Shortly thereafter Dads mom, Grandma Grace, came to live with us and
take charge of a houseful of men. She had bought a Ski Lodge in Ruidoso,
New Mexico with the life insurance money she got after Grandpa Sam died
of lung cancer (cigarettes). Besides buying a Ski Lodge, she had also
bought a huge luxury car, a Packard
Super Clipper, with load levelers on
all four corners. The load levelers were to keep the car from sagging,
on the drivers side, due to Grandmas size, under five feet tall and over
200 pounds.
She bought the ski lodge the year that
there was no snow in Ruidoso and had gone bankrupt. She had always wanted to travel
in high social circles and when Grandpa Sam died and left her with the
money from his life insurance she saw her chance and made her move. She
had done something similar, back in the late 30's, early 40's. Her and Grandpa Sam
owned a small apartmenthouse in Portland. This apartment house provided
them with a place to live and a comfortable income every month. It
wasn't a big enough deal for Grandma and ,after needling Grandpa Sam
long enough, convinced him to sell the apartment house and buy a hotel
in Tacoma, Washington. When they got to Tacoma they settled into their
new roles as owners of a large Hotel, the Hotel Bonneville.
Grandma was set to start traveling in the elite social circles that she
felt she needed to be in. They joined the Elks Lodge, the Masonic Lodge,
and a few other noteworthy organizations. A year or so after they took
possession of the Hotel they found out that the building codes were
changing in a couple of years and the Hotel was going to need to be
completely rewired to bring it up to code so that they could remain
open. At this point they didn't have the money to rewire the whole
building and they had to walk away when the new building codes went into
effect. They couldn't sell it without disclosing the fact that it needed
to be completely rewired. It was a total loss and they had been swindled
out of all of their savings. They moved to Alamogordo, New Mexico
and went to work for the Government at the
White Sands Missile Range and
worked there until ritirement. They were there for the
Trinity test of
an atomic
bomb in 1945. and they moved to El Pas, Texas.
Grandma needed a place to go, after losing the Ski Lodge and
the timing was perfect for her to come and live with us.
Grandmothers are fun to visit but way different to live with. She was
very sweet and spoiled us when we had visited her in the past but now
things were different. She came in and took charge. My brother and I had
our own rooms, I was downstairs, next to the livingroom, and David was
upstairs, off of the dining room. When Grandma arrived, I moved upstairs
and shared my brothers room with him and Grandma moved into my old room.
When she found out that we were subject to corporal punishment in
school, for bad behavior, she decided to introduce corporal punishment
at home, to take some of the pressure off of dad. My brother and I had to come
up with a list of offences and decide how many hacks each offence was
worth. I went out the back door and pulled a split board, approximately
three feet long and four inches wide, off of the fence. The handle was wrapped with cloth
electrical tape, and that was used as "the paddle".
On the light side, Steve Allen, our neighbor from across the street,
used to tell some pretty rotten jokes and one of the ten or twelve
offences, we were subject to being punished for, was telling Steve
Allen jokes. I think that particular offence was worth two hacks.
Grandma used to deliver the hacks during the day so that when dad got
home we could eat dinner without having to wait until later for dad to
hand out punishments. Dad used to be a bodybuilder in his younger days
and had to be careful about laying his belt across our backsides because
he didn't know his own strength. He used to leave welts and bruises
(stripes) when
he gave us spankings. We used to have "stripes" from our butts down to
the back of our knees. He used to keep one of his belts, about two and a
half inches wide, folded up and
tucked into his recliner, next to the seat cushion, so that it would be
handy and it served as a constant reminder of the possibilities of the
consequences of bad behavior. That system actually lasted for a couple
of years before our offences grew so much in seriousness that dad would
have to be involved.
We had chores to do, like going to the Laundromat with Grandma to wash
closthes and hanging laundry on the clothesline in the backyard,
cleaning the dog poop out of the front and back yards, mowing the lawn,
a push mower to begin with and later replaced by an electric mower that
mom sent down from Portland. We had to keep our room cleaned and
straightened up at all times and all the clothes either hung up in the
closet or folded and put away in drawers.
Grandma and I didn't get along, almost from the beginning, and things
deteriorated from there. She used to go upstairs, while we were at
school, and go through our things and check between the mattresses for
contraband. She went through our stuff, almost daily, up until we
finally left home. We had to become extremely creative to hide anything,
like cigarettes and Mens magazines, from her. It was a game of cat and
mouse that went on almost daily for years.
Dad was working for the Newport City Police when we moved into this
house. A couple of years later he retired from Law Enforcement and took
odd jobs around town until he figured out what he was going to do. He
worked as a gate guard over at Georgia Pacific for awhile. He didn't
care for the smell and it was boring. He tried Taxi Driving for a litle
while but there was no money in it. He drove a chip truck back and forth
to Florence, for Leonard Anderson, but the work wasn't steady enough to
make a career out of. I used to ride in the chip truck on his trips back
and forth to Florence with him. I loved to spend time with my Dad, doing
anything.
In the meantime the salmon fishing industry was beginning to take off
and people were making a lot of money with salmon, charter boat fishing
and commercial salmon trolling.
