Vern’s Stories: My Working Years - Part One
My sweet and only daughter, Joy Grady, sent me an E-mail asking about my work experiences as she was writing a story for her grandkids. As I was thinking what to send her, I got an inspiration to write some stories about my fifty-year work experiences. So here goes the first one.
My working life of fifty years, from 1932 to 1982, began in Muroc (now Edwards) and ended when I retired in Oro Grande, 50 miles from where I started. My first full-time job began in 1932 when I was 17 years old. I had carried paper routes in Santa Monica since I was 12 years old. Most of the time I had one evening route every night after school plus Saturdays and Sundays, but there was awhile I had two routes, one in the morning before school and one in the evening after school. I had to get up at 4a.m. to finish my morning route and be in school on time. After school, it would take me probably until 5:30 p.m. to finish delivering all of my papers. That was a little much.
My debut into the full-time work-a-day world started on a sour note. I was a sophomore in high school in Lancaster, California. Glenn and I rode on the school bus from Muroc to Lancaster, a distance of 30 miles. It was a long ride and not the best of roads as some were dirt roads and washboardy. Coming home at night, we were tired and seemed to need something to amuse us, so as teens will, we did different things, probably mostly vocal. What we did was nothing really bad, but something that might get on the bus driver's nerves. Our bus driver was Mr. Bell who had been a plumber before he was a bus driver. He seemed quite stern and gruff. We kids nicknamed him "Plumber Bell," which he probably didn't like too well. On this afternoon as we rode the bus home, we were doing something. I'm not sure what we did to tick Mr. Bell off: maybe could have been a song or something we made up like: "Plumber Bell, a merry old soul is he, etc." I can't remember; that was almost 70 years ago. Anyhow, when Glenn and I got off the bus that night, Mr. Bell handed both of us a "Walking Ticket," which meant that we couldn't ride the bus anymore until we were reinstated by the principal of the high school. Mama drove the 30 miles and took Glenn in and got him reinstated. I decided not to return to school because I had a chance to work for Mr. V. E. Britton who owned the Mojave Rotary Mud Company. It was depression times and we were very poor, partly because Daddy was sick a lot of the time and couldn't always work I worked and helped support the family until I got married in 1936.
Working for Mr. Britton, I was out on the Rodgers Dry Lake driving a Fordson tractor, pulling a scraper and digging up the hard clay of the lake bed. Little did I know that the shuttle from outer space would be landing there in the future. It was hot hard work for nine long hours but I was young and strong and liked to work so there was no problem. I had a model "T" Ford I drove about 5 miles down the lake bed from our place to work. In the winter on the desert at night, it could be knocking at the door of"0"degrees. My model "T" had no battery or starter, only a hand crank. I had a regular procedure I went through. Every morning in the cold winter months to get that stubborn old "T" started, I would roll out of bed at 5 a.m., stoke up the fire in the wood range in the kitchen and place a five-gallon can of water on it to heat. I finished getting ready and ate my breakfast and Mama fixed a lunch for me to take to work. Out in the yard, I would jack up one of the rear wheels. (The reason for this was that the model "T" had a planetary transmission that rotated in oil. When this oil was cold and stiff, since the transmission rotated with the engine in the heavy oil, it would be trying to rotate the rear wheels. That made it very hard to crank. By jacking up the rear wheel, it could rotate freely with the engine.) I would take out the four spark plugs, put a little gas on each one and replace. Next I would bring the boiling water from the kitchen range, fill the radiator and start cranking. Usually after about 10 minutes of cranking, I drove merrily off to work, to be confronted by a much heavier Fordson engine that was waiting its turn to be cranked. That must be why I have such a strong right arm, huh? After working there 9 months, the rotary mud business slowed down considerably. I, being the youngest of the four employees, was laid off.
It was now September 1932. My Mother's brother, Uncle John Murdy, who later became a California State Senator, was a big-time bean and sugar beet farmer in Orange County. He told my Mother that he could use me for about three months in the lima bean harvest. I packed my bags, hopped into my 1925 Chrysler touring car and I was off to my Uncle John Murdy's house in Wintersburg, now part of Huntington Beach.
Uncle John was the 4th from the youngest of the John Murdy, Sr. clan. He was John Murdy, Jr. and his son was John Murdy III. He was born in 1900 so was 32 years old at this time. He was a very successful farmer. He had graduated from the University of California at Davis in agriculture. He was tall, handsome and very positive. He seemed very sure of himself in everything he said and did. He was a very amiable person and was a member of the Methodist Church and sang in the choir.
Uncle John and Aunt Norma lived in a very pleasant large home with attractive furnishings on their farm and drove a large expensive new car. By our desert standards where everything was quite Spartan, we considered them very rich. Grandma informed me that when you sojourned at Uncle John's, you were expected to take a bath every day, not just on Saturday nights. Seemed like a waste of water which was a precious commodity on the desert. This 17-yr-old was somewhat intimidated by all this luxury and rules, but I did my best to be a good guest in their home.
Lima beans are planted in long rows, the right distance apart so a tractor could straddle each row to cultivate and to cut the vines when it was time to harvest. The implement used to cut the bean vines off was a long V-shaped knife, the width of the tractor. It skimmed along just below the surface of the ground and cut the stem of the vine off just below the ground level.
Now comes the work where I fit into the picture. A crew of five or six men, each taking one row at the end of the field, stacking the heavy load of mature bean-pod vines in piles as they raced down the rows, pitch forks in hand. The object seemed to be to reach the other end of the row first, which could be a quarter to half a mile away. These bean vines with their load of beans were much heavier than alfalfa hay to stack, and for a while I was left in the dust. In a short time I learned to handle a pitchfork properly and watching the others, I learned the tricks of the trade and was able to keep up with the old hands.
After the beans were all stacked in neat rows, they are left to dry a number of days. Then the big threshing machine was brought into the middle of the field and set up. A bunch of large bean wagons, each pulled by a team of horses brought the beans to the thresher. There was a neat thing about those wagons, probably thought up long ago. Each wagon had a big net, like a fish net, that covered the bottom and the sides of each wagon box. It was fastened solid on one side and had a big ring on the other side. At the threshing machine there was a tall pole with a pulley at the top, with a rope through it, running down to the ground. A horse was on one end and a big hook on the other end. As the wagon pulled up along side the threshing machine table, under the pole, the hook was put in the ring on the net. As the horse started off, the net would raise out of the wagon and roll the whole load of beans and vines, as pretty as you please, in one nice round pile onto the threshing table.
I was assigned a wagon and a team of horses which I drove until the harvest was over. We harvested lima beans, setting up in many fields, all the way from the ocean front in Huntington Beach, east of Beach Blvd. to past Westminster. There was a cookhouse on wheels with the threshing machine that furnished our meals. We just threw our bed rolls on the straw pile back of the thresher and slept out under the stars, since the weather was mild. Sometimes when we moved to a new location, the beans needed another day or two to dry before we could start threshing so I would go home to Uncle John and Aunt Norma's to take a much needed bath and to rest. I don't know if I clogged any drains or not but I was extremely dirty, as you can imagine, because of working around a threshing machine for several weeks.
Each wagon had two men on the ground, one on each side of the wagon. The wagons went down between two rows. The men pitched the shocks into the wagons from each side until it was loaded. Then it was off to the threshing machine. It was no work for a woman as the shocks were very heavily loaded with lima beans. Some times a mouse would run out from under the shocks as they were lifted. On one day we were hauling beans out of a field west of Golden West Avenue, near where Illene Woods later lived. There were steep hills in that field and we were loading the wagons down hill. They were so steep that there was danger the team would not be able to hold the heavily-loaded wagons back. At the top of the hill, before we started down, we would take ropes and tie the wheels so they could not turn. The team would then drag the wagon down the hill like a sled.
One day we were picking up from a field about a mile from the thresher. We were the last ones out of the field end. When we were loaded, there was still about a half a load left in the field. Rather than make the long trip back for half a load, we decided to get in the wagon and tramp the vines down so we could get the rest of the beans in the wagon. It worked OK and we got all the shocks loaded in the wagon, not realizing we would be causing problems later. When we got back to the thresher, they hooked into the ring to hoist the load out. The horse was straining with all the strength he had and couldn't budge the load. Finally with a great second effort, he gave a great lunge and broke the rope. The man driving the horse said, "Where did you get those beans? They are the heaviest beans I have ever seen." I can't remember if we ever told him what we had done. We ended up pitching them off by hand.
Aunt Norma was a very wonderful lady, the mother of three children, Dorothy, 8 years old, Maxine, six years old and the baby of the family, Jack, four years old. Aunt Norma seemed to be always cheerful and upbeat. She was a good cook and served up delicious meals. I'm sure as I was able to get away from the threshing machine now and then for a day or two and trudged tired and dirty into the house, I must have brought a lot of dirt in with me. I can never remember Aunt Norma ever complaining about the dirt I brought into her house which was always immaculate. After a refreshing hot bath, leaving any dirty clothes in the hamper to be washed, I always found my bed all made up with clean white sheets.
Well, our threshing season was about over and we finished our last field. The gunny sacks of lima beans have all been hauled to the large lima bean warehouse at Smeltzer. My dear sweet Mama worked there at that warehouse for awhile when we first got back from Washington state, many years ago when I was about five years old. I drove the team and wagon back to the thresher yard at Wintersburg. I spent the rest of my time working for Uncle John and living with him and Aunt Norma on Pumpkinshankle Lane, now Heil Avenue near Goldenwest Street.
Things were a little more relaxed after the harvest and there was time to do some other things. I visited Grandma and Grandpa Murdy several times. They were the greatest grandparents anyone could have. I visited with Uncle Charlie and also had a great visit with Aunt Alma. Uncle John had a Model A coupe with a rumble seat. I guess it was his fun car. When the work was done for the day, we sometimes would all pile in and run down to Sunset or Seal Beach for a swim. During the day we were cleaning up the machinery, oiling, greasing and storing it in the big barn behind the house.
On Sundays we went to the Methodist Church in Wintersburg. Some Sunday afternoons Uncle Raymond and Aunt Eva would come over to Uncle John's to visit. While the adults were visiting, the kids, Dorothy, Maxine, Jack, Betty Jean, Margaret Rae and my sister, Genevieve, who was staying with Aunt Eva and Uncle Raymond, had a long rope. With a girl on each end of the rope, they took turns jumping and I joined the girls jumping rope. I had a routine where I twisted and turned like I was falling down while jumping the rope. They seemed to enjoy that, too.
Since everything else was done, Uncle John sent me out to plow the fields. I remember this one day I was plowing a field north of Wintersburg and across Goldenwest Street east of Uncle Raymond and Aunt Eva's farm. It was a beautiful day and I was feeling on top of the world because I was doing such a great job of plowing the field. No doubt I was singing some hymn at the top of my lungs so to be heard above the staccato bark of the tractor engine. The fresh country air, the smell of the fresh turned earth, the chirping of the birds, the high pitched call of the killdees as they followed the plow and gobbled up the worms and all the other tasty morsels the plow turned up, all of these seemed to orchestrate a symphony of peace and love in my heart. It felt so good to be alive. The world was my oyster and I had a feeling the future was going to be wonderful. My thoughts turned to thinking about a future with a beautiful wife and a big wonderful family. (And you know what, it really happened. I married a beautiful girl. She was not only beautiful to look at, she was a beautiful mother to her kids and together we raised a beautiful family.)
Well, dreams can be nice if they are the right kind but something happened to bring me out of my reveille. Huge dirt clods started raining down on the tractor. I turned around to see what was happening. Uncle John was running towards the tractor and was throwing the clods to get my attention. I stopped the tractor; I couldn't imagine what was wrong. Uncle John came up to the tractor and said, "Your furrows are getting mighty crooked." "Oh," I said, "I didn't know that made any difference as long as I kept my two left wheels in the furrow. It will all be harrowed and floated level and no one will know whether the furrows were crooked or straight." Well, right there Uncle John had to explain one of the facts of farming to me. He explained that when the furrow curves in and out, the tractor follows the furrow but the plow being behind the tractor, cuts across the curve and leaves a little land unplowed. After Uncle John explained it to me, it wasn't too hard to understand. I landed with a thud back on planet earth and the real world we really live in. You can believe I made a great effort to keep my furrows straight----no more clods from Uncle John.
There was a large field north of the Meadow Lark Golf Course (where Dorothy Gurzi now lives) where Uncle John grew alfalfa hay. He had a model "T" Ford truck with a large flat bed centered over the rear axle. He didn't bale his hay but hauled it loose. We loaded it up as high and as wide as we could pile it, on this huge bed. After we had it loaded, I started out for Uncle Brick's dairy in Westminster. The load was so well balanced over the rear axle that there was practically no weight on the front axle where the steering takes place. It was weird. Every little bump we hit, the front axle raised up off the road and we would go maybe the length of the truck before it would come back down to earth. I made it to the dairy without running into anyone or running into the ditch. I'm not sure how. Maybe a couple of my guardian angels were pushing from either side to keep it straight ahead. (One of my daughters-in-law, Nancy Harris, says she thinks I have three guardian angels assigned to me because of all the dangerous risks I take.) I don't know where the third angel was, maybe sitting away up on top of the load of hay watching ahead or maybe he was sitting beside me holding the steering wheel so I couldn't turn it. I don't think I understood it at that early age but years later driving a dune buggy over the sand dunes on the desert, I found that it is very dangerous to turn the steering wheel while you are airborne. While a vehicle is airborne, it might have a tendency to drift a little to the right or left. Instinctively, you will try to correct by turning the steering wheel, but nothing happens because your wheels that steer the vehicle are up in the air, so not realizing it you keep turning the steering wheel. Seconds later the wheels hit the pavement crossways and you swerve across the road and hit another vehicle or maybe roll over in the ditch on one side or the other. This causes many accidents.
While down with all the Murdys, Uncle Charlie Murdy who was taking out peat moss on Grandpa Murdy's farm with his steam shovel, needed some help so I worked for him a couple of days. It seemed that everything that needed doing that I was needed for was done. I guess I simply worked myself right out of a job.
By then it was November and it looked like if I left soon, I would be home on the desert in time for Thanksgiving. The day I left, Uncle John took me up to the farmers market in Santa Ana and bought all kinds of fruit and vegetables for me to take home to the family. I also had a nice sack of lima beans I had gleaned from the straw pile. Sometimes in the mornings during threshing, we would wake up to a heavy wet fog. Under those conditions the lima beans would be too damp to thresh and we would have to wait until the fog lifted, perhaps by ten or eleven o'clock. Having nothing else to do I would glean beans to take home.
When she heard that I was going home the next day, my little sister Genevieve who was living with Uncle Raymond and Aunt Eva and going to school with Betty Jean began getting homesick. I think she had intended to stay the whole school year and was contented as long as her brother was around. Now that big brother was getting ready to leave for home, she began having second thoughts. When Vernon leaves, she will have no immediate family near by. It turned out to be a little too scary for a little girl so far away from Mama and Daddy and sister and brothers and she began to cry. The night before he left, she decided to go home with him. The simple life in their little home on the hot dry Mojave Desert with her family was more attractive to her than all the luxurious living in Orange County. She did appreciate Aunt Eva and Uncle Raymond and all the lovely things they had done for her and the beautiful clothes Aunt Eva had made for her. She climbed into the jalopy beside her big brother and we were off for home.
It was a nice fall day and we enjoyed the fresh fall air in our fresh-air taxi and the anticipation of soon being home with our family. Truly "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." We went home via Mint Canyon. Everyone seemed to pass us on the up hills but we passed them on the down hills. That old jalopy didn't seem to have much power compared to the powerful new cars going up hill but it didn't take a back seat to any of them going down hill. We arrived home without incident and had a happy reunion with Mama and Daddy and our sister Nellie May and brothers, Glenn and Ralph. The desert never looked better.
Two days later I was coming home from the Cohen Ranch, two miles east of our place, where I sometimes helped Mr. Hensen round up his White Face cattle. The road was one of those two-track desert roads, worn quite deep into the desert sand from years of use. I was tooling right along when all of a sudden, the right front wheel started pulling out of the deep rut and heading for the open desert like a hound dog that has just spotted a jackrabbit. I was turning the steering wheel to the left as fast as I could to bring it back into the road but to no avail. It plowed right through a large greasewood bush. Greasewood branches flew in all directions before I finally got stopped. I got out, puzzled as to why this old Chrysler jalopy had acted so strangely. When I got in front of the car, I saw a strange sight. The left wheel was turned as far to the left as it could go and the right wheel was as far to the right as it could go. It could mean only one thing. The tie-rod that holds the front wheels together had fallen off. The wheels, heading in opposite directions, had acted like a giant plow and had plowed a ditch right through that greasewood and out into the desert.
I imagine you can guess what I was thinking. As I stood there in the desert sand looking down on the deep rut and this huge greasewood, torn clear out of the ground and the front wheels all askew - "What if” - this had happened just two days earlier going down those steep grades in Mint Canyon? It was probably just hanging on by a thread then and one good bump might have jarred it loose, in which case, brother and sister would have probably been rolled up into a little tin ball.
It also brought to mind another time earlier that same year when I was working for the Mojave Rotary Mud Company on Rodgers Dry Lake. From the headquarters where we kept the tractors to the work area where we dug up the clay was several miles out on the dry lake. The high gear on a Fordson tractor was very high so it would go very fast. Being a little short on brain power at that early age, I was really speeding out to the job on the dry lake. The lake is usually very smooth and hard, but unknown to me there was a big rut in front of me. When the front wheels of the tractor hit the rut, it jerked the steering wheel right out of my hand and the front wheels which were steel, cramped all the way to the left. The tractor responded by changing directions 90 degrees. It rolled up on its side, the steel wheel with heavy steel cleats spinning wildly. It hesitated for a moment as if trying to decide whether to go on over or come back down the way it went up. It came back down the way it went up and I proceeded on out to the job at a somewhat slower pace.
As the young man, seventeen years old, stood by the car in the sand of the great Mojave, it was worship time! "Thank you, Lord Jesus, for Your love and watchful care over us." Your angels, not usually seen, but present in time of need, do Your will without fail. Praise God for His loving care!
For the next eleven months I worked around the homestead rounding up cattle, helping to brand calves and various other chores. One time I rounded up some strays on Ralph's Harley Davison Motorcycle. They had drifted west of Lancaster, 30 miles away. On November 22, 1933 I went to work for the Pacific Coast Borax Company at Boron where I worked for 17 years. Well, that will be another story.
Bye, bye. Remember, love never fails and is kind.
VERN
Note: Please click the link below for a PDF of the original document.