MyStory3

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Through all their travels, the family kept their little dog, Flossie, with them. Etta had purchased her
in a pet shop in Denver, for $10, while in her travels following Chess across the country, in military training, before he was shipped overseas.
This was the month of June, and Mikie turned two years old there in Bakersfield, on that strip of ground between the lake and canal. A little cake was made over the campfire, and two matches,
wound with string, were placed on it, for candles. The weather was so hot, Mikie wore a little "loincloth" instead of clothing! Laurie was almost cool in a pretty, loose cotton dress and diaper.
She was nine months at the time, and still sleeping in the "six-month crib" she had been using since graduating from her banana box... She did not want to sit up, even at nine months! There was nothing wrong with her back, but she insisted on lying on it at all times, when not being held. Sometimes on her stomach. She was a very good baby (except when propped up in a sitting position... when she would cry and kick until she scooted down onto her back!). This little girl was eleven
months before she was willing to sit up! She had the straightest back of any child....
and the back of her head slightly flattened!

Chess and Etta picked up pop bottles and beer bottles along the highway, to buy milk for Wardie,
and sometimes even bought ice and made ice cream in an old hand-turned ice cream maker....
That was delicious!! Back in those days - the 40's - bottles were one cent each refund, and people usually tossed them out along the road. The family had plenty potatoes, picked up behind the digger and crew, and never went hungry. Mikie and Laurie were as brown as nuts by the time they left Bakersfield! No sunburns.

Daddy managed to earn enough money to put Mama and the children on a bus to go to Lodi. He wanted them to go stay with his mother and Ronnie while he took care of the mechanical problem
and got their belongings loaded up... Then he would be along. It didn't happen....

Etta, Mikie, and Laurie stayed with Blanche and Ronnie for about a month, and Etta worked in a cannery, processing peaches. Finally decided to do something different, since there was a problem with childcare. Grandma Blanche didn't feel up to the task. Etta managed to find work in a home, doing housework and caring for a child in exchange for room and board for herself and the two little ones. (She was now expecting an addition to the family... in April.) After applying for, and receiving assistance, the family rented a small cabin. It was now early March, 1948. One evening, Grandma Blanche and Ronnie knocked on their door, and surprised them with the long-absent Daddy!

When Chess'L returned, he decided to re-enlist in the Air Force, since he'd had an honorable
discharge and did very well in the service. He thought the re-enlistment would help him to re-adjust and keep him from straying again. The family rented a house in Vallrejo, CA, in a housing project up on a hill overlooking the Carquinez Straits. Right after moving into the new house, while Daddy was on the Air Base, Mama went into labor and after finding a friendly neighbor to watch the little ones, she got a ride to the Air Base hospital. It was a rainy day, March 25th, 1948. Impatient little Randy Neal arrived to be welcomed into the loving family. A dear little brown-eyed boy.

It was peace-time, and the Air Force sent Chess'L to a station in Alaska, where he remained
for several months, working on the base, chaufering the commissioned officers and doing
body repair and paint work on the military vehicles.

So, Etta, Mike, Laura, and Randy were left behind as Chess'L was shipped off to Alaska. Due to financial difficulties, he applied for, and received, a hardship discharge and was home within six months.

The family soon moved to Portland, Oregon, where the same scene was re-enacted in the summer of 1949. August 30, 1949 another dear little girl was welcomed into the family (Teresa Lynne)...and they began a trip through the apple country, working in the orchards for a time. They continued south and east, through Utah, visiting cousins (the Sanbergs), then south to Arizona, to pick cotton. It was winter now, being December, and the southland was having severe weather: snow!! No cotton-picking. The family and all the workers were in tents...in Waddell, Az., and no one had any money. It was cold and windy, with the wintry winds blowing under the tents, and all the children became ill with diarrhea and pink eye! The only heat was kerosene two-burner stove, which didn't give out much in the way of heat, so the children had to remain on the beds, wrapped in blankets.

After a visit to an old-timer, elderly doctor, who prescribed castor oil for all the children.....even the four month old baby, the scourage was overcome! In the meantime Christmas Day rolled around, and a tiny tree was found somewhere, which Etta managed to decorate with bits of paper and materials of uncertain origin. From the company store, one small gift for each was purchased, on credit. On Christmas morning, Mike with eyes sealed closed with the pink eye infection, opened and played with his gun and holster set, never indicating that he was troubled by not being able to see it. Remarkable for a five year old! Laurie, four years old, had a baby doll, and Randy, at two and a half, received a
car (probably inspiring his later interest in automobiles), and Baby Teresa was given a pretty rattle.

After Christmas, the children played with that little tree for days, wrapping, opening, and re-enacting the Christmas scene many times, along with some of the workers' children.

There were many hungry people in that cotton camp, and our little family invited others in their tent
to share with them the meager food supply. Etta knew how to stretch a can of mackerel, with oats and flour, etc., to make a platter of delicious fritters! Many an empty stomach was warmed and appeased
in that not-so-warm tent that cold December!!
By the first of the new year (1950), with some of the snow and ice melted, Chess'L was able to weigh
in enough cotton to get his family out of this miserable situation. They managed to get back to Sacramento, California, where Chess'L went to work at McClellan Field, as a mechanic.