15. The Library
14. The El Rey Theater
13. Chickens
12. The Calf that Peed
11. Alcatraz
10. Victory Garden
09. Grocery Shopping
08. Rationing
07. We Move to Walnut Creek
06. The Enemy
05. Pearl Harbor
04. Kindergarten
03. Gassing the Car
02. Aunt Jerry’s Stove
01. Milking the Cow
The Library
I always went with Mom when she shopped for groceries. Usually while she was in the El Rey market I’d go to the library. It was on the corner just across the street.
The library was a place of enchantment. It had two arms joined in the middle by the desk manned by the librarian, a stern woman with grey hair tied in a bun She demanded silence.
Checking out a book always fascinated me. Along with my library card, I’d bring the several I wanted to the desk. She’d open the cover of the first. A pocket had been glued to it. She take a card with the book’s name from the pocket. She’d put the card over my library card’s metal identification tab and roll a wheel over it. She had a pencil with a little silver attachment. It had a multislotted wheel that she evidently 
changed every morning so that the due date (two weeks in the future) was present. She’d freshen the ink by tapping a small pad. Then she’d stamp the due date on the card. Finally, she’d stamp the date it on a note-sized paper and put it in the pocket.
If I turned to the right after coming to the desk I’d enter a large room with long tables. Large books on shelves. References and such. Atlases. A large globe of the world had a prominent place.
I found only one things of interest: the stereopticon. First I’d select a card, one with the 
same picture on both sides. I’d fit it into a sliding fitting on a long stick. Then I’d look through the two squares. Wonder of wonders, the pictures had depth. Dimension. Over and over I found things to look at. I especially liked the pictures of Vienna. People. Men in tall hats. Women with wide skirts carrying parasols. But most marvelous, the silence. The places I could see. But they were inhumanly silent.
While occasionally I’d use the stereopticon, I spent most of the time on the other side of the library. Books and books and books. Rarely did I leave with less than six or eight to be read over the week until the next grocery trip. Or reread. Often I took pleasure in taking home a favorite book to be enjoyed once again.
One day it occurred to me that there must be a best book. Of all those I read, which one was most outstanding. Above all others. I thus began a serious study of the contents of the library. After some weeks I came up with a winner: Two Little Savages. Enthralled, I read and reread 
the adventures of two boys who tried to live as indians.
Not only a gripping story, there were wonderful illustrations! I checked it out and read it once again.
But as days extended into weeks I began to have doubts. Two Little Savages told a fine story. Granted. But was my criteria too limited. The experience of reading a book, I reasoned, was not simply in the story. There existed something I came to call “bookness.” The physical book was part of the experience. What it looked like. How it felt. The paper of the pages. The cover and spine. So I found I had to reopen the contest.
There began a sober reconsideration of the best book in the library. This took considerable time, especially since I had to sandwich it between getting books to check out for the coming week. But after a long and complex series of comparisons a new champion emerged. A nonpareil. The best book in the entire library:
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar.
Begin with the story. Suspense, suspense. Would the ape man regain his memory? Would he realize the pretty rocks he played with were really jewels of great worth? Would the vile seducer Albert Werper realize his evil intent toward Lady Jane? Would Tarzan arrive in time to save her?
But beyond that, the book itself. A cover of tiny diamond pattern. Yet with stains on it. This gave age and dignity. It meant that someone else had checked it out. Read it. Perhaps got ink on it. Leaving it slightly battered. Inside, the paper of the pages were somehow filled with flecks, as if something had fallen in while printing. They were smooth to the touch. Occasionally I’d find one of them dogeared, the record of an earlier reader.
Once again I checked it out and took it home. I took it with me to the garden where I had to water the tomatoes. I started the hose running, but not too strong. Enough for the water to flow down the winding path I’d made between the plants. Then I’d pick one or two that were ripe. I’d sit in the shade of the plants, eating the tomatoes as I opened the book, and once again lived with the ape man.
The El Rey Theater took on a timeless quality. It had always been there. It would go endlessly on, before the war began and after it would end.
I spent either Saturday or Sunday there–sometimes both! With luck it became a total experience, the determining factor being how much money I was given.
The movie itself cost a dime. I’d always angle for 25 cents. That bought, in addition to admission, lunch. A burger at the small cafe next to the El Rey cost 15 cents. I’d order and then, as I ate, contemplate the various signs on the walls. One especially never failed to hold my attention:
The skunk sat on the stump. The skunk thought the stump stunk. The stump thought the skunk stunk. Who do you think stunk, the skunk or the stump.
The enigmas of the universe arrayed before me on the walls of the cafe!
If I’d been given a nickel extra I bought candy. Hershey bars were always high on my list. 
I’d sit in the darkened theater, breaking off two segments at a time. On my tongue I’d let them dissolve until they filled every nook and cranny of my 
mouth. Milk Duds often won out, though, because they lasted so much longer. Sometimes until the middle of the double feature.
The movie experience had a stately, almost formulaic sense about it. I always tried to be as early in line as possible. That meant I would get into the theater and be able to claim my favorite seat: the fourth row in the right (the first three were reserved as loges) next to the aisle. Once there I’d wait until the lights dimmed. As they did, a curtain would be drawn to the sides of the screen, clacking along as it went. Then came in orderly sequence the newsreel, the cartoon, the previews of coming attractions and then the double feature, the first usually in color and the second often black and white.
While the newsreel regularly featured “The March of Time,” I was partial to 
MovieTone News. I liked the voice of the narrator. Lowell Thomas. The gridiron! New inventions! The war! Celebrities! Politics!
I likewise was partial to Disney cartoons. Loony Tunes & Merry Melodies.
Still, I was a cartoon omnivore, uncritically consuming anything, from Woody Woodpecker
with his maniacal laugh to Little Lulu. 
I always like it when the cartoons were about the war.
The second film of the double feature often was a comedy.
I paid special attention to previews. The El Rey featured all sorts of movies: mysteries, adventures, westerns. My preference though was war movies. I always enjoyed movies about the war in Europe.
Still, they were never quite as entertaining as those about the war in the Pacific, especially when they starred John Wayne.
I could never quite understand why there had to be so much kissing in them. I’d much rather see him single handedly destroy the hated enemy.
So, after four hours I’d stagger drunkenly from the theater into the light of day, the afternoon sunlight hurting my eyes.
For various reasons, chickens became extraordinarily important. Not long after we moved in that spring, Dad and Mom bought two dozen baby chicks. 
They put a large cardboard box on the floor of the little shed attached to the house. By cutting the sides down to about six inches the chicks were safely penned in.
To be sure they stayed warm through the night, Dad rigged a light on an extension cord so that it ran down through the hole in the bottom of a flower pot. He then turned the pot over and turned the light on. The pot became toasty warm. Indeed it did. The next morning he found that all the chicks that huddled closest to the pot had been toasted. Those farther out had pushed them against it. They weren’t in very good shape either.
After getting rid of the little dead bodies, they went to the feed store and bought another two dozen. This time Dad experimented with 
a gooseneck lamp. He finally got a distance above the chicks that seemed comfortable to them.
The chicks slept, strutted, drank water and ate mash. I watched fascinated over the weeks as feathers began to show on their tiny wings. Soon the little roosters would stretch, flap and earnestly greet the world with lusty “gronks.”
While the chicks grew in their cardboard home, Dad built a shed-like chicken house. For a floor he simply put a piece of plywood on the ground. Then he pounded into the ground the four corner posts.
Some relatively straight limbs worked as a roost. To get them we had to go to Aunt Jerry and Uncle Ted’s new place south of Alamo. Plenty of walnut trees grew there.
Nest boxes completed the structure.
“It’s not much for looks ,” I heard Dad tell Mom, “but its hell for stout.”
Once the chicks were old enough to fend for themselves, Dad shut them in the coop at night and let them outside during the day. Slowly the hens matured and began regularly to lay eggs in the boxes. Most of the hens. There seemed always to be one or two who decided the boxes were not for them. They’d make a nest for themselves somewhere in the weeds. Slyly they’d slip off and lay their eggs there, the preliminary sitting and then raising their own chicks. It became my job to frustrate them.
Beyond pulling out most of the grape vines, Dad did little to tend to the place. Weeds grew profusely. Yellow mustard, mainly.
Mustard stretched unbroken the field west of our place.
Around the chicken house it grew almost a tall as I was.
A wily hen would find a place in the mustard, make a nest and begin laying her eggs there. Each day, after laying, she’d return and announce her accomplishment with a “cut-cut-cut-kDAKit.” It would be up to me to watch in the morning to see where she came out of the mustard and begin her celebration. Only by seeing the tunnel into the mustard did I stand a chance of finding her nest and saving the eggs.
Dad soon realized a way to expand our rationing coupons for gas and tires and such. He found and bought a Buick as a second car. I think it was a Buick. It was old and tired and rusted. Nevertheless it doubled our gas and tire quotas. Its ration stamps could be applied to the car he commuted in to work. 
Generally the old car sat in front of the house. Mom occasionally drove it to town to shop, but that was about the sum of its usefulness.
One day a letter (we had no phone) came from Aunt Carol, another of Mom’s sisters. It said that if we wanted it, she had a calf that had just been weaned. We could raise and butcher it. The meat would go in the frozen food locker we rented in Walnut Creek. But time was of the essence. If we didn’t come and get the calf, it would go to someone else. Dad was at work. Mom left Bill (my little brother) with a neighbor to babysit and immediately we set off for Vallejo.
I was enormously excited. Going to Aunt Carol’s meant going on the ferry to Benicia. We’d drive to Martinez and wait in line at the terminal. Soon we’d be on the way.
I’d watch as Mom paid the toll. She leaned out of the window and give the man the money.
We were on the way! We were on the water!
On the trip over I sat in front with Mom. Once we got to their place I realized Aunt Carol was coming back with us. That meant the back seat for me. It meant I would share the back seat with the calf.
Mom and Aunt Carol were very nervous. If the toll taker saw the calf, they probably would not let us go on the boat. Instead we’d have to drive to the bridge many miles to the west of the ferry. Since the calf was very small they planned to put a blanket over its head. I was to hold the blanket in place. We’d sneak it onto the boat.
Wrapping my short arms around its neck, I did the best I could. As we drove, the calf became increasingly restive. It snorted and bucked. The blanket came off his head. Aunt 
Carol had to kneel on the front seat and help me hold it. It bucked and fought until she managed to get the blanket back in place. But by this time I and the calf had moved from behind where Mom sat driving the car to the other side. The passenger side posed its own problem. The floor of the car on that side had rusted out leaving a hole eight or ten inches across. As we drove I could see, from where I usually stood behind Mom, the pavement rush by. That’s why I was strictly told to stand behind her.
The calf remained quiet. Mom paid the toll. The man did not notice the calf. We got on the boat. We left on the return trip.
Perhaps it was the vibration of the engines. Perhaps it was simple fatigue. Perhaps it was getting over the fear of the new situation. Whatever the reason, I suddenly realized the calf was peeing. Mom and Aunt Carol turned to look, expressions of horror their faces.
Loudly the pee splashed. But not in the car. The pee went directly through the hole rusted in the floor. Aunt Carol turned and looked outside the car. A yellow river snaked its way down the deck toward what looked like a drain. Except it appeared to be plugged. Gradually a yellow pool spread between the cars ahead of us.
Mom and Aunt Carol sank down in the seat. I heard wild and panicked giggling.
No one got out of any of the other cars. No one noticed. We docked. As it departed the car in front of us splashed through the pool. Yellow splattered our windshield. We bounced up the ramp. Suddenly Aunt Carol said in a shaky voice that she thought we had splattered pee on the car behind us.
Panicked silence. At last we turned off on the road to Walnut Creek and the car behind us continued on the road to Martinez.
The calf stayed quiet for the rest of the trip.
Over time a complicated family economy came into being. It didn’t really “develop.” More than anything it simply seemed to happen. It began with the chickens. As soon as they were big enough, we began to eat the roosters. We had fried chicken at last twice a week. The eggs 
were another matter. As rationing continued, eggs became a prime source of barter. Dad would trade them for stamps. Most often gas stamps. Everyone won. Those on the other hand got eggs without monetary cost. We got stamps, the way to freedom.
For Mom and Dad, freedom to recreate meant a couple of things. Often on Saturday or Sunday the extended family would gather, usually at Aunt Jerry and Uncle Ted’s, for dinner. While I looked forward to that, the barter system gave us something at once subtle and pervasive: movement.
Extra gas stamps meant we could indulge in our prime recreation: going for a ride. Often Dad would marshal us into the car. I would stand behind the front seat. Mom held Bill while Dad drove. A complex system of roads radiated out from Walnut Creek. They’d pick 
one or another and we’d drive along, noticing this and remarking on that as we went. What had happened to this place or that–who had painted a house, built a garage, fenced a chicken yard, planted a garden, harvested vegetables. On and on. A litany of minutia to be noted and repeated and commented upon and digested. Sometimes we’d stop at a roadside stand and buy corn or beans or melons.
During childhood going for a drive seemed a normal and natural way to spend a weekend afternoon. Only much later did I realize for my parents it answered a deeper and more complex need. Mom and Dad grew up in the midwest, Mom in Oklahoma and Dad in Texas. Both of them were profoundly bound to place. As children they rarely ever left where they lived. Then came the migration to California. Out of the deprivation of the Dust Bowl to the green of the west. Movement.
For Dad and especially his brothers one image encapsulated it all: Alcatraz.
Most of Dad’s brothers and sisters settled in Salinas, a hundred or so miles south of Walnut Creek. Given the state of roads–as well as gas rationing–visits were a major event. Now 
and again one of my Uncles would come to see us. Their cars were better than ours. One drove a Hudson. It had big windows. Invariably the visit would include Alcatraz. We’d load into the car, usually with Dad and his brother in the front with Bill between them. Mom and I along with various aunts and cousins sat in back
From Walnut Creek we’d go west. The thrill of 
going through the tunnel. But this paled in comparison to crossing the Bay Bridge. When we drove on the lower level, sometimes an electric train would pass us.
I’d stare down at Treasure Island. In 1940, before we moved from Oakland to Walnut 
Creek, Mom and I had gone to the World’s Fair there. I remembered the crowds, and walking with Mom holding my hand. The buildings dwarfed me.
I remembered the huge statues of naked people.
But most clearly I remembered Mom’s shocked tone of voice as later, when we got back home, she told Dad indignantly about the nude ladies.
A woman named Sally Rand had brought a show to the Worlds Fair. It featured women without clothes!
On we’d go to San Francisco. Down to the Embarcadero where huge ships were loaded with soldiers and with supplies for the war effort. Slowly Dad would drive along as we all stared out at the bay.
Then we’d find a place where we could see it. The supreme image of stasis. The prison where no one escaped. Alcatraz.
We’d park and look. No one got out of the car. For Dad and his brothers the image seemed to hold infinite fascination. They’d talk and talk about it. Still it did not seem to me they had much of anything to say. “Water sure looks cold.” “I’d hate to swim in it.” “Wonder how many prisoners there are.” “I’d sure hate to spend time there.” After they’d looked their fill, the car would start and we’d drive back home. No stopping at any of the restaurants. None of the other places we might visit. Back we’d drive to Walnut Creek.
Gas stamps meant mobility. Mobility in the larger family sense at times meant going to see the ultimate image of stasis, as if Alcatraz embodied, encapsulated the rootedness of the midwest childhood they had all escaped.
Food was a central reality during the war. All of us were urged to plant a Victory Garden.
Over and over we were told we must not be wasteful.
Even Donald Duck urged us on.
In addition to growing food, we were told both to cook with care and to preserve.
Food preservation presented problems. The house Dad built was very, very small. 
Although canning was a major undertaking in such close quarters, Mom still managed the first year to put up jars and jars of food. She soon ran out of space to store them. In the 
next years she found a different solution. She froze food. We of course did not have a freezer at home. In Walnut Creek she found a place that rented lockers. They were in a huge room. Rows and rows of lockers, some large and some small. 
Although we had a small one, Mom managed to put dozens of little freezer boxes of food into it. Especially string beans. She’d blanch them in hot water, cool and then pack. We had string beans for months.
So summers would go. I’d play my part, grubbing along in the dirt.
It never occurred to me to question the fact that the same building housed the El Rey Movie Theater and the El Rey Grocery Store. It seemed part of the natural order of things. I never wondered where the name came from either.
The Market faced the street. An awning rolled out covering part of the sidewalk. The entire front wall folded into some sort of track, so that the produce section faced the sidewalk without any barrier. On one side rested a stack of baskets to put things in.
To enter the market, we passed by oranges and apples and carrots and potatoes. Mom spent time here. Since we did not have a refrigerator we shopped several times a week. She regularly bought fresh vegetables. Peas and string beans, usually. Potatoes. Maybe melons.
Once through the produce, Mom went to the meat department. It stood on the left. No packages here. Nothing prepared and shrink wrapped. Here trays of meat lay before my eyes. Since I was so short, I looked directly at 
them.
Sometimes a radio played. It sat on a shelf at the back of the butcher shop. Often it played the Sons of the Pioneers. “Drifting along with the tumbling tumble weeds.” Other beautiful songs.
The meat department played an important role in my vision of the world. On the trays before me lay the unambiguous reality. The world was divided into us and them, we and they. We bought hamburger. Chuck steak. Chuck roast. Sometimes round steak. Rich people didn’t. They bought sirloin steak. Rib steak. Cross rib roasts. They bought sliced bacon. We bought bacon by the slab. As the week went along Mom would slice off piece by piece. When the last had been cut off, the rind would simmer in the pot of pinto beans she usually served on Friday. This general split carried over to lunch at school. Rich kids ate pressed ham in their sandwiches. I ate bologna.
We were never far from the war effort. A poster above the butcher reminded us.
So much that fascinated as Mom continued to shop! The floor, for example. It was wood. To clean it one of the men put a scoop or two of what looked like red sand on it. 
Then he’d use a push broom to go up and down the aisles. As a consequence the wood had long since changed color. Light, narrow veins alternated with darker wood where the compound had soaked in. I found this beautiful.
As we walked along the aisles the displays of canned goods fascinated me. All sorts 
of things in cans. Mom rarely bought anything canned except occasionally Campbell’s soup. During the summer she canned all sorts of things. Fruits, mainly. When she cooked or baked, she did so from scratch.
She always bought coffee. Folgers. She’d take a pound can from the shelf and carefully check to be sure the metal key had been fastened to the top. Once home she’d insert a 
little metal tongue at the top of the can into a slot in the key and then wind round the top of the can. When she began there followed a satisfactory “woosch” as the vacuum broke. Smelled good, too.
We’d always stop at the cereal display. I’d lobby for Wheat Chex or Rice Chex. You got secret agent things with them–decoder rings and pens. 
While now and again she might buy some of the other kinds, she always bought shredded wheat. Nabisco Shredded Wheat.
On the back, Shredded Wheat boxes had a picture of 
Niagara Falls. Blue. When we got home and it came time to open the box, I always stood on my chair at the counter in anticipation. Inside were three layers of four shredded wheat biscuits. No wax bag or such. A card separated each layer. Wonderful cards. I 
lusted after them. Puzzles. Games. Projects. Once when Mom was not looking I pillaged a newly opened box, taking out all the cards. Thereafter I was under strict orders. I only got the next card after I’d eaten the biscuits on top of it.
Once we’d worked our way through the store it came time to 
pay. We’d get in line and come to the woman at the cash register. Each item had its price stamped on it. One by one she’d take each out, punch in the cost and then cha-ching, the cash register would go and magically up would pop the figure. Once everything had been entered and totalled Mom would pay her. At the same time she’d give the lady our ration stamps. Then we’d go home.
As a child I accepted the world as “given.” It is the way it was because that’s the way it was. That’s how I related to the world in which I found myself. I was on the “home front.” I confronted a central fact of everyday life during the war: scarcity.
There was not enough to go round. If everyone was to get their fair share, then everything had to be rationed. Food. Clothing. Gasoline. Tires. Everything.
If it could possibly be useful in the war effort, then it was rationed.
The Office of Price Administration issued Ration Books to each individual in each family.
Even we children. The OPA’s Ministry of Food issued one to each of us. Although I never touched mine, I knew mine was in Mom’s purse
They rationed almost everything. A “spare” was a wild card that could be used for more than one thing.
Gasoline was especially important.
Every time we stopped at a station I was made aware gas was rationed.
War ration books contained pages and pages of what looked like postage stamps printed on flimsy paper.
When we used them, we knew we were all in this together.
We all know where we stood.
Mom and Dad’s response to Pearl Harbor was amazingly swift. Fear haunted the house on 11th Avenue. Fear of a followup attack by the Japanese. By the spring of 1942 they’d sold the house in Oakland and bought a lot in Walnut Creek.
In those days Walnut Creek was little more than a Main Street. 
Today freeways outline what at the war’s onset was a network of two-lane blacktop. Walnut Creek in those days was primarily a junction. The north-south highway from Martinez through Danville and on to Dublin met the highway that went west to the bay area.
Walnut Creek was a dozen miles away from potential targets. Moreover, it was beyond the east bay hills. They felt safe. Besides, it would be an easy commute for Dad to go to his job at Colgate-Palmolive-Peets on the bay down from Berkeley. 
Of particular importance, the two-lane blacktop from Walnut Creek to Berkeley did not go over the hills. Rather a tunnel ran under them. Shortly before entering it, the highway went to four lanes.
Mom and Dad bought a third of a country acre on 2nd Avenue a couple of miles north of town. They bought it from Peter Vallino, an old Italian who had emigrated decades before, planted his small vineyard and, every autumn, made his own wine.
Showing the absolute confidence he had throughout his life in his ability to build and/or fix
things, Dad first cleared most of the grapevines and then built a house. Actually it was the size of a two-car garage.
The build did not go smoothly. At six years old, only two of Dad’s frustrations registered with me. Whether because he did not have enough money or because he did not know any better, he bought green wood. Regardless of how fast he worked, as the spring sun beat down. the studs would slowly begin to warp and split. This called forth the same kind of language Uncle Ted sometimes used. Dad also had trouble running electrical wires through the studs. He’d drill a hole and then, before inserting the wire through it, he’d put a white porcelain tube in the hole. Evidently this was to act as some sort of insulator. Over and over the tube would break, again accompanied by brisk language.
He finished the outside of the house in early spring. We moved in. He worked on the inside for the next few months.
We lived there until 1946.
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