My
parents, Howard and Elsie (Daugherty) Goines, were born in 1919 and 1921. As
children living on rural farms in Arkansas and
Oklahoma
during the “Great Depression” (1929-1940’s), they were not fully aware of the
financial collapse of the country. Life was already hard and went on as usual;
eating from the garden, gathering eggs, carrying water to the field hands, and
chopping cotton beside them when they were old enough. It was understood and
automatic that the children helped whenever and wherever needed; without
question and without opposition. It was a necessity if the family was to
survive.
Mother
remembers one of the programs instituted by President Roosevelt was to employ
men to work on the roads, which some in her community did to earn a living.
Others would follow the crops as harvesting time arrived by picking peaches and
strawberries.
When
Mother was a young girl, she overheard a conversation between her father and
one of his field hands. He had asked for a raise
from $1 a day (twelve hours) and her father answered that he would like to pay
him more but he just couldn’t afford it. Her father was very disappointed but
there was nothing he could do; his own children worked for free, a situation
that afforded my mother limited attire.
Even
though Mother grew up during the depression, she was fortunate to be able to
take advantage of FDR’s N.Y.A. (National Youth Administration) program, which
paid most of her room and board at Arkansas Tech. She was responsible for the
remainder and earned it by answering the one phone present in the entire
three-story women’s dorm and locating the person the caller wanted. This paid
her only $10 of the required $15 for her room and board so her father paid the
additional $5, which was a hardship for an Arkansas farmer.
Her
last year at Tech she worked as a waitress in the dining hall six and a half
days a week, which paid for her entire room and board. After her two years
there she graduated in 1939 with a teaching credential and her first teaching
job earned her $65 a month. She later received her B.A. degree from San Francisco State
University when my parents moved to California in
1946. She taught in the John
Swett Unified
School District for
thirty years and retired in 1981.
Daddy’s
father had three hired men on his farm so when the government was looking for
workers to grade the roads he hired out the hands and his team of mules. The
pay was given to his men. It was their
only income.
Daddy
planted and sowed in the fields for no pay right along side his father. When
the crop was harvested, however, he was paid $2 a day for twelve to fourteen
hours work or ten cents an hour if less than a full day. He was paid just like any other field
hand.
As a
teenager, Daddy told his father, “I will drive the tractor on the hottest days
or coldest days of the year, but when I graduate from high school, I’m off the
farm. Three days after graduation, he left for Muskogee, Oklahoma
where he trained to read aircraft blueprints.
From Muskogee he went to the Cessna Aircraft plant in Wichita, Kansas
and from Cessna to the Beechcraft Factory where he earned $.71 an hour. He was
only there a short time when Pearl Harbor was
bombed. My parents had planned to marry in February of 1942 but they moved up
their wedding to Christmas Day, 1941 when they knew the war was at hand.
They
began to see an end to the depression with the Lend Lease program and the
buildup of airplane factories and shipyards. Also the oil fields had opened up
for drilling.
I
suppose the best place to be during the “Great Depression” was on a farm where
families could grow their own food and raise chickens, cows, and hogs. That
life was hard but the financial loss was limited because there were limited
finances. The depression had a positive effect on my parents because they
learned to do without the frills, to live within their means, and to save up
and buy with cash instead of credit, a virtue that has stayed with them all of
their lives.
Today
the family farm has all but disappeared and our food is being imported from
countries which do not adhere to our own food and drug standards; an added
threat on the home front.
It is
yet to be seen how this present depression/recession will shape and influence
us as individuals, as families, and as a country. Maybe being forced to return
to our old ways will not be such a bad thing. We can all learn a valuable
lesson during these hard economic times and that is look to GOD
and Get
Out
of Debt!
ADDENDUM (as told to Danna by her father in 2005
at age 84)
HOWARD
EURBIE GOINES
February 26,
1921 – March 1, 2010
Place of
Birth: Spiro, Oklahoma
Howard,
affectionately known as Pa by his
family and friends, enlisted into the U.S. Army Air Corp in Little Rock, Arkansas
on December 1, 1942 and served with the 3rd Bomb Division, 388th
Bomb Group, 562nd Bomb Squadron. He went from Private to Tech Sgt.
within six months of enlisting and was the highest ranking Non-Commissioned
Officer in the 562nd Ordinance Department, responsible for the
conduct of the men in the barracks, assigned all duties i.e., KP, issued
passes, policed the grounds, serviced the ground equipment, etc.
Pa
went from Little Rock to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Missouri, then to the
Oldsmobile Plant, Lansing, Michigan for basic training where he broke the
record for field stripping a 20 millimeter machine gun blindfolded (he never
had to fire a gun during the war). From there he went to Salt Lake City, Utah,
then Tacoma, Washington, then Wendover, Utah, then Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, and
finally to Knettishall, England, where he spent most of the war.
Pa
traveled overseas on the Queen Elizabeth I. There were only half enough beds
for the troops so those who weren’t working slept and vice versa. The ship
docked in Edinburgh, Scotland
before going on to Knettishall,
England. Pa’s
unit was the first to arrive in Knettishall so they had the privilege of
establishing the layout of the base and setting up the Quonset huts as their
living quarters.
After
arriving in Knettishall, Pa was in charge of the Ordinance
Department. Although it was not considered part of the Army Air Corp, it was
still attached to it. He was responsible for twenty-eight men whose duties were
to load the planes with bombs and ammunition. Each plane could carry twelve 500
pound bombs. The bombs were armed by the men after being loaded; however, Pa
and his Lieutenant were the only ones allowed to insert the delayed fuses due
to the fact that they could not be
manually disarmed but had to be dropped and detonated.
Pa’s
men loaded the planes at night and the American pilots flew during the day. The
Brits loaded their planes during the day and flew at night. Pa was able to
improve the standard way of loading the bombs by backing a trailer underneath
the Bombay doors and using a cable hook to pull the bombs up through the
opening, thereby eliminating the dolly and lift system. He always looked for a
better and simpler approach to any job in order to save time and aching backs.
Pa
also used his talents and skills in other ways. When the men’s watch crystals
were damaged, he would take the Plexiglas from the damaged windshields of the
B-17 bombers and shape them to fit their watches. He was able to make a little
extra money this way.
The
men were rationed five packs of cigarettes and five candy bars each week.
Because Pa was not a smoker, he would ride his bike out to a local farm and
trade his cigarettes and candy for fresh eggs and unpasteurized milk. Steak in
those days was horsemeat.
His
mother sent him cookies and a pecan pie, once, which arrived weeks later . . .
moldy and in crumbs. Pa’s tent had a
coke heater, a hotplate, and an iron skillet so he burned the mold off the pie
and had a feast. He also shared it with some of the men—grudgingly. It seems no
one cared that the pecan pie was moldy.
Pa
saw a few sights of England
while there. From Knettishall, it took three hours to arrive in London by train. He rode
the “tube” (subway) and saw Big Ben and the Tower of London.
He has also traveled across the London
Bridge, both in London
and in Arizona.
After
VE Day (Victory in Europe), all the ground personnel who wished, were able to
take a tour in one of the B-17 bombers over Holland,
Belgium, and France; they also circled the Eiffel Tower
and Arc de Triomphe.
When
Pa was scheduled for a month of R and R, his return trip to the States took
five days. He flew home on one of his own B-17 bombers leaving from England to Wales
to the Azore Islands,
to Gander Field, Newfoundland, to Bradley Field, Connecticut.
Everyone on the flight had to wear a parachute, which also doubled as their
seat. They sat anywhere they could find a place because the planes weren’t
designed for passengers, just bombs.
After
his R and R, Pa was assigned to the South Pacific and had only made one leg of
that journey when the Atomic Bomb was dropped on Japan and the war was over. He
never had to leave the States again. He was discharged on July 19, 1945 at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas
and returned home to his wife and daughter in Van Buren, Arkansas.
After
the war my parents migrated to the San Francisco Bay Area of California. They
have lived there since 1946 and raised three daughters (Nan,
Paula, Danna). Pa retired at fifty-eight to pursue his hobby—Model A Ford
restoration. He has restored or helped to restore over twenty cars and is
nationally known for his skill and expertise.
