Vern’s Stories: On the Trail of a Steam Shovel
As I mentioned in an earlier story, we wondered if Mama was getting tired of moving so much and was getting tired of the Spartan life they were living in Oregon and Washington. If so, she hadn't seen anything yet. In the next 20 years, 1920 to 1940, they would move 24 times, living in tents, cookhouse wagons, or sometimes a house, one room or more, whatever was available at the time and place. We kids loved it: one high adventure after another. However, this moving around didn't seem to do much for my grades in school. I thought I would never get out of the second grade; I went to six different schools, traveling around 400 miles in the process. In the order of enrollment they were Corona, Olive, Costa Mesa, Firebaugh, Mendota and Santa Monica.
We had a wonderful Mother. We (I'm sure I speak for the rest of the kids) will always thank the Lord for the wonderful Mother we had. She was a real pioneer and took everything in stride. She never complained of what had to be done. I think she was one of the greatest mothers of all times, always wanting the best for her kids that she could provide. She was unselfish to a fault, never thinking of herself, always of her family.
Daddy was a good man, a hard worker, a fine family man, always provided for his family, we never missed any meals, we always had the necessities, clothes, etc. He loved his wife and children dearly and spent time playing with his children and providing things for them to play
with. He loved to hold the younger children on his lap and sing to them. He had a good singing voice. Daddy was strong physically and was strong-willed and we usually did things his way. Our lives seemed to run along pretty smoothly, but I think our lifestyle was very hard on Mama. I think Daddy was the adventurous type and needed new adventures along the way to keep the adrenalin flowing evenly. Although this way of living was hard on Mama, she went along with it for Daddy's sake, so he would be happy and she took life as it came, without complaint.
Mama and Daddy's forebears were all hearty pioneer stock who braved the wilderness to forge new empires in the West. They were brave and unafraid to make new trails into the uncharted wilderness, to take up homesteads, make a home, to work and toil and make the land give them sustenance and clothes for their growing families.
Mama's parents, John and Hettie Murdy, as a young married couple with a two-year-old son, moved from Iowa and took up a homestead in South Dakota in 1884 and there made the soil deliver a living so they could raise a family. They braved those cold winters for 22 years. Ten of their twelve children were born there. The first son was born in Iowa and the last daughter in California. They sold their farm and moved to California in 1905 when our Mother, Edith, was thirteen.
Daddy's parents, Marion and Nancy Jane Harris, both came across the plains in covered wagons on the Oregon Trail in 1852, the Harris' headed for Oregon and the Swinney's on their way to California. Grandma was less than a year old and Grandpa was six years old. There were many who died in those early migrations because of the hardships, accidents and diseases such as cholera caused by polluted water. Marion's mother, Mary Harris, died on the trail and one of the children. Little Marion took sick with a fever, his condition kept getting worse and worse. He became comatose and there seemed to be no pulse. It was decided by those in the know that he had died. They wanted to bury him but "No", his father still felt a warm place over his heart. He said, “As long as I can feel that warm place over his heart, you are not going to bury my son." Later they again could feel a pulse and his father nursed him back to health. He grew up to be a strong young man and later became our grandfather.
I guess some of these pioneer genes must have been passed on to our Daddy because he was a restless man and didn't stay in one place for long. After awhile he wanted to move on and do something different. He seemed to want to get into new adventures, something that would be a big challenge.
When we three boys came down to California with Mama on the Southern Pacific Railroad, Daddy stayed up North to work one more season in lumbering. Since he had worked out in the woods, in the hills and the valleys of Washington harvesting the big fir pine and hemlock trees to send to the sawmills to be made into lumber, he decided he would like to work in the other end of the industry and see how the finished products were produced.
It was early in the year of 19I9 and the mill had not opened yet for the season’s run. They had, however, posted the jobs that were available and what each job paid. Daddy looked down the list and picked out the one that paid the most, an edger. Now Daddy didn't know an edger from a banana peddler but the price was right. In his interview with the owner, Daddy was asked how many years of experience he had running an edger. Well, Daddy had to admit he didn't know what an edger even looked like, let alone know how to run one, but he liked what it paid. The poor owner almost tumbled out of his chair but he recovered quickly and gathering his wits about him, he remembered it was about a week before the mill would open and every circular saw in the place needed sharpening. The next question, "Do you know anything about sharpening circular saws?" This was right down Daddy's alley. As a young man he had worked on a large circular saw, cutting up firewood and had sharpened it many times and knew exactly how it should be done. "I sure can," Daddy answered, "that's one of the things I'm really good at."
The man handed Daddy a file. "Sharpen that big saw over there," pointing to a nearby saw. Daddy went to work and when he finished the man came over and looked at it "Wow!" he exclaimed, “You may not know an edger from a router but you sure file a mean saw." Then he said, "You are hired. You can sharpen saws all this week and we will see what we can do when we start up next week."
Daddy worked all week side by side with the boss and by start-up time everything was in fine fettle, humming harmoniously. By now the boss had taken a great liking to Daddy. He said, ''Tell you what. I'm going to put an excellent edger operator with you to show you how to run this machine. If you can pick it up in a week or two, the job is yours." Daddy picked it right up and ran the edger until the plant shut down in the fall. He not only held up his part of the operation but, when he was ahead and out of material to process, he would jump in and help someone that was having trouble on his machine with work backing up. He would give him a helping hand to get caught up. When the plant shut down in the fall, the boss begged him to come back the next season but Daddy said, "Sorry, I'm headed for California and won't be back."
Meanwhile in California we were living with Grandma and Grandpa Murdy on their 10-acre farm at a place called Smeltser, between Wintersburg and Westminster, where they had a dairy. The mail came by rural route from Santa Ana. It is now Huntington Beach, near the cross streets of Beach and Edinger. Mama was having a good time being with Grandma and Grandpa and catching up on all the news about her family. We kids were getting acquainted with our Grandma and Grandpa. We were too little when we left California to remember them and of course Ralph was born while we were in Oregon. Grandma and Grandpa were wonderful people and we soon learned to love them.
Grandpa was quite a tease and would give different ones in the family nick names that usually seem to stick. He looked at little Ralph who seemed so jolly and happy most of the time and he named him ''Happy." That name stuck and was the only name he went by for many years. During this time I started going to kindergarten at Seabright School on Beach Boulevard in Wintersburg, which is now Beach and Warner. Ella, Grandma and Grandpa's youngest daughter, was going to school there at the time, but I don't remember what grade she was in. She was seven years older than I.
Next scene: Daddy comes back to California. It must have made a big impression on me because that is one thing that sticks in my memory like it was yesterday. On the way to the Murdys to reclaim his wife, he had stopped somewhere and got a shave and haircut and a shampoo. Daddy, at age 32, was a very handsome man, with his dark hair parted just so and combed with a rooster's tail on the top front, with his smooth shave and cologne, he looked and smelled wonderful. We kids were so glad to see him. I remember climbing up on his lap and snuggling up to his face. It seemed so good to have my Daddy back.
After Daddy got back from Washington we lived in two different houses in the area, one was on Beach Boulevard near Wintersburg and the last one was on Golden West Avenue at the top of the hill in Huntington Beach. I remember three things that happened while we were there, the last one was the most exciting. First, we had some chickens and a cow. A weasel got into the chicken pen at night and killed most of the chickens. Second, Mama went out twice a day and milked the cow. Ralph had a little tin cup and he would always follow Mama out with his tin cup when she went to milk. She would fill his cup with the warm milk right from the cow and he would drink it right down. He must have liked it real well because he was always there when she went to milk.
The next and last thing I remember happening while we lived in Huntington Beach, turned out to be the beginning of this saga, "On the Trail of a Steam Shovel." One day Daddy came driving up in the yard with a brand new shiny 1920 Ford truck. It wasn't complete though, only a Ford truck chassis. He came driving in, sitting on the gas tank. There was a radiator, hood, cowling, steering wheel, motor, transmission, driveshaft, rear end and frame. It had solid rubber tires on the back and thirty by three and one half inch pneumatic tires on the front, two headlights, two finders in front and two taillights in the back. That was about it, no body or no seats. (That's why he was sitting on the gas tank.) After he got it home, he found a roadster body somewhere and built a flat truck bed out of wooden planks. Later on he found a rear seat from a Ford touring car. When the whole family went somewhere together, he would put the rear seat on the bed of the truck, behind the front seat and we were off in style, we boys riding on the seat in the back. Talk about buckling your seat belts: our whole seat was just sitting there, nothing to hold it on in a crash. Fortunately, we never had a crash.
Our Uncle Charlie Murdy, Mama's oldest brother, owned a steam shovel. He was a contractor and took jobs wherever someone needed a steam shovel, so he moved around a lot. Soon after Daddy bought the truck and fixed it up so we were mobile once more, Daddy decided to go to work for Uncle Charlie, running his steam shovel. I don't think Daddy had ever operated a steam shovel before, but that didn't bother him. He had never seen a piece of machinery he didn't like. In no time he was operating it like a "pro." So we are starting out to follow a steam shovel. Whither it goeth, we know not, but who cares; it sounds exciting, doesn't it?
After Daddy went to work for Uncle Charlie in 1920, the first job was way out on the desert almost to Death Valley, in a lake bed, mostly dry, called Searles Lake, near the Town of Trona. The little town we lived in was owned by the Pacific Coast Borax Company and was called Borosolvay. Years later it was called by a simpler name, Argus. (It is kind of interesting that years later when I was 18, I went to work for this same company in Boron, California where I worked for 17 years.) There was one main street in the town of Borosolvay. The ground sloped up hill to the north from the street. Along this uphill side of the street was a long row of company houses. Further up the hill was a plunge of warm, filtered water where everyone could swim. A little further up the hill was the one-room school that housed all eight grades. On the other side of the street to the south and towards the lake was the large building where the brine from the lake was processed to manufacture various chemicals, borax, potash, etc. Also in this area was a large garage, shops and buildings, pertinent to the maintenance of the plant. Here also was located a large company store.
I think the lake, which was about 15 miles long and 4 miles wide, was dry most of the time. When many valuable chemicals were found on top and beneath the surface, a way was found to extract them from the lake profitably. The process used was a wet process. Water was pumped out on the lake in ponds where it became a brine and was pumped back into the plant and the different chemicals were extracted from the brine. Out on the lake was where Uncle Charlie and Daddy were working with the big steam shovel, making levees for the ponds. The ground was mushy and soft; the steam shovel had to be supported by huge mats, which were needed to keep the steam shovel from sinking out of sight in the muck. As I remember it, those mats were made out of several layers of 3 x 12 planks, crisscrossed and bolted together, big enough to support the weight of the huge machine. There were two of these long mats as they worked along building levees. When they came to the end of one mat, they would swing around behind and hook on to the mat, lift it on cables attached to the boom, swing it around in front and place it on the soggy soil and move ahead on to it.
We lived in one of the company houses on the street west of the school and Uncle Charlie and Aunt Nellie lived in a company house directly below the school.
In the fall of 1920, I started to school in the first grade at the one-room school on the hill. There are a couple of things I remember about that first year in school. I remember that there was a large unabridged Webster's dictionary on a pedestal in the back of the room with lots of pictures in it. I used to look through it a lot. The other thing I remember: I always wore a one-piece blue sailor suit to school. It had a flap that buttoned on the back side. When used the bathroom, I could get the flap unbuttoned but for some reason I could never get it buttoned back up. I would run down the hill, holding the flap up with one hand, to Aunt Nellie's house and have her button it up for me. It probably happened during recess or lunch so I didn't lose any school time in these non-curricular activities.
Well, the biggest event of the year was about to happen when our little sister Genevieve would be born on November 17, 1920. Mama and Daddy had planned for the event to happen at Grandma Murdy's in Smeltser, California. (My goodness, is that what it says on your birth certificate, Genny? Actually, it says Santa Ana.) To get ready for this event, Mama had to travel by freight train, passenger train, and street car to get to Grandma's. A freight train was the only public transportation out of the Searles Lake region to Mojave where you could catch the Southern Pacific passenger train to Los Angeles. So Mama, Glenn and Ralph climbed on board the caboose in Borosolvey, headed for Grandma's house. I stayed home with Daddy. I'm not sure if the jerking, jolting ride on the freight train speeded things up a little bit or not, but in due time Daddy told me I had a new little baby sister. I don't remember what Daddy told me when Mama left for grandma's. He probably said something like: "Mama's going down to Grandma's to pick up a new baby for our family." Of course they didn't teach all the facts of life in the first grade back then and I think it was better that way. There was no curiosity about what was going on; we just escaped that and went on with our play, thinking no more about it
In the summer of 1921 Uncle Charlie's contract was completed at Searles Lake and we moved to Corona, California where he had a new contract building dikes along the Santa Ana River. I started my famous career in the second grade in Corona. We worked our way down the river to Costa Mesa where Uncle Charlie had a new contract digging gravel out of a hillside for Orange County roads. Several events happened while in Costa Mesa: Daddy bought a five-ton White dump truck, we got our first dog and Glenn and I could have been killed, but we weren't.
We camped in our tent house in a little valley with several other people in tents, near where the gravel was being taken out. One morning a man came along, opened the tent flap and threw a little fox terrier puppy on our bed. She was white with black spots and a black tip on her tail, so we named her "Tippy." She was with us for many years.
Near where we lived was an oil well. At the time there was no drilling going on; it was just sitting there to attract kids. Glenn and Ralph wandered over there. (I, at the time was in school in the second grade.) Glenn spotted a platform along side of the oil derrick, that had a lot of heavy drill stems on it. He got up on the platform and started to walk across on top of the drill stems. All at once the drill stems started to roll. Glenn was thrown off balance and fell down between two drill stems. The drill stems rolled together as close as they could with him pinned between them. Glenn couldn't move. Ralph was very young but he sized the situation up and realized that Glenn was in serious trouble. He high-tailed it for home to get Mama. When he got home he was having a hard time making Mama understand him as he couldn't talk too well yet. He was swinging his arms and was very excited. He kept jabbering and pointing towards the oil well. Mama figured Glenn must be in some kind of trouble. They ran back to the oil well together and Ralph showed Mama where Glenn was stuck between the heavy pipes. Mama lifted one of the pipes off of him and rushed him to the doctor. Later on, when she and Daddy went down to look at the scene, she could not move the pipe at all. Although Glenn was badly bruised around the stomach area and couldn't eat solid food for a few days, there was no permanent damage .
When we had a chance we boys liked to ride with Daddy in his big White dump truck. It looked good and I thought it was the prettiest truck on the job. There were several Bulldog Mack trucks on the job and I thought they were ugly compared to Daddy's big White. One day I was riding with Daddy as he was hauling a load of gravel to a job. On the way we had to cross a wooden bridge. We were purring right along as we came to the bridge. Just as we got to the center of the bridge, the planking broke and with a loud "Bang" the truck dropped straight down until the frame of the truck was resting on the cross timbers. Talk about a sudden stop: one minute we were sailing right along, the next second the truck was perfectly still, but not little Vernon. He kept right on going. He finally lost flying speed and went into a stall and dropped to the gravel road bed. After getting up and brushing himself off, there seemed to be no damage. All systems seemed to be operational. This was the third close call I had had in my young life. The first was in Lordsburg, California. I was kicked by a mule, leaving his foot print in the middle of my back. The second was in Oregon when I was bounced out of the back seat of the Model T Ford and this was the third. There would be many more over the years. God has been good to me and I praise Him always.
Uncle Charlie had now completed another contract and he had signed a new one. This one would take us farther away, over the Ridge Route and into the San Joaquin Valley. I think I had better quit rambling on. You may all go to sleep on me, so we will save that for a later story. Bye for now.
Author's note: In this and prior and subsequent stories, where there is conversation or what people are thinking, I have sometimes used a little imagination to give the story flow and continuity. However, the main substance of all the stories are true and they all really happened.
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