Getting from there to here...
As I get older , I realize I have many more yesterdays than I will have tomorrows and it makes me pause to wonder how I got from there to here. My footprints are all over the place and they started 81 years ago in a place much like the Joad family in John Steinbecks book "Grapes of wrath".
During the great depression of the thirties and the dustbowl in Oklahoma, our family chose to load our 1931 Ford sedan with all our worldly goods and head for California, "The land of milk and honey" along with thousands of other "Okies", that sought jobs, land, dignity, and a future.
Going west on Route 66 our family discovers that we are not alone in this adventure other families are making the same journey, charmed by the same promise. In makeshift camps alongside the road, we hear many stories from others, some are coming back from California, and many are forced to confront the possibility that their prospects may not be what they hoped.
My dad was a journeyman auto mechanic and had a job waiting for him; but many of my relatives were at the mercy of the landowners and they find little hope of making a decent wage, as there was an oversupply of labor and an absence of rights, and the big corporate farmers are in collusion, while smaller farmers are suffering from collapsing prices.
We end up in Tracy, California and landed on the wrong side of the railroad tracks where hobos and migrant farm workers were abundant. I learned at an early age to lie about my birth place. It changed from Cordell, Oklahoma to Bakersfield, California to lose the stigma of being an "Okie".
That was then much like being called the "N" word to black people today and that lie came back to haunt me when I retired and filed for my social security. This required a birth certificate and mine said Oklahoma instead of California like the rest of my school and military records stated. When I explained the reason for my lying, the younger people filing my claim didn't see the relevance because many of them were ignorant of our history.
Today, I take pride in calling myself an "Old Okie boy" but not back then when it carried so much garbage.
This all changed 70 years ago on December 7, 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, it was on a Sunday and I was almost 11 out playing on the school ground behind our house. We had just come home from Sunday school and church and mom was preparing lunch when I heard this boy hollering Extra, Extra, read all about it. He was out selling news papers describing what had just happened.
The shock that fell over our nation was mind boggling, every one who had a radio was glued to the speakers. We got a map of the world and pinned it to the wall close by our radio to keep up with the news of WW 2. Our life changed so rapidly after that and we all grew a bit older due to the start of this war.
Many things occurred during that period. The United States came together as a nation to get behind the war and support our country.
One of the most important was to raise money to fight the war. The government started to sell defense bonds as they were called in those days. Scrap drives such as metal, rubber, and even silk stockings plus many other items were collected.
To buy gas, shoes, sugar, coffee, and you had to have ration stamps, so many stamps for the value of the products. Gas, tires, new farm equipment, cars and trucks were not sold without hardship orders from the government allowing those purchases.
My dad like many others quit his job to move to Richmond and work at Kaiser shipyard # 2. We stayed in Tracy due to lack of housing in Richmond at that time. Dads day off was Thursday and he would come home to see his family. He like many others were sleeping on cots in someone's garage waiting for a place to rent. It was at that time we moved to 39 Garrard Blvd. in Atchison Village. Built in 1941 by the U.S. government to house the vanguard of an influx of workers for the burgeoning Kaiser shipyards, the modest 450-unit complex was hailed at the time as a cutting-edge example of worker housing designed following the tenets of the "city beautiful" and "garden city" movements. Atchison Village, built across the street from the former location of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad depot and yards, was designed with winding streets, spacious yards, simple one and two story wood duplexes and fourplexes and a community center and park.
We lived here a couple of years while dad worked in the shipyards and he finally got fed up with the slackers where he worked and quit. They worked around the clock three shifts and dad as a machinist and mechanic would be working on a project that still needed a few hours to complete, and when he came back two shifts later the project was just as he left it.
The two years I spent in Richmond were important to where I am as a man today as I had a lot of free time to experience independence. After school I would get a bunch of newspapers and ride the ferries that transported workers across the bay and sell the papers at a profit. I made a bundle when Errol Flynn was on trial for rape and everybody wanted a paper. That along with getting stove oil for renters in the village. The stove oil was free but you had to get it from a big tank in the village. I had a red wagon and several cans for oil and would deliver them to my customers for money.
In 1983/84 I was working at the Standard Oil refinery in Richmond and it was located not far from where we lived during our stay in Richmond. I toured through the old neighborhood a couple of times and was very disappointed in the run down condition it had become. While researching a bit, I find that today it is in much better condition. http://www.rosietheriveter.org/parkav.htm
I have some very positive memories here playing on the large green lawns, learning the facts of life and getting involved with others collecting scraps for the war effort.
El Monte was our next move and dad had his own business. It was on the corner of Lambert and Peck Rds. with four stalls in the garage to repair cars and a gas station in front to pump gas and lubricate automobiles. I would come there after school to help dad and his other mechanics by pumping gas, lubing cars and changing oil and when that was slow......help tear down engines in cars for needed repair. Dad was great to let us experiment on our own ideas of repair knowing full well his method was better; but he also knew that mistakes were the best teachers and you learned from those mistakes.
Worked for dad and US Rubber company in LA building tires off and on when they got a big contract and would work 4....6 hour shifts a day and that worked out perfect for me on the midnight shift and getting off work at 6AM showering and driving back to El Monte to go to high school. Did that until 1949 and my brother Neal called to get me up to Grass Valley to get rich logging. Logging was great, Grass Valley and all the surrounding country was beautiful, but getting rich didn't happen.
I fell in love with the country, people and truck driving but it was seasonal and after my time in the army and marriage to Janey I had to move to Sacramento to work full time. Always wanted to move back up to Grass Valley when we retired but Janeys health kept us close to Kaiser hospital and now that she is gone my ties are still in Sacramento with my children and grandchildren.
I make it up to Gods country quite often to visit friends and relatives and that just about sums up how I got from "There to here".
I am still in pretty good health and hope to still visit a few way points on my GPS of life. I am banking on the century point in my journey and to that point I would like to make an open invitation to any of you gnarly bikers that might read this story to join me on February 11, 2031 for a ride on some level plain, riding in rhythm with a passing train..........Ken Kinder