My Dad

[No_Key_Bandit]

This journal is not written by me. I am transcribing it from a typed essay. My brother Jim is very interested in history. His favorite type of history is his (and my) family history. My parents were both getting old… my Dad had retired (he was working as a Wal-Mart greeter when he wrote this essay) years before and both he and my Mom had a lot of time on their hands. Jim took this opportunity to badger and “guilt” them into writing an historical account of their lives. I believe my Dad always wanted to be a writer, but due to five children and overwhelming responsibility to feed, clothe and house us, he never pursued his dream.

Unfortunately, about two years ago, cancer took a strong hold of his body and never let go. I am very happy that my brother was able to get him to write this essay before his death. It is very special to me personally and I consider it priceless.

 

[No_Key_Bandit]

One

One

My children suggested I make a record of some of the things I remember about my earlier years, with particular emphasis on the way “It used to be.” That’s the reason for this rambling account. My generation has survived through the greatest depression the world has ever known as well as the greatest war.

So – I was a “Depression Kid” and in time became a World War II veteran, a G.I. Bill college graduate, a married man, proud father of five children, and grandfather to five beautiful girls. There’s nothing unusual about that – these are typical steps in the lives of millions of Americans.

Change is inevitable but we restless Americans seem to encourage change more frequently than other nations of our world. There are many things we take for granted in 1995 that weren’t even thought of when I was a boy. Some examples are: always available hot water, automatic washers, comfortable wash-and-wear clothes. Air conditioning, frozen foods, FM radio, television, audio and video tapes, microwaves, man-made fabrics, plastics, lightweight and miniaturized everything (in contrast to big, heavy, cumbersome objects), and the whole field we call “electronics.” As one considers the changes in our daily lives over the past 50 or 60 years just reading the list could become tiring and boring and that is not the intention of the writer. Here you will find (perhaps too many) sentences which indicate how it used to be.

I was born in 1922. My name is John Raymond Bird and the following is an attempt to coherently describe little things that I have noticed “on my watch.”

First of all, How did we get here? The Bird family is “Old Johnny Bull.” My father told me many times, “Our family has been in this country since before it was a country.” Probably no one really knows – this is conjecture. Don’t expect royalty in the Bird family tree, we’ve always been common folks. Perhaps the first of the Bird family came to this country as a sailor, or maybe alobster-back, or even an indentured servant. This was new world; it was big, untamed, and lawless for the most part. A man could disappear easily – particularly if he were fed up with the British navy or army (and a lot of men did.) At any rate, our ancestors were the restless ones. They crossed the Alleghenies, fought off the Indians, cleared the land, and settled down in the wilderness. My father used to recite for me: “My father’s mother’s mother was a Sweet, and the Sweets were cousins of the Lincolns. That makes me a fourth cousin of Abe Lincoln. I pass this along to you (free of charge.) We are the closest loving relatives of Honest Abe. The point is the Lincolns were backwoodsmen; so were the Birds.

 

[No_Key_Bandit]

Two

Someone is sure to ask, “What about the B-Y-R-D ‘s?”
The Byrd’s primarily settled in the south and became the landowners. When this finally became a country, the Byrd’s became “The Representatives Of The People.” When we got into a shooting war, the BY’s were the Generals and the Admirals while the BI’s were the foot sloggers and the deck swabbers. When the war was over, it was back to the farm for our ancestors.

So much for history. My dad came from Michigan and left the farm for the big city. He worked almost fifty years for the “Elevated Railroad” in Chicago. My mother also worked for the Elevated (formerly known as “The Chicago Rapid Transit Company” in those days.) He had a title – “Superintendent of New Car Construction.” My mother was a visiting nurse. They met and eventually married. My Mother went back to a little town southwest of Chicago called, “Rochelle, Illinois” to the small hospital where she had previously worked to have her baby – me.

We lived in Chicago for the first five years of my life. One thing I remember was the milkman who used to drive a horse-drawn milk truck. He would sometimes take me with him around the block. (One interesting side-note about horse-drawn milk trucks is that the horse would memorize the route. If a customer quit that particular dairy or moved, the horse would stop at that certain house every time. The driver would go through the whole routine of delivery and rattle the bottles loudly before the horse would go on.) Naturally, I wanted to drive a milk wagon when I grew up until I discovered the Garbage Truck. They had two horses. The team would pull several wagons in tandem and had hard rubber tires. Automobiles were big vehicles in the early 20’s and not too many of them were around. I can remember electric cars also. They were steered by a tiller rather than a steering wheel. Electric trucks also were common in the city. They were used for short hauls such as delivery vans. It was customary in the cities and towns to have home delivery of a lot of products – milk, bread, produce, laundry, etc…

So, there were horses and electric cars. How else did people get around in the 1920’s? Most folks in cities rode streetcars. The most numerous in Chicago were the two-man cars with a motorman and a conductor. People would get on the rear platform, pay their fare (a nickel in the early days, seven cents by the time World War II broke out), and work their way through the standees until they could exit at the front. The “El” cost a dime; the bus was also a dime. Chicago used to have open-top double-decker buses. It was a great way to see the city for very little money. Each of the transportation systems was a separate company so the rider had to pay a different fare should he change from – say the elevated to the bus. Taxicabs were, of course, always common in any city. Once in a while as a special treat, we would ride in a taxi. I enjoyed sitting on the “jump-seat” which was a fold-away seat for one person ahead of the rear seat.

 

[No_Key_Bandit]

Three

I went to kindergarten (a progressive innovation in those days) at age five. Then we moved to a little town about 40 miles north of Chicago called Libertyville. This community had a population of about 3,000 then. It was a typical small town of America – everyone knew everyone else (as well as their personal business.)

How did we get around? We never had an automobile. We were an exception – my parents had passes on the North Shore Line, an interurban electric railway which ran from Chicago all the way to Milwaukee with a branch line going out to the next town beyond Libertyville called Mundelein. The Elevated was tied in with North Shore Line and my dad was able to just show his pass. My mother had been promised a life-time pass also – but as the years went by, she had to apply for a “trip pass” (which was always granted, but as time went by, more and more reluctantly.)

I went to a newly-constructed school called Rockland. There was another public grade school called Central which was an old building on the other side of town from where we lived, and, of course the Catholic school. Second grade started uneventfully for me but suddenly one day I was pushed in the third grade – I skipped second because I could read. My third grade teacher spent countless hours with me after regular school hours helping me “catch-up” on third grade math – the multiplication table. Now please do a little math yourself and you will figure out that I graduated from grade school at age twelve and was only sixteen when I finished high school. Educators later learned that it was a big mistake to have students “skip” a grade, primarily because of social problems with their peers.

An event occurred in October, 1929 that changed America – forever. There was a stock market crash; everything stopped. Rockland school had been built with plans for a gymnasium and auditorium and cafeteria to be added later but these never materialized. There weren’t any school buses – everyone walked to school. Most of the time I went to grade school – eight grades, then four in high school (there were no Junior High schools then) we lived on the edge of the school district. So I walked a mile to school – home again at noon (no cafeteria, remember? We had to have special permission to carry a lunch) – back to school for the afternoon session and then home again at night. We didn’t need a gym for exercise, we got enough just traveling back and forth.

 

[No_Key_Bandit]

Four

The effect of the depression were starkly apparent everywhere. On the way to Chicago many examples became evident. In Skokie, for example developers had laid out a new plan of streets. The streets were paved, sidewalks were in, light poles and fireplugs were neatly spaced, and not a house went up for years. In the city where one day cranes had been busily hoisting girders for new buildings, on the following day everything ceased – and the steel skeletons stood against the skyline for years. Hoovervilles sprang up and the train travelers could watch the people down the embankments. What is a Hooverville? Herbert Hoover was president at the time. If you had been going along, working at your job going home at night , and suddenly you lost you job, and the bank foreclosed on you mortgage, you’ve got to live somewhere and blame somebody for your troubles. That’s what happened to millions of people across the county. They were living in scrap-material chanties and clinging to hope. There weren’t any government agencies accumulating data, so no-one even knew how many were unemployed. The “IN” administration was stating bravely that “Prosperity is just around the corner.”
It wasn’t.

Men would travel to other cities in hopes of finding work. If one’s clothes were good enough, hitch-hiking was common. Most “Knights of the Road” rode freight trains and we used to count the number of men riding the rails as we would pass a freight train.

My mother would feed the bums (read tramps, hoboes, homeless, wanderers, vagrants – or – just bums.) They would come to our door and, if they were clean, she would ask them into the kitchen. We didn’t have any money to give them, but they could get a meal. If they were really dirty she’d feed them on the back steps. We weren’t ever afraid of these strangers, they were just folks like us, but they didn’t have any way of earning a steady living. Our house was marked with cryptic set of signals and every Saturday I would have to scrub off the hieroglyphics. People on the other side of town told us that they would see these wanderers get off the St. Paul steam railroad train and head straight for our house.

Our own lives were affected also, naturally. My dad was supposed to be working in new car construction, however, the elevated hadn’t built any new cars since 1926, so my dad was working in car repair. His salary kept getting cut until he was working for $100 a month. That may sound pretty good, but that was for six full days a week and rent was about $50 a month. I was taunted by my classmates, “You’re one of them rich kids; your dad is working.”

I have always said, quite honestly, “I’ve been working since I was ten years old.” My mother became a commission collection agent for a magazine distributing firm. Teams of salesmen would work a town, signing up individual households for a “book” of magazines. A family agreed to subscribe to The Saturday Evening Post, Liberty, and Colliers, for example, and also agree to pay 35 cents a month for these magazines. I did the legwork; my mother handled the paperwork. It took a lot of time. Anyone who has ever collected money knows exactly what would happen, “We don’t have the money right now. Could you come back Thursday?” We tried to be at the same place at the same time every month – but – it did take a lot of time, and a lot of walking. Whatever money I ever made went for necessities – school supplies (we had to buy our own books and supplies in those days), clothing and oh yes, Fourth of July Fireworks!

 

[No_Key_Bandit]

Five

July Fourth was a big day for boys in America during the 1930’s. We would save our money any shop several stores for the best buys. We usually would buy day-time fireworks. We’d get up early and after breakfast start roaming around with a pocketful of firecrackers – lighting them off with a piece of burning punk or perhaps a hunk of smoldering clothesline. Some few families would have a night time fireworks display and kids would gather for the display of skyrockets or roman candles or pinwheels. The newspapers on July 5th would always feature pictures of boys who had lost a finger or maybe an eye by being careless.

In the summers of 1933 and 1934 a big event occurred in Chicago – The World’s Fair. A World’s Fair is a showcase of where we are now as well as a display of new ideas for the future. Every World’s Fair has an outstanding, unique characteristic. Chicago’s was The Skyride. These were cars suspended by cables which slowly moved from one tall tower to another over a man-made lagoon. The idea was that cities could install similar devices and eliminate street congestion. The fair was a fascinating place for an eleven-year old boy. My mother volunteered as a lecturer in the American Cancer Society Booth three day a week and I went to the fair with her. Admission for children under 12 was a nickel (when I got to be 12, I never told them) and I was free to roam. I got to enjoy all the free exhibits (the rides cost extra.) General Motors has set up and entire assembly line, building Chevies. The much ballyhooed feature of the ’33 chevy was Independent Wheel Suspension, called “Knee-Action” by the admen. The American Tobacco Company had an assembly line for cigarettes. Quaker Oats demonstrated how they made “Cereal Shot From Guns” – Puffed Wheat or Puffed Rice. The display most popular with young boys was the Lionel Train display. There was always a long line for that one and each person admitted got to control something on that Lionel system — a signal , a whistle, a switch, even start or stop the train. I first saw Television in 1933. A display was set up and people could watch on a tiny screen an announcer talking from the rear of the room to the front. “Ladies and Gentlemen, This is a LIVE DEMONSTRATION of Television. There are no wires!” (It really didn’t impress me.)