“Taut” in San Fran
As children most of us never understood how hard our parents worked to provide their family a better life than they had. We were lucky because our dad C.B. taught my brothers his chosen profession. When my brothers were nine, they went to work with our dad during the summer months. I once asked Dad if he had it to do over again what would he want to be? His answer:
“Just what I was, a carpenter, I enjoyed building and remodeling homes for people who loved them.”
I remember Dad studying for several months at night, for his contractor’s license. This was after he had worked all day in construction and then worked another job on the weekends. The manual he studied from was in two volumes, each a couple of inches thick. He had to travel to L.A. to take the extensive three day contractors exam. It was a real achievement to be a licensed contractor. He passed with an exceptionally high score and began his career in earnest.
Dad did not start out to be a carpenter and contractor. When he was in college, he worked as a surveyor for an oil company, then WW II exploded on the scene. We have not experienced in our lives the turmoil and uncertainty that my parents felt when suddenly their whole world was turned upside down. After the war dad decided that traveling around the world as a surveyor with wife and children in tow might not be the best idea. So he and my mother began to look for a place where they could start their lives and raise a family.
Dad was mustered out in San Francisco. The town was full to bursting with military and their families all looking for a place to settle. Mom and I had come to San Francisco to be with Dad. He had decided that in California there was an opportunity to live and work in a more hospitable climate than he would face if he returned to Oklahoma. After the ravages of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression there was little left for him in Oklahoma.
So where to live? My dad had been trained as a cabinet maker/carpenter by the Navy, and he reasoned that California would probably be needing both those skills as a huge number of men were choosing to stay in California
My dad had a friend who knew of an old man, a recluse, who owned two cabins high up in the hills outside of San Francisco. The old man lived in one of the two cabins and Dad’s friend thought the man might rent them the other if Dad cleaned and repaired it. Well, that was where my parents started their lives together. I was about two and my mother was expecting my brother Rick, so getting a place quickly was a priority.
The cabin was just that: a cabin with little or no amenities. There was running water and electricity but to get to the cabin you had to hack your way through the under-growth and trees. Dad worked all day till dusk clearing the brush, or what he thought was brush, and Mom began cleaning the cabin. At dark when he came in Mom was startled to see that he was covered in welts and rashes all over his exposed skin, which was a lot of surface since he had finally removed his shirt when he got too hot working in the summer sun. Dad said, “he didn’t feel well.” What an understatement! He always down played any illness he had.
Mom began to panic, there she was with Dad looking like something from a horror film and not knowing what to do. She was pregnant with a two-year-old clinging to her skirt, frightened witless by a daddy she didn’t recognize, stuck on the side of a mountain. Well, she did the only thing she could do. She ran to find the old man recluse. She wanted to see if he could tell her what was wrong with Dad and if the old man had a phone or of knew of a doctor in the area.
The old man came back with Mom to see what was the matter. The moment he stepped into the cabin he took charge. He began washing Dad in warm water and soap all the while clicking his teeth and shaking his head. The old man worked on Dad for a long time. He mixed up some concoction and began patting it onto Dad’s skin, being careful to not break the blisters that were everywhere. He told my mom he didn’t know if Dad was going to make it; this was the worst case of poison oak he had ever seen.
The brush that Dad had spent all day clearing had poison oak in it. Dad was so intent on clearing around the cabin because of the danger from snakes, coyotes, and fire, that he just worked his way through it. He knew what poison oak looked like, but try as he might to avoid it there was little he could do to protect himself.
Mom spent the next few days helping Dad by washing and medicating his poor, inflamed skin. Dad recovered and I think it must have done something to his immune system because he never again had a problem with poison oak when he came into contact with it from time to time on job sites up in the mountains at Big Bear and Laguna.
That was not the only adventure my parents had while they lived in the cabin. Not long after, they had an experience that only could be an “I love Lucy” episode. When my dad got out of the Navy, he knew he would have to buy a car. He would need it as he had started working for a contractor as a carpenter. He found a little old used Hudson coup that was in pretty good repair, or so he thought. The little black car got him back and forth to work and taking Mom to get groceries and on errands.
They knew that when they had saved up enough money, they would get Dad a pickup and Mom would have the car since the cabin, was a long walk to get to a store. Mom had never had a car of her own before she and Dad married and she was looking forward to a little transportation security. Well, as all plans of man, it was a bust from the get-go!
One night while they were sleeping, the emergency brake let go and the little black Hudson coasted down the mountain and right into the forest. How it missed all those trees is a miracle that only God could explain. The next morning when Dad went out to get in the car for work, he was flabbergasted. Where was the car? No one would steal a little beat-up Hudson! As Dad stood there, his eyes came to rest on the bottom of the hill on which the cabin sat. There, among the sheltering pines, sat the little black Hudson. Dad tried to get the car started, but the Hudson had a history of not starting unless you got it rolling down hill to get up speed so the engine would turn over.
Fast-forward to the next day. Dad borrowed a big heavy surplus Army truck from a friend in San Francisco. He had worked out a plan of attack to get the Hudson back up the hill, which was the only way out of the trees. Dad backed the behemoth of a truck down the hill and fastened a heavy chain to the front of the car and to the back of the truck. He was going to tow the car back up the hill.
“Mary get in the truck and slowly pull forward till the line is taut and then go like a bat out of hell up the hill. Don’t stop for anything till you get to the top. I will be in the car guiding it out of the trees, and maybe I can get it to start while I am being towed.”
Mom got in that huge truck, which she had never driven before, got it started, no small feat, and then went like “a bat out of hell” up the mountain. Suddenly the cab of the truck began to fill with black smoke, it came boiling out from under the hood and dashboard. She couldn’t see anything but she knew not to stop till she got to the top. Finally the top! She leaped from the cab of the truck coughing, choking, and rubbing her eyes. When she could breathe again, she looked toward the back of the truck expecting to see the little black Hudson. It wasn’t there! As her bleary eyes focused on the heavy chain her gaze followed it to it’s end, where she expected to see Dad and the Hudson. There lay the front bumper of the car. She raised her head and looked back down the hill. There stood my Dad in front of the Hudson just staring up at her. Mom slowly began the decent of the hill as my dad stood silent at the bottom. When she got down to Dad, he just looked at her and asked:
“Mary do you know what taut means?”
“No!” came her reply. I did what you told me to do. I went like “a bat out hell” and that stupid truck filled up with black smoke so I couldn’t see anything. What happened?”
Well it seemed that with the chain not taut, the sudden yank pulled off the bumper and part of the grill on the front of the car. As to the black smoke in the behemoth, it seems Mom forgot to take off the emergency brake, and that was the burning rubber that made the smoke that made her blind, that caused the chain to yank off the bumper that left the little Hudson in the sheltering pines.
Dad eventually pulled the car up the hill and got it repaired. They lived in the cabin a while longer until they got a place in town. Granny Ross came to take care of us while Mom had my brother Rick. Oh, and Mom never forgot what taut meant again.
