PICAYUNE — At the ripe old age of 16 I made my way from Randlett, Oklahoma to California looking for work. The first job I applied for was washing dishes in a Greek café and I was hired on the spot.

Within a couple of days I adjusted to washing great stacks of dishes, cups and saucers, glasses, and silverware through the large galvanized metal sink. The next step was to swish them through clear hot water and set them in the drying racks to dry. I also peeled mounds of potatoes, cleaned and scraped carrots, mashed potatoes, and made several kinds of salads. When the evening meal was over I swept the floors and mopped the dining room and kitchen. If that sounds like a long days work, it was. I was well paid at $3 a day and my meals. My room cost only about a days pay per week and I was getting rich fast.

Now that I had a job and a place to stay I returned to the problem of contacting my Dad and brother Bob who had come to California to find work before I came. Finally it dawned on me that I had their address: General delivery at Oroville. I went to the post office and mailed a postcard to their Oroville address. No problem.

I was allowed to get off early one day and spent a quarter to see Jimmy Stewart and the new French actress, Simone Simon, in a film titled “Seventh Heaven.” I had not heard of it before and it must have been a loser because I have not heard of it since. Personally, I enjoyed it very much.

Dad showed up a week after I started my job at the Greek restaurant . I was elbow deep in soap suds at the sink washing dishes when I felt that someone was watching me. I looked up and there was dad leaning against the door and grinning. I didn't know whether to shake his hand or hit him with a wet dish towel. At any rate I joined him in a good laugh then asked him how long he had known where I was.

"Oh, your card got to me the day after you mailed it. Since you had a job, I knew you would be O.K. and I waited until I had an afternoon off to come down." Remembering that moment I wonder that I didn't throw the dish towel.

He asked if I would like to move up to Gridley where he and Bob had work irrigating a peach orchard. After thinking it over I decided that I would stay in Oroville. Even then I found it hard to give up a sure thing for a possibility. My decision proved to be a good one because Bob and Dad ran out of work for the period of time between peach thinning and picking season and they moved back to Oroville. The three of us rented a small furnished cabin with a living room, a bed room, and a small kitchen and we bought groceries with my salary.

Within the week my mother and my younger brother, Dale, arrived from Oklahoma by Greyhound bus. They had traveled first class. (A Mother's Day thought: I'm sure you have noticed, this, no matter how many of the family get together they are not really the family unless mother is there.}

I continued my work at the restaurant and was glad to be reunited with the rest of the folks. We even rented a second cabin. Dale once reminded me how much he enjoyed the soup-of-the-day I brought home each evening. It was a gift from the Swede cook because the same soup was never served two days in a row. I carried it home in a covered gallon bucket each day suspended from my bicycle handle bars by the wire bail. (By this time I was no longer a pedestrian having bought a second hand bike at a beat down low price.)

Dale also reminded me of the time I had an accident on the way home when the bike skidded on a rail at a railroad crossing. I went sprawling, the lid came off the bucket, and the soup went into the gutter. We recalled the disappointment of the family because everyone looked forward to their soup de jour. Its really surprising how quickly luxuries becomes necessities after they become a regular part of our routine.

A few days after our family was reunited Dad agreed to take my place in order that I could have an afternoon off. I went with a friend to a beautiful area on Feather river where we swam, sat in the sun and got acquainted with other young people. I was excited over the news that, only one week before, a kid had discovered a large nugget of gold worth three hundred dollars along the bank among the roots of a tree. We spent a good part of our time sifting wet sand and gravel along the bank of the river.

We had a ball but, like other things that are fun, the California sun can be overdone. In truth I was the one who was overdone. At bedtime I was a deep red and had to sit up in a rocker to sleep. Mother coated my thin Scotch-Irish skin with Vaseline but we soon realized that the protection should have been done before the exposure. We did what we could for my condition, even bought a cheap electric fan to keep my back cool. Since I could not stand a shirt on my blistered back, working was out of the question. Dad had to continue washing dishes, peeling vegetables, making salads, and mopping floors for a week until I was better.

Mother and Dad stayed in the first cabin while Bob, Dale and I occupied the second one. Sleeping with Bob or in his vicinity was always an experience to be remembered. Often, in the wee hours of the morning, he would sit up in the bed and yell to the top of his lungs, "Hey, hey, hey." As his long-time bed partner it was my job to tell him that he was only dreaming and follow it up with a reassuring order "Now lay down and go to sleep". That was the way things usually went but during the time I was laid up with sunburn, Bob found a few days work with a irrigation crew in an orchard in the vicinity. They must have worked extra hard in digging the ditches and containing the rush of the water into them because after we had been asleep for hours we were all awakened by Bob yelling, “Hey, it’s breaking loose down here!"

In a flash Dad was standing on the floor beside him yelling “Where? Where?"

"Right over here!" Bob answered, pointing to a splotch of moonlight on the cabin floor.

Someone had the presence of mind to pull the light cord and we all had a laugh about Bob working day and night. Next morning Bob, as usual, had no memory of the event. I have a feeling that most of our terrors, if we switch on the light, turn out to be splotches of moonlight on the cabin floor and nothing more.

(Continued to next Sunday.)