I said before, grandpa got the contract to put in the North Bend Airport.  In those days, you had mainly little planes.  The first airliners were also quite small.  The big one, United Airlines, was formed right there in North Bend as a union of four airlines and it had been spear headed by Mr. Gorst, a resident of North Bend and an old pioneer.  Airline travel did not get off the ground until after grandpa’s death when the old DC-3 came in.

In the mean time, he was expanding, grandma thought he was old, ancient, really and it was time to retire and go back to Portland, but grandpa would not think about that.  Things were going too well for him, even in the depression.  There was not a large cash flow, but business was improving for him.  The Aunt Edie and Uncle Dick married.  She was a local girl, a cousin of Everett Messerle, named Spooner.  Uncle Dick was 21 and I believe she was 16.  That was 1937.  Shortly after the marriage, they decided they needed a bit of privacy and so moved off the farm.  Uncle Dick was not sure at that point that he wanted to farm, he tried welding, he tried other things, he bought himself a motor cycle, they both took up skating, they were having a grand time.  One time in the late spring mom and pop were out at grandma and grandpa’s place, they did that a lot, and mom said, she just could not understand it, but she could not get enough pickles.  Grandma looked at her and said, You are pregnant.  Mom said, nonsense, I cannot have children.  But as time went by, mom’s belly started to pooch out, there was no denying that something was going on and so there was.  I was born on Nov. 24, 1937, the day that her sister, our Aunt Louise had died.
I can tell you, I do not remember that first year, but I had it good.  No baby was spoiled more than I was.  Grandpa was absolutely delighted.  Mom chose the name, Ronald, for me.  It was a popular one, but the second name was Bernard, which was grandpa’s second name and a name that had been in the family for over four hundred years.  Mom could nothing except hold the baby.  Grandpa moved his milking schedule up so that he could come and put me to sleep.  

Mom had me and naturally, grandma and grandpa were delighted.  No baby was ever more spoiled than I was.  I started to walk at eleven months and at twelve mom weaned me.  In those days, little boys wore dresses until they were four or five but grandpa thought that I should actually have pants and so mom sewed me up pants that looked just like his.  I also had a hat, I remember that hat, it was exactly like his, mom was an excellent seamstress and somehow she made it exactly like his.  I called it my pappo hat.  Grandpa started to take me to the meetings that he was going to.  The place in North Bend was not considered good enough for us and so they found a place in Marshfield on Date Street just across the street from Mingus Park.  I thought that place was huge.  Remarkably, when I saw it just a few years ago, it seemed small.  Pop made me a special steam shovel out in the back yard and a nice little sand box in front.  Across the street was the Oar family and they had a little girl exactly my age and I started playing with her.  Mom got pregnant again.  Shortly before Bob was born, there was a big grass fire in Coos River and it looked like it was going to destroy not only grandpa’s farm, but several farms around and so there was a big community effort to put it out.  Grandma felt a special affinity to Saint Anthony and she prayed that if that fire were put out in time, she would take the Saint Anthony Messenger the rest of her life.  The fire was put out and she did take the Saint Anthony Messenger the rest of her life.  She also wanted the next baby, my brother Bob to be named after Saint Anthony and so when Bob was born, mom named him Robert (she liked that name) John (after pop) Anthony.  Bob always made a big deal out of the fact that he had three names and I only had two.  Besides, he liked each one of his names.

In those days, the women stayed ten days in the hospital and so I stayed with grandpa and grandma, much to their delight, and from what I heard, to my delight, too.  I had been born in Mercy Hospital in North Bend and the nurse who assisted in my birth was Sister Genevieve, who was very famous at that time in the Bay Area.  When I was young before I went to school, I thought she was the most famous nun who had ever lived and during the forty years she was there, she either delivered herself or helped in the delivery of nearly every baby born in North Bend and many of those whose mothers were from Marshfield.  As it turned out, my own wife, Mary Ann, was born in the same hospital in the same room and assisted by Sister Genevieve.  The people there all thought she was a saint, even the non Catholics thought she was a saint.  So, Bob came home.  I was delighted with him and until he died, I always thought he was the best looking of all the boys in our family.  But it did take a while until he grew up enough to be a real playmate.  He was born in the year, 1939, on August 27, and while mom was in the hospital, Germany invaded Poland and France and England declared war on Germany.  At the same time, the Japanese were waging their own war on China and expanding.  Japan had no raw materials and so needed iron.  All along the West Coast there were big scrap iron drives.  The Japanese were buying up all the scrap iron they could get their hands on.  Grandpa JB was always a big worried about that.  He said that iron was going to come back to us in our backs.

To be continued.