Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: June 15, 2014

The swimming pool was built in the spring of 1946 and after that, we never used the little play area down under the swinging bridge by the creed. Some of us still remember it but it was gradually abandoned and overgrown. The little miniature bridge across the creek gradually disappeared as did the picnic table and chairs down there and you could hard find the path again. Things were changing in the town as well. The naval base at one time had about 5,000 navy personnel and during the war, there were planes constantly flying and patrolling the coast, both North and South of the Coos Bay area. The bridge had soldiers stationed in little booths and they stopped cars every time a ship came under the bridge. That was abandoned. There were many, many red lights all over the town and business there was brisk. It had always been a brisk business but with five thousand men in their late teens and early twenties, the business bloomed. The whole water front was filled with float houses, too, and about that time it was decided to clean up the bay. In the summer, the bay just reeked with all the sewer from all the communities and homes emptying their sewers directly into the bay. The float houses were evacuated and burned. In those days, you did not have to go through all the niceties that you do now, if something needed burning, it was burned. The naval base was then evacuated as well, the naval men relocated and the base was turned over the the town of North Bend with the stipulation that if it was ever needed, the navy would be allowed to come in and take it back. The soldiers started to return as well. Many of those fellows had a very hard time adjusting to peace time life. I remember so many of them like an old friend of the family, Dewey Anderson, who never really made it back. In the end, he married and divorced, could not hold down a job, and he lived with his mother and although they lived in town, he had a horse there which he rode down town. He was an excellent horseman but could never get the war out of his mind. There were others that I knew as well, most made it back like pop’s old high school friend, Fred Owens, but in the good old days, there was no help for these fellows and they were told they just had to adjust. It was hard for them.

For us, though, life went on. After the last big harvest in the fall of 1945, pop laid out a mini golf course and the beginnings of a tennis court which was completed also in the spring of 1946. We kept the cow and actually got a couple of horses, a brown one for me and a black one for brother Bob. We were never too original with names and the brown one was called Brownie and the black one was called Blackie. Brother Bob was too big for the crib and so in the house, pop built us bunk beds in the children’s room. Louise still had her crib and Dory was now in a crib in the children’s room. We had also gotten a dog, our first Saint Bernard. Pop built a nice dog house for it and wrote the name on it. She was called Jeannie and in the end had two litters of pups, one littler had fourteen pups, too many for her to handle and so mom fed the pups with an eye dropper and brought them through. The dog house was never used, of course, but grandma’s place was the place where Jeannie nursed her pups, I should say, where mom and Jeannie nursed the pups. They were beautiful pups, too, and gradually, they were all given away. They really looked like St. Bernards, too.

One of Bob and my great pleasures was riding those horses. i do not know why pop even got them, he hated horses, but anyway. My horse was a young spirited horse, Bob’s was an old broken down horse. One time we were out riding and my horse jumped over the creek and I fell and broke my arm. It was not a bad break, it was called a green green stick fracture, we called it a bent arm, because my arm was bent. It hurt like crazy and so we went up to the house and pop said, don’t tell anybody. Mom had been in town at the time and I was hurting so bad I could not play and so all three of us sat on the couch, scared actually, and mom came home and asked what was wrong. Nothing, said we. Why aren’t you playing, she asked. Well, we don’t want to, we just want to sit on the couch. Why aren’t you talking, said she. Nothing to talk about, said we. Pop was no big source of information, either. I could not eat supper, couldn’t dress myself because I hurt so much, threw up in the middle of the night, and then it all came out. It was a Saturday when that happened. Mom called up Dr. Johnson and he agreed to meet us at a certain time later in the morning at the hospital. Mom could see that my arm was bent. We tried to go to church, but that didn’t work, mom then thought we should have some breakfast and so we went to a little cafe, I still remember the name, it was called Dot’s Cafe and I still have a soft spot in my heart for that place. I actually ate a little, and then we headed up to the hospital. The doctor set my arm under a fluoroscope and I was fascinated with it because it was like a continuous X-ray. In the good old days, nobody worried about radiation dosages. Every shoe store had an X-Ray machine so you could see how well the shoes fit, a lot of stores had X-ray machines just because they were neat. So, I got a cast, felt much better and came home. Pop got rid of the horses. But we still had the cow.

To be continued.