ELEANOR GUSTAVSON WRITING CLASS
(Meets every Wednesday, during the school year, with Meridith Rish, as Facilitator, and her faithful Dog, Jasper always in attendance along with fifteen to twenty five "students" at each Wednesday session)Here are some stories written by Eleanor, and some others of interest, published in the booklet of memoirs for the school year 2006-2007. IF JASPER COULD TALK by ELEANOR GUSTAVSON If Jasper could talk, he'd tell us how much he loves Meredith and how good she is to him. He would tell us how he loves to ride in the car with her and go wherever she goes. He would remind us that he's uneasy whenever she leaves the room
if Jasper could talk, he would tell us about the rest homes he visits with Meredith and how happy the residents are to see him. If Jasper could talk, he would tell us how much he enjoys the papers Bob (with one "o") writes about his family and their activities. If Jasper could talk, he would let us know that he likes to listen to Mint reminisce. If Jasper could talk, he would ask Anyta questions about her childhood in New York. If Jasper could talk, he would thank Terry for being so willing to share so lovingly the stories of his family- especially his daughter If Jasper could talk, he would compliment Marj on her interesting writings and the droll way in which she reads them. Jasper's Favorite Pastime If Jasper could talk, he would encourage Lilly to to write about her teaching years and other aspects of her interesting life If Jasper could talk, he would tell Blanche how happy he is that she has joined our class and how he looks forward to her writings. If Jasper could talk, he would compliment Pat Wilson on her articles and compliment her on the "Memoirs" book she puts together every year If Jasper could talk, he would ask Pat Clayberger to write more of her fascinating articles and he would tell Pat how happy we are that she didn't have to serve on the Spechter (Sic: Spector) trial. If Jasper could talk, he would thank Irene O. for sharing, not only the story of her childhood, but also her husband's memories. If Jasper could talk, he would greet Bea and tell her how much he likes it when she reads a story. If Jasper could talk, he would call Kaye and let him know how much we miss him and his stories. He would also compliment him on the improvement of his English. If Jasper could talk, he would tell Barbara Cummins that he enjoys her stories of an early Glendale, If Jasper could talk, he would thank Franziska for sharing her interesting memoirs with us. If Jasper could talk, he would compliment Barbara Cardinal on the improvement in her willingness to talk and to share her writings w ith us. If Jasper could talk, he would tell Irene Hartz just how delightful and charming her writings are and thank her for sharing them with us If Jasper could talk, he would ask Jean to write more stories about his experiences as a missionary. If Jasper could talk, he would tell Beverly how he admires her well written stories. If Jasper could talk, he would compliment Jungle Jenny on her writings about her exciting life. If Jasper could talk, he would call Joan Muldowney and encourage her to come back to class and write about her very interesting life growing up on horse farm in Ireland. If Jasper could talk, he would tell us how much he enjoys being in our class and the catnaps he takes throughout the afternoon. ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************* From Memoirs and More 2007 AROUND THE WORLD (Excerpt} by BOB FARLEY "We found out that the world IS round! This was emphasized when we purchased our tickets. The travel agent (Montrose CA Travel Agency) went through the description of the trip, described the tours, gave us a written description of the sites that we would visit and explained the ticket, the lodging, side trips, guides and other details of our tours. Then she asked. 'would you like to make a round trip?' She caught herself before I could say anything and continued with ' I guess that will not really be necessary, will it?' I agreed. The world is round." ******************************************************************************************************************************************************* From Memoirs and More 2007 "Frosty the Snowman" (Excerpt) by IRENE ROBORTETTO "..I remember seeing pictures of kids playing in the snow, snowmen being built, sledding, making snow angels, and all we ever had was sun, maybe a little rain, cold and wind-just no snow. (Note: Although I do remember the snowfall of January 1949...) This refers to a time when IRENE lived at 1824 No. Brighton Street in Burbank, California. At that time Gene and Eleanor Gustavson lived at 506 North Parish Street in Burbank with sons Donald 3+, Richard 1+ and Ralph, infant. The snow in the winter of 1949 was the only time ever remembered that it snowed sufficiently in the San Fernando Valley to build snowmen, go sledding or the many things done when several inches of snow is on the ground in a non-snow area. ******************************************************************************************************************************************************* From Memoirs and More 2007 How a Computer Works by ELEANOR GUSTAVSON I've heard numerous explanations of how a computer works. They are all well and good but my understanding of the complexities of a computer makes a lot more sense. In the first place, forget about all those technical terms that computer geeks like to use. I bet even they don't understand all of them. They talk in acronyms like URL's, Rams, Roms, Bits & Bytes, and a CPU - which in my book stands for Compact People Unit. Well...those people just don't know what they're talking about. Bill Gates and his peers have tried to make computers seem very mysterious. but they are really very simple. And I know the secret. Computers are occupied by little creatures who do all the work. They operate calculators when you need answers to things like percentages. In fact, most of the time they know the answer. I don't know who needs to know percentages anyhow. just tell me whether the difference is $10 or $100. If you tell me percentages, then I have to figure just how much - so tell me how much in the beginning. Then we want to look up history so we ask the computer to tell us what happened on a random date - say September 1920, for instance. Agatha, the solver of mysteries, will quickly research the month and, besides finding that I was born that month, will give you all the other interesting data although you've already heard the most important Can't remember how much income tax you paid in 1995. Well - there's a man named Herman Block who can tell you, He has all those figures right at the tip of his fingers. Do I have money in the bank? All the computer occupants have to do is run over to the bank and look at my account. When I say "run", I mean really run because that's what these little creatures do. They move fast - in the blink of an eye so to speak. How much is my car worth? Who Cares? I won't get that much for it if I try to sell anyway. The same with my house. It doesn't matter - it's worth whatever I can get for it. So don't waste time asking a question like that. A website called HGTV tells you how to decorate your living room. It's your living room so decorate it any way you like. The little computer creatures like all different colors so, if you ask the question about what color to paint the walls, the answer will be the favorite color of that "little person". But go ahead - ask anyway just for the fun of it. Besides they like to keep busy. My house has 12 rooms and 2 bathrooms and they are all different colors. If you don't like the color just keep painting til you find a color you like. Who cares what the "in" color is this year? The woman in the computer paint room will tell you to do whatever you like. Do you go to the computer for recipes? If you don't know how to cook by now, how has your family survived? Bob (which is Robert spelled backwards) is in charge of the whole operation of my computer. He runs around like crazy seeing that everyone stays busy. Some of the specialists are Athaga in charge of research, Thamar who heads up decorating, Mixer the master cook. Tibber the gardener, Dr Liph our renowned psychologist, Mot Wakorb our newsman and many others. These people have adopted our names and have turned them around thinking we wouldn't recognize them. But, boy, did we fool them! Now you won't have to call in a computer consultant - just remember what I've told you and you'll be fine. Oh - I almost forgot - there is one other thing. My youngest son - a rocket scientist at JPL - keeps telling me to be sure to back up my computer. Well - I've backed it up as far as it will go. It's hitting the wall now and won't go any further. *************************************************************************************************************************************************** From Memoirs and More 2007 The Train Whistle by ELEANOR GUSTAVSON It was 1 a.m. and i couldn't sleep. I got up and decided to play a game on the computer. As I started, I heard a train whistle in the distance. And memories flooded over me. My dad worked on the GM&N (Gulf Mobile and Northern Railroad) which later became the GM&O (Gulf Mobile & Ohio) Railroad in the southern United States. He started out as a fireman, later became an engineer, and when hr died, he was the Fuel Supervisor of the road. I don't know why he chose the railroad as a career and I never asked him. However, our family ate, slept and lived as a railroad family - and most of our social life revolved around relatives and other railroad families. For a long time, Daddy was on call. Although I was too little to remember those days, I remember them talking about the "call boy". I never inquired about that title until recently I found out that the call boy worked in the dispatcher's office and, when a crew was needed for an unscheduled run, he got on his bike and went to notify whichever crewman was needed. If it was nighttime, he knocked on the door or perhaps a window until he roused someone to let them know the man of the house was needed for a run. I don't remember that Daddy ever had a regular run. He went out when he was needed. When he was working as a hostler, we would take our supper down to the roundhouse and share it with him. A hostler is the engineer who worked in the yard where all the extra cars were parked. While we were there he would let us climb up into the engine and ride with him. It was lots of fun to ride with him when he took the engine on to the turntable and the man working with him - called a brakeman - would start the turntable and we would ride around and come out headed in the opposite direction. They didn't have to put the cars on the turntable because they could be hitched up from either end. The yard would be full of box cars filled with all sorts of things. The dispatcher would send Daddy a schedule of the different trains with the cars listed by number and he would go back and forth until he had the right cars hitched together. That group of cars would sit in a specific place on the tracks and stay there until its crew brought an engine and started the cars on their way. Sometimes there were five or six trains to be made up. It was tedious and boring work. The makeup of the trains was a conglomerate. There would be cattle cars (to be filled later), box cars (filled with all sorts of goods), refrigerated cars (to be filled with ice and filled later), coal cars. gondolas (usually with boxes of goods tied down). The cars were unhitched at their destinations and left there. Then the engine would back up and pick up the other cars and they'd be on their way. Railroad men were not happy to see trucks hauling goods which normally would have gone on the train. During the Depression in the 1930's, men traveling around looking for work would climb into the empty cars and ride as far as they could to another town. The conductor - who was in charge of the train - walked the length of the train and looked n all the unlocked cars. If he found someone in one of the cars, he would make him get out and get off the railroad property. The experienced men became very adept at hiding from the conductor - sometimes on top of the car. These men were called hoboes. I always admired the conductor, He rode in the caboose with a little cupola on top with windows all around, He was in charge of the train and it was his job to keep the train on time and taking the right direction. Occasionally, as the train went on its way, it came to a junction where it had to have the right tracks so it ended up where it belonged. At the junction, the brakeman would jump off the train and run up past the front of the engine where he threw the switch and moved the tracks so they were headed in the right direction. Daddy was a fireman or an engineer at different times. The fireman's job was to shovel coal into the fire box so the steam maintained a steady pressure. This was a grueling job. The engineer "kept his hand on the throttle" and moved the engine forward or backward as needed. On a steam engine - which are the ones I loved - the engineer had to watch a number of dials to be sure the firebox was hot enough, to check the steam pressure and other things I don't remember. On the engineer's side of the cab was a dead man's throttle, meant to stop the train if anything happened to the engineer. Since the engineer had to keep his hand on the throttle. if anything happened to him, his hand would drop off the throttle and the train would stop. I think there was also a foot pedal of some sort that he had to keep his foot on, too. Often the engineer would send a message by the whistle to let his family know he was back. It would be something like three short and one long blast and his family could expect him as soon as possible. My Dad and my Uncle Will were both engineers and they each had a distinct way of blowing the whistle so we would know who was coming in. I don't remember what Daddy's code was but I remember getting excited when I heard it because he gave me lots of attention and I adored him. The diesel engines came into popularity in the late 1930's but it was never the same. Daddy traveled around the state training the engineers and firemen on how to operate a diesel engine. The diesel was more economical and cleaner - but most of the men didn't like them. The sound of the steam whistle gets in your blood and stays there. When I hear the whistle I want to get on that train and go wherever it goes. The whistle and the clickety-clack of the wheels on the track are mesmerizing. ***************************************************************************************************************************************************
On Tue, 22 May 2007 16:13:08 +0000, Carol Tonseth wrote: Thank you Bev for
the info.You had given most of that to me already. I found the book thru a
friend who has Swedish relatives in Kingsburg. I didn't know this until
recently so its kind of fun to hear her stories from her aunts about the
families there. Who knows we might be related! The book was written in 1991
and I bought it over the weekend at the little Swedish store in Kingsburg.
Its about $30. If you want one I could see if they have any more. I figured
some of the relatives quoted at that time may have passed away by now. Still
wanting to verify the death date for Carl F.and why he came to Kingsburg at
that age?
I'll keep you posted.
carol
**************************************************************************
From: "bevernie" <bevernie@austin.rr.com>
Where did you get the book? I am sorry they didn't contact me. Hiram just
died this last year. Weldon's mother was a Gustavson. Thank you so much for
the information. Yes, the info you have
is correct. Here is what I have...hope it makes sense.
Carl Frederick aka Uncle Charlie married Anna C. Ross. Someone in Sweden
told me Carl's name was Karl Frederick Carlsson. The family took Gustavson
after they arrived in America. The U.S. said each family should take one
name. Gustaf Adolph being the oldest may be why he took Gustavson or the
fact that the King of Sweden was also named Gustavson. Carl (Charlie) & Anna
had three girls: Effie 1882-1969, Elsie 1884-1954, & Esther 1887-1985.
They had one son John dob abt 1888 and I understand died in Los Angeles.
He took his mother's maiden name of Ross and I never had any info about
him. Esther never married she died in S.F. I knew her quite well. She was a
RN. Effie and Elsie married Wilson brothers from Kingsburg. They were all
very religious. Effie Cordelia Gustavson & John Albert Wilson. They had
four children: *Anna Charlotte 1910 ? Charlotte abt. 1912, *Hiram Everett
1914 & Harvey Russell Wilson 1916. Harvey married (1940 in Reno NV)
Madeline Ethel Sherwood 1918. Harvey & Madeline moved to Paradise CA where
I met them. Madeline was a real genealogy buff and I copied some of her
info. She suddenly died the following year before I could get all her info
on the Gustafson's. I am still hoping.
*Anna, Charlotte & Hiram never married.
Harvey & Madeline had two children;
Marilee Ann Wilson 1943 married Steven Duane Sanders. They married in 1963.
Have three children Morton Duane Sanders 1965, Douglas Wayne Sanders (1967?)
and Julie Ann Sanders 1968. Frederick Russell Wilson 1945 married 1967
Virginia Rae Moser ?. They had two children Debra Lynn Wilson ? and
Christopher Scott Wilson Elsie Victoria Gustavson 1884-1954 (married 1911)
Carl Alfred 1880-1949. They had four children: Grace Dorothy Wilson
1912-1982;Doris Victoria Wilson 1915-1967; Alice Elizabeth Wilson 1917-1987;
& Mildred Josephine Wilson 1919-present. I became friends with Alice &
Mildred. Grace, Doris & Alice all remained single. Mildred J Wilson
1919-present married Weldon Richard Anderson 1906-1994. They had two
children: Carlene Lois Anderson 1946-present & James Richard Anderson
1948-present. James never married. Carlene is divorced I believe and has
two step-children. Carlene CA & James CA; Marilee CA & Frederick aka
Rick NV all have email.
*********************************************************************
From: Carol Tonseth
Monday, May 21, 2007
Subject: Kingsburg Relatives
I have bought a book that is written about the early settlers in
Kingsburg titled "Bit of in the Desert" . So far I haven't
found any of the Gustavson's but Weldon Anderson, Hiram and Harvey
Wilson are mentioned as some of the early families. I'm trying to
research our relatives in Kingsburg and when they arrived, etc. The
author does say that she sent out letters to everyone and if they
weren't returned with info she couldn't put that in her book.
Cuz Jerry sent me the following on Carl F. Gustavson
What I have found in the city directory for Co Spgs is that Carl F
maoved to Kingsburg Ca in 1907, that he was a tailor here in the
Springs, that he lived here as early as 1896, that he had three
girls, Effie, Elsie, and Esther
I have Carl F. death date at 1906 which couldn't be possible if he
was still in Sprgs. As always genealogy is a wonderful search
for the facts. I plan to visit the Kingsburg cemetery and see if I
can verify his death date. Will still try and contact the family on
info too. Indeed if he came to Kingsburg in 1907 he definitely is
one of the original settlers there as they celebrate their 100th
anniversary next yr.
Carol
***************************************************************************************************************************
YAHOO.Shortcuts.hasSensitiveText = true; YAHOO.Shortcuts.doUlt = false; YAHOO.Shortcuts.location = "us"; YAHOO.Shortcuts.lang = "us"; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_id = 37; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_type = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_title = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_publish_date = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_author = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet = { lw_1179860042_0: { text: 'Colo', startchar: 895, endchar: 898, start: 895, end: 898, weight: 0.826792, type: ['shortcuts:/us/instance/place/us/state'] , metaData: { geoArea: "269375", geoCountry: "United States", geoIsoCountryCode: "US", geoLocation: "(-105.55091, 38.997841)", geoName: "Colo", geoPlaceType: "State", geoState: "Colo", geoStateCode: "CO", type: "shortcuts:/us/instance/place/us/state" } } }; YAHOO.Shortcuts.overlaySpaceId = "97546169"; YAHOO.Shortcuts.hostSpaceId = "97546168"; On Tue, 22 May 2007 03:03:26 +0000, Carol Tonseth wrote Cuz Jerry sent me the following on Carl F. Gustavson:> "What I have found in the city directory for Co Spgs is that Carl F moved to Kingsburg Ca in 1907, that he was a tailor here in the Springs, that he lived here as early as 1896, that he had three girls, Effie, Elsie, and Esther" This may have come from Bev, but I think Mother related this story: Effie, Elsie and Esther were serious young Christian girls with a talent for singing and, in addition to singing in church, they would sing as a trio on the streets outside of the local taverns - would be interesting to verify....since Mother was born in 1909, it would have been a story that she'd heard. I have Carl F. death date at 1906 which couldn't be possible if he was still in Kingsburgh. I plan to visit the Kingsburg cemetery and see if I can verify his death date. Will still try and contact the family on > info too. Indeed if he came to Kingsburg in 1907 he definitely is one of the original settlers there as they celebrate their 100th > anniversary next yr. Carol ********************************************************************************************************************************************************
I have bought a book that is written about the early settlers in Kingsburg titled “Bit of Desert” . So far I haven’t found any of the Gustavson’s but Weldon Anderson, Hiram and Harvey Wilson are mentioned as some of the early families. I’m trying to research
our relatives in Kingsburg and when they arrived, etc. The author does say that she sent out letters to everyone and if they weren’t returned with info she couldn’t put that in her book. Cuz Jerry (Gustavson) sent me the following on Carl F. Gustavson: What I have found in the city directory for Colorado Springs is that Carl F moved to Kingsburg Ca in 1907, that he was a tailor here in Colorado Springs, that he lived here as early as 1896, that he had three girls, Effie, Elsie, and Esther. I have Carl F. death date at 1906 which couldn’t be possible if he was still in Colorado Springs. As always genealogy is a wonderful search for the facts. I plan to visit the Kingsburg cemetery and see if I can verify his death date. Will still try and contact the family on info too.Indeed if he came to Kingsburg in 1907 he definitely is one of the original settlers there as they celebrate their 100th anniversary next yr.
Carol
********************************************************************************************************************************************************
tact wOn Sun, 20 May 2007 22:59:21 -0500, bevernie wrote
> Yes, you have relatives there.. Bev, you are a librarian at heart -
thank you so much
I thot I remembered overhearing Mother (Leona Von Pessl) and Grandma
Ruth Gustavson) talk about cousins in Kingsburg. They spoke very
highly of them. For some reason my mind had pictured Oregon. A tidbit:
they told a story about Grandpa's mother, Emma Bergren Gustavson. When
they reached Colorado Springs Emma told Adolph that she was tired up
moving and that was as far as she'd go. If he wanted to keep traveling
on, he'd have to go without her. Evidently it was a bit of a bone of
contention between them. And as the pieces of the puzzle began to fit
together (thanks to all of you family history buffs) I see why. They
had been married in Chicago. She'd had quite a traveling history up to
that point as she'd first gone to Germany. The story I
heard was that her sister had married a German baker and Emma found
herself working in the bakery every day way before the sun came up and
soon decided that wasn't a good way to keep from starving in Sweden.
She returned to Sweden and came across the Atlantic in steerage with
her life-long friend whose name I cannot recall (Mrs Bergman), but a
later picture of them both is in one of the albums that I sent south.
Then her story continued clear across country, giving birth to her
large family in several towns as they came west. So Adolph's brother's
continued on without him or their parents who also put down "roots" in
Colorado Springs. And, it seems to me, Ed's and Ruth's family lost
conith a very rich part of the Gustavson family
**********************************************************
Elsie Mabel Gustavson
by Eleanor Gunn Gustavson
June 2005
I first met Elsie in 1939 (66 years ago when my mother and i came to California (from Laurel. Mississippi) to visit my brother, Joe,
who was rooming with Elsie’s mother in Glendale California and attending Curtiss Wright Technical Institute, an aviation school,
at Grand Central Airport
Elsie and I were the same age (19) and had much in common. I sort of felt like she was a sister, I always wanted, but never had.
Several memories come to mind, over six and a half decades later. One day “Mom” Gustavson, or Mrs “G” as we affectionately
Called her, my mother and I, with Elsie driving, took a tour of Hollywood with guidebook in hand, to see movie star homes. We had
similar fun trips to the beach at Santa Monica, with picnic lunches, and elsewhere around Southern California.
Elsie always had impeccable taste in clothing and appearance. One day “Pop” Gustavson, Elsie’s father, gave her $5 to get a new
clothing outfit. she and I went shopping and she put together a wonderful outfit, very stylish and becoming to her reserved nature.
I envied her talent.
After Gene and I came back to Glendale from Ohio in 1962, with a family of five kids, Elsie and I talked on the phone frequently,
almost daily. In fact, she and I were talking on the phone when the news came over the radio and TV that JFK had been shot
and fatally wounded in Dallas.
Elsie had a delightful sense of humor and was a beautiful, bright lady. She always kept a lovely home, was always very
gracious and hospitable. She reminded me of Mom (Mrs G) in many ways of mannerism and, in fact, appearance.
I am sorry that I couldn’t keep i touch with her the last few years. But circumstances were against us. gene had called
her on her birthday, May 18, and she seemed to him pretty normal, although she still seemed to have an attitude of just
biding time
I am also sorry that I couldn’t be with all who are mourning her passing. But that old thing called age seems to take its toll.
In spite of her withdrawn nature, she will always be remembered and we will miss her.
(Elsie had passed away May 29, 2005 at age 85 and this was written by Eleanor while confined in an outpatient clinic after several days hospitalization)
Maybe Karen can verify something that I remember with regard to
515 La Loma. I remember Elsie saying that you asked them if they
wanted to buy the house and when Lou said he didn't want to buy
property in Glendale, you then said that you either had to sell the
house or move your family in when you returned to Glendale.
love and prayer, Miriam
********************************************************************************
Hi to all,
Regarding the La Loma house…I remember my mother saying that my dad didn’t want to buy a house in California.
What a shame!!!! They had so many chances of buying a house in Glendale and an acre in Newport Beach.
One of his friends was developing land in Newport Beach back in the Forties and wanted to sell dad one acre for $500.
He said, “he didn’t want to buy land that looked like the swamp”. He wanted to go back to Texas, but his mother died
in August, the same year Grandma Gustavson died (she died in March 1962). I know my mother wanted to buy the
La Loma house, but dad didn’t, so it turned out he didn’t go back to Texas because his brothers wanted to sell the
ranch (which they did), and after receiving their share of the money, my parents bought a house in West Covina
(which we didn’t want, but he did). We wanted a house in Pasadena.
While growing up, I moved eleven times before I turned 30. After I got married, we moved once. We have lived here
in Northridge 30 years. I think my mother moved twice that number while being married.
Hope all is well with everyone. I will have to read your memoirs Uncle Gene. Thanks for the info and stay healthy.
Love, Karen McClure 
EUGENE VICTOR GUSTAVSON
MEMOIRS
PART 1
1914 to 1962
This is a try at compiling an assortment of memories covering ninety years -1914 to 2004 – assuming my memory has retained a reasonably accurate recollection of various incidents worth noting. Some I recall clearly, some are pretty hazy and some have been told to me by my older siblings, Leona and Edward or relayed from them through others. In general, I think the stories are fairly accurate, if not exact.
I actually started this in 1994 but put it aside now and then as other things occupied my time. It may never be finished but hope to record enough to make it a worth while contribution to family history. First, a little background on family origins during, or before my lifetime.
My parents were Ruth Daniel (Mom) and Edward Daniel Gustavson Sr. (Pop) married November 26, 1908) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. My mother, maiden name Ruth Daniel Goodan, was born October 1, 1892 in Lucerne, , near Greeley, Colorado and my father was born in or near McPherson, Kansas June 18, 1881
Mom had two half sisters, Grace and Lulu, both older, and a younger brother, Dan. The family was generally middle class, or above. Although Mom’s family roots seemed to be around Kentucky, I’m not familiar with from where, when or how ancestors may have immigrated to America. My understanding is that they were, primarily, Scotch and Irish. I became well acquainted with Grace and her husband, Frank Moore, and her daughters Martha and Emma and later, in with Lulu and her daughter Winnie (Burleson), who had been a studio make-up artist in Hollywood.
During early years of their marriage and prior, Pop had taken up preaching around Colorado Springs, principally to farm families on the plains east of Colorado Springs. He had had a religious ‘healing” experience after an illness in his youth which convinced him that there, indeed, was a higher being. He was the only one of the five siblings, who followed an early religious career,
Mom’s and Pop’s mode of transportation on their ministry circuit was a covered wagon pulled by a team of horses. 
This was before automobiles had become the preferred mode of transportation. I don’t know what circumstances caused them to give up the itinerant preacher life to try painting and farming, but, I presume, it had a lot to do with money.
I can’t say I have much of importance to chronicle about my and my family life. But I recently almost completed reading a two volume autobiography by one of Eleanor’s relatives which I found very interesting, even though he had had a rather ordinary life, which applies to my life..
I began thinking that almost everyone’s life history may be of interest to someone; so why not give it a shot. Besides, Dick and Eleanor have urged me to put down at least some family highlights that I remember during my lifetime. Also Edward’s and Signe’s youngest son, Jerry, had shown considerable interest in family background to which this should contribute.
And, by the way, having a PC for this task makes it much easier. In fact, otherwise it wouldn’t be done. My first experience with PC’s started in early 1985 when I bought my first setup (Over $6,000 with a 16kb hard drive)) and PC’s were just starting to be used by individuals. How we got along without personal computers before the 1980’s, I’ll always wonder. I had some experience, training and knowledge of main frame computers in my work at Lockheed dating back to the 1950’s but advent of the PC introduced at complete new way of life soon to become almost a necessity for most people.
To apply some order to an otherwise confusing array of incidents that may have embedded themselves in memory, I’ll attempt to group them generally within nine 10 year spans beginning with 1914, year of birth.
For starters, I’ve never had much of a memory with respect to current events. From the earliest I can recall, I seemed to be more occupied with what’s next than what is happening at the moment. This characteristic caused me to miss out on recording in memory a great many things that, at this stage in life, might be pleasant to reflect on and perhaps write about or talk about to anyone interested.
My sister, Leona (born November 30. 1909), and brother, Edward (born August 3, 1912 & d. February 12, 1996), had a much better memory of our heritage and just about everything that went on in our early family life. They can (could) describe details about events and association with friends that I have not an inkling of recollection – even though I was probably there and maybe a participant.
When I last visited (in 1985) my birthplace at 704 North Pine Street in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the house still stood much as it was in 1914. The only noticeable difference was addition of a small room and a garage. The house that belonged to my paternal grandparents (Adolph and Emma Gustavson) at 708 North Pine, still stood and looked very much, from the outside, as I remembered it up to the time we left Colorado Springs in 1936.
Edward on plough with Gene and Arlene watching
After several years of living on farms (where Arlene and Paul were born January 27, 1916 and December 27, 1917 respectively) east of Colorado Springs and, later, near Fountain Colorado, we returned to Colorado Springs in 1927 where we lived until 1936 when the whole family, except Edward and his wife, Signe, migrated to Glendale, California in search of a better life. More about that later.
Very shortly after my birth (April 7, 1914) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, we moved to a farm, owned by our Mom’s Dad, Daniel Goodan, on the plains northeast of Colorado Springs, near Alta Vista, Colorado Calhan, Simla, Ramah and Matheson were nearby small towns on the route from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Limon, Colorado and on eastward into Kansas.
We lived on several different farms during about 10 years in that area 50 to 60 miles east and a little north of Colorado Springs. Leona, Arlene, Paul and Elsie were born there. Edward and I were born in Colorado. Spring, apparently during our parent’s occasional brief returns to the city.
The plains area of Colorado, east of the Rockies, in those days, was rather inhospitable with hot, dry summers and cold winters. All farmers gambled on getting enough snow in winter and spring and summer rain to produce a worthwhile crop. Rainfall was infrequent and undependable. But the rich soil lured die- hard farmers always eager to make a killing with a good crop yield. They had to have an adventurous, entrepreneurial instinct, always hoping to hit it big and avoid going broke.
The area farmers, at that time, had no idea they were perched over a huge aquifer -literally an underground ocean – several hundred feet below ground level. Even had they known about it, the technology to pump water over two dozen feet, or so, was non-existent at that time in the area. Water was pumped with hand pumps or windmills from wells, which were hand dug, and very necessary to supply the water for livestock and farm families.
My very first recollection of anything was playing along a road in front of our house, near Alta Vista when probably three or so, with my sister, Leona and brother, Edward, both older than me. I recall this incident because bunched up against the fence were stacks of huge tumbleweeds, each four or five feet in diameter and much bigger than me. For some inexplicable reason those tumbleweeds impressed me and the sight of those “monsters” still clings in memory. From this farm, I think, we may have moved to the Daniel’s place south and east a few miles where we lived a couple years.
Other incidents in the first 10 years include: The first schooling I remember was at the Eagle Bluff one-room school (Grades 1 thru 6 or 8, I believe). It was a few miles directly south of Matheson, Colorado. We moved to a farm with a sod house (the Force place) a mile or so West of the one-room school, from about 1918 to 1920.
The only recollections I have of the Eagle Bluff School involve three incidents that still linger in memory: A larger, and older, red headed girl (Gladys Bowers) seemed to delight in dragging me around the schoolyard by my feet. Another involved an open, two-seated passenger car driving by the school with a man with his wife in the front seat beside him. Students were engaging in snowball fights during recess in front of the school. A snowball, thrown accidentally, or maybe on purpose, struck the lady in the face. An angry husband returned to demand the guilty party fess up so he could render his version of discipline to the perpetrator. Naturally, no one came forth. It caused quite a stir among the kids until he finally gave up and drove on. I don’t remember that the teacher became involved.
The other incident occurred when the teacher asked me to recite in front of the class just as I desperately needed permission to visit the school outhouse. I was too shy or intimidated to ask permission to be excused. While doing as instructed, I couldn’t hold on any longer. The pool on the floor must have embarrassed others about as much as it did me.
The house on the Force place was built with sod exterior walls. Besides the house which was the family living quarters, it had a barn, chicken coop, storage sheds and a two-story garage structure next to the house used to house a Chevrolet touring car Pop had bought in about 1916, according to Leona.
While we lived there, I have a vague recollection about our Dad having to register for the WWI draft. I recall morning dove hunts with him and, the most vivid memory of all: a bi-plane airplane flew low, directly overhead, in a Westerly direction.
That one sighting of an airplane in flight captured my imagination to such an extent that it shaped my entire future life. As time passed by, I became more and more enthralled with the thought of “flying like a bird”. I recall imagining I could jump off a building, spread my arms and glide to a landing. This fantasy was so realistic, I actually visualized it as being possible. Maybe prehistoric ancestors were birds?
While living at the Force place, somehow the house caught fire one morning and burned to the ground along with just about everything we had. I recall that Mom sustained a serious cut on an arm trying to break a window to save some possessions. Guess we were lucky. There were no other injuries. There was no such thing as a volunteer fire department, fire insurance or any other kind of protection from such disasters. According to Leona, the fire was the morning of May 5, 1919.
In recent years, my brother, Edward and sons Dan & Jerry, reported visiting the site and finding some remnants of recognizable family belongings.
After the fire, we moved into the garage building, next to the home that burned down. The whole family – by that time five kids – occupied the second floor of the building, probably not more than a couple hundred square feet. That building almost burned down, also, as the result of a lightning strike. Fortunately Pop and his brother (Uncle Ernie), who lived on the premises at the time in the inactivated gospel wagon, got the fire out before it did much damage.
Other than dove hunting with Pop on the Force place, the only other recollection I have is when my brother Edward and I experimented with throwing .22 caliber bullets in the cook stove (a wood/coal burner) to hear them explode and, on another occasion, trying to explode them by putting them on a rock and hitting them with a hammer.
We moved from the Force place to another farm (the McCune place a.k.a. the Alford place), a short distance to the west and south – far enough that we had to attend another one-room school, Fairview, located a half-mile north and probably about a mile west. This was in March 1920. Our youngest sibling, Elsie, was born on this farm shortly thereafter.
I believe, at the time, I probably attended the second and third grades at the Fairview school and neighbor farmers, en route which we walked, were the Carpenters and the Humphreys. Among names of neighbors and kids in the area that I recall included Virgil and Delbert Humphreys, Viola Carpenter, Bertha Baccus, Ura and Arthur Jackson and sons Orlin and Forrest, Dave and Marie Daniels and an Ed Anderson. The Jacksons had a younger daughter who died as an infant.
The Ford model T and Mom and Pop (L) with Uncle Ernie, Edward, Gene, Arlene and Paul (R)
We farmed corn, wheat, potatoes and beans. And, of course, we had milk cows, chickens, hogs and horses. We raised most of our food and occasionally had enough left over to sell in town for cash used to buy clothing, farm implements and, after a good year, a Model T Ford touring car. Don’t recall what happened to the previous car, the Chevrolet. But I remember the Model T because it was the first car in which our Dad taught me to drive.
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All of the siblings, except Elsie and Paul, were old enough to really learn the work ethic on this farm. Everyone had chore and field work assignments that kept us busy. We learned how to ride horses, milk cows, hoe weeds in the fields, operate farm implements, and the art of survival in a rather unfriendly environment. Crops were sometimes destroyed in minutes by hail or died a lingering death from drought – it was all dry land farming at the mercy of the weather to supply enough rain to support the crops and feed the animals.
There were no amenities such as exist now. Kerosene lamps or lanterns provided light for all night activities – including homework. The “bathroom” was an outhouse (a wood structure with two or three seats provisioned with outdated Sears Roebuck catalogs or corn cobs) several yards from the house and a galvanized tin tub for bathing, usually in the kitchen.
Water was hand drawn or pumped by a windmill from a well and carried into the house. Most windmills, as I recall, had a tin tank, five or six feet in diameter and a couple feet high in which they pumped and stored the water for the livestock.
Water was heated on a coal or wood-burning kitchen stove – which also provided heat in the winter. I recall awakening one, or more, mornings with a light coat of snow on the bed quilt. The snow, driven by wind, drifted in thru cracks around windows or between the wall boards. Needless to say, such energy saving ideas such as insulation were unheard of at that time.
We got our first radio while living on this farm. It was a battery powered crystal-set affair with headphones. I believe the only stations we could receive clearly was the Grand Ol’ Opry from Nashville and Dr Brinkley from just over the Texas border in Mexico who promoted monkey glands as a cure-all for anything that could possibly ail a person. This was in the early 20’s and the radio was more a curiosity than a dependable entertainment device. But it did work and helped keep us entertained and occupied when we had any spare time.
A multi-party line telephone helped neighbors keep in touch with each other and up-to-date on local area goings on, not the least of which was customary gossip. By the time I was six or seven, we had a wall mounted telephone, in a wood case with a speaker horn and two bells on the front and an earpiece which hung on the side of the phone. Each party on the line was assigned a distinctive series of rings like two longs and a short and other variations. A hand driven lever on the side was used to generate the rings, on that phone as well as others on the line, to call up a neighbor
The youngest of the six siblings, particularly Elsie Mabel and Paul Rozell, were a little young for most of the heavy duty chores. But they did participate considerably and the rest of us were all old enough to do a good share of the heavy duty work, as was expected of children and taken for granted by everyone in those days – which I think was for the better as contrasted with today’s lack of directed work assignments for children.
By the age of eight or nine, we could handle teams of horses pulling harrows, cultivators, plows or wagons. We’d milk cows morning and evening, feed animals, herd cattle and ride horses, bareback, at full gallop “just like the Indians on those plains before us”. In one incident, riding down a slope at full gallop, the horse stepped in a hole and fell head over heels with me tangled in the melee. Other than a skinned leg, I had no other injuries. Just got back on and resumed the full speed gallop.
I recall no specific or organized instruction on how to do those things. We just picked it up, more or less through “sink or swim” efforts and lots of practice. As we grew old enough to understand what was going on and as we developed the mental and physical capability, it seemed to come very naturally. It was expected of us and resistance to the laborious routine never once occurred to us.
Being isolated from other playmates, we had to create ways to stay occupied and expend excess energy in what little spare time we had from farm chores. There was an abundance of material for make-believe playthings. We invented our own games, made our own toys and built our own castles. One Christmas present, a home made sled or store bought little red wagon was a major gift from Santa. At that time, we had little radio, obviously no TV or any form of entertainment by others. Nevertheless, I can’t remember ever being bored. We always dreamt up plenty to do in our spare time.
However we weren’t immune from occasional “don’t do’s” and mischief. My first brush with a “don’t do” occurred at a very young age, I believe while living on the Daniel’s farm… Somehow a neighbor friend (Orlin Jackson) got a package of Camel cigarettes. It was a challenging temptation for us – he, my brother, Edward and I – to pass up the dare of trying to smoke ‘em. So we did. I not only got miserably sick but, when we got home, somehow Mom and Pop recognized the aroma and figured out what we’d done. Needless to say, the woodshed was used to teach us better. After that, the only highly noticeable and obnoxious odors we ever carried home on us was from barnyard aromas, skunks and other “perfumes” we encountered while exploring nooks and crannies of the countryside.
The roads in those days were mostly just two “ruts” worn by wagons pulled by horses. There were no graded or, what could be called, improved roads. At about the age of nine, Pop taught me how to “drive” our Model T which he had bought after a rare, good crop year. I learned by sitting on his lap behind the steering wheel and guiding the car in the ruts of the road. That took real skill – the problem was getting the car out of the deep ruts. The Model T had three foot pedals: one pedal for shifting (full down for low, half way up for neutral and full up for high), another pedal for reverse and a pedal for braking. The throttle and spark control levers were mounted on the steering column behind the steering wheel.
Automobile engines, in those days, had to be cranked by hand. They had a nasty habit of kicking back, particularly if the spark were advanced too far. There were a whole bunch of broken arms before a smart fellow by the name of Knudsen invented the DC electric starter in the early 20’s. None of our family had a problem because our Dad taught us how to hold the crank on the heel of the hand so when it kicked back it would kick out of our hand. In cold weather, a tea kettle full of hot water poured over the intake manifold was usually required to get the engine started. Automobiles in the early 1900’s were very crude by modern automotive technology but it sure beat going to town in a wagon behind one or two horses.
The only thing that rivaled the airplane in my fantasies was owning a Chevrolet roadster. I visualized myself behind the wheel of a sleek Chevy roadster bound lickety-split for places unknown and probably non- existent.
Among incidents I recall during the early twenties – pre 1924 – was the conniving by me, Edward and our uncle Ernie to take youngest brother Paul bear hunting. We had an old black bear skin rug with the head almost intact. The scenario was that I was to drape the bear skin around me and hide behind a nearby haystack. Edward and Uncle Ernie were to equip themselves and Paul with weapons – sticks simulating guns – and go bear hunting. At the right time, I was to charge from my hiding place towards the hunters in full bear skin regalia. I did and it worked. Paul took one shot with his “weapon” and ran full speed, screaming “bear”, towards the house.
Another incident while on the McCune (Alford) farm involved my assignment to keep a herd of a dozen or so cows out of the corn field. There was no fence. So I was to station myself between the herd and the corn patch. If the cows headed towards the corn, I was to shoo them back to pasture. I knew cows are supposed to be dumb animals. But they were not so dumb they couldn’t outsmart me when it came to getting to the corn. It was easy for them. They just spread out. When I chased one side of the string out of the cornfield others made a bee line for the corn and vice versa. After a half hour to hour of this futile cat and mouse game, I finally gave up, sat down exhausted and, I think cried, until someone – I don’t recall who – came to the rescue.
Harrows, used to smooth the fields after plowing, in those days were horse drawn and made in two halves. If a tight turn were attempted, one side could be pulled so as to turn over on top of the adjacent half. While driving a team of horses harrowing a newly plowed field, as I turned around at the end of the field to make a return run, the harrow buckled in the middle and folded over on itself. I had turned the team too sharply. Luckily, the team didn’t spook, as often happened, which could have been rather upsetting to me -let alone my dad. I finally got the harrow back in shape and continued harrowing.
Weather on the Colorado plains could change suddenly and unexpectedly. There were no “weathermen” and no way of foretelling what to expect within days, hours and some cases minutes. While visiting at a neighbor’s place, the Carpenters, about 1922-23, I was sitting on my horse next to their kitchen door, which had a small concrete porch. With no warning, there was a violent flash and bang. Lightning had struck the porch – they said later. I seem to recall being knocked off the horse. Some say I wouldn’t have survived had that occurred. Whether it knocked me off the horse or not may be debatable. But I recall that it did and I’ll stick with that.
It was customary for neighboring farm families to visit each other, frequently for dinner (now, we call it lunch), often an elaborate mid-day feast, usually after church on Sundays. Other than morning and evening chores, Sunday was the only day that farmers could reserve for relaxation, recreation and social get-togethers. Being somewhat isolated, neighbors had a natural friendly tendency toward each other. The old days of feuding over land, water and mineral rights – as normally depicted in movies – had long since gone the way of the pioneer settlers.
Everybody on adjacent farms seemed to depend loosely, informally and confidently on neighbors. All the families knew that when help was needed, it would be forthcoming as quickly as possible. Politics and religion was never questioned or considered.
One Sunday while having dinner (now lunch) with friends a rare weather phenomena swept through the area – a tornado, of all things. It was a fearsome sight. A huge, swirling “barrel” of dust and debris with an “elephant trunk” descending from black clouds into its center was winding its way across the countryside. We jumped in cars and raced away from it. Fortunately it did minimal damage – none at our place – but it sure put a scare in everyone in the area. In comparing notes afterwards, although it traveled to the northeast, everybody in the area thought it was headed towards them.
Weird tales were spread about its antics. It had torn a door off a barn with no damage to the barn. It had driven a single straw of hay into a beam in a barn – no other barn damage. One person was picked up and thrown head first into a haystack – shaken but uninjured, and so on. None of the tales of what the tornado did, to the best of my knowledge, was ever confirmed, but it sure made good conversation and there was no doubt it was a major, major event in an area unaccustomed to such violent weather disruptions.
One clear, sunny Saturday morning in March, many folks and the siblings had gone on a shopping trip to town as was customary. By noon, the wind had sprung up and ominous clouds began to skirt across the sky. Shortly thereafter, freezing rain and then snow began to fall. Before nightfall, a vicious blizzard had developed. Animals, particularly cattle, tend to drift with the wind, as happened in this storm, until they encounter a fence or some other barrier. There, they stop and bunch up to wait out the storm. By next morning, most of the farmers in the area had lost most of their cattle herds – smothered and frozen while bunched up along a fence during the storm.
Fortunately, we were able to save our animals but it was just one more disaster to contend with that surely would break the spirit of the hardiest farmers – and it did, for many. Small farmers gradually left the area and in subsequent years the whole dry land farming area has become more or less grazing land with only a few large wheat spreads.
Pop finally gave up fighting the drought, hail and severe winter weather on the plains of Eastern Colorado. Hoping to find a friendlier farming environment in the irrigated fields near Fountain, Colorado, he rented a farm (the Bobbit place) for a try at it.
On the morning of April 7, 1924, my 10th birthday, a caravan of wagons, cattle and riders shipped out for a move lock stock and barrel to Fountain, about 15 miles south of Colorado Springs. The gang consisted of Pop, me, my brother Edward and another man with his two sons. We had two or three wagons, one of which I drove, several head of horses, and cattle. Mom, the girls and Paul apparently traveled by car, although I have no clear recollection how or with whom they traveled.
The distance to Fountain was about 60 miles. The roads were little more than two ruts created by wagons over the years. We bedded down at night, cooked our meals over open wood fires and trudged along at a steady pace. During the trip, Pop shot a hawk thru the eye at what seemed a distance of several hundred feet. He assured us it was expert marksmanship, which we believed. I now think it was more luck than skill, although he was very good marksman. Our caravan arrived in about three or four days at the farm Pop had rented a couple miles Northeast of Fountain.
A new way of life was about to envelope the Edward & Ruth Gustavson family, them and their six offspring. Fountain, Colorado was a veritable paradise compared to the plains of Eastern Colorado. Crops, principally alfalfa and sugar beets, had to be irrigated. A good irrigation system had been developed for the farmers in the immediate area.
Ed and Ruth Gustavson at Fountain CO far circa 1925
The house on the Bobbit farm was situated on an elevated area of the farm and the barnyard was about a quarter mile below it to the north. Looking at internet maps, I believe it was located at the intersection of what is now known as Squirrel Creek Road, which runs east and west, and Link Road which runs north and south.
Our principal crop was alfalfa, probably about 20 acres, which was used to feed our dairy cattle for milk production. We had several milk cows which were hand-milked morning and evening without fail 365 days a year. They grazed on a couple hundred acres of pastureland and were fed supplements, principally alfalfa hay.
The Gustavson family siblings all pitched in, as taught earlier, to carry their share of the work load. Boys did barnyard and field chores while the girls helped with those chores as well as the housework. It was expected and taken for granted. As I recall, we performed all assignments without a lot of fuss and, generally, quite satisfactorily. Our Dad was not in the best of health and money to buy food, clothing and to pay any help by hired hands was virtually non-existent.
We rode a bus to and from school in the town of Fountain, Colorado – the first school we attended with enough rooms to accommodate separate grade classes. At that time, it was known as a Consolidated school. It had an indoor gym and separate classrooms for different grade levels. The bus was a Ford Model T pickup with fore and aft bench seats on each side and a canvas roof with side panels to protect us against the elements. As I recall it was driven by a young man named Melvin Wilson who, later on, rented a room
at our house on North Walnut in Colorado Springs. This bus arrangement was a great place to sit next to a girl if one had a crush on, which I did -I believe her name was Hallie Foster – but there was no privacy – just snugness. Fountain was a town of possibly two hundred residents. The town kids as well as the surrounding farm kids attended the school. The East part of town was almost entirely Mexican families living in sod houses. Their income was from field work in surrounding mostly alfalfa and sugar beet farms.
While at this farm, I got my first job at a dollar a day with a neighbor farmer driving a team of horses to hoist hay with a crane from wagons high enough to swing it around for stacking. It was the first time we had a graded road in front of the house. Road crews consisting of horse-pulled graders and scoops built a graded roadway surface along Squirrel Creek Road which got rid of the double ruts of the old road. . Near the barnyard was a thriving prairie dog town with hundreds of the little creatures and no way to get rid of them. Smoke or water injected into their underground labyrinth didn’t seem to work.
Another memorable highlight while living near Fountain was hunting and trapping muskrats with my Dad and brother Edward, riding the plains to the east looking for coyotes, antelope and stray horses and playing cowboy, even though our herds were just milk cows. It was here my favorite pony, Tommy, disappeared never to be found. We combed the surrounding area by horseback for weeks to no avail. We finally surmised it must have been stolen or wandered off with a herd being driven through by horse traders.
The Ed and Ruth Gustavson family in Fountain CO circa 1925
One incident involving our muskrat trapping involved a couple neighbor kids, Tommy Kane and an older brother, raiding our muskrat traps. Edward and I rode up to their farm to confront them and were ordered off the place by their Dad. We left rather quickly without accomplishing our mission as we believed he could enforce his order for us to leave the premises with, what we believed, was a shotgun.
Our Dad then bought a going dairy on the north edge of town in about 1927 where we bottled milk in glass bottles and delivered to town residents every early am. We churned butter and made cottage cheese, which Mom and Dad took to Colorado Springs and Pueblo for sale. The milk had to be heated to kill bacteria and then chilled before delivery. Each day’s milk had to be delivered no later than the next morning. While here, I caught a ride to Colorado Springs with a laundry truck driver. He’d pick up laundry in Fountain and take to Colorado Springs laundries where it was processed and returned in a few days. En route, he stopped at a little country store and bought a bottle of Coca Cola, the first I had ever tasted. I didn’t think it tasted very good. But it was ice cold on a very hot day.
This dairy adventure was short lived as I understood the previous owner had misrepresented the status of the operation and there was insufficient capital to keep the operation in business. Besides the town banker took in a sizeable (in those days) deposit from our Dad while he and the bank were being investigated by an examiner. The outcome was a disaster. The bank was closed, lost a lot of depositor money and the banker eventually was imprisoned; for fraud, I presume.
We then moved to a place within walking distance east of town where the cows were sold and we were temporarily out of the farming and dairy business. We were living at this place when Charles Lindbergh made his historic solo flight to Paris in May 1927, an event that had a big impression on me and largely shaped my future life. Apparently, the task of farming or dairying to support a family of six kids had finally (almost) come to an end.
Our mother, Leona and Edward had found jobs in Broadmoor, a wealthy suburb at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain, close to Colorado Springs – Mom and Leona as live-in caretakers for a wealthy Japanese family and Edward doing yard work. The rest of the family remained in Fountain for the summer of 1927 before moving to Colorado Springs by the time school began in September.
The absolute highlight, for me, of 1927 was Lindy’s solo flight to Paris which occupied radio and newspaper headlines and space. It served to intensify my, and many others, interest in flying. I had a deep resolve to someday design and build airplanes. No other event had ever gained the almost 100% interest of most Americans and many other countries. It was a sensational accomplishment that captured international attention the like of which had never before happened.
I looked forward going to school in Fountain when I had a few pennies – or even one. At noon lunch, we’d go to a little store nearby the school and buy chocolate covered mints for a penny a piece. If it had a pink
Center, we’d get another one free.
When we lived east of Fountain, within walking distance of school, we had to walk through the Mexican area of town, a two or three block area of principally sod houses. While walking home from school through Mexican town, we occasionally got into “friendly” rock throwing fights with the Mexican kids. Why this occurred was never explainable or questioned. It just happened. We all went to school and played together. But we were not friends as we walked through their “territory”. It was sort of a game with no recognizable racial bias. The Mexicans usually started it. I don’t recall anyone ever being hit or hurt. It was more in fun, not in anger. But the rocks were real and hard.
We finally had electricity before we left Fountain. I can’t recall just where or when we first had it, but it was mostly limited to lighting and the radio. We had no electric stoves, refrigeration, washers or dryers. We used wood burning stoves for cooking and heating. We made trips in the fall to the Rocky Mountain foothills several miles to the west to get wagon loads of wood for winter heating and cooking. These trips were distances involving overnight camping out. Nowadays it’d be considered an outing. Then, it was serious business.
We moved from Fountain to 916 Cheyenne Boulevard, close to Broadmoor and Cheyenne Mountain (later to house the underground North American Defense Headquarters, NORAD). I enrolled in the ninth grade at Cheyenne Mountain High School whose renowned Principal was Dr Lloyd Shaw. He was a great naturalist, and as a hobby, an amateur hypnotist.
Broadmoor was a community of prominent and wealthy residents. Most of their kids attended Cheyenne Mountain High. We were as poor as the proverbial church mouse; but we had no trouble making friends and fitting in. We just didn’t know, or recognize, any differences. If the wealthy kids did, they didn’t let on or show it.
I’ll never forget the school principal, Dr Lloyd Shaw, a gregarious, very personable outdoorsman. He entertained school assemblies in the auditorium by hypnotizing student volunteers. He had complete command of the hypnotized subjects. They would do whatever he told them to do, including making them stiffen up so he could bridge them between the backs of chairs, put a concrete slab on their stomach and break it with a sledge, with absolutely no injury or harm to the subjects. I was impressed.
I didn’t complete the ninth grade at Cheyenne Mountain. We, including many other neighbor kids, came down with measles, scarlet fever and a whole rash of illnesses. By the time we were released from quarantine and had recovered sufficiently to return to school, it was too late to complete the 9th grade subjects at Cheyenne Mountain.
We (Edward, Arlene and I) enrolled in the ninth grade September 1929 at Colorado Springs West Junior High. We continued in the same grades through Colorado Springs High entering the 10th grade in 1930 where we all graduated from the 12th grade in June 1933.
We had moved to 428 North Cooper Street before enrolling at West Junior High. We still had a team of horses and Edward used them to earn cash hauling ashes from neighbor’s ash pits – the residue from coal and wood burning cooking and heating stoves widely used at that time. Some places we later lived in Colorado Springs were; 1824 West Colorado Avenue, 436 North Walnut Street, 316 North Pine Street and in the 1200 block of North Weber or Wasatch (not sure which), just before leaving the area for Glendale, California.
In 1928, while we lived at 428 North Cooper, I enrolled in a correspondence course with the Aviation Institute of America based in Washington D.C. The Institute was founded and run by Walter Hinton one of the pilots of a group of NC-4 seaplanes that the Navy had sent on around-the-world cruise to demonstrate how far airplanes had progressed for military as well as potential civilian use.
The correspondent course introduced neophytes, such as myself, to the nitty gritty of airplanes such learning the name and function of every detail part required to build an airplane. Included was the theory of flight, an introduction to aerodynamics and structural design. After completing this course, I received a Certificate (at left) June 29, 1929 and I had a gained pretty good knowledge of airplanes of the day, which were mostly propeller driven wood, steel tube and fabric flying machines.
With the farming instinct still intact, our Dad had rented a farm in the Black Forest, Northeast of Colorado Springs. We still lived in town and farmed the place in summer. It was there we had our first tractor –a Fordson, manufactured by Ford Motor Co.
It was at this farm that Edward suffered a serious (could have been fatal) injury. He was driving a team of horses hitched to a wagon when the team spooked and “ran away”. The tongue of the wagon came loose, plowed into the ground which threw Edward forward to the ground severely injuring him. Apparently there were internal injuries which took several weeks to heal. But he pulled thru, evidently none the worse as he later participated in athletics, joined the Colorado Springs Fire Department after graduation from Colorado Springs High and. got married to Signe Peterson in December 1935
Continuing his attachment to farming, our Dad rented a farm near Lake George about 40 miles up in the mountains, west of Colorado Springs, almost exactly on the Great Divide at an altitude of over 8000 feet, where we grew potatoes. I still remember breakfasts of bacon, fried eggs and biscuits – their aroma in the mountain air is unforgettable.
On one or two occasions in this time span, we traveled to the western slope of Colorado to help with the peach harvest near Grand Junction. It was hard work but a lot of fun. I must have eaten as many peaches as I dropped in the basket used to gather fruit from the trees. The trip over and back involved going over the Monarch pass at an elevation of a little over 11,000 feet. On one trip home, I recall the car stalling and having to spend the night on the pass. It was cold but we were used to a rugged life and survived ok.
None of the farming forays paid off and our Dad finally gave it up and went to work painting at the Broadmoor Hotel near Colorado Springs. He became the house painter and stayed in that capacity until the family moved to California in 1936. Painting was his primary trade which he had learned from his Dad. A preaching foray in the early years of marriage had never provided for a living, although he made a good effort.
At West Junior High, we (Arlene, Edward and I) began to take a serious interest in school. Edward and I were older than others in the ninth grade. We had fallen behind due to illnesses and other mishaps but Arlene was the age of others in our classes. The three of us were in the same grade level. Edward and I took an interest in athletics, studying and, for the first time, really appreciated and enjoyed school.
We found that we had some athletic talent and I made the headlines by putting the 8 pound shot somewhere above 55 feet at an interschool track meet. It was some sort of a record at that grade level which stood for many years and, for all I know, may still be the record.
Money for the family usually ranged from little to none. For a brief stint, in the late 20’s and early 30’s, we participated in WPA work programs for food allotments. Some of the work involved road building which was pick axe and shovel labor. We, Edward and I, also worked in a grain elevator and feed store.
We finally landed a job washing dishes at the Antlers Hotel, the town’s major deluxe hotel. Edward, I and a friend were hired off the street by a recruiter from the hotel. The work was far removed from hard, physical labor we were used to. But we thought the pay was good with delicious meals included. The Maitre’d was from France, the Chef and Assistant Chef were from Belgium and most of the cooks foreign trained which somehow seemed to make them better cooks than Americans.
We rubbed elbows, as employees, with the famous and elite; but not much of it, especially money, rubbed off on us. From washing dishes, we (Edward and I) moved up the ladder to bussing dishes and I was finally given a job waiting tables and serving the musicians in their private dining room. Big bands were the rage those days and the Antlers engaged the best every summer. I recall the Bobby Meeker band headlined at least two successive summers while I worked at the Antlers.
My first interest in politics was aroused during the 1928 presidential election. Al Smith, a Catholic, was the Democratic nominee and Herbert Hoover, a Protestant, the Republican nominee to replace Calvin Coolidge. This election generated more than usual political heat. Since Smith was Catholic, a lot of suspicion existed as to his motives – more accurately, the Pope’s motives. A large segment of the populace suspected the Catholics were cunningly seeking religious domination through political control.
Feelings ran strong and most Protestants were more than a little nervous about the election outcome. I was working at the Antlers – the dinner shift which let off late enough to learn election results before the newspapers could get the news out. Hoover had won.
In those days, newspaper boys peddled their papers by circulating thru the neighborhoods shouting the headlines at the top of their voices. I emulated their technique on the way home from work, probably near 11 pm; I beat the newsboys with the headlines. I shouted at the top of my voice all the way home, about two miles out to 1834 Colorado Street, “HOOVER WINS”! Early the next morning, the newsboys bicycled through neighborhoods shouting the same headlines: “HOOVER WINS”.
Edward didn’t fare so well with the Antler’s management, particularly the Maitre de Hotel, a stern, overweight Frenchman, whose approaching presence in the dining areas was the loud clicking of his hard heeled shoes on the marble floors in the hotel entrance area. His office was at the south end of the first floor while the dining and kitchen areas were at the north end. With the hotel guest entrance area was in between. He finally fired Edward for a minor infraction, which he would probably overlook had it been somebody else, although Edward had a tendency to talk back if he didn’t like the boss’s instructions.
His departure from the Antlers was a blessing in disguise for Edward as he promptly landed a job at Barthel’s, which was one of the principal ice cream producers in Colorado Springs. I don’t remember how or when I left the Antlers but I joined Edward at Barthel’s where we worked for several summers, helping to make and deliver ice cream, while in school. Besides all the ice cream we could eat (15 or more different flavors) one of the highlights was morning clean up duties. The ice cream making crew (Glen Hair, boss, Roy Harper, Hal Aiken, Edward and me came in early to clean the fountain and seating areas before opening to the public. One of our rituals was always to make delicious sandwiches and thick malts to start the day besides cleaning the public service areas.
Our educational momentum began at West Junior High and carried over to Colorado Springs High. We continued to be enthused with school and were able to maintain a fairly good grade average. We also continued interest in athletics, concentrating on basketball under Coach Joe Erps. Edward and I made the CSHS traveling team in basketball and we won the State high school tournament our junior year (1932) but, unexpectedly lost in the final game to Falcon in our senior year (1933).
Our CSHS basketball team 1933 (I at Left, Front)
Our league consisted of Centennial and Central Highs in Pueblo, Denver Canyon City and Salida Highs. Centennial was the high school of David Packard who was co-founder, after college graduation, of what has become giant firm of Hewlett-Packard, and later Secretary of Defense. He played for Centennial during my junior year, but I didn’t specifically remember him.
On one trip to play Salida, in western Colorado, I recall we were snowed in at Lake George, west of Colorado Springs, near the top of Ute pass and had to walk the rest of the way down the pass to Monument, a little west of Colorado Springs.
These trips were great experiences. We always were fed super meals by the school and treated more or less like someone special. After we won the state championship in our junior year (1932), everyone was convinced we’d repeat the next year, as all the starters were back. Sure enough we won all but one game at Pueblo Centennial by lop sided scores which returned us to the State championship games in Denver. I made the starting lineup at center. Edward was the backup.
We started off with a bang advancing easily to the semi-finals. There we met more than our match from a little school from Falcon, Colorado with hardly enough boys to make up a team. They beat us 33 to 31. We just couldn’t get the ball to go through the hoop, try as we could. It was a mystery to all of us and still is. We should have won the game easily. But losing finally brought us back to reality. We weren’t as good as we thought.
The game of basketball was slow at that time – hence low scoring. After every score, the ball was returned to center court for a “jump ball”. Control of the ball was determined by the highest (or cleverest) jumper tipping the ball to one of his players. Even though we failed to win the championship when we should have, all the senior starters on the team were given college athletic scholarships: Jim Riley and myself to Colorado College in Colorado Springs; Al Pirnat, Jack Ross and Hildreth Frost to Denver University.
Wally Borden, the fifth starter, was one year behind the rest. I don’t recall what some of the others received.
While at CSHS, I belonged to the glider club under the direction of R S Bee. We built a flight simulator to learn the feel of flying. The contraption consisted of movable wings and tail surfaces with normal airplane controls. It was mounted on top of a five foot pedestal and held in a level position by a system of bungee (shock) cords. It had a seat, in the front for the pilot and conventional stick and rudder pedals to move the controls. When the wind blew hard enough, the pilot could maneuver the craft much like an airplane: bank left or right and nose up or down.
From my earnings at the Antlers and, later, at Barthel’s ice cream store, fountain and factory, I saved some money, a part of which I used to buy a 1924 Studebaker touring car with a big six engine for sixty five dollars. It became our glider tow machine. Being an open front and aft seat touring car, with no top, it was ideal for that purpose (and not much else).
We obtained a damaged primary glider which we rebuilt and used to make the next step towards becoming pilots. We mounted it on a pair of wheels with a tongue long enough to hook up to an automobile. We then towed it down the runway fast enough for the controls and wing lift to be effective. From there, we gradually mastered the chore of pulling the glider with a tow rope, sans wheels, fast enough for it to become airborne. We became good enough at flying the glider that most of us mastered the art of flying high enough to cut loose the tow rope and make an 180 degree turn before landing,
The only accident I recall was when one of the participants, Otto Rohrbach, who was unusually small and light for his age, wasn’t heavy enough to counterbalance the tail weight. The center of gravity was too far forward. Nobody thought of adding additional ballast in front. When the glider became airborne it nosed up and stalled, crashing back a few feet with considerable damage to the glider but no injuries to the pilot,
Using this car to tow a glider was the only time I recall ever disobeying my mother. She objected to the idea of my flying, believing it was much too dangerous, and she saw the intended use of the car as furthering that dangerous ambition. She said I couldn’t use it for that purpose. I did – but felt rather bad that I defied her wishes.
Edward with Uncle Ernie at the Skelly Service Station
Continuing to pursue my interest in airplanes, Edward and I had opened a Skelly service station in 1933 at the corner of Walnut and Mesa streets in Colorado Springs,t, which we operated while also going to school. The station had two gravity feed pumps at the service island. One pump was for Ethyl and the other for regular gas. The gasoline was pumped by hand from underground tanks into glass containers on top of the pumps. The glass containers (round cylinders) held 10 gallons and had graduations in one-quarter gallon increments marked on the side. The gasoline was fed by gravity from the glass cylinders to the car tanks. Don’t remember what a gallon of gas sold for those days but it was cents instead of dollars. In those days, every customer was treated royally. The attendant pumped the gas, washed the windshield, checked the coolant, tires and oil and, sometimes, cleaned the interior of the customer’s car with a whisk broom.
While at Colorado College (1933-34) I traded gasoline from our Skelly station to Stuart Wandell, an instructor and corporate pilot, for flight instruction in a Curtiss Wright Junior airplane. This airplane was a small tandem two-seater, open cockpit pusher. The three cylinder 30 hp Szekely engine had barely enough power to get off the ground at the 6000 foot airport elevation. I soloed in that airplane after about six hours of dual. The high school flying club experience had taught me most of the needed flying skills. But instructor Wandell wanted to be sure he was satisfied I knew how to handle the powered plane before cutting me loose. I did considerable solo flying, as much as I could afford, in 1934, primarily in the Curtiss Junior. On one or two occasions, I exceeded (ignored) my student pilot license restriction and took friends for some flights around the field.
I couldn’t seem to become seriously interested in college work, although I was elected president of the freshman class at Colorado College, made the traveling basketball team where we played such schools as Colorado University, Colorado A & M, Denver University, Utah in Salt Lake, Utah State in Logan, Utah and Wyoming in Casper? and was generally a freshman class so-called leader. Had I stayed the course, I probably would have had a completely different adult life.
Colorado College just didn’t seem at the time to offer me much progress towards my interest in designing and building airplanes. Instead of returning for my sophomore year, I decided I’d go to California and try to enroll at Curtiss Wright Technical Institute in Glendale, California.
I had saved enough money to risk the trip to California. Pop decided to go with me. I was 20 and he 43. I had acquired a Ford Model A roadster which we loaded up with our belongings and headed West in September 1934. We took the route north through Wyoming, west into Utah and south through Las Vegas, Nevada into California. It was a hot, tiring trip and my dad, aside from being apprehensive, suffered from the heat and nervous exhaustion. My driving over unfamiliar roads was undoubtedly a bit nerve wracking for him. I drove all the way, as I had no problem with the heat.
When we arrived in California, I immediately began looking for a job and contacted Curtiss Wright Technical Institute (CWTI) about enrolling. I found a job in a little cafe on San Fernando Road within a block of CWTI, where I also could live for free in a shack behind the cafe. A retired couple, Mr & Mrs. Martin, operated the cafe and Mr Martin loved his wine. He consumed as much or more than we sold. It looked like it would work out exactly as I wanted. Only a couple hitches: I didn’t have enough money to meet the school’s minimum enrollment fee and Mr Martin’s wine habit soon doomed my hopes for enough earnings at the cafe to save the amount they needed.
Pop became ill shortly after arriving in California and returned by train to Colorado Springs. While in California, he had lived with his younger brother, Dave, Burbank City Engineer, and his wife in Burbank. He had two young adult step daughters, Evelyn and Betsy, who lived with them.
My cousins Bill and Carl Gustavson and their friend, Mel Larsen, had moved to California and were living in Glendale where Bill worked for the film studios and Carl worked at odd painting jobs.
The rest of 1934 I scrounged for odd jobs in and around the Los Angles area, one of which involved taking pictures of people and handing them a card which they could mail in with a couple dollars for the picture I had taken. The camera had an attachment so the card had a number which identified the picture taken. Our best market was on South Central Street in Los Angeles. Sundays were particularly lucrative because most of the subjects were in their Sunday best. At that time, South Central Street was the center of the City’s black community.
I roomed with a friend I had met while working at the cafe by the name of Al de la Reyes, an odd but pleasant little character, who worked at a rubber reprocessing plant converting old tires into floor mats. Between his paycheck and my irregular earnings, we were able to get by. But I ended 1934 at age 20+ as poor as I’d ever been and maybe just a little bit wiser. It was tough to raise a quarter for a gallon or so of gas, let alone buying other necessities.
In early 1935, my brother Edward came to California. I don’t know if his mission was to get me to return home, or not. But after a short while he and I returned to Colorado Springs in the 1928 Ford roadster I had driven to California with our Dad in September 1934. We returned the southern route, through Barstow, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Trinidad and Pueblo to Colorado Springs. Roads were mostly unpaved, dusty and bumpy but passable most of the time.
Shortly after arriving back in Colorado Springs, I got a job as night attendant in a Skelly service station managed by a Mr Porter. The station, owned by the Scott Oil Company who, also, had owned the station Edward and I operated in 1933-1934, was open 24/7 and my shift was from 6 pm to 6 am. I worked this shift six and sometimes seven days a week for 18 months. Pay averaged about 25c an hour; but I saved money because I lived at home with very little other expense – except an occasional date (usually a movie) with a high school girl friend, by the name of Marella Stockdale. After I left Colorado Springs, she married and the next time I saw her, and other Class of ‘33 CSHS graduates was at the 50th reunion in 1983.
By late 1936, I had saved enough to risk another foray to California to again try to enroll at Curtiss Wright Technical Institute (CWTI) and join the rest of the family in Glendale, California. I had bought a 1928 four-cylinder Chrysler coupe from my Uncle Gene, and I and Arne Peterson, Edward’s wife Signe’s brother, headed for California. This particular auto was one of the first with hydraulic brakes whose main cylinder tended to fail its function which resulted in running some red stop signals but, fortunately, no collisions.
Arne (Pete) stayed in California for some time before returning to Colorado Springs where he worked during World War II in an aircraft overhaul facility at Peterson Field on the Colorado Springs airport.
By late 1936, the family, except Edward and Signe, had moved to California and were living first at 710 East Harvard Street, for about a year, and then at 319 North Maryland Avenue in Glendale, California where my father and mother lived until his death in 1955 and my mother until 1959, before having to vacate to make way for an apartment complex.
By that time all of the family, except Miriam, Leona’s daughter who was born in Colorado Springs the previous July 7th, was old enough to seek whatever employment wherever it was available.
Miriam became a very lively young lady, sort of gangly, with brilliant blond hair, who we all became very attached to as she progressed thru childhood.
Arlene got a job-waiting table in a café on South Central Avenue in Glendale and soon thereafter she and Leona opened a small lunch counter on South Glendale Avenue near the entrance to Forest Lawn Cemetery. Due to their tendency to feed the customers well (too well) the enterprise made no money and soon was given up. The major bright spot of this enterprise was Arlene meeting Hector Bouttier, a regular customer. They were later married August 19, 1939.
I enrolled in the CWTI aeronautical engineering course, completing it in late 1937, after which, in early 1938, I got a shop job bucking rivets with the Vultee Aircraft Corp. in Downey, California, where I worked for a few months before being laid off. I then worked a few months for the Army Engineers on a surveying crew that was in the process of laying concrete in the Los Angeles River to control periodic flooding. The aircraft industry was struggling but by 1938 things began to pick up due to Hitler’s threats in Europe.
While going to CWTI, money was, as usual, very hard to come by. I had a savings instinct: no matter how little I made, I always saved some of it for the “rainy day”. I still had enough saved to invest in a pinball route in Los Angeles. Payoff’s from pin ball machines were illegal. Playing them wasn’t. The operators had an “association.” If you belonged and paid their dues, merchants where the machine was located could make payoffs to winners without fear of police confiscation. Machines would get no play if there were no payoffs. So, to protect my investment, I joined. They had regular dinner meetings in luxury hotels in downtown Los Angeles, which I attended. Came to find out if you kept your nose clean with the “Association”, your machines were never bothered. Head of the “Association” was an influential lawyer named Craddock. His influence with the political power structure was the key to the whole operation of pin ball machines in Los Angeles.
In October 1938, I was hired by Vega Airplane Company, a Lockheed subsidiary, in Burbank, as a draftsman on a twin motor, driving a single propeller, low wing, 5 passenger, all metal airplane called the Starliner Unitwin. Vega occupied an old pottery factory adjacent to the main Lockheed plant at Victory Place near Empire Avenue in Burbank. It later became Plant B.
Vega Airplane Company was set up by Lockheed to develop commercial airplanes in a different class from those developed by Lockheed. It was first headed by Mac Short, an engineer from Wichita, Kansas and later by Courtlandt Gross, brother of Robert Gross, head of Lockheed. Within a short time Lockheed was overloaded by a major order from Great Britain for a bomber version (the Hudson) of their 14 passenger, twin engine commercial airliner. Lockheed assigned the advanced bomber version of the Hudson to Vega for design and manufacture. Vega then moved to larger quarters in the old Moreland truck plant at the corner of San Fernando Road and Alameda Avenue in Burbank California to handle the new order,
Vega was awarded a contract for manufacture of B-17 bombers in conjunction with Boeing and Douglas, known as the BVD joint B-17 production program. A new plant (1) was built at the corner of Hollywood Way and Empire Avenue on the Union Air Terminal ground to handle the B-17 program. Vega moved into this new facility in 1942.
I had continued to tinker with airplanes on the side and a group of roomers my mother had taken in to make ends meet, consisting of John Gladden, Joe Gunn, Gerry Barden and myself, bought an OX-5 powered Curtiss Robin from a preacher in Lompoc, California. He had mounted a loud speaker system on the plane and circled over crowds preaching to them. For some reason he was grounded and put the plane up for sale. We bought the plane for a few hundred dollars ($500 I think).
Curtiss Robin powered with a WWI OX-5 Engine was, probably built in the 1920’s
After moving the plane to Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale, we tried to get it licensed and found that we were grounded because major modifications were required before the CAA would license it. We turned the modification over to the Curtiss Wright Technical Institute school shop as a hands-on teaching project. By the time they completed the work required for licensing, we had mostly drifted on to other interests and sold the plane without ever flying it, except one flight by John Gladden and another by a test pilot.
On a bright, sunny Sunday, December 7, 1941, I was at little airport on Telegraph Road, across from the Montebello Airport and Vail Field trying to get the six-cylinder Challenger engine started , after a major overhaul. I had just recently bought Curtiss-Robin plane.. No matter what I did, the engine just wouldn’t start. It had blown a cylinder on the first flight after I bought the plane.
Shortly after noon, the airport attendant came out where I was working. He asked if I’d heard the news. I hadn’t. He told me about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I was a little curious earlier because planes were landing at the other airports but none seemed to be taking off. This was unusual. I supposed everyone who heard the news had no desire to go flying. But, in fact, they were not allowed to take off.
In a couple days, all private flying was banned near the coast and private plane owners were ordered to disassemble their plane so they couldn’t be flown by storing the engine or wings in buildings separate from the fuselage. As the war in Europe intensified, Lockheed and Vega went into an all out hiring effort to meet the military work load. Engineers from civilian industries were recruited by the hundreds, as were women and anyone else not already scheduled for military duty. I was taken off the drafting board when we moved to the Moreland plant and put in charge of instructing new civilian industry engineers on aircraft design and drafting practices. All new engineer hires had to pass through my program before being assigned to project duties. From there, I was assigned as Engineering Personnel Manager when we moved to the new plant. It was a couple years before I could return to my preference for airplane design work.
In 1944, I was reassigned to the Preliminary Design Department working on a new Navy patrol airplane design, the PV1. Shortly thereafter, I was assigned to work with John Thorp on a very small airplane design project for Robert Gross, head of Lockheed. We developed a single seat, low wing airplane able to takeoff and land within 100 feet ground roll. It reflected Mr Gross’ desire for an airplane he could use to commute between his Bel Aire home and work. Of course he wanted to operate from his home – not some distant airstrip. But, more importantly, it was aimed at use by ordinary Army troops with minimum flying instruction to improve battle ground mobility. It was called the “Little Dipper”.
The Lockheed “Little Dipper”.
All young men had to register for the draft during WWII. I was routinely given a 4A deferment because of my employment in the aircraft industry, which classified me as essential to the war effort. I joined the Civil Air Patrol, which had recently been organized on a national basis to support air defense activities. I had to spend one or two nights a week on guard duty at Vail Field, as well as any free weekends working on Army planes assigned to the CAP.
By the time I was classified 1A (available for induction), President Roosevelt lowered the maximum draft age to 28. I missed induction by a few months, although I was required to take the physical for induction. Naturally, I passed. It wasn’t very difficult and was all set to go into the Army when President Roosevelt issued his order not to induct those over 28.
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During WWII, I had joined my brothers, Edward and Paul in operating a Texaco service station at the corner of Doran Street and San Fernando Road in Glendale. Later we acquired a Goodrich Tire, hardware and appliance store in a brand new building on Honolulu Avenue in Montrose. I was sort of a silent partner with Edward and Paul and participated primarily by keeping books and sometimes working as an attendant.
During the later stages of WWII, TV was in its infancy and most watchers did so by standing in front of a store display window to view programs. Exterior antennas were required to pick up the signal transmitted from atop Mount Wilson, northeast of Los Angeles. We offered that service but people were reluctant to buy while it was still an attractive, unproven consumer product..
During the height of WWII, gasoline, many food items, tires, clothing and just about every “necessity” was rationed. Ration coupons were issued based on various criteria to balance need with availability. For instance, gasoline usage was controlled by issuing “A”, “B” and “C” coupons. “A” coupons were issued to anyone owning a car. It was only enough to get around for grocery shopping, going to a Doctor, etc. “C” coupons were issued to those whose job required use of a car in defense work, with “B” coupons in between. An unlimited “D” coupon was issued to government and military personnel required to use their cars on official business. Food coupons for items, such as coffee and sugar among others, were rationed on the basis of number in the family. The rationing program seemed to work adequately, if not exceptionally well. Some fraud occurred but it was not publicized as widespread.
During WWII, 1941 to 1945, Lockheed became almost exclusively involved in designing and producing airplanes for the military. Their plants in Burbank, as well as all major plants in the area were camouflaged to hide them from potential enemy bombers. Lockheed’s employment peaked at over 90,000. Other Southern California plants such as Douglas, North American and others went all out producing various types of military aircraft.
The entire west coast was considered very vulnerable to enemy attack and extensive government measures were taken to protect all facilities and the population. Aside from relocating most Japanese among the population to internal encampments, many other government restrictions were imposed. Although most Japanese were loyal to America a few were not and the U.S. Government had no time to try to determine which was which. This resulted in many loyal Americans of Japanese descent and a few others being uprooted from their livelihood and segregated from major coastal population centers.
Private flying within 150 miles from the coast was prohibited. Several of us wanted to keep up our flying activities and we’d make week end forays to the Lone Pine and Independence, California areas where airplanes could be rented to practice our flying. The group included John Thorp, Burt Shannon, Ralph Lundhal, Ed Larralde and myself; all from the Vega Engineering Department. There may have been some others but I don’t recall.
Joe Gunn, who roomed at our place while attending Curtiss Wright Tech in 1939, had a younger sister, Eleanor. She with her mother came out from Mississippi to visit Joe. I met her at that time but recall no particular impression other than she was much more lively and outgoing than her brother, Joe. 
Her parents passed away within several months of each other in 1941 and she moved to Glendale, boarding at our house for a while. I became progressively fond of her and her outgoing personality. Notwithstanding opposite personality traits, we seemed to hit it off exceptionally well. Despite my somewhat advance age, neither of us was desperate. Even our different religious upbringing, she Catholic and I a wishy-washy Protestant, was no barrier. But they say opposites attract each other and I suppose that applied in our case.
We were married November 26, 1944 in the Holy Family Catholic church in Glendale, me at age 30 and she age 24, both of us old enough to know what we were doing.. We honeymooned in Pasadena, Big Bear and Lake Elsinore.
That had to be the climax for me of the ten years ended in 1944. I had finally accepted the responsibility of family life after avoiding it for several years longer than most. After a near miss while flying over Glendale towards the San Fernando Airport in 1945, I even gave up my leisure flying pastime in consideration of family responsibilities.
As of 2004, the marriage has lasted 60 years with 5 children in the first 10 years. The first, Donald Eugene was born September 3, 1945 while we lived at 832 West Patterson in Glendale. Richard Bartlett born May 3, 1947, Ralph Edward born November 30, 1948 while living at 516 North Parish Place in Burbank, Patricia Joanne born November 15. 1950 while at 12354 Rye Street in Studio City and Robert Paul born September 14, 1954.in Atlanta, Georgia.
We bought our first TV on Patti Jo’s birth date. Four of our children (except Robert who has no children) have spawned 18 grand children and step grandchildren and, at last count, 10 great grand children, including two on the way in June 2004.
From 1945 to 1954, I learned that family obligations couldn’t be ignored or sidestepped – which wasn’t a problem as, while single, I did pretty much as I wanted . Other than a high school girl friend and my wife, I had never, to my recollection, dated or taken seriously any other girls. I was not a so-called ladies man.
I left Lockheed in 1945 to join with John Thorp in the design and development of a two place version similar to the Lockheed single place Little Dipper which we had developed. My job was to help in the design and get the plane certified, for commercial sale and use, by the FAA, which I did. I didn’t consider pay a factor, at the time. But a stock interest along with a small salary seemed a safe gamble then. With a family coming along, I soon learned better.
Unfortunately, the market for small planes was flooded with war surplus machines and there was no demand for small, private aircraft, The Thorp adventure went nowhere and I returned to Lockheed. John Thorp continued with the development of a highly regarded kit version that is was very popular and widely used in the kit-built aircraft hobby through the post WWII years. Several of the home-built versions are still around, as are many different airplanes, home-built and factory types. John Thorp had married, Kay, returned to in his boyhood home area Lodi, California where he passed away in the early 90’s.
I returned to Lockheed in 1946 where I was assigned as a designer on the F-90 project, a twin engine, swept wing fighter for the Army Air Force. This was one of Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works projects and the F-90 was designed to break the sound barrier. It’s twin engines didn’t produce quite enough power to pass Mach 1 in level flight but it could in a dive. The project went nowhere and I was transferred to the F-84 project in wing design where I worked until 1950.
My itchy feet convinced me I’d have a better future if I joined Century Engineering as a contract designer. Century Engineering was founded by some ex-Lockheed engineers (John Lockheed, son of one of the engineering contracts from Lockheed.
No sooner had I set up shop with Century than Lockheed offered me a position as Engineering Representative on the B-47 joint Lockheed, Boeing and Douglas production program headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. The pay and type of position were too good to pass up. I accepted. It involved moving the family, wife and four children to Wichita. So that’s where we all went in 1951, settling in at 1132 North Crestway, across from a golf course, after giving up on a house I had bought in southwest Wichita because of sparse City services and improvements.
What I remember most in Wichita was the cold, snowy and icy winter when dyed-in-the-wool golfers still played on the course across the street from our house. It was here that Eleanor took a foray into the basement, which was backed up knee-deep in sewer water caused by some flooding, to disconnect the clothes washer. She’s fortunate not to have been electrocuted. I made frequent trips by DC-3 to Marietta Georgia, where Lockheed’s production program was headquartered in an old WWII government plant.
Lockheed transferred me from Wichita to their Marietta Georgia plant in the fall of 1952 where I was assigned to the position of Administrative Division Engineer in the engineering department of about 1,500 people.
We moved from Wichita to 1788 Moore’s Mill Road in northwest Atlanta about 15 miles from the plant. Our circle-of-friends were mostly Lockheed people, neighbors and Bolton School contacts. Don, Dick & Ralph attended Bolton school and were active in the scouts. Patti Jo was just reaching school age in 1955, and Bart (Robert) was still an infant having been born September 14, 1954, on Eleanor’s 34th birthday.
We moved to 6421 Peachtree Dunwoody Road, on the northeast side of Atlanta near Sandy Springs where we lived until 1957 when I joined
1788 Moore’s Mill Road (L) & 6421 Peachtree Dunwoody Rd (R)
Aeronca Manufacturing in Middletown, Ohio. Our home on Peachtree Dunwoody Road sat on ten acres of land with about half of it wooded. It was a two-story house, water was from a stream in back of the house (occasionally home of water dogs), stables and lots of room for the kids to play, and snakes that looked like tree branches when raiding the garden.
The place on Peachtree Dunwoody Road has since been surrounded by high-rise developments and, according to reports, is virtually, if not completely gone. By the mid 90’s, the land was said to be priced at about a million dollars per acre, although we bought and sold the 10 acre home for around $40,000 in the mid 50’s.
In 1955 while we lived in Atlanta, Pop passed away. He had suffered a moderate stroke in 1949 or 1950 and suffered deteriorating health from then until his death. He had been confined to a sanatorium (Drier’s in Glendale) several weeks prior to his death. During our trip in 1955, we visited with Pop in the sanatorium just before leaving to return to Atlanta. While on our trip back, he passed away. He was 74. The other family members tried, unsuccessfully, to intercept us en route. We learned of his death when we arrived back in Atlanta
While living in Atlanta, we made yearly summer trips by car to California to visit family. It was over 5000 miles round trip in non- air conditioned cars. If cars had air conditioning in those days, ours didn’t. I drove and didn’t mind 300 or 400 miles a day behind the wheel. How Eleanor and the kids endured the trips, is hard to understand now days. If they found the traveling hard to endure, they never let on. The only thing that approached a complaint was the often repeated “how much further’ or “when will be there?” or “are we about there” comments by the kids.
. While being assigned to Wichita, then Marietta and, finally, accepting a job at Aeronca in Ohio, our contact with other family members was very limited from 1952 to 1962. We were away from California about 10 years, although we visited several times and Mom spent several weeks with us in Atlanta. During her visit, we vacationed in Florida and drove up to see her Aunt Sadie Clark in Gatlinburg, North Carolina. Sadie Clark had retired there after a distinguished career as a female lawyer, one of a few in those days.
While flying back to California, Mom suffered what was thought to be a heart attack on the plane and was not well from then until her death in March 1962. She also had been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and had to take insulin.
She was living with Lou and Elsie at 319 North Maryland, which was rented, where the family had lived since 1937, shortly after moving to California. It served as the family home and anchor for family members from 1937 until it was sold in 1959. It was sold, to be razed along with most of the houses in the block, to make way for apartment structures.
Lou & Elsie with children Fred, Karen and Stanley and Mom moved to 515 La Loma Road in Glendale. I had bought the house primarily to have a home for Mom who was being cared for by Lou and Elsie. In 1959 they moved in and lived there until our return to California in the fall of 1962.
Our life in Atlanta was generally very satisfactory as we made a lot of friends, participated in local school and scout affairs and considered everything very pleasant. However, I had been contacted several times by “head hunters” trying to fill fairly high level jobs in the aircraft industry for their clients. One such contact came from a firm representing Aeronca Manufacturing Corp. They were looking for someone to head up their engineering department. In the early days of aviation, they had been renowned for their C-1, C-2, C-3 and K series of light plane design and production.
The Vice President, whose jurisdiction included the engineering department, was an Ex Army General named Wally Ford. He was an accomplished pilot and owned a Beechcraft Bonanza which he used regularly for business and pleasure. He flew me to and from the Cincinnati airport a few times. I was very intrigued. I accepted the job of Director of Engineering for Aeronca (at $25,000 per year salary) and gave notice to Lockheed that I would be leaving my job. Besides being Administrative Engineer, I had just been elected President of the Lockheed Credit Union.
Aeronca was involved almost completely in subcontracting manufacturing work for major aircraft companies. A small group of the engineers were assigned on various development jobs, principally government sponsored. The major subcontract job was for North American Aviation on the B-70 center wing/fuselage sections. This was a supersonic built extensively of brazed honeycomb between steel skins for the principal flying and fuselage surfaces. It was a big, supersonic bomber with great promise in the Air Force stable of flying machines. Only two or three were ever built and one was destroyed while being flight tested in a collision with a chase plane.
Aeronca had developed equipment and skills to handle that kind of manufacturing work. Besides the production staff of several hundred, another 40 to 50 engineering personnel spent all their time handling design changes and coordinating with North American personnel. Other engineers were on many smaller subcontract jobs. Total Engineering staff was on the order of 125 to 150.
While in Middletown we first rented a house at 11 McKinley Ave for about a year. We then purchased a nice two story house at 2104 Linden Avenue, a couple miles east of the downtown. Don, Dick & Ralph attended middle and high schools. Patti Jo attended elementary and middle schools and Bart got well started in elementary school.
2104 Liinden Avenue, Middleiown OH
At one point, after Mom died, we considered selling the property on La Loma Road in Glendale and listed it for sale. We received no offers and took it off the market. Very shortly thereafter, in the fall of 1962, my job as Director of Engineering at Aeronca was terminated. We left Middletown, Ohio to return to Glendale.
Having the home to return to was not only very fortunate but has proven to be very good because of the continuing increase in real estate prices. We paid about $30,000 when we bought it in 1959 and its market value in 2004, I’m told, could be over ten times our purchase price.
515 La Loma Road, Glendale CA
After we moved to Glendale in 1962, all finished schools in Glendale: Marshall Elementary, Wilson Junior High and Glendale High School.
Hope to add to this covering events and highlights after 1962
Edward Daniel Gustavson Jr.
Memoirs by Jerry Gustavson
Born August 3, 1912 Colorado Springs, Colorado
Died February 12, 1996 Montclair, California
Born at 1016 East Monument, second child, first son. His earliest recollections were of a blizzard when he was 2 or 3 while living on the plains of eastern Colorado. He remembered the snow had drifted to the roof tops and he was sitting on a drift, looking out over the plains and seeing nothing but white, all the farm structures had been snowed under. Also as a young child a common visitor to the farms was a man pulling a water reservoir on a wagon behind a team of horses. This man was called the water monkey and Edward would always look at him real hard, trying to see the man’s tail. Bison bones were common on the prairie at this time and Edward would often find bison skulls. Also Indian arrowheads could be found along the creeks and Edward remembered letting his little brother Gene borrow one particularly good specimen to take to school to share. Edward never saw that arrowhead again. One time another boy had gotten kicked by a mule. Because the telephones were party lines Edward’s mother and others on the line were listening in while the boys mother was talking to the doctor. In this way all could track the little boy’s progress. The little boy eventually died and all the farm families shared in the grief.
March and April are the worst -weather months for Colorado and one March day a blizzard struck, hitting the NW corner of the house with a shudder. Edward remembered, as the thick snow flew and the wind blew, looking for his father to come back from the barn. A rope had been fastened from the house to the barn so one would not get lost in the blizzard because visibility was near zero. As Edward watched, the snow would clear temporarily and he finally could make out the shadowy form of his father making his way back to the house with both hands on the rope. The homes were not really air tight and Edward would say he often would awaken in the morning to find snow on his bed that had sifted through the cracks in the wall.
The weather on the plains of Colorado made farming a tenuous enterprise at best; hail storms can come up and destroy entire crops. After one such hailstorm Edward recalled walking in the fields and finding rabbits that had been stunned by the hail. He and his brothers gather some and put them in the kitchen beside the warm stove. The bunnies came to and ran about the house in no time.
Edward often said these years on the farms were the best of his life and later in life would often talk about buying a wheat or dairy farm or a cattle ranch. He came very close to buying one located near Franktown, Colorado in the 1960s.
The family would often come into town and stay all night with Grandpa Gustaf in a tiny house on Pine St. When he and I were passing by this house one day in 1991 he recalled an incident when he was staying at this house in about 1917. He recalled looking out the front window watching his grandpa walk out the pathway and then out the gate to the sidewalk. As he did this he stopped to light a cigar. Edward’s father was a very devout Christian man who instilled the evils of tobacco and alcohol early to his children. When Edward saw his grandpa lighting up he ran to his dad and told him grandpa was smoking. Edward remembered his father saying, “Oh no he’s not” and that was that. Edward said even though this incident took place almost 75 years earlier he remembered it as if it had happened the day before. In his mind he could still see his grandpa standing outside the gate lighting up.
In 1924 the family moved to Fountain Colorado and the 12 year old Edward, his younger brother Gene, and an uncle (Ernie), had to drive the cattle on horseback from the farm south of Calhan on the plains to Fountain ala the old cattle drives. It was a two day trip and they spent the night sleeping under the wagon.
While living in Fountain Edward and Gene ran a trapping line along the Monument Creek. One day they discovered someone had stolen all the traps. The thief was obvious (another boy-Tommy Kane) and so Edward and Gene went to the boys house to confront the boy and recover the purloined traps. The boy’s father got upset, not at his son, but at Edward for suggesting his boy would steal anything. He ran the boys off and Edward vowed to get even. He carried this grudge for many years and then, as a full grown man, big and strong, he came back to seek his revenge. Not knowing exactly what he was going to do, he knocked on the door. The man who answered the knock was not the man from the image of Edward’s youth, but was by now a stooped and, of course, much older gentleman (An older Tommy Kane). When he saw Edward he beamed from ear to ear and invited Edward in for dinner and he and Edward had a great time visiting. Edward left without ever mentioning the traps.
When he was about 15 Edward had a very close encounter with death. While on a trip to a farm his father was leasing near Eastonville in Black Forest area of Colorado, Edward was driving a team of horses and wagon. Descending a steep hill the team somehow became disengaged from the wagon. As the wagon picked up speed the tongue forked into the dirt road, jackknifing the wagon and throwing Edward violently to the ground. His companions on this trip were his brother Gene, a boyhood friend Orlon Jackson, and his Uncle Ernie. They took him into Colorado Springs to the nearest doctor who diagnosed a torn kidney and was sent back to his home on Cooper St. All throughout that night and for several days and nights his mother stayed up with her delirious and feverish son, applying hot compresses to his back and chest. He only seemed to get worse. Finally one morning when he was at his absolute worse his mother went to call the doctor. During his mother’s absence a blood clot passed through his heart and from then on he improved. He lost a lot of weight, was out of school for a year, and took a few years to get back to normal.
Edward had boyhood friends but three especially that he kept all his life. These were the Reed brothers, Edwin a fireman in Pasadena, George, a judge who worked in the Eisenhower administration in Wash DC, and Wesley who became a judge in California. The Reed family, whose father was a Nazarene minister, lived with the Gustavson family for a while when the boys were in high school.
For many decades a masonry silo stood on the farm in Fountain where the Gustavson family had resided. Along the base of this silo could be seen holes about the size of a hammer head. Apparently Edward had a lot of fun one afternoon with a hammer and a silo.
Because his own dad only had a 6th grade education, Edward decided that would be enough for him also and so he decided to leave school after the 6th grade. For two years he worked full time. His father told him that the only thing another person could not take from you was your education, so after the family moved to Colorado Springs in 1927 he enrolled at West Junior High School . At Colorado Springs High School he played on the basketball team and was a member of the state champions. His name is engraved on a trophy in the now Palmer High School trophy case. He graduated at almost age 21 in 1933. He was also active at the local YMCA, boxing and playing basketball.
One day during his teen years as he and his young brother Paul were walking along the streets in Colorado Springs Paul yelled at a couple of boys who were up in the window of a house. The boys yelled back and one thing led to another and soon the boys were face to face with Edward, who was by now trying to defend his little brother. Only words were exchanged until one of the boys suddenly hit Edward square in the jaw. The ensuing fight finally ended in a draw but Edward would forever carry a reminder of that sneak blow. Whenever he moved his jaw laterally a crackling could be heard.
These were the depression years and Edward always worked, helping the family. While in high school he was employed at the Antlers Hotel busing tables and one day a patron had left a piece of apple pie untouched. Edward decided that, instead of tossing it out, he would just go ahead and eat it. While he was enjoying this dessert, his boss came around the corner and, thinking Edward had stolen it, immediately fired him. Edward took off his apron, wadded it up, threw it in the face of the boss, and walked out. The next day he began a job search at the south end of Tejon Street, going into each business asking for work. When he got to Barthels Ice Cream Store at the corner of Bijou he was hired. He spent the next few years there mixing and delivering ice cream. He worked, in the summer, 12 hours Mon thru Sat and 6 hours Sun for 25 cents an hour. At Barthels Edward recalled buying, for a nickel,a big shake and would be given the entire shaker to drink. During this time he and his brother Gene bought a Skelly gas station on the corner of Mesa Rd and Walnut. They owned this business for several years, sold it , and then in about 1937 purchased it again ,this time with his brother in law Arne Peterson. They owned the station and ran it for a couple more years.
On May 30th, 1935 the city experienced a devastating flood which destroyed parklands and buildings along the Monument Creek. Lives were lost partly because an understaffed fire department could not handle all the emergencies. So in August the city decided to hire more firemen. Edward was one who applied and took the grueling physical fitness tests. One test involved lifting a 50lb dumbbell one handed up and down over ones head as many time as possible. Edward began this test and by the time he had reached 50 repetitions with no sign of fatigue the tester said, “Ok, that’s enough”. Another test was a rope climb which began sitting on the floor and never using one’s legs. Edward had never climbed a rope in his life but he shimmied up the rope, touched the ceiling, and came back down just fine. When the tests were completed Edward had come out number 1 of all the applicants. In 1991 when I was reviewing these results with Bob Harvey, a fireman who was the unofficial historical records keeper of the Colorado Springs fire department, he commented, “That is one terrific score!” In the Fall of 1996 Edward’s grandson, Karl Erik, also took the Firemans test for the City of Colorado Springs. The test was graded differently but Karl got a perfect score on both the fitness and written tests.
Firemen in that day were judged how much of a man they were by how much smoke they could take inside a burning building without coming out for fresh air. This ,and the fact he was a smoker for a good portion of his life, no doubt contributed to the lung problems he had in the last year or two of his life.
He was a member of the First Church of the Nazarene in Colorado Springs along with his parents and most of his siblings and was very active in the church. In 1933 he had met a girl, Signe Sohie Peterson, and asked her to come to a basketball game in which was playing. Because you never went out the first time you were asked she refused and then was worried he would not ask her out again. In December he was one of the three wise men in a church play and asked Signe to go. This time she accepted and eventually, in August of 1935, right after he was hired on the fire department, they decided to get married. They did not want their parents to know and so went north, stopping in Castle Rock to get the marriage license, and then at a pastors house in Denver to get married. They honeymooned at Elitches Gardens and then rode back to Colorado Springs and went back to live at their respective parents houses. They did eventually tell everyone, of course, and their first house was on Cooper St.
In 1937 the Colorado Springs fire department was invited to Chicago Ill to participate in the First Annual Fire Fighters Tournament. Teams from Pittsburgh, Chicago,Baltimore,Louisville Ky.,Gary Ind.,and others were also participating. Edward was one of the nine Colorado Springs members and the two day meet was held over Labor Day in Soldiers’ Field. Colorado Springs won the meet, beating out all these bigger cities, and Edward received a gold medal.
One day while on the job as a fireman he happened to be at the Police Chief’s office. There had been a famous murder in Colorado Springs in the 1880s or 90s and the murder weapon, and ax, was in the chief’s office this day. The chief showed Edward that bits of the victim’s hair were still on the blade. He held it up to Edward’s hair and said “About the same color as yours”.
On the fire department he worked with many men who became lifelong friends. One of these men, Homer Davis, was a nephew to the man who discovered gold in Cripple Creek, Bob Womack.
The department had a 1926 Arhens Fox fire truck, a jewel of which they were proud. Edward had the job of driving this truck many times and would often talk about it in his later years. In 1992 during a department public show, the Ahrens Fox was on display and Edward again got to sit behind the wheel of this machine. He did not remember the steering wheel being on the same side of the cab but was happy to be in the driver’s seat again. This fire truck is now on display in the Colorado Springs Fire Department’s museum, along with at least three pictures of Edward.
He stayed on the fire department until 1942 and then Edward, Signe and the two little boys, Danny and Buddy loaded up their 1936 Chevy and a trailer and moved to Glendale, Ca. While ascending the steep Raton Pass in southern Colorado the car heated and would not pull the load up . After a delay a trucker came along and, using a chain around the front axle, pulled them over the top. He took both the LA police test and the Glendale firemans test. He scored #2 on the police test, beating out, among others, the future mayor of LA, Tom Bradley. He got #1 on the fire test and was told that since he had previously worked as a fireman he probably should accept that job over the police department. The first year on this job was assigned to the ambulance unit. This was a particularally demanding job emotionally and was possibly the worst job he ever had. He was exempt from military duty because of this public service job and so did not serve in WWII. While working as a fireman he and his brother Gene owned both an auto parts store and a Goodrich tire store.
He quit the Glendale fire Dept to concentrate on his businesses and in 1953 moved to Valinda in the San Gabriel Valley. He worked for General Dynamics in Pomona as a fireman and in 1955 began selling real estate. He was active in real estate for the rest of his life, selling houses and investing. In the 60’s he bought at least 10 homes, usually from divorced couples, paying $100-$200 for their equity and renting the homes out. The rent would cover the mortgage payments and the homes at the time began to increase in value substantially. He worked hard on these houses, always doing the maintenance himself . There was rarely a problem that he could not fix. He was a real estate broker and at various times owned several real estate offices located in the Sunrise Shopping center at Valinda St and Maplegrove and in the West Covina shopping strip on Garvey Ave and Vincent. These businesses were called Valinda Realty and Gustavson Realty. He worked at these businesses during the day and then would work at General Dynamics on the swing shift. He also did income taxes for individuals. While living at 1502 Pass and Covina Road in Valinda in the the late 50’s he bought a horse whom the kids named Judy. She was stabled in a corral he built in the backyard of the house but because she was not broken to ride was eventually sold.
There were a few business deals that escaped him, possibly if he had better luck on them it would have made a big difference in his financial wealth .In 1960,s or early 70’s he made a bid on a piece of commercial property that was up for auction. This was located on the corner of Azusa and Garvey, just on the north side of the freeway. He came in second on that bid by a margin of only a few thousand dollars. This was a prime piece of business property. Another time, possibly in the 60’s his brother Gene had an opportunity to purchase a train ride for children in Griffith Park of LA and asked Edward to go in as partners. Edward declined, however, and Gene went ahead and bought it. Gene expanded the train business to several other amusement rides and did quite well with it. It has often been featured in movies and commercials.
In 1972 the second son, Byron Lee , died at the age of 33. This was a big blow to the entire family.
Edward retired from General Dynamics in 1976 and built a home in his boyhood city of Colorado Springs. He and Signe intended to move to this house but never did, instead staying in California and renting the Colorado Springs house out. The two took frequent trips during retirement , mostly to Colorado, but also to Texas, Hawaii, and other places and Edward continued in Real Estate, selling over a million dollars in property value in 1983. Throughout his life he reveled in physical work and even when he was 80 was smashing concrete with a sledge hammer. In 1991 He and Signe bought youngest son Jerry’s raised ranch house in Colorado Springs so Jerry and his family could move to a larger house. While Jerry and he were working around the outside of the house it became necessary to get into the inside. The front stairway had been recently stained and the entrances to the bottom portion of the house were locked. Edward said, “Here Jerry, I’ll boost you up to the front door.” Jerry was 39 years old, 6′4″, and weighed at least 215 lbs. Edward was 79 years old. Edward interlaced his hands and made a step for Jerry’s foot. Skeptically Jerry put his foot into the step and pushed off with his other foot. As the weight of his body shifted to the foot in Edward’s hand Jerry expected the solid boost up to the door. The reality was more like stepping into quicksand and both he and Edward ended up on the ground. No one was hurt and they both had a good laugh. Another time, sometime in the 1980’s, Edward, Signe, Uncle Pete, Jerry, Cathy and the rest of their family were visiting the Evergreen Cemetery. It was getting late and was, in fact, closing time. They drove back to the entrance only to find it had been padlocked shut! No way to exit and seemingly no one was around to let them out. After a few minutes Edward got impatient and went to his trunk and came back with a small sledge hammer. He would get us out! He took a swing at the lock and just then a car pulled up from the inside of the cemetery. It was the caretaker, who had locked the entrance so no one could get in and then drove through the cemetery to make certain everyone was out. When Edward saw the car and realized who it was he thrust the hammer into Jerry’s hand and said, “Hold this”. We all had fun retelling that story.
In his prime he was 6′ 1 3/4″ and weighed 190 lbs. He did everything right handed but swung a bat and golf club left handed. His favorite phrases were “What the sam hill!” and “I’ll be switched!”. I never heard him use any swear words
The following is taken from excerpts from email correspondence between Jerry and Gene Gustavson in March 2004:
“My memories of the fire that burned down our sod house on the Force place are so vague as to be quite unreliable. I recall that Mom had a
severe arm injury from breaking a window glass to try to save some possessions. I remember a damaging lightening strike to the 2-story
garage we occupied after the fire. It was close to the burned structure and we all, including Uncle Ernie who was there when the lightening
struck, lived on the second floor.
. I, also, remember dove hunting with our Dad, a bi-plane flying low in a westerly direction (first any of us had seen) over the farm, your Dad
and me throwing 22 caliber bullets in the pot belly kitchen stove to hear them explode (and exploding them by hitting them with a hammer on a
piece of stone in the yard) and my thinking I could fly by spreading my arms when jumping off a chicken coop. Otherwise, I, now, draw a blank
We started the trek to Fountain on my birthday, April 7, 1924. Uncle Ernie accompanied us. The gang consisted of our Dad, his brother Ernie,
Edward, me and, I believe, a young friend of ours (and Bill and Carl) named Mel Larsen. We had quite an entourage: cattle, hogs, chickens,
horses, wagons and personal belongings. Took at least two days, maybe three for the about 60 miles.
The farm was probably a couple miles northeast of Fountain. Don’t remember the roads (number or otherwise) but recall we traveled due east
from Fountain almost a mile, then north a half mile or so, then east a short distance and, finally north to the property. The house stood at
the top of a hill, about a quarter mile from the barnyard which was down a hill to the north. I was later told the house had been moved down near the barnyard. Looking at a current internet map, it sure appears to me the place we moved to from the plains to Fountain was at the corner of Link Rd and Squirrel Creek Rd, as you surmised.
Many years after we left there, perhaps on a visit in the 1980’s, I recall seeing an old silo still standing, near the barnyard on Link Rd, as it was when we lived there Can’t confirm how some holes may have gotten in silo. I knew nothing about holes in the silo or how they got there. Not surprised to hear it’s all gone now. There used to be a thriving prairie dog town just east and little north of the barnyard. We could never get rid of them Wonder if any else has tried and been successful?
After living there a couple years, we moved to a dairy immediately north of Fountain on the route to CS where we delivered glass bottled milk to Fountain customers and sold cottage cheese, butter and eggs to customers in Fountain, Pueblo and CS. This enterprise didn’t last long. As I recall, the problem involved a dishonest seller and banker, among others. Your Dad, our Mom and Leona then found work in Broadmoor in late 1923 or early 1927 and rest of family moved to a place immediately east, on outskirts of Fountain, off the main road to the east, until Fall 1927. We all then moved to CS, on Cheyenne Blvd, then to N Cooper, West Colorado Street, N Walnut, N Pine and finally N Cascade before relocating to Glendale in 1936.
Yes. we set traps along Fountain creek to get muskrat. Their hides sold for what seemed, at that time, to be a fortune to us.
I recall the incident involving raiding our traps by the Kane brothers (Tommy and ?). Anyway, we rode our horses up to their place on the mesa, north of Fountain, to settle the matter. Their Dad got involved and ordered us off their property. He had a shotgun, as I recall, and
needless to say, we left in a hurry. That’s all I recall and I had forgotten it entirely.
Don’t remember any later incidents on the affair and probably your Dad did make up with the old man but have no recollections of it as I was
not involved. I recall your Dad mentioning that he had met Tommy Kane in later years and how Tommy had become, what appeared to be, a bedraggled derelict.
It brings to mind another incident involving the same area we trapped in. There was enough water (marsh) that ducks used it as a stopping spot on their migrations thru the area. Our Dad used to hunt them using a shotgun to bag whatever he could. On one occasion, I recall he told us (Ed & me) to stay put on one side of the water area while he circled around to get a better shot from the other side. We were in his line of
fire and I recall shotgun pellets hitting nearby as he fired at the ducks. None struck us but they were close enough for us to hear the
pellets striking the foliage around us.
The story about the Black Forest accident your Dad suffered is about as I remember. He was laid up for several weeks as our Mom nursed him back to health. At the time, we didn’t realize how serious the accident was. Seems to me it may have been later than 1927 as most of the family
(except Mom, Leona and your Dad who found jobs in Broadmoor) were still in Fountain until late summer 1927 – probably 1928 or even 1929. Being not sure, I’ll see if Leona or Elsie can recall.
Can’t authenticate the cracking jaw problem as I was, probably, not around or would have remembered. Seem to recall Paul had the same
problem. May have been hereditary rather than a punch?
I don’t remember what we were paid or how many hours we worked at Barthel’s Ice Cream parlor but, whatever it was – probably only a few cents/hour – we were glad to get it and seemed to get along fine. In those days 25c/hour would be like several dollars/hr now. When I first started to work in the airplane business around 1938, I was paid 40c/hour ($16 bucks for a 40 hr week) bucking rivets and had to travel over 20 miles from Glendale to and from Vultee Aircraft in Downey here in California.
As to your questions we did own (jointly) a Skelly 2 pump station at the corner of Walnut and Mesa circa 1934. It was built by ? Scott (a Skelly distributor) who had the only Skelly distributorship in CS and operated the station at Nevada & Colorado (one of several), a 7/24 operation at which I worked the night shift (6 pm to 6 am) in 1935 and part pf 1936 to save up enough money to attend CW Tech (an aeronautical engineering & shop school) here in Glendale
We (your Dad, Paul and I) owned and operated a Texaco station at the corner of Doran & Coloardo here in Glendale during WWII and later, also, owned and operated a Goodyear tire, hardware and appliance store here in Montrose in the latter 40’s. Your Dad pretty much ran that store and sold it around ‘49 or 50′ after which he operated a “rolling” store selling parts and supplies to area service stations and mechanics.
I don’t remember the details of why he left the Antlers but I do recall he didn’t strike it off too well with the Maitre de, a gruff, demanding
overweight Frenchman, whose approaching presence was always detected as his hard heeled shoes banged down the marble corridors of the Antlers. We all snapped to attention and got busy when we heard him coming.
It all turned out for the better as your Dad, then, went to work at Barthel’s where he got along fine. I joined him there not too long after
he left the Antlers. We worked at Barthel’s thru high school (1933) and, shortly thereafter, your Dad was accepted on the Colorado Springs Fire Department
The Car Crash
January 1949 – Glendale, California
By Carol Bouttier Tonseth
What I remember about the car crash. I recently learned I was 7 ½ years old when this happened because my cousin Stanley was born the same night in the same hospital we were taken to.
We were driving to my grandparents home in Glendale from our home in La Puente where we lived at the time. We were all in the front seat because we had borrowed my grandfathers coupe and it had only one seat in front with a rumble seat in the back. Our car must have been in the shop for repairs because we didn’t usually drive my grandfather’s car.
It was night time. My sister, Vickii (Yeats) was sitting on Mom’s lap and I was sitting between Dad and Mom (Hector and Arlene Bouttier). Then everything happened so fast. I don’t remember the crash. I remember waking up in the middle of the street and strangers helping me to the curb. I wore glasses at the time and they weren’t on my face after the crash. A stranger found them laying in the street in one piece and brought them to me. I think Mom and Vickii must have been there somewhere but I don’t remember them being near. I remember my Dad finding all of us and then sitting down on the curb and crying while he was holding Vickii. I later found out that they had found Dad hanging out of the door window of the car unconscious. The car had traveled away with him after the crash. The ambulance came and I rode up front with the driver and attendant. The rest of my family must have been in the back. Riding in the front seat of an ambulance at 7 ½ yrs old with the siren blaring and weaving between all the cars and seeing all the lights at night was quite a memory for me. I don’t know if I was afraid or so traumatized I didn’t feel much. I have never forgotten that ride!
When we got to the hospital they put me on a hospital bed in ER and kept checking me. I think I had a few bruises but otherwise was ok. I don’t remember what was going on with the rest of my family but later found out my Mom and Vickii
had been injured. I think dad was ok.. Vickii had cuts on her face from hitting the car window at impact and was thrown out of the car. Mom had twisted her ankle and hurt her leg after being thrown out. I’m assuming they were taking care of them but I don’t have a sense of where they were in the room.
As I was sitting on my hospital bed I looked toward the door leading to a hallway of the hospital and saw my Uncle Lou pass ER. I yelled at him. He stopped and looked in at me and was shocked to see all of us in ER. I was surprised to see him in the hospital. He was visiting my Aunt Elsie who had just delivered my cousin Stanley! It was a moment I will never forget.
I later found out that a drunk man had run a stop sign and hit us. He seemed very upset about it at the scene but I don’t know whatever happened to him. I do know that he came to the house to apologize to us.
In looking back at this event in my life and what has transpired since then it has caused me to reflect on what the Lord had in mind when he protected our family during the car crash in Glendale. Ruth (Hutchison)was born a couple of years later as a result of that protection which made our family complete. The Lord allowed my parents to raise us and see their grandchildren before dying in a car crash 30 years later.
How do I understand God’s plan for their lives and mine. I can’t. But I know one day we will all be together again in that wonderful heavenly place!
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My Memory of the Car Crash on January 1949
By Vickii Bouttier Yeats
We were coming home from Grandpa’s and Grandma’s and were in Grandpa’s car. It was a one-seater, I think they called it a coupe. I was on the shelf behind the front seat laying down and we were at a stop light when we were hit by a drunk driver.
When I woke up, I was on the street and I do remember the smell. It was asphalt and gas and it was an eerie feeling. Dad was next to me crying on the street. The next thing I remember was being in the hospital.
In the hospital, they were fixing my face because my head had hit the windshield and I had cuts all over my face. I remember my head being wrapped in gauze after they put medicine on my face. I don’t remember being in any pain.
We went to Glendale to Grandpa’s and Grandma’s house so Grandma could care for mom and her leg injury. Her leg had been hurt and bruised badly in the crash. Our cousins came over and I remember Karen coming down the stairs twiddling her hair as she walked. I kind of remember Dan & Bud (Gustavson), cousins, being there at the same time too. I was about 5 years old.
62007vUTC07bUTCSat, 14 Jul 2007 18:04:23 +0000 2, 2007 at 01:15 p07
Nice pics.
12007vUTC12bUTCMon, 17 Dec 2007 05:09:37 +0000 2, 2007 at 01:15 p12
Ted
I will dream of your poetic words tonight.