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This is London
Calling
© By AbrahamLincoln
Times have changed. If I live until my birthday I will be 81 years old.
Our house, in Gordon, was purchased from the Arcanum National Bank
because the original owners lost everything during The Great Depression
and could not make payments. The taxes were past due at the county seat
in Greenville, Ohio and my dad went there and paid the sum of $300.00
for the back taxes and was given the deed to the property. The
depression was really bad and it ruined a lot of families—one man got
so depressed that he hung himself in his garage. My uncle, Chelsea,
lost his herd of hogs to Federal Agents who came to his farm and shot
them. He was told the government would send him a check for the dead
hogs but he told us that they never did. That was one way the
government used to keep the price of hogs up and not depressed.
I have no idea where my father got the money to pay the taxes on the
house I was born in but he paid them and we lived in that house on
Railroad Street in Gordon while I was growing up. My folks were
divorced before I was old enough to go to Gordon School and my dad who
was always out of work seldom sent us the $3.00 court-ordered alimony
payments. He moved out and left the house and contents to my mother and
me. Most of our food came from the vegetable garden—mother made enough
money washing Herb Hamel’s bushel basket of clothes to buy the few
things we had to have that we didn’t plant in the garden. What we had
to eat was in glass Mason canning jars under the bed—we ate a lot of
green beans, butter beans, and lima beans from vegetables mother grew
in the garden. We had no icebox or refrigerator so we could not keep
meat or things like butter and milk very long in hot weather. Mom would
pump a bucket of cold water from the well and put our butter and milk
in the water to keep it cool.
I remember people were in fear during World War II—the neighbor boys
were fighting somewhere in the world—sons were killed in Italy, Germany
and on islands we never heard of in the Pacific Ocean—Iwo Jima, Guam,
Peliliu, Tarawa and Guadalcanal. I had no idea that one day I would be
on top of Mount Suribachi looking out at the beaches where so many
brave soldiers died, scared to death by murderous fire from entrenched
Japanese soldiers determined to die there in the middle of nowhere to
keep their home islands and people safe from an invasion—and some
28,000 died during the struggle on Iwo Jima.
The blackouts we were ordered to observe at night added to my fears
that the “Japs,” would line up the people of Gordon and cut off our
heads. When the boys left for the service, we seldom got to see them
again until the war was over, over there. Most parents seemed to fear
their sons going to the Far East more than those whose sons were going
to Europe. I must have watched too many movies at the theater where the
newsreels showed the Japs shoving bamboo splinters underneath the
fingernails of American prisoner. I know I winced at that because I had
splinters get under my fingernails and cried buckets while mom somehow
got them out. I believe the war scared most of the children and a lot
of adults who were not able to join the armed forces. Adults bought a
lot of War Bonds used to finance the war—my dad paid $18.75 for a bond
that paid $25.00 after holding it for 10 years and he bought one bond
every month during the war years.
I have vivid memories of my school days when Miss Brown turned on the
small Crosley radio that the students had collected and sold old
newspapers and catalogs to scrap dealers to get money to buy it with. I
remember how we listened to Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London
while bombs fell all around him. He was a very popular radio news
announcer and his was one of the broadcasts the whole school listened
to on our small radio. Miss Brown insisted we listen and when the news
ended, she asked us to bow our heads and offer a prayer for the safety
of our fighting men overseas.
Praying was something done in school at the start of every school day.
I don't think it is allowed these days.
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