Our move to Northern California

Well, fans, here is a continuation of my childhood memories.

Just about my last memories of my childhood in Southern California were (are? I’m not quite sure of the grammar.) about Pearl Harbor Day. The family was visiting with the Prindles (Sp?) in Gardena. We had been to the beach that day. I recall being upset because their son had “stolen” my name: Robert Neal vs Robert Niel. And I vaguely recall Roosevelt’s “…a day that will live in infamy” radio address.

While I do not recall having been consulted or even being offered an explanation, the decision was made to relocate to Northern California in 1942, specifically to Santa Rosa. I can only assume that the reason was for my mother to be closer to her aging parents in Petaluma. My father gave up his teaching position at Riverside Junior College and took a similar position at Santa Rosa Junior College.

I recall very little about our home in Santa Rosa other than it was on a corner lot at 642 Dexter Avenue. It had a two-car garage behind the house, facing on the side street.

Speaking of the garage reminds me that over the Thanksgiving school recess my father drove to Oregon to visit with his family. While there he harvested a trailer load of Douglas fir Christmas trees from his 100 acre parcel. He towed the trailer home to sell the trees out of the garage. Incidentally he hid a box of apples under the trees to get by the agricultural inspection station.

The garage also reminds me of my first bicycle. My father bought it for me for $2.00.

My brother, Jerry, and I walked the few short blocks to school. We typically took a short cut through an apricot orchard. There was a small clearing inside the orchard that was planted with what we thought were green onions. So we helped ourselves and ate several samples. It turns out they were garlic and we reeked of garlic for some time.

Our departure from Santa Rosa comes with an interesting story. As I have noted, my father was teaching at the junior college. In early spring of 1943 he flunked the first five members of the basketball team in his Spanish class. The president of the college called him into the office and explained that “We don’t do that around here.” My father’s response was that students who do F work in his classes got F grades. He was not going to change the grades. The president’s response was “In that case we will be missing you around here next year.” To which my father responded “In that case you will be missing me a lot sooner than that.” He went to his office, packed his things and left.

Jerry and I finished the school term in our Santa Rosa school before joining our father on the chicken ranch in Petaluma that my parents had purchased from my maternal grandparents.

An interesting technical note: the electrical power frequency in Riverside was fifty cycles per second while the frequency in Santa Rosa was sixty cycles. So we had to get new clocks to keep accurate time.

I shall have to spend some time organizing my memories of life on the chicken ranch. There is so much to tell. (You have already heard about Woodrow.) More to come.