Author: Ron Guenther
Written: May 23rd, 2014

I first wanted to say that the early years in Kentuck were always overshadowed by the war. It took a couple of years before the war went our way and initially, it was touch and go with our being on the defensive quite a bit. I remember very well the horror when General Wainwright had to surrender the Philippines and General MacArthur barely escaped with his family. I remember the fall of Wake Island. I remember the fall of Burma. It was one disaster after another. In the Pacific the Japanese had better fighter planes than we did and also better trained and more experienced pilots, so a lot of ours were shot down. But we captured a Japanese zero and figured out how to make a better plane and from 1943 on, we had the upper hand everywhere in the air. On the ground and on the islands, it was different. It was tough. We feared for Uncle Dick and as it turned out, rightfully so. He had trained in Roswell, New Mexico, a place later made famous by the UFO-s that ostensibly crashed there. Then he was scheduled for overseas duty. He may have been confident, at least he put on an air of confidence, but we were afraid. There was a popular song that came out about then entitled, Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer. It was a mediocre song but I liked it because it reminded me of Uncle Dick and gave the impression that our flyers were invincible. I recently listened to it on YouTube and it really was a mediocre song and I do not get the same feeling about it that I did then.

Back home, though, except for the rationing, life went on. We had that room to wall paper and the wall paper came in and we were excited about it. Pop was going to paper the room, so first, he was going to put up a plane, off white paper. I screamed and hollered. No, no, no, i want the boy blue wall paper, you promised me the boy blue wall paper. Pop patiently explained that we put the boy blue wall paper on the sides where you can see it and on the ceiling you put this special paper up and then between the two, you have this border. No, no, no, I screamed, I want the boy blue wall paper up there, you promised. Pop had no patience with me at all. After his explanation failed, he himself screamed out, Jerdeen, get that kid out of here. Mom came and got him, I sobbed for an hour, and then when all was done, they brought me in and showed me the wall paper. It was just perfect and I was so pleased with it. That boy blue wall paper stayed there until the folks moved out of the house.

They did put the water heater in the children’s room as this room was called. Pipes ran from that tank into the stove and back so water came in from the bottom of the tank where it was cold and circulated through the stove and then back to the hot water tank. What that meant, though, was even in the hottest weather, you had to have a fire going. It did give hot water for the kitchen and there was just enough hot water for one bath tub and then a little left to rinse your hair with. It was a step up from the wash tub in the living room, but mom had this idea that girls are basically cleaner than boys, and little kids are cleaner than big kids. So, the order of baths was, little girls first all the way up to the big girls, then little boys and up until you had the big boys. I can tell you that by the time I got into that bath water, it was hard to say if it was water or not. That technique went on for years. The fact is, though, Louise was just as dirty as Bob and I were, she wallowed around in the mud down at the bay just like we did, but mom never saw it that way. Mom at that point also was able to have a real washing set up out on the back porch. She had one of those old fashioned washing machines with two stationary tubs, one for the wash with her bluing and then the final rinse and then hanging up the clothes. Wash day was one day a week, I believe it was a Monday. That took a lot of wood, too. After I was in the first grade it was up to the boys to get the wood.

Then mom wanted a wall telephone. I told you already about our three longs and four shorts. It was an eighteen party line and naturally there were some people who did nothing but listen in on the telephone so you never visited on the phone, you said your business and then got off the phone. The person in charge was Mr. Nipper and one time just after we got the phone, Bob and I were playing with the phone and fouling up everybody else’s ability to call. Mr. Nipper finally traced the problem to us, but mom said, no, her boys would never do that, so he went away. About a half an hour later, he came back and said he would like to see our phone, and there Bob and I were still playing on the phone. Mom was so embarrassed. Nipperville on the Inlet itself is named after Mr. Nipper. He has been dead for years, but anyway. So, we had our room. I had a single bed, Louise and Bob still had their cribs.

The place where the outhouse was, pop filled in and that spring built a fire place there. It was a neat looking fireplace. About that time, grandma Wilda said that she was tired of living in different places down town. I had even visited her once when she was living in the Myrtle Arms apartment house in Coos Bay and she had given me a neat, black elephant. But she regretted that and later traded me out of that for a big, grey ugly thing that she said was more realistic. I of course swallowed that line of Mullarkey and traded back. After she died, though, I did get my black elephant back and I still have it. But she said the probate part of the inheritance had been settled, it was just a matter of months and she wanted to move out to our place. She sold everything she had in Coos Bay, that is, she did it over a period of a few months from that point on. Uncle Dick was sick about that. He wrote her a letter saying, how could you. Now I have nothing to come home to. Mom was so hurt by the letter that she burned it. Pop said he would build her an apartment so she could have some privacy. I have no idea where he got the lumber for that. Getting lumber was almost impossible at that time, but somehow he got it and after the weather cleared up, he turned that wood shed into a cute little apartment house for her. Grandma was delighted. Some time in September, she moved in. The year was 1943.

To be continued