Wish Books and Hardwood Floors

Edited and reposted from December 19, 2007


In the early 1960s, shopping was such a special occasion for my family that we went on purposeful expeditions only several times a year.  One time was during the inevitable "back to school" rush, and another always happened several weeks before Christmas.

My sister and I were never under the care of a babysitter, so on the chosen Friday night we waited for Dad to arrive home from work with great anticipation. We gulped a dinner of something like macaroni and cheese with canned green beans. Afterward, Mom struggled to get a coat and hat onto my fidgety little sister, and then checked for a third time that the shopping list was actually in her purse. Finally, we piled into Dad's red and white '57 Ford Ranch Wagon for a drive into town.

Becky sat sandwiched in the front seat between Dad and Mom, while I held on tight in the back seat and pressed my nose to the window, watching as headlights, taillights, and streetlights whizzed by. The color and sparkle of nighttime and festive lights, magnified through rain drops on the window glass, added to my holiday spirit.

We lived in the Richmond Annex along Carlson Boulevard, which consisted of homes built on landfill during the post World War II building boom. Woolworth's on Macdonald Avenue was the store of choice when Mom came out to Richmond from Minnesota in 1945. Department stores quickly became popular in the post war years, though Macy's was a little too expensive for Mom's taste. Once in a great while, we ventured into Oakland to visit the tall Sears Roebuck building, mostly to pick up catalog orders.




















Macdonald Avenue at night, Richmond, 1959. Richmond Street Scenes


For us, Christmas gift-buying usually meant driving through the rain and the dark into downtown Richmond to shop at Montgomery Ward. After Dad found a parking spot, we climbed up the few short steps to enter the store and get out of the rain. Inside, the overheated department store immediately made us feel uncomfortable: our wool coats began to steam and smell, and our wet shoes clicked and slipped against highly polished hardwood floors. The foreign sounds of elevator bells and far-away voices on the intercom captured my attention as we wove around islands of neatly piled clothing, as well as other shoppers. At the back of the store was a special area set up for Christmas, and we made a beeline for that before my sister's attention span had a chance to wane.

Mom had been formulating what to buy for weeks, but she always took my sister and I to have a look at some of the things we'd been drooling over in the catalog, known as the"Wish Book." Though tempted by what we saw, we never begged--we were taught restraint. Even so, my active little sister found it difficult to keep from touching all of the glittery treats among the displays, because she loved everything. But, greedy or entitled? Never! We could point and sigh and smile and hope, and that was all we ever needed
to do.

After World War II, Montgomery Ward had become the third-largest department store chain. In 1946, the Grolier Club, a society of bibliophiles in New York City, exhibited the Wards catalog alongside Webster's dictionary as one of 100 American books chosen for their influence on life and culture of the people. The brand name of the store became embedded in the popular American consciousness and was often called by the nickname "Monkey Wards," both affectionately and derisively.

In the 1950s, the company was slow to respond to general movement of the American middle class to suburbia. While its old rivals Sears, J.C. Penney, Macy's, and Dillard's established new anchor outlets in the growing number of suburban shopping malls, the top executives thought such moves as too expensive, sticking to their downtown and main street stores until the company had lost too much market share to compete with its rivals. Its catalog business had begun to slip by the 1960s...

--Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Ward

Santa was in the store, of course, but after several unsuccessful attempts to get my sister to sit on his lap, Mom gave up. Becky was terrified by certain things, and one of them just happened to be Santa. Santa Claus in storybooks was a grand idea, but the reality of Santa-in-the-flesh was just too unsettling for her. I am reminded of a time when Becky was about three years old and Mom came home with new, dark-rimmed glasses. Oh, how Becky screamed and screamed - she was inconsolable! Poor Mom had to schedule another appointment and select something a bit less scary. You would never think that my sister, as a grown woman, would be into horror movies and collectibles, now would you?

When the tour of the toy department was completed and any grumbles had been quieted, Mom took us to look at clothing--a huge, dubious wasteland that made up most of the department store. That was Dad's cue to sneak back to the toy area and buy what Mom had instructed. I always knew what was happening, but it was more fun to pretend that I didn't.

Mom struggled to keep my sister in tow while searching for the perfect flannel shirt for Grampa, the tights Becky needed to match her cute holiday dress, or linens for Aunt Mabel. After the shopping was completed--or everyone had reached their tolerance limits--we all piled back into the station wagon for the drive home, grateful to be in the cool evening air once again. The purchased gifts were secretly stowed in the back of the wagon, safe in the dark from prying eyes and distanced from curious fingers.

While Mom and Dad recovered from sticker shock and the stress of another holiday buying expedition, the family headed home to the little white stucco house with red wood shutters in the Richmond Annex. We all anticipated another happy Christmas, but, we had made Montgomery Ward even happier, I'm sure.

My Childhood Home: Then & Now

Oh, the places the internet can take you now.  It has been 12 years since I last visited the San Francisco Bay Area and drove by the house where I spent most of my childhood on Carlson Boulevard, in the Panhandle Annex of Richmond, California. I discovered that I need not drive all the way to California to see what's up in the old 'hood, however.  We can fly nearly anywhere via Google Maps and look down upon fields, yards, and rooftops, and engage in innocent voyeurism from afar much like a pedestrian taking an early morning stroll.  If these techniques do not offer enough input, then online real estate listings will provide the rest, including photographs of exteriors, and even interiors whenever properties go up for sale.  But, in these photos our old stomping grounds can often be unrecognizable due to removed walls, added windows and structures, completely updated kitchens, and the like.  One thing I did recognize in a current photograph of the exterior of my childhood home was a black lava boulder that became a fixture at the bottom of our walkway.  It is still there today... but, more about that in a bit.



View Larger Map


The Richmond Panhandle Annex is the neighborhood shaded in blue.

My mother was raised on a Minnesota farm, and as a young adult, she worked seasonally at Richmond canneries.  She knew how to save money on a low income, so she was able to provide the down payment on our bungalow after she married Dad.  Our first house could not have been more than 1,000 square feet, with a living room, two small bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen that looked out onto the backyard, and a dining room.  Off the dining room there was a laundry room that connected to the one-car garage, and hiding underneath the laundry room was a small concrete cellar, intended as a air-raid shelter.  The house was built along the west coast during the threat of U. S. involvement in World War II (1940), and the architect seems to have taken family security quite seriously.  The cellar was accessed by lifting up an angled double-door, which sat against the back of the house much like an old-fashioned tornado shelter.  When Mom later had a family room built along that exterior back wall, a trap door in the laundry room floor became the only access.  A sump pump was installed in the cellar floor to deal with the constant moisture problem, courtesy of San Francisco Bay.  We always did battle mildew in that house.

Our lot was 7,500 square feet, bordered to the north by another single-family bungalow, and to the south by a two-story tri-plex apartment building.  Like most homes, the garage served us well for storage, and Dad's Ford fit nicely in the driveway.  The house was white with red shutters and a painted red porch and walkway, and it remained that way for many years.




Dad (Bill Wheeler) and me, with my favorite doll, Jane,  in front of the original shed at the back of the Carlson Blvd. house in April 1955.  We moved to the house that spring from a duplex apartment shared with Dad's cousin.


Growing up in the house on Carlson Boulevard meant a series of small things to me as a child.  Before my sister was born, and just after, I was regularly encouraged to play by myself in the backyard.  This meant regular visits with our beagle, who lived near the chicken coop and rabbit cage beside the shed.  The original shed that came with the house was later torn down and rebuilt by Dad and my maternal grandfather, Ernest Johnson.  The new shed was painted barn red to match the shutters on the house.  In addition to watching our animals, I spent my leisure time "popping" snapdragon flowers whenever Mom was not looking, climbing the wood fence to study the passion flowers growing over the neighbor's arbor, making cities out of baby powder cans and bottles on the lawn for my toy cars, or just laying on my back studying cloud formations.  When I was a little older and Mom was willing to trust me with the shed key, I sometimes took solitary sojourns to look at Dad's tools, even though I did not get to learn how to use many of them.  Still, I managed to pound more than a few nails into blocks of wood during those years, and came away with greasy enough hands that my shed adventures seemed satisfying enough.



The Wheeler home on Carlson Boulevard in Richmond, California, ca. 1956.

The essence of any family life, of course, is what goes on within four walls during the many hours of togetherness.  On Carlson Boulevard, my routine pretty much centered around a strict bedtime, and usually a breakfast of toast, jam and milk, the standard peanut butter or bologna sandwich for lunch with fruit and cookies, and whatever we had on hand for dinner: meatloaf, lamb or pork chops with potatoes, and (yuck) canned vegetables.  Whenever we had ham, it was the pre-cooked breakfast type that Mom would then fry to smithereens in a cast iron skillet.  Food was just sustenance, and she did what she could with the bargain groceries Dad sought out at the local Safeway.

 

My K-6 school days involved piano lessons from Mrs. Alva Anderson once a week before school, and walking the long blocks to Alvarado Elementary along a busy four-lane boulevard and under the busy I-80 overpass. More concrete awaited me at school, which was built atop a slope with a small play yard on the same level as the single story school building, and two large play yards cascading below.  Each level was separated by mountainous concrete embankments, with not a tree or a patch of dirt on the grounds, except for the small lawn at the office entrance. 

There are also sensual memories that linger from Carlson Boulevard, like listening to the mournful Alcatraz Island fog horn blaring from the middle of the Bay during periods of dense fog, and the tingling scent of eucalyptus trees in nearby Alvarado Park, part of the East Bay Wildcat Canyon Regional Park system.

As a new homeowner, Mom had visions of self-sufficiency like she experienced back on the farm.  There was at least one occasion when a batch of chicks was kept warm under a heat lamp on the laundry room floor, awaiting placement in the backyard chicken coop... ducklings, too, although they fared much less well than the chickens.  The poultry venture only lasted a few short years, however, until complaints from a neighbor put an end to our attempts at urban farming.  We have not been the only ones who were ever ignorant of zoning rules, however.  I had to laugh out loud in many places when I first read Farm City:  The Education of an Urban Farmer, by Novella Carpenter, which details an adventure in backyard self-sufficiency in nearby Oakland, in the midst of a more extreme urban environment than I ever experienced.

After my sister, Becky, was born,  she soon developed into a playmate with distinct preferences.  I do not remember how many hundreds of times I had to play "Mousetrap" on the living room floor or listen to the dreaded recording of "The Rooster With The Purple Head."  All for the love of family!  It was also at the house on Carlson where I watched the Beatles perform their famous stint on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, and hid under the blankets at night after watching the terrifying "Creature From the Black Lagoon" on our black and white television set.  It was not my first sleepless night, however.  I never did understand why Mom made me sleep in her twin bed just after my sister was born, while she stayed with the baby in my bedroon.  Didn't she know that there were alligators living in her and Dad's closet, just waiting to slither across a darkened room and snap at stray little arms and legs?

The dark, sparkling lava boulder I mentioned earlier became a permanent part of our front yard in about 1960, though it was never intended to be. The "boulder incident" occurred during one of our annual vacations in Oregon. Each August, Dad would take his two weeks vacation from the Bell Packing plant in Emeryville and drive our 1957 Ford Ranch Wagon northward, to Salem. My mother had a fair number of relatives in the Salem area: my aunt, grandfather, great aunts and uncles, not to mention cousins. During one visit when I was about 8-10 years old, Dad took a couple of the men in the family to do some rock hounding, probably in eastern Oregon. While he was away from the others (bathroom break, perhaps), my great uncle, Frank Johnson, and a cousin, Harvey Moen, managed to displace a large volcanic rock from a nearby outcropping.  Dad returned to find a big object perched atop the station wagon, looking rather like a lighthouse optic section had sprouted on the roof.  He must have been angry, but Mom does not recall his showing more than a mild annoyance. He probably did not want to admit that he had been taken.  At 5'3" in height, Dad could not even begin to move the boulder on his own without damaging the wagon, and he never would have demanded help from the pranksters themselves.  I do not have any memory of what occurred after that, but Mom says we drove the 800 miles + back to the Bay Area with that lava rock perched atop the car. She was amazed that the Highway Patrol did not pull us over and ask about it. At home, a friend or neighbor helped lift the dense rock off the car.  Where the rock first came off the car is where it stayed, at the edge of the driveway. The boulder was so heavy that it left a crease on the roof of the Ford.



The Wheeler home on Carlson Blvd. in 1965.  Note the lava boulder at the bottom of the walkway steps, left-hand side, in front of the trailer.

  

Like most urban neighborhoods, Richmond, including the Annex, has had its ups and downs.  The City of Richmond, which borders San Francisco Bay, experienced a population explosion in the 1940s due to the shipyards and other wartime manufacturing.  But, decreasing industrial jobs after the war and the relocation of many businesses to newer areas created an economic depression, and property began losing value.  By the 1970s, the area was decaying rapidly.  As per example, other owners of the house on Carlson Boulevard had bars installed on the front door and windows at some point.  Richmond, sad to say, developed an infamous reputation based increased crime rates and gang activity over the past few decades.

The same house in 2001, some 36 years after my family moved to El Cerrito.  Bars had been installed on the front door and windows--a sign of significant change in the neighborhood. The lava boulder remains, barely visible below the door of the white pickup.

A comment was posted on Yelp:  City of Richmond by a former resident, and I could not have put it more eloquently:

This is not a review of Richmond, but a lament, really... Richmond is the best little city that could have been but never was. It has everything going for it, all the ingredients that could have made a nice town: great old architecture (what hasn't been torn down yet), cheap housing and some beautiful old houses, great location and weather. It used to be a real working man's town... Then they tore down downtown. Richmond has been the victim of poor urban planning, endemic racism (from all sides), and an inert and inept city government. Add crime, drugs and a huge population that has lost its ability to function without public assistance and it is a recipe for dysfunction...  don't get me wrong, I still like Richmond because I'm from there... Overall however, when I am there I just can't wait to get out again... One thing I have to say about growing up in Richmond is that I can definitely tell the difference between backfire and gunshot.

The good news is that the old neighborhood may be on the verge of re-surging values, both socially and economically.  Young business professionals, who are finding a shortage of affordable housing elsewhere in the Bay Area, are snapping up real estate "deals," and buying older, less expensive homes and refurbishing them to the max. The latest owners of my childhood home have not only taken off the iron bars, but the interior has been completely modernized in recent years, with a covered deck added to the backyard.  Things are now looking up again for the Panhandle Annex.  No matter what changes lie ahead for my childhood community, I will always have my memories of growing up as part of a Richmond blue collar family with strong, traditional values--a beginning as rock-solid as that lava boulder that still keeps guard along my old walkway.

"Whiskerinos" and the Golden Jubilee of Richmond, California



Ernest Johnson, age 58, dressed for the Golden
Jubilee in Richmond, California, August 1947.

I was quite surprised when I first saw this photograph of my maternal grandfather, Ernest Johnson, with a beard and moustache adorning his face. To my knowledge, he had never worn any facial hair, aside from an occasional unshaven stubble that he liked to rub against his grandchildrens' faces for their squeamish reactions.  My mother told me that when they both lived in Richmond, California, the city held a Golden Jubilee from August 22-24, 1947, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the city's founding. Among the planned activities was a "Whiskerino" contest, for which "Richmond's male populace [had] been grooming their whiskers for weeks."  Grampa always seemed to be a team player, having been raised with nine siblings, so I'm sure he thoroughly enjoyed the anticipation of the events, and perhaps talked over plans time and time again in the break room with his fellow custodians at the Ford Plant.

In 1945, my grandfather moved to the west coast from Leonard, Minnesota, when he could no longer make an adequate living as a farmer.  By 1947, he had been a widower for over 25 years.  Richmond, California was a boom town during World War II, mostly because of the local shipyards and the tank production going on at the Ford Motor Company plant.  Housing shortages continued right after the war, so Grampa lived for a time in a boarding house and then rented a room above a water tower.  He was a modest man with simple needs, and he knew how to get those basic needs met by taking steaks or salmon from the Richmond Pier to his sister's nearby apartment on Sundays, in exchange for a good home-cooked meal.

Richmond's Golden Jubilee celebration was meant to serve as a reminder of the "good old days" in the history of the west. It seems that not just my grandfather, but many other Richmond residents had a lot of fun getting into the spirit. Here is a link to a privately owned collection of photographs taken during the Golden Jubilee parade in downtown Richmond, in August 1947.



The huge parade was not the only special event planned for the 3-day celebration.  Opening the festival was a mock raid on a downtown pharmacy by "Joaquin Marietta," an early California badman, along with his henchmen.  "Guns from both sides will blaze, but, as in olden times, the bandits will lose and will be carted off the 'jail' and kangaroo court," a local newspaper reported on the day before the commencement of the Jubilee.  Following an exciting start, there were plenty of activities to follow, including a hillbilly music contest, a Mexican festival, and a Saturday night costume ball at nearby Alvarado Park, for which all attendees were expected to wear pioneer dress.  I would like to have been a fly on the wall to see Grampa thoroughly enjoying himself, wearing his crinkly smile, and his sporty new whiskers, of course!

Sources:
"Raid to Open Richmond Fete."  The Oakland Tribune, August 21, 1947. p. 16, col. 1.

Urban Memories of Post-War Richmond

In this blog, I focus a great deal on the midwestern history of my Norwegian immigrant ancestors. Their background has obviously had a major impact on not only on my genetics, but also on my morals and outlook on life. However, my early years in the San Francisco East Bay have had just as much impact, and probably more. The burgeoning Bay Area was where I learned about life and all of it's colorful nuances--where I cut my teeth, both literally and philosophically. It is also a place where, all at once, one could develop an appreciation for beautiful landscape due to the geographic variety of the northern California seacoast, but also a disdain for the raping of the land brought about by progress.

I think of myself as having grown up in an urban environment, not because I lived downtown in a large metropolitan city, but because the same culture (and concrete) extended throughout the bedroom communities of the San Francsico Bay Area. There were no farm animals or crops near my home: Richmond was definitely a city, but on a smaller scale than nearby Oakland or Berkeley.

The town of Richmond sits on the northeastern end of San Francisco Bay, and long before waterfront industries existing there today, there were refineries, wartime shipyards, and numerous other commercial ventures that led to a rapid de-beautification of this once small East Bay town. When I think of my early affiliation with Richmond, I think of cracked cement sidewalks with weeds growing through, yards full of neglect from the working culture necessitated by the post-war economic struggles, endless telephone wires across a hazy but sunny skyline, railroad tracks that led to more interesting places, and constant traffic along busy Macdonald Avenue.


The only reason I am including this photograph of Cutting Blvd. in 1954 is to show just how ugly and unkempt certain parts of Richmond could be during the post World War II years. Though it was a far cry from the rural life my mother and her family knew back in Minnesota, it was still home to me (Richmond Street Scenes; EastBayHistory.com)



When I was a baby, my mother and I lived with her aunt Mabel Johnson in her Richmond four-plex apartment. I don't remember quite that far back, but after Mom and I moved from the apartment, I recall weekend visits with Great Aunt Mabel, especially the walks downtown and longer excursions to Nicholl Park.

If we made the walk uptown from the apartment--a mere couple of blocks away, there was plenty of shopping to be done among the endless rows of Woolworth's trinket compartments. I still have many handerchiefs and baubles that came from regular stops at that store. While Mom was a single girl working at local canneries, she often bought herself treats at Woolworth's; among them were purses and shoes, which she claimed to be her particular weakness back then. She also stocked up on items for her own hope chest, like floral-patterned china dishes, purchased one piece at a time, as well as tablecloths and other linens.

Sometimes we would stop by See Candies during our downtown walks. The floor's pristine black and white squares looked so shiny that I expected them to shatter under the weight of our feet. Stepping into the store's cool sweetness from the gritty sidewalk, the large butchershop-style, glass-fronted compartments impressed shoppers with crisp white boxes and regimented rows of appealing chocolates. Gladys Nelson, a family relation by marriage with ties to my mother's home state of Minnesota, worked behind the counter. Each time we stopped in to say hello to Gladys, we were treated to free pieces of peanut brittle. Peanut brittle was never a favorite of mine, but I was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. First, the stuff tried to break your teeth, and if it couldn't break them, it would then stick with ruthless determination. What I really longed for were the small creamy blocks of nut-filled chocolate, or chocolate-covered caramels. Those went down quite easily, but never came free.

Looking west along Macdonald Avenue, near 10th Street. See Candies is on the right, near Macy's department store, 1957. The old buildings were already reaching a state of disrepair at this time. (Richmond Street Scenes; EastBayHistory.com.)


One of the best parts of any visit with Aunt Mabel was going to Nicholl Park. It was a longish walk from her apartment on Sixth Street to MacDonald Avenue and 33rd Street. The park was a weedy oasis for local children who had no yard at home, or, as in my case, for those who were visiting great aunts and could not play in musty and fascinating shadow-carved stairwells for fear of disturbing day-sleeping neighbors.

At Nicholl Park, a young soul could run wild on a huge expanse of beat-up lawn. Though I was never the type to run and play with abandon, I did enjoy observing and taking in the breadth of humanity, learning many subtle lessons, and others not-so-subtle, through the adventures playing out in that urban jungle.



That's me, with my long ponytail covered from the wind by a scarf, and my great aunt Mable Johnson.  Nicholl Park in Richmond, about 1959.



The park had playground equipment, and the swings were always in high demand. I never seemed to be able to catch one while it was free, since I was not up to shoving past a dozen others kids and the menace of flailing arms and legs. Also of interest on the grounds was an old Southern Pacific steam engine, which looked impressively huge to children. Stairs installed at its side allowed curious youngsters to climb up and pretend to be an engineer.

Even grownups need a little playtime.  Posing on the monkey bars at Nicholl Park are my great aunts, Cora Moen (upper left), and Mabel Johnson (upper right), along with my mother, Doris Johnson (standing).  Richmond, California, November 1946.

The park also had a petting zoo for a number of years, but it was eventually closed because of vandalism and injury to some of the animals. That was quite sad. Perhaps it was the farming genes in me, but my favorite part of any visit to Nicholl Park was when I could stand among the chickens, ducks, and goats and convince any of them to stand still long enough to actually be petted.

From the point of view of a child, Richmond was just another place to find pleasure and meaning (and occasionally, disappointment) doled out one piece at a time, like peanut brittle that was often too sharp to eat. Richmond's special place in history meant little to me at the time, because I was too busy coveting an empty swing.

Though Richmond was rapidly deteriorating during my early years, it is currently seeing some rejuvenation downtown. During World War II, it was the scene of a second Gold Rush, a place where a deluge of humanity descended in search of work in the shipyards and the canneries and factories. The streets were crowded with persons of all ages, from all racial and economic backgrounds-- restaurants, bathrooms, and even beds, were in short supply. These drastic demographic changes created massive overcrowding to being with, but eventually a progressive culture of diversity, open-mindedness and liberalness began to emerge.

One of the best historical documentations of World War II-era Richmond are the photographs by Dorothea Lange, famed for her images of Dust Bowl migrations during the Depression. The Oakland Museum of California has a fine collection of Lange's photographs, viewable in this online guide. Although I knew Richmond personally beginning 10-15 years after these photographs were taken, they are highly representative of what my mother first found when she moved there in 1946.

For better or worse, Richmond's cooling cauldron of upheaval in the post-war years was my childhood home.

For further reading:

A City in Transition: Richmond During World War II, by Clifford Metz and Judith K. Dunning.

Photographing the Second Gold Rush, by Dorothea Lange and Charles Wollenberg.

To Place Our Deeds: the African American Community in Richmond, California, 1910-1963, by Shirley Ann Wilson Moore.

An Avalanche Hits Richmond, by J. A. McVittie.

Richmond Community History Project (ROHO, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)

Richmond Museum of History

Rosie the Riveter Oral History Project

Dancing in Boom Town

My mother has a favorite photograph of herself, which was taken in Richmond, California when she was 25 years old. I recently found out that she (Doris) had been carrying the original around in her purse for years, and I convinced her to loan it to me so I could have professional copies made. Persons involved with eldercare, take note: what unknown and irreplaceable family treasures are being toted around in your mother's or aunt's purse? Better find out--respectfully, of course!

In 1945, Doris was still a country girl getting accustomed to city life, though immediately after leaving her childhood farm home she worked a six month stint at a candy factory in St. Paul, Minnesota. She loved being in St. Paul, but was somehow convinced to join her sister, Phyllis, who had recently moved out to Richmond on the west coast. Doris and her aunt, Mabel, rode the train out from Minneapolis in April 1945. There were so many soldiers aboard that the two women had to sit on their little (and very hard) suitcases near the bathroom during the entire trip.

Doris shared a one-bedroom, second-story apartment with no ice box on Sixth Street near the elevated railroad tracks in downtown Richmond, along with her sister, aunt, and a cousin. They made do. Sometimes they worked the canneries, and several of them tried waitressing. Doris started out as a waitress, but soon gave it up because she was too shy; she had great difficulty with the amount of personal interaction it required.

At the apartment, two of the women shared a double bed, another had a cot, and the fourth slept on the living room sofa. Not having an ice box meant stocking up on canned goods and carrying the heavy bags home on foot, while buying perishables as often as possible. A kitchen cupboard was vented to the outside, but it only kept things as cool as the outdoor temperature. In the Bay Area, that usually wasn't very cold. My grandfather, a custodian at the Ford Motor plant, was in the habit of going down to the Richmond pier on Sundays. After the end of wartime food rationing, he would buy a fresh salmon, or he would get steaks at the market. Then, he would take the groceries to his daughters' apartment and visit while they cooked dinner. I think they had to do his laundry, too, but that's another story.

Richmond,_California is sandwiched between Berkeley/Albany and San Pablo in the East Bay. The town experienced explosive growth during World War II. San Francisco Bay, with its many ports, saw an inevitable increase in military activity. There was also associated growth in existing industries, such as the Standard Oil Company, and the Ford Motor Company, which switched to building tanks during the war years. The Kaiser Shipyards were built along the Richmond waterfront and began recruiting workes from all across the United States. Richmond produced the most Victory and Liberty ships for the war effort, even breaking records in the process. As a result of all this, the once-sleepy Richmond became a hub of activity, with lines forming everywhere for restaurants and bathrooms, which were few and far between. There were all-nite movie theaters in operation for those who had nowhere else to go, and "hot-beds" where a place to sleep could be rented for eight hours.


Doris was especially fond of the outfit she wore in this photograph, which she bought in Richmond because it had a Scandinavian look and reminded her of home. It consisted of a bib and matching full skirt, all pink, which she wore with a white blouse. The pink roses in her hair were probably acquired at Kresses Dime Store or Woolworth's--trinket meccas in those days. Her sister, Phyllis, owned a similar outfit in lime green. I'm sure the girls looked quite cute together.

When the photograph was taken, Doris was at a dance hall in downtown Richmond. Photographers would wander through and offer to take pictures, which any gentleman accompanying a lady was expected to buy as a memento. I say "accompanying" gentleman, because it was common for girls to attend the dances in groups with friends or relatives and meet up with soldiers or sailors on leave, just to dance and enjoy the music. There were also many workers from the nearby Kaiser Shipyards, seeking entertainment with pockets full of newly-earned cash. The atmosphere inside those wartime dance halls was usually quite innocent, since in most places only soda pop was sold. But, as extra insurance, officers from various military branches made sure their enlisted men did not embarrass their country with any unwise behavior.

One place Doris attended frequently was the MacCracken Dance Hall. Steps led down from the street into a cellar-like basement. She remembers that the location was on the list of potential fallout shelters for Richmond during World War II. With the shipyards nearby, that was a very real concern. The dance halls in the Richmond area usually had big bands or country musicians performing, like the Dude Martin Hillbilly Trio in the photograph below. The scene was quite different from the dances Doris attended back in her hometown of Leonard, Minnesota.



















The Dude Martin Hillbilly Trio performs at a Richmond dance hall
during World War II. Collection: Dorothea Lange Collection The War Years
(1942-1944) Richmond, California Dude. Oakland Museum of California.


Back in Leonard, dances were held at the community hall in town. For farming folk, most any occasion was also a good reason to hold a dance, and local musicians jumped at the chance to play. There were no formal bands and no one ever got together to practice, but there was always someone's brother or uncle who could do a fair job with a piano, guitar, or accordian. And, it wasn't just the Scandinavians who partied. Doris once commented on the German community near Leonard, who often held their own functions: "Those Germans sure knew how to party!"

There would also be dancing at family celebrations, like weddings or anniversaries. When Doris was very young, she and the other children would stand on the sidelines and tap their toes and wiggle about, longing to participate. At some point in her teens, she was invited to dance for the first time. The man who asked was a cross-eyed relation to a cousin of hers, and a generation older. Doris replied shyly that she'd like to, but she didn't know how. "Come on, I'll show you!" he replied happily, and took her out onto the dance floor to cut a rug.

After that, Doris danced every time she got the chance, and she began attending Leonard Community Hall events regularly with her sister, cousins and friends. Dancing was the most fun she'd ever had, and it was the only way for her to enjoy music back then, since her grandparents' farm did not have electricity for radio. So, it's no wonder she was willing to suffer the crowds of the Richmond dance halls and the attentions of all those eager enlisted men later on. A shy farm girl in the city need never sit at home with her knitting, if she is willing to dance the boom town jig with the best of 'em, that is.