A DIARY REVEALS A NORTHWEST NOVEMBER IN 1940

  

Note: I published this post a couple of years ago, but its message is worth repeating— BE GRATEFUL.

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 A couple of days ago, I picked up my father's diary from 1940 to peek into my parents' lives during the month of November that year. His words made me think about all I have to be thankful for and how little we really need to be happy. In Norman Rockwell's famous painting "Freedom From Want," the artist created a scene that has become our ideal image of Thanksgiving. We see a smiling, laughing family gathered around a table heaped with food while the grandparents present the turkey. Even though mine was a loving and happy family too, real life in the '40s wasn't quite so perfect as nostalgia would suggest. I was the sixth of seven children, a child of the '50s and '60s, so I wasn't there, but thanks to Dad's diary, I can picture that time.

Howard and Rosalie Willsie with the first three of their seven children.

 In November of 1940 my parents, like others in their small community, still struggled to recover from the effects of the Great Depression. My father already had a wife and three young children to support.  A national election that month meant President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would serve a third term, and Congress had passed the Selective Service Act in September, requiring all men between the ages of 18 and 35 to register for the draft. During that year, the news on the radio reported the latest, none of it good. Nazi Germany invaded and conquered one country after another. Japan controlled Indonesia and Italy controlled Greece, and most disturbing of all, over 400,000 Polish Jews had been forced into the Warsaw Ghetto.  

Reading the diary, I though about what must have been on my father's mind daily as he worked hard, spending long hours driving a freight truck, picking up meat from Carsten's packing house in Tacoma, roses from Beall Greenhouse on Vashon Island, moving furniture, hauling groceries, and more. He had livestock to care for, as well as other chores around their place, and he dedicated any spare time available toward his effort to get a new barn built before winter. In that month, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed, complicating freight delivery. With everything else that concerned him, he also followed the news as World War II grew ever more devastating, not realizing that within a year his own country would be involved.

As for my mother, her days revolved around the household their two-month-old infant daughter and young boys, one a toddler and the other three years old. The domestic duties she took in stride included not only caring for small children, but also washing laundry in a wringer washing machine. Since she had no electric clothes dryer, she dried everything on a  either a wooden clothes rack indoors or outside on the line on days with no rain, even in freezing weather. She sewed, baked, cleaned, canned, and worked as hard as my father, morning 'til night. Mom kept a diary through her teen years and at the beginning of their marriage, but by November of 1940 she had left it to my father to preserve the days of their busy, hardworking lives in the little leather-covered book I now hold in my hand, 73 years later. Repeated throughout is some form of the statement that they both went to bed exhausted.

In the small space allowed for each entry in the five-year diary, my father crammed together bits of home life, social life, and current world events.

Sun. Nov. 10 - "Finished my sawhorses and went over to the place and cut the sill and joists for the barn. It snowed most of the morning. Dad went duck hunting."

Mon. Nov. 11 - "No freight trip today. I got in a full day on the barn. I'm all ready to start laying flooring. The girls had the baby shower today. Neville Chamberlain is dead."

Wed. Nov. 13 -"Too busy again to day to work on the barn. The English scored quite a naval victory over the Italians. The big Narrows Bridge collapsed last Thursday."

Thursday. Nov. 14 - "Very foggy until noon in Tacoma this A.M. Had another busy day. Paid some more bills. The lodge is giving a card party but we are too tired to go."

The next day they asked a friend to watch the children so they could have a little date night. They "took in the show," meaning they went to a movie at the small local theater. He mentioned the death of a community member on the following Monday. On Tuesday, Dad rejoiced that he had a small load of freight. Even though it meant less income, he could spend over two hours working on the barn. A week earlier, my mother had taken her babies to a clinic set up at the local high school, for smallpox vaccinations, and on Tuesday a county nurse came to their home to check on the children. For dinner that night, she roasted a duck her father had shot when he went hunting.

Wednesday, Nov. 20

"Rained all day. Grandpa and I went up to the bank and he gave me the deed to our place as we have it all paid for at last. Tomorrow we eat turkey."

Yes, they did eat turkey the following day at the home of my grandparents, but before the meal, Dad spent the morning working on the barn. The next day the sun came out and my mother did a big wash. They picked up several boxes of apples from a friend and soon the kitchen would have been filled with the sweet smell of homemade applesauce and pie. I can close my eyes and remember that smell, still part of home life after I came along.

Next he wrote, on Saturday, November 23, "The Greeks are forcing the Italian Army back into Albania. It's warmer tonight and raining. Couldn't get over to the barn today at all. Eggs are forty cents a dozen."

A few days later he noted that my mother "... hung out a big wash yesterday and boy how it rained all night. She went out and wrung them out on the line."



Thanksgiving day passed and life went on. His noted that his gross income from hauling freight that month was $36.00 lower than in November of '39 and he had put 22,000 miles on his Diamond T truck. My mother sewed a snowsuit for their oldest son. Christmas would soon be upon them and year later, war. After the shock of Pearl Harbor, the news that came over the radio would no longer seem so remote. My father wanted to join the Navy but remained a truck driver, his trade considered vital to the nation. 

When you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner this year, be thankful. I am thankful for my parents and I miss them. The world is still a troubled place and always has been, but rich or poor, in times of war or peace, home is home and family dear. Put aside your little aggravations, petty issues, negative thoughts and feelings of never having enough. You have enough. Look around the table. Others will go hungry. Others are alone. Some are refugees or homeless in your own town. Think of those missing, those who should be in the empty chairs. In memory of them, their struggles, their happy times, and most of all their love and good example, be grateful.



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The Day I Could Have Lost to "Busy" and "Soon"

I hung up the phone after talking to Dad and thought about how much I've overused, believed in, and lived by the word "busy." It's often preceded by the word "too." And I thought about him turning 96 this month and how I'd just said the words, "I'll try to get in to see you soon."

Don't assume the worst. I do see my Dad often, talk to him, on the phone, and help him out whenever he needs anything. I always make it clear that I love him. But in the hurry and scurry of my life I sometimes forget how little is going on in his. As I hung up the phone, I pictured him in his chair with the clock ticking on his apartment wall. As a daughter I do pretty well, but I could do better.

It seemed such a short time ago that I wrote a blog post about Dad called Raking in the Memories but it had actually been a whole year, another year gone by too quickly, one tick of the clock at a time. I remembered that last fall he hoped we could take a drive up to the mountains to see the vine maple turning red, and after saying "Sure!" and sincerely meaning it, things got "too busy," the leaves fell, and the long winter came. I looked outside at the perfect autumn day and picked up the phone to call him back.

"Hi Dad. It's me again. I just wondered if you have any plans for tomorrow," I said. "How about if we take a drive?"

I didn't need to ask him where he'd like to go, but I did anyway. Of course it was his favorite place, out Highway 410 and over Chinook Pass to have lunch at Whistlin' Jack Lodge on the banks of the Naches River. My husband and I left Tacoma at 8:45 am and headed north to Renton to pick him up. He was out the door with his walker before we stopped the car.

Some days go by in a blur. On others, if we're lucky, we live each hour with the awareness that it is being imprinted on our memories. Tuesday, October 6, 2009: saved forever. Like opening an album of photos, or one of those calendars of national parks, I will still see the images of that day even when I turn 96. Breathtaking vistas spread out for our pleasure around each bend of the road. Dark green forests, Mt. Rainier, sparkling water, alpine meadows, rocky road cuts, fir and cedar giving way to pine, all made me feel like I'd returned to an aboriginal home and a poignant reunion with nature. I remembered what silence is and pure air. The distant horizon of peaks layered itself in shaded purples and blues. Then we saw what we came for. In every open space exposed to sun the vine maple blazed orange, rust, and red.

The best sight of all was Dad gazing out the window, probably thinking of all the years of vacations and day trips, of trying to see as much of America as he could. I remembered being a kid and watching him from the backseat of his Buick Electra. As one of his seven children, the realization that I understood and shared his love of going to places we'd never been felt like a secret, special, and unspoken bond I hoped was just between us.

"I miss driving," he said. I knew he wanted to feel his hands on the steering wheel again, the engine's surge, and the thrill of the road stretching out before him with some new discovery around the next curve. He gazed out the window. Sometimes he talked. Sometimes he didn't. For a few moments now and then, he dozed. But most of all he just enjoyed, pointing to maples and saying "There's some color."

We ate lunch at a table next to the window, in Whistlin' Jack Lodge. Outside, the Naches River danced low over its rocky bed, still shallow before the autumn rains. Sunshine warmed the trunks of wind-tossed pines to a rich burnt umber color. Years ago Dad would have wanted to walk down beside the water. Those days are gone.

Never one to talk about the past, he surprised me with his answer to my question; did he remember his first trip to Mount Rainier? He did, in detail. As a young bachelor he had a Norwegian coworker and friend who wanted to see the mountain up close. So they packed up Dad's Star Touring car and spent a week camping at Longmire and Paradise. I'd never heard this story, and wondered how many more stories he had that I'd never hear.

When we took Dad home and said goodbye he repeated that we'd given him "a real treat." I hugged him and told him, with sincerity, that the pleasure was ours. We'd driven over Chinook Pass, then looped back to the west through White Pass, over 300 miles.We hadn't done this for him; we'd done it with him. As he walked away toward the elevator I though again about that four letter word "busy." Another one is "soon." I decided right then, I'm trading it in for "today."

Copyright 2009 Candace J. Brown


IMPORTANT NOTE: Just days after this blog post was written a landslide closed part of our route through the mountains. Here's a link to the Washington State Department of Transportation with information about this situation: www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2009/10/LandslideclosesSR410Chinook+Pass.htm