It was the summer of 1943 in the quiet, lazy town of Clovis, in eastern New Mexico. The world was in considerable turmoil, with WWII going at full blast and all. It was hardly noticed by the four little boys, playing marbles in Mil's front yard, out there between the sidewalk and the street and under the cool elms where it was shady. A few big insects and odd-looking flies were cruising around and hanging in the air like small helicopters, all the while buzzing, as if to complain about the heat. It was very warm in June.
Not much else seemed to be going on. WWII B17 Flying Fortresses were constantly droning and circling around the edge of town. They were based six miles west of town at the Clovis
Army Air Base, and were training to go overseas into harm's way.
The pretty movie star, Priscilla Lane, drove by and turned left into a driveway, four houses down the street. She was renting a house there with her captain husband who was stationed out at the base.
We kids were just out of school and at our tender age, those lazy, hazy days seemed like a whole eternity to us. We all had chores assigned to us, but it was too hot to work. Besides
too much hot sun could cause "that old polio." We had lawns to mow, weeds to hoe, chicken pens to rake, beans to plant in the garden---whatever. Work was not high priority stuff to us, and we could con mom a little but it'd better be finished when dad got home.
What did American boys do in those days do for fun? The list of activities was practically endless. When we weren't doing war effort stuff, like collecting old tin cans, finding old rubber tires, collecting paper, bacon grease, or aluminum, we could: spin tops, walk on stilts, play marbles, skate, bicycle, play cowboy, or Tarzan. We could play baseball, basketball, or football, nail stuff with our hammers and shingle nails. (We were notorious nailers: If it were there, and loose, and needed nailing, DEPEND ON US---we'd nail it, good and proper.) We built WWII model airplanes; we read "Dave Dawson in the R.A.F." If things got slow, we would put some gum on a string and go looking in "transler" holes, for those hairy spiders!
One of the most fun things was making a "Rubber Gun." You'd get a some 1X6 lumber and cut out a gun-shaped piece of it...with a handle, kinda like a pistol. Smooth it a little with sandpaper. You'd tape a clothespin on the back of the handle part. (This was your "trigger.") Then you'd cut an old car tire tube into slices about 3/4 inch wide...wrap one of these around the clothespin top to make it tight and so it would hold one of your rubber tube strips, stretched out to the end, about 2 1/2 feet. When you squeezed the bottom of your clothespin, the rubber strip under tension was released and would fly maybe 20-30 feet. If you got hit, it didn't hurt much.
When things got extra hot we'd play: "Jap Zeroes: Down In Flames." This required that we go home and change into swim trunks. Then we'd turn on the hose, and fill with water a low place in our clover lawn, making a nice puddle. The "gunner," holding the hard-spraying hose nozzle would get set; the Jap Zeroes (all the other kids) would rev up, turn on their sound effects, hold out their arms, and come a-roaring in, "rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-tat," guns blazing, and get a full fusillade of that wonderful cold water, and "go down in flames," crashing with a big splash right into that overworked low spot on my dad's lawn.
Later on, when we got tired, we would get ourselves PNB/jelly sans, or one of our mothers would have some frozen Koolade for us in ice trays; popsicle sticks would have been nice, but who had sticks then? Our moms would just tear up pieces of old dish towels for us to wrap our ice cubes and savor them! By then, the Clovis News-Journal had arrived and we'd spread it out and get down on the living room floor and read the daily B&W funnies. We had to know what was happening to Joe Palooka and Jerry Leemy, who were somehow stranded in France, behind Nazi lines, armed only with their cool .45's. (I owned one in plastic!)
Things were rationed in those days. We were too young, I guess, to worry much about it. In fact, quite a few things were rationed: gasoline, tires, sugar, coffee, meat, shoes, clothing--more things than I can remember. We kids could not get some important necessities, like Hersheys, Snickers, Baby Ruths, Best Pals, Bit O' Honeys, Paydays, or most important of all, Wrigley's Chewing Gum, and we did worry about that.
What happened on those rare occasions when we got ahold of some money? Let's look at several well-written paragraphs by an old friend of Clovis days, R.S.: "Mil, reading your post about 'wheat trucking, your grandad, and others....I was sitting at the kitchen table this morning, thinking about times past that we so much enjoyed, that kids today will never experience. One that came to mind was that during those very hot summers in Clovis, we would go to the market with a nickel or dime in our pocket and reach into the open soda box and dig through the ice and icy water for the last flavor that seemed to be lying on the bottom of the case.
The water was so cold that it made your arm and hand ache. You might have to reach into the water two or three times to get the bottle that you wanted. And after opening our selection on the corner of the soda box, we would take out our Scout knife to pry the cork off the inside of the pop lid to see if we had won a prize. Remember those days! Cokes came in those little green bottles and tasted good! I think it was the sugar sweetener they used, instead of this corn syrup mixed with who knows what.
Anyway, we always then went to the counter and paid for it. And then, of course, there were the watermelons bobbing around in a horse-watering tank outside the market, packed with 25 pound ice chunks, and the same numbing sensation...But, that's another story---for another time!" (Thanks to R.S., and we'll read you anytime!)
By one more summer we were out trying to get some kind of jobs; we needed spending money.
We liked those "Walking Liberty" silver half-dollars! Two summers later, I was doing a man's work
in Dad's laundry, as it tried to keep the airmen at CAAB in clean clothes. Stay tuned......
( Writer's note: When I was 59, I just had to see if I could make one of those "rubber guns"again like we made as kids. It came out pretty good!)-------30------BY MIL5/10/12
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