Memoirs of Norbert E. Gnadinger, Sr. Volume 1

1942

There was very little good news in the newspapers as this year began. Real fear of the Japanese gripped the entire country. Rumors of an impending landing of their troops on the west coast were rampant. The hysteria about the Japanese menace became so bad that eventually all Japanese-Americans were made to leave their homes and businesses on the West coast to be herded into guarded camps away from the coast. This act was terribly wrong, but at the time, it seemed to make good sense. I am of German descent and I later wondered why I was not put in a camp also. The Japanese-Americans were later allowed to join the services and fight for their Country in Europe. They earned many decorations for bravery, there(In my mind, I have a thing about, what I call, this stereotype. I am an American, not a German-, black-, Spanish-, or any other -American. Amen!!). In spite of all of this, our country was in deep trouble and we were lucky, again, that our location and isolation from Japan and Germany gave us the time needed to arm ourselves and win back what we had lost. As we found out later, it was not easy to launch our invasion of Europe or the Islands of the Pacific and the Germans and Japanese did not have the resources to invade our faraway shores.

What the Germans did have was a superior number of Submarines which played havoc with our cargo ships. There was not a day that went by in which we failed to hear of another of our ships having been sunk by the “Nazi’s”. Through propaganda, this became a hated word all through the war as was the term, “those dirty Japs”. It was not hard to stir up our hatred of Germany and Japan during this period for most of their actions of war were far from being humane and some of their actions were too horrible to believe. Anyway, the news about the submarine warfare was very depressing. During this year we lost millions of tons of cargo vessels before we were able to effectively protect our ships from the “subs”.(Stanley’s daughter, Judith Gnadinger was born, Feb. 22, 1942)

I have no intention of writing a blow-by-blow description of every event that occurred during World War II. This is a Memoir only and I must send you to your history books for such detailed information. I will make mention of the really important events of our war as they occur. Our family life, like all families in the United States, continued to flow along fairly normal in spite of the war.

Brother Frank had finished his apprenticeship at the Courier-Journal and was now a Machinist. Robert no longer worked at Bensinger’s Outfitting Co. but now had the same type job as an account collector for Kay Jewelry Co. Stanley and Mary Jane were now living on Frankfort Avenue and Aunt Rose was still a housekeeper for Father Boldrick at his church on Wampum St. in Highland Park. Mom was still reading those “Pulp” detective stories, listening to various mysteries on the radio and definitely worried about her sons going to war. Bill Wantland worked as a Waxmaker for the American Printing House for the Blind and he and Mary Catherine lived on East Barbee St. Grampa Buchter has been promoted to General Foreman in charge of the chinaware-glassware floor of the Belknap Hdwe. & Mfg. Co. Belknap maintained the title, Manufacturer, only because they kept open a very small Harness shop on Main St. near First St. Otherwise, they purchased for resale every item in their catalogues.(6-22-2001)

I can only remember Grampa as a very serious beer drinker. Very seldom would he take a drink of other alcoholic beverages. He had a quaint way of drinking beer which I could never figure out. After getting a bottle of beer “ice” cold, he would pour it out into a glass and let it sit on the kitchen table until it had to be warm and then he would begin drinking it. This quirk must develop in the genes for Helen is the same but opposite way with her approach to coffee drinking. She pours it hot and then waits until it is cold before drinking all of it. Just so it don’t rub off on me. Grampa was also famous for having once won a bet with a Bookie on a horse which paid 100 to 1 odds and he never let anyone forget this. He didn’t brag about the many horses he bet on who are still “running”. He ate his lunch each day at a bar located on the corner of First and Market Sts. Upstairs in a small room accessible up a stairway from the bar presided the Bookie. I don’t say that he bet on the horses every day but the upstairs room was popular with him. I even joined with him upstairs several times, but with my usual bad luck, I didn’t make a habit of doing that. I really hated to lose. The food downstairs was really very good though, for a bar.

Bernie was recuperating from his accident at home in his own bed. There was no way he could go back to work yet. His healing was a very slow process. It seemed as though he was reporting back to St. Anthony’s Hospital every other month for more reconstructive surgery. Bernie had been very, very seriously injured and he was very lucky that he was still alive. At one time his leg would give him a lot of trouble and at other times it was his diaphragm at that point separating his abdominal cavity and his chest. It would be a couple more years before he was released by the doctors to report back to work. Even so, as I reported earlier, about ten years later he checked into the Mayo Clinic to clear up one more problem with his diaphragm. Bernie went through “hell”.

I had been given more and more responsibility in my job as a “laborer”. I was spending increased time working in the warehouses rather than in outside storage areas. My foreman liked to delegate authority and I guess I was learning quick enough so that I could be trusted working alone and finishing a task successfully. The Q.M. Depot was beginning to hire a lot more people since the beginning of the war and my boss would turn over their training to me. The type of work we were doing did not require extensive training but it was a job that I was already quite familiar with. On March 10th, I was handed my re-classification notice that I was moved up one position from Laborer to Junior Checker. This meant a raise from $1200.00 to $1440.00 a year and I was given a roving crew of my own and I had to report to Whse. 25 for each days assignment. On April 15th I was again re-classified. This time to Senior Checker and my pay jumped to $1660.00 a year. This was quite heady. I was also moved permanently to Whse. 61 where I began training as a Shipping Supervisor. This was a long drawn out process for I knew nothing about the ins and outs of shipping. Part of my training included attending the Supervisory Training School located in the Quadrangle.

An interesting thing occurred shortly after this, in the Summer. An even better job was posted in the office at Whse. 25. I only remember the occasion, not the job type. I thought that I could handle this job with a little training. The “higher ups” thought differently because the job was given to another person. Guess who was the other person? None other than brother Stanley. We were bidding against each other. I wasn’t exactly happy about this happening but I did learn you don’t always get everything you go after.

Now that I was finally making enough money to become independent, Helen and I decided it was time to get our own place to live. We had been taking advantage of the Buchter’s long enough. They never complained other than little Monk’s shout of frustration. Stanley, Mary Jane, Patsy and Judy were now living in Crescent Hill in a house just off Frankfort Ave. at 117 Stoll Ave. At work I mentioned to Stan that we were ready to move out on our own. He said that the house across the street from his at 120 Stoll was vacant and for rent. It didn’t take me long to look over the house and pay the first months rent. Helen was happy with it. It had no furnace so we had to go out and buy a coal stove. It was a “Warm Morning” which was quite popular at that time. It contained a lining of “fire bricks” which helped hold the heat and it made the kitchen very cozy and warm. Uncle John Steinmetz again furnished the coal. There was a garage and I had the coal dumped in there. I kept the fire going usually and every morning before leaving for work I would haul in buckets of coal for Helen to use during the day and haul out the ashes at night. We now lived in the big city so the ashes were put out once a week for the garbage pick-up. The bathroom was upstairs and we had to buy a natural gas heater which we turned on while taking baths. Each of the rooms also had fireplaces which we could “fire up” whenever we needed the extra heat.

Besides the two stoves, we now needed a few more pieces of furniture and also a Maytag “wringer type” washing machine, all of which we bought “on time” from the Lang Furniture Co. Automatic dryers were not dependable or readily available then so we continued the economical method of drying clothes which we were familiar with. In the kitchen in each door and window frame I inserted screw hooks. After each wash and when the clothes had been rinsed and put through the wringer, Helen would string a clothes line(rope) through all the hooks and then tie it “off”. She got out the box of clothes pins and filled the lines with the wet clothes. With the stove lit in the winter, the clothes were soon dry. The aroma of drying clothes was pleasant. While the drying process was going on you had to do a lot of ducking down if you wanted to pass through the kitchen. In warm weather, a clothes line was strung out in the back yard for the wet clothes and “clothes line poles” were used to hold up the lines to keep the clothes from dragging on the ground. The washer had to be filled with hot water using a bucket and it was emptied the same way through a drainage hose. A separate wash tub was filled with cold, clear water for rinsing the soap from the clothes. The automatic feature available was Helen’s strong arm power.(Norb’s 80th birthday, 6-27-2001)

Grandma Buchter was not at all happy about our moving out of her home. How could she love and spoil her grand-kids if they were so far away. The flame of love always burned in Grandma’s heart. Jiggs, Whitey and Monk, I believe, were glad to see us move out so that they could have more peace and quiet without crying babies. Grampa said that we would be back soon, and Helen and I hoped he was not correct.

This may be a good break-in point to talk about Grampa’s gradual personality change. Grampa, through frustration or whatever, could get pretty mean, especially if he was drinking. Having Grand-babies to love gradually changed all of that. He started out being very uncertain as to how to approach and handle the grand-children but, as time passed, he learned that he liked to “rough-house” with the kids and his whole demeanor changed. I always thought it was the love the kids gave him which made the difference. He began showing-off the kids and one time actually carried Rosie down the road to Martin’s Tavern to show her to all his friends. He handled Rosie very gently. I would say that Grampa had something missing in his life at this point. Of course, he had his own children, but he was older now and more mature and ready to change.

The war was still going on, naturally, and there were a few bits of good news to report about our mobilization and the positive affect our aircraft carriers and planes were having in protecting some of our Pacific Ocean installations. In Europe, Hitler had double-crossed and declared war on Stalin and the Russian people and began an all out attempt to defeat the Russians. He should have learned from the French and Napoleon’s failure to defeat Russia over a century before this. The winter weather in Russia was a tough foe in itself. Hitler was to regret this mistake. Everything that we needed to make our lives comfortable was now rationed to us. We could still buy most things but not as many and not as often. We needed steel for our tanks and ships and since there was a serious shortage, there began a regular effort for collections of scrap metal. It was amazing the extent and variety of metal objects which were donated by the people. Every bit of scrap metal in their garages and basements was donated. Metal and wrot iron fences were removed and donated. Even church bells and at the opposite end, pistols, rifles and shotguns were thrown on the heap. Every scrapped automobile storage lot was depleted. As I said, everyone was personally involved in this war effort.(6-28-2001)

The single most important item which most people could easily donate was, blood, needed desperately for the wounded service personnel in the war. The American Red Cross set up clinics all around town where you could go to make your donation. Portable units were moved from factory to factory to make it even more convenient. Everyone finally learned they had a “blood type” and as the war wore on, notices appeared in the paper for people with special blood types to make donations because there was a high demand for that particular type. I believe a person was limited to giving blood one time every six weeks. It was an easy process and I always seemed to feel better, physically, after I had donated. I started donating while at the Q.M. Depot and continued doing so after I started working for Tube Turns and for years afterwards. I must have donated gallons of blood a pint at a time. After the war, the six week donation period was lengthened. The Red Cross finally stopped accepting my blood after I began to use aspirin, heavily, for my arthritis. Some people are allergic to aspirin.

What I thought would be the most important event in our lives occurred this spring and summer. Helen and I both turned twenty-one. At last, Helen and I became, woman and man. You know what? Neither of us felt any different. We didn’t feel any older or superior. Turning twenty-one was a disappointment to me. I guess, having been married at eighteen, made me more of a man at eighteen rather than at twenty-one. Oh well!!!!

Sometime toward the end of Summer, Helen gave me some more good news. She was pregnant again. This baby would be delivered in our own home. Helen began searching again for a doctor who would come to the house for the delivery. Our previous doctor, C.V.Atherton had stopped doing home deliveries. She was about to give up on finding such a doctor when someone recommended a Dr.W.B.Foreman who had offices at 31st and Portland Ave. in the west end. We contacted him and he agreed, reluctantly, to accept Helen as a patient. He did examine her several times and gave her advice about diet and exercise. Now we had to be patient and wait for the following March for the happy moment.(6-29-2001)(Joe’s wife, Margaret Ann[Sondergeld]Gnadinger, born, Apr. 9, 1942)

Helen and I didn’t do a lot together with Mary Jane and Stanley even though we lived just across the street from each other. What I mean is, we didn’t “live” in each others living room, as they say. We would take turns baby-sitting for each other. Patsy was four years and Judy about six months old. Nibby was two and Rosie one year old so the kids couldn’t really play with each other except when we were visiting. I couldn’t help noticing that Stanley always had a project going that he was busy with when he came home from work. I remember he had one thing going where he made and painted lamp shades. While he was busy with his hobbies, Mary Jane would be bored and she and a girl friend down the street would go out together while Stanley baby-sat. Helen and I talked about this later and agreed that if Stanley had spent more time with Mary Jane then instead of concentrating on his hobbies too much, they might have remained married even today. Stan. must have learned something from this experience because when he married his second wife, Audra, in later years he became known as a fun loving guy, always on the move and ready for a party. Maybe we can give Audra the full credit for this change.

Next door to Mary Jane and Stanley lived Mr Fawbush, the ice-man. He delivered ice from a small pickup truck mostly to Taverns. He had an ice crusher attached to the truck and when he arrived at one of his customers he could take any size block of ice the customer needed, crush it to small size and spread it over the bottle beer in the beer cases behind the bar. I believe he sold it by the metal basketful. This would be efficient even today. This paragraph is really about how little I knew about mechanics. I had been having trouble starting Bernie’s ‘37 Chevrolet and this day it wouldn’t “kick-over” at all. Mr. Fawbush suggested that he give me a push with his truck to get the car going. You could start a car that way easily in those days. Well, he pushed me all over the East end and downtown Louisville without any success. Finally, we decided to drop the car off at a garage near seventh and Broadway where we were at the time, and let them repair it. I road the street-car down the next day to pick it up and found that it had needed a new distributor. The reason that I know now that I had no “smarts” is, today we know that if the car wouldn’t start after just a short push, you have something seriously wrong which needs to be repaired, and usually, electrical trouble.

One thing I was really intrigued with when I was growing up and especially, after I was married, was the “Street Dance”. While we lived on Stoll Ave., and several times during each summer, the people in the neighborhood would put up signs and pass out brochures advertising another dance. “Our” dance was held on an entire block of a street just off Spring St. near Mellwood Ave. which we blocked off. A neighborhood band would supply the music, soft drinks and snacks were sold and the kids and their parents would have a ball. We always stayed until bedtime for the kids and it was only a short walk home crossing the railroad tracks. We did not have to get a permit from the city to do this. Only the neighbors were involved and they didn’t object to this fun thing.

Now that I was assigned to a specific job in a definite warehouse setting where there was no need to move from job to job, I began to fell more comfortable with my new routine. After a few months, I was named Assistant-Shipping Supervisor. That meant I did most of the paper-work. The job was enjoyable and the work was not hard. I worked out of the warehouse office but I learned to spend a lot of time on the floor talking to the men and their foreman. What better way is there for improving yourself and your job. The men in each warehouse were part of an independent unit. Unless some major rush job developed which required extra outside help, these men were responsible for everything received, stored and eventually shipped from our unit. They were also handymen carpenters. They didn’t object if I sometimes helped them out by sawing a board or driving some nails. This is where I learned new skills through observation and discussion. I was also given a lot of “hee-haws” when I fouled-up something. Most of these men were “Gentlemen Farmers”. This meant that they worked at a regular job all day and farmed at night and over the weekend(life security).

This fall I signed up on a team in a bowling league sponsored by the Q.M. Corp and representing Whse. 61. This was a first for me and one of many, many bowling teams that I would be a part of. Since I had never bowled in an organized league before, this was all new and exciting. At this time there were few bowling “alleys” in Southern Indiana. The only one in Jeffersonville was located in an old residence just off Court St. in the downtown area. I believe there were eight lanes at most. Every week was a new learning experience as I tried to improve myself. Advice was easy to get for everyone was an expert. I do remember that I thought the experience was great and from this first beginning, I continued to bowl the rest of my active life.

Christmas, this year, was to be one of our most enjoyable. I could now afford to buy presents for each of us and for our parents. We gathered together from our relatives surplus ornaments, icicles and strings of reflective paper. We found a string of tree lights in a second hand store. Now, all we needed was a Christmas Tree. Jiggs said he knew where there was a grove of evergreens growing wild out Popular Level Road. We all loaded ourselves in the car along with a hand saw and followed Jiggs directions to the plot. We let Nibby pick out our tree and Monk chose the Buchters’. We had no gloves so we had plenty of hand pricks from the needles as we held the trees for cutting. Nibby had picked out a tree about three foot tall. When we arrived home with it, I nailed together a flat stand and tacked the tree to it. Having bought an extension cord, we set the tree up and carefully loaded it down with all the colorful “dressing” that we had. For a first tree, it was beautiful. This year we had our presents and celebrated Christmas Eve in our own home. After Mass on Christmas day, we visited with our families.(6-30-2001)