World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, American; World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
Sometimes we would go to the farm the night before and stay over,
sleeping in the house, on the porches, even in the hay in the big
barns. The older boys used to drink beer and play cards all night out
in the barn. The house was on a hill about one quarter mile from the
lake with a lane running down to a boathouse on the shore. In later
years I can remember going down with Clarence and Gordon to sleep in
the boathouse which was out over the water. It was a wild spot in
those days with no cottages nearby. The hill from the house to the
lake was all grape vineyards and there was a railroad track right
through the vineyard. When we heard a train coming, we would run down
and toss big bunches of grapes to the train crew as the train went
very slowly due to the up hill grade.
In 1925 Clarence and Gordon went to Florida for a couple of months in
the winter. In those days the roads were not very good and the cars
undependable. While in Florida, living in a tent, they worked on the
road repair gang and also picked fruit. I remember they picked apples
all that fall on a farm near Geneva in order to earn enough money for
their trip. I recall their return from Florida late one night during a
bitterly cold snowstorm. They came in the back door with bags of
oranges.
In 1926 there was an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Rundel, from Omaha,
Nebraska, who were traveling through Canandaigua when they had a
serious accident. They were hospitalized and their car was in a garage
being fixed. Due to their injuries they did not feel up to driving to
Nebraska so they advertised in the paper for someone to drive them
home. Gordon answered the ad and drove them back. They all got along
so well, they asked him to stay with them and he did ... for three
years. He bought himself a pickup truck and started a painting
business there. He sent us pictures taken of the tornado damage in
that area. I remember one picture he took of a wheat straw that was
driven into a telephone pole.
In 1927 Clarence and John Timms started for California on motorcycles
and they got as far as Kansas when they could no longer ride the
motorcycles due to the bad roads. The roads were all red clay and when
wet they were worse than ice. After falling off them too many times,
they pushed the motorcycles into Kansas City and sold them. They took
the money and went by train, to Omaha where Gordon was living. They
talked Gordon into going on to California with them in his truck. The
roads were very poor, dirt mostly, and it took them a long time. In
California they picked grapes, then they came back to Omaha, where
they left Gordon, and returned home by train. When Gordon finally came
home in 1929 he drove all the way without stopping and it was several
years before he got over it. He developed car sickness and could not
ride in a car for some time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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