BAND
OF BROTHERS
Dave
Hanson
While dad’s brothers were off
in the service, dad was working on the home front.
I’ll start when I was a baby,
so I’m only going on my memory from stories I heard long
ago. As I got a little older, I do remember some of it.
Dad only went to school for 8
years. If he had gone on, he would have had to board out in
Virginia to attend high school. When the 9th
grade kids in town were in school, he was helping grandpa in
the woods and on the farm.
When the Hanson boys were in
their late teens, they built a laundry building for their
mother. It was so hot from boiling water to can food and
wash clothes in the house that it was hard to sleep
upstairs. They also built a hay barn.
Dad’s first carpenter job was
to frame Sulo
Harkonen’s building two miles
west of the Gheen corner. That
building is still there. He had to buy some basic tools,
but he borrowed the rest from Gust Parson.
Sulo finished the building.
This was in the Depression. He built the bridge forms over
the railroad for the state in Orr. That bridge has been
replaced. He was hired to teach the CCC boys how to build
the barracks at Cusson. He was
a little too old at that time to be in the
CCC’s.
In between these jobs he
worked in the woods. He hewed railroad ties for the
railroad that went from Old Gheen
to
Nett
Lake when he was newly wed. Jobs were hard to come by.
He got a job at a resort on
Spider Lake, Wisconsin, and moved the family down there.
Ray Brewer, dad, and a crew were building cabins. That’s
when I was 2 ˝ and my brother, Laurence, who was 1 ˝,
drowned.
He landed a carpenter job on a
housing project in
Pennsylvania. After 2 weeks
he was superintendent on that 250 unit project. Dad
remodeled his Model A Ford into a
wood-paneled station wagon.
When he left, his buddy, L.D.
Gustafson in Cook, said, “Herbie,
if you get a job, let me know.”
Dad moved the family again out
east. Dad called up L.D. and told him he had a carpenter
job, and to come out. L.D. broke his wrist or ankle and had
to come back to Cook.
Dad had a spot on his lung, so
they wouldn’t consider him for the draft in the service. He
thought he got T.B. when he was 19 working underground in
Ely.
The Austin Company was a
business that built large projects. The war was heating up
in
Europe. Poland had been
invaded 2 ˝ years before and England was threatened. This
country was shut down by the depression and the feeling was
that we would be in the war sooner or later. Roosevelt and
most of the government didn’t want to get into the war.
Some aid started pouring into Europe from the states. Some
factories started retooling to build tanks, jeeps, and
equipment to sell to other countries. I don’t think Japan
bombed Pearl Harbor yet.
After the housing project was
done, the Austin Company started an airplane factory at
Des Plaines near O’Hare field in Chicago.
I remember waking up on the
train when we entered
Chicago through bleary, tired
eyes. I saw the thousands of colored Christmas tree lights
as mom and my sister rode into the station to meet dad.
Dad was good at math and knew
how to read blueprints, and had a little bit of B.S., I
suppose. He told me years ago that a superintendent was a
“professional son of a bitch.” He had to fire a man in
Pennsylvania because dad made a mistake of letting a few
incidents slip by and the man started acting friendly and
putting his arm over dad’s shoulder. He felt bad about
firing him because he had a family.
The
Des Plaines job
was an all wood bomber factory. The steel mills were down
from the depression and all available steel was going into
the war effort. The plant had to be wide enough so the huge
planes could roll out the end of the building. No pillars
or posts could be used to hold the roof up, so the building
had to be twice as tall as a steel building. The upper half
was wood trusses.
As soon as the long 40 acre
building was started, machines were installed and they
started building airplanes. As the factory progressed,
airplanes were rolling along on the assembly line inside.
Mom knew nothing about dad’s
job as it was top secret. He couldn’t tell her anything.
There was always a threat that somehow word would get out
and a saboteur would kidnap mom and us kids. She knew it
was a government job, and didn’t ask questions, just like a
Mafia wife.
Two weeks after the building
was done, airplanes were rolling out the end doors.
By then, we were in the war
for the duration. People don’t realize how fast the country
mobilized. The mines and mills were in full production. A
lot of towns on the coast and in
Duluth harbor
started building ships. They were smaller here because they
had to get through the Soo and
Welland Locks to get to the
Atlantic. A lot of steel and metals were being used. The
automobile factories suspended building cars, and went into
building airplane motors, jeeps, tanks, and army trucks.
Henry Ford had training
manuals to train his factory workers. The army used the
manuals and had crash courses to teach the boys in the
service how to become mechanics and maintain the war
equipment. Caterpillar manuals were converted into tank
manuals. General Motors built airplane motors. The Air
Force wasn’t formed yet, so the Army had an air force and
the Navy had their airplanes and pilots.
England
was being bombed and no one knew if they could hold out, so
it was near panic and a feverish pitch to complete the
projects and get to keep the war effort going.
The kids were saving tin foil
for the war effort. The Boy Scouts were collecting scrap
iron. That’s why metal antiques aren’t common. Fat was
collected to make glycerin for explosives. Any iron that
wasn’t nailed down was collected. Aluminum pans were used
for airplanes. Food was rationed and a tremendous amount of
farm products went into food for the armed forces. A lot of
supplies and food went to other countries also, who were
fighting on our side. Gas was rationed for the same reason.
It was almost impossible to
get tires. All the rubber from the South Pacific was taken
over by
Japan. Synthetic rubber was
developed out of oil. The tires went for planes, jeeps, and
truck tires. Nylon was used as synthetic silk for
parachutes.
I remember stories of
rationing stamps being traded by neighbors. Some didn’t
drink coffee and they were traded for sugar stamps. Some
saved them. When the war was over, they had skimped on
things and the stamps were of no use anymore.
People bought war bonds to
finance the war. Almost everyone had someone overseas in
the war.
Those small flags with a star
were hanging in many, many windows. Mom and wives didn’t
know if they would ever see their loved ones again. Some
never did.
After a few months, dad and
mom packed up us kids and headed for
Oklahoma City.
Each Austin Company job was larger than the last. Dad was
32 years old and they called him “The Boy Super.”
The
Oklahoma plant
was so large, the job was divided
into shop and material, and site work and construction. Red
Parish was the shop superintendent and dad did the
construction.
Dad had trouble right away
when the engineers went on strike. Dad had to do something,
so the next morning he asked his foremen to round up all the
college math students on the labor crews. He selected about
20 kids and gave them a crash course on surveying. They
laid out most of the foundation and in a couple of days the
engineers came back. He didn’t have any trouble after that
with his crews.
Dad had ulcers for years. He
had his own office on wheels and had his own jeep and
chauffeur. The office was pulled all over the job as it
progressed. They have a converted semi van office like that
on modern jobs.
Each morning he had a meeting
with all the foremen. But they had to check the blue prints
constantly. He always said an architect should be a
carpenter before he goes to college. Sometimes plumbing
pipes on the plans went through where heating and cooling
ducts were planned. Electric cables ran through places on
the plans were concrete walls were. They changed the plans
and kept the building going.
That was the best money dad
had ever made, but the jobs only lasted a few months and
they had to move again.
Some asked dad why he got into
that strike mess, and he told them “I’ve got brothers out
there and I’m not going to let anything or anyone hold up
this job.”
The next job was in
Fort
Worth, Texas. This was an all steel building, so they
didn’t need a carpenter superintendent.
Dad went downtown
Fort
Worth and poured over plant books in the library. He showed
up at the Austin Co. office and recommended that they use
native plants, shrubs, and trees that would be easy to
obtain nearby and wouldn’t die in a year or two. He got the
superintendent job for site preparation and the landscaping
project. He had 5000 men on his crew.
He called up Ray Brewer, from
Hayward, and told him to get a crew of lumberjacks and get
down there as soon as possible. They had to clear the site
for the 65 acre factory.
There was a lot of scrub oak
on the land. One day dad stopped his pickup and watched a
prizefighter looking man hacking on an 8 inch oak tree. Dad
laughed, and the guy said, “I suppose you can do better?”
Dad said, “I think I can.” Dad had been working in the
woods since he was a kid. He told me he had a brand new
double bit axe in the back of the pickup. About 4 good
chips from each side of the tree and it went down. The men
on the crew stood there in disbelief. They had never seen
any boss work. Bosses were all sons of rich people and
never did manual labor.
Once the
Wisconsin men
cleared the site, and bulldozed, and dug the foundation
area, the building went up.
They dug up some 40 foot high
trees. By digging trenches around and tying up the root
balls with burlap and rope, the trees were moved by flatbed
trucks and planted.
He wanted shrubs to be planted
randomly instead of in rows or hedges. Dad got a bunch of
different colored marbles and tossed them in the air.
Wherever they landed, he had stakes that corresponded with
the color pounded in. The bushes were planted by the
following crews. Sycamores, live
Oak, Magnolias. There are a lot of southern plants to
choose from. They planted acres of sod. Concrete
sidewalks and parking lots were prepared.
The strain was so bad, dad
finished that job and quit and moved to
L.A. We lived
in a housing project called Channel Heights overlooking Long
Beach shipyard. I remember the huge tank farm right behind
where we lived. There were millions of gallons of gas and
fuel stored in those round, flat
topped tanks. I remember the thousands of blimps, for miles
around L.A. that were kept tied down with cables. They had
numerous small chains hanging down in case Japanese
airplanes invaded the U.S. and tried to bomb. The planes
would tangle in the chains.
Long Beach
ship yard was the largest naval facility on the West Coast.
They had dry docks there where blown up ships were floated
in and large doors closed and the water was pumped out.
The ship yards were swimming
with workers welding and repairing ships, and refitting them
so they could go back to sea. Also captured ships were
stripped and converted into troop transports. Dad
remembered an Italian luxury liner that was stripped of
mahogany and teak paneling. Also the brass railings were
stripped and scrapped. Some marble steps were thrown away,
also. What couldn’t be salvaged was burned.
Dad was the shop boss and the
yard had every kind of power tool there was. Most of the
young men were overseas so the crews were made up of a lot
of women and older men and slightly disabled men.
Rosy the Riveter posters were
all over. They were welders, railroad section gang
workers, they wired airplanes,
drove trucks, manned the factories and did every job men had
done before. Dad liked the Navaho workers from
Arizona. They had never been in town before, but became the
best welders.
The yard had a submarine net
all the way around the
L.A. harbor. When they pumped
out the dry docks, small fish had to be carried out of the
bottom. Sailors would carry them in pails and take them
down to a dock where a young whale was waiting. They tossed
the fish into his mouth. It swam out into the Pacific and
the sub nets were closed. If it was in by the dock, the
frogmen would go out and patch the hole in the net. It
became a kind of mascot.
We had all kinds of neighbors
in the housing project. I was only four,
but remember the ice man
carrying ice into the house. We would bum ice chips from
the back of his truck from him. One time our dog,
Tootsy, tore the mailman’s pants
leg, and mom was teary-eyed and sewed the rip up.
I remember
Joylene
Bareros. Her family was Pilipino and lived one house
above us in the project. She was my sister
Marion’s age
and a year older than me.
Some people from
Arkansas
lived across the street. Another family by the name of
Whipple lived across the street also. Dad and Mr. Whipple
both build home made trailers together. The war was nearly
over and I know now most people just wanted to move back
home.
We learned what Black Widow
Spiders were on the screen windows, and what tarantellas
were from the older kids.
The only planes I could
identify were the double fuselage P 38’s roaring overhead.
When the war was over, my
sister, Marion, had been in 3 schools and the folks decided
it would be better to live in the woods back home. They had
enough stress and moving around to last a lifetime. A lot
of people thought dad was crazy to leave high paying jobs to
come back to Gheen.
“All dads’ brothers came
home.”
I thank all the people who
kept the war from coming over here. They did sink a
Japanese sub in the
L.A. harbor. They didn’t let
it be known until the war was over. People would have
panicked. Mom remembered the ground shaking when those huge
guns fired a few times. German subs were on the east coast
watching. Thanks to the miners on the Range. Thanks to the
women who took over. Thanks to the corporations. If our
country was set up like India and China in the 1940’s we
would have lost for sure.
My brother has the old picture
album that was filled after the house burned in 1948. There
is a letter of recommendation, “To Whom it may Concern,” dad
got when he left the Austin Company in the album. That
didn’t get burned up. The little tin strongbox was
the first thing they got out of
the burning house.