Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Lid
Michael Shannon
It’s inauguration day January 20th 1961. There is eight inches of new snow on the ground. It is freezing yet over a million people had gathered on the mall as witnesses. Two vastly important things happened on the marble steps of the Capitol building in Washington DC. Neither one was the swearing in of a new president. In a photograph of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren reading the oath of office to the new chief executive who is not wearing a hat, his wife Jaqueline stands behind Warren absolutely rocking her Halston designed pillbox hat. The hew President John F. Kennedy was set to become the first US leader born in the 20th century, the first Catholic commander-in-chief and the first president whose inaugural speech was beamed across crackly television screens in color.
Everything that happened on January 20, 1961, was stage-managed to tell America that a new age was dawning. “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” he implored a nation in need of reassurance and leadership at the height of the Cold War.
Perhaps the saddest thing about this day of hope was that it was the death knell of hats. Kennedy didn’t like hats and wouldn’t wear one unless he had to. He had great hair which is essential in the political game. Why cover it up?
In one fell swoop two centuries of hats were swept away. After 1961 there were still great hats to be seen but only on rare and special occasions. In the movies, at fashion shows and at the Kentucky Derby where they aped the far more famous and, dare I say more stylish British.
Audrey Hepburn, “My Fair Lady.”
We all know the iconic mega-feathered hats of the Edwardian era. The Edwardians were particularly enamored with plumage, but unlike their be-feathered predecessors, the Victorians and the Georgians, many a fine species of bird was taken to the brink of extinction by the incredible demand for ladies be-feathered hats.
Throughout history, hats have played a big role in indicating one’s status. For the Edwardians, they took this to a new level, and often added entire birds to their heads, and sometimes these birds were fantastical creations cobbled together from several varying bird parts!
Popular plumage for hats extended beyond ostrich, to include heron, peacock, egret, osprey, bird of paradise, pheasant…even vulture. The more “common” feathers for adornment were garden fowl, pigeon, turkey, goose, and rooster. These feathers were made into plumes, pompoms, aigrettes, wings, pads, bands, breasts, and quills, and not by marchandes, milliners, and craftsmen in quaint little shops, oh no, by massive factories employing thousands of women and children, and dealing in hundreds of thousands of feathers per day. In 1900, in North America, the millinery industry employed 83,000 people!
Camille Clifford American actress
Evelyn Nesbit, the Girl in the Velvet Swing. Lillian Russell the Jersey Lily. Lily Elsie in the Merry Widow
In a world of sweat stained baseball caps and shapeless, floppy hiking hats sold at every seaside gift shop and those faux cowboy hats made for the bar and ATV wrangling, only Jazz musicians have kept the banner of the chapeau flying. No one could rock a Pork Pie like Lester Young, the greatest tenor sax player who ever lived if I do say so myself.
L to R Thelonius Monk and Lester Williams “The Prez,” nicknamed by Billie Holiday herself.
Rockers too have had their iconic hats. Some such as Leon Russels “Mad Hatter” lid was so famous that just the sight of it identified the person. Tom Petty’s John Bull Topper and Stevie Ray Vaughns Texas style Plateau hat could be spotted a mile away. All three somehow lent a special air to the legendary musicians.
Cowboys are well known for their hats. Every area of the country seems to have a dedicated style today but in the beginning it was just something to cover the head. Bowlers, broken down military hats the cheap felt hats that came out of the civil war especially from the Confederates. Since big time ranching essentially started in Texas-New Mexico those boys set the style. They were dirt poor, likely almost no education but they could fork a horse and they showed off a certain style that somehow puts modern cowboys riding their ATV’s and wearing custom shirts with patches that make them look like they came out of nascar to shame.
Cowboys from the old original days. Black, Brown and white as it used to be. 1870 to 1900. PD
The women too wore hats, just like the men though with perhaps a little more style.
Clockwise from upper left: The Sweetheart of the rodeo, my great-grandmother Marianna Cayce, a Mexican Charraria from Jalisco, Mexico and one of the girls from the old Huasna rancho, California. Look up the Charrarias, they ride horse handling events and do it all sidesaddle. My grandmother was the first woman to ride astride in the Santa Barbara Fiest parade in 1925. She loved the scandal.
I have to say that some of the movie cowpokes sported great hats too though theirs were chosen by set dressers to match their features, like an artist might paint them but the good ones are worth remembering.
From upper left clockwise: Henry Fonda, Tom Selleck, Jeff Bridges with Hailey Stanfield and from the greatest western ever made, “Monte Walsh.” Lee Marvin.
Every good gangster must wear an iconic hat. Fedoras, snap brims, skimmers, newsboys, they wore ’em all doncha see? Before gangsters dressed in tracksuits and gold chains by the dozen, revealing their status as potential killers there was a day when the point was to look like an honest businessman. In suits and fedoras they strolled the Big Apple in neighborhoods such as “Hell’s Kitchen, “Alphabet City” and the Bowery. Gangsters of every stripe roamed the lower east side, Little Italy and The Five Points, The Tenderloin and Harlem. The Dead Rabbits, The Forty Thieves, The Whyos, The Purple Gang and Murder Inc. roamed their districts with evil intent. With a Snap Brim or Straw Boater, Chewing on a ‘seegar’ they dressed to the Nines to send a message.
“Lucky” Luciano and “Bugs Moran” Cold dead eyes.
Moviemakers have a fascination with gangsters. Their portrayal is designed to send shivers up and down the spines of viewers who will watch them and ogle their antics on the big screen in a state of vicarious joy.
The Godfather, Little Caesar, Public Enemy and Scarface.
The workingman typically sported a cap unlike the “Swells” and their Homburgs and hardboiled Derbys winding down through the financial district and sporting a rolled umbrella as a mark of their status. Known by various names in the western world, Flat Caps, Newsboys, Scally Cap and Baker Boy Cap they were once worn by tradesmen of every kind. Recently they have seen a modest rebirth with the hipster Scally Cap and the Baker Boy Paddy Cap from Ireland.
The Morning Telegraph was a New York City broadsheet newspaper owned by Moe Annenberg’s Cecelia Corporation. Bat Masterson frontier marshall was its sportswriter. It ceased publication in 1972. Newsboys photo circa 1897.
This a comparison of the Baker Boy Cap, the real on the left and the movie on the right. Henry Fowler real, Cillian Murphy not real.
Gang members frequently wore tailored clothing, which was not uncommon for gangs of the time. Bosses wore silk scarves and starched collars with metal tie buttons. Their distinctive dress was easily recognizable by city inhabitants, police, and rival gang members. The wives, girlfriends, and mistresses of the gang members were known for wearing lavish clothing. Pearls, silks, and colorful scarves were commonplace on their women. The gang in England, operated from the 1880s until the 1920s. The group consisted largely of young criminals from lower- to working-class backgrounds. They engaged in murder, robbery, violence, racketeering, illegal bookmaking, and control of gambling. Members wore signature outfits that typically included tailored jackets, lapelled overcoats, buttoned waistcoats, silk scarves, bell-bottom trousers, leather boots, and flat caps. The so-called Peaky Blinders, which contrary to what you might see on television did not have razor blades sewn into their caps because Gillette didn’t begin making the old single edge razor blade until 1908. They instead gained their name from the way they wore them with the cap tilted so that the peak covered one eye.
The real deal. Peaky Blinders criminal records about 1904. Birmingham, England.
The armed forces in America have little choice in what they wear. Officers and enlisted men have gone to great lengths to build in some individual style when they can. In WWII Army Air Corps officer pilots wore their field grade visor hats in the cockpit. Because they wore head phones to communicate the strap on the phones bent down the crown stiffener so that the normally flat top was “crushed” on the sides. The hat became so cool that all officers not just fliers sported them. Flyers looked down on these posers with a degree of disdain as they should.
The real deal. B-17 pilot Colonel Jimmy Stewart and Major Clark Gable, air gunner. Both flew multiple missions over Germany.
Enlisted sailors and soldiers, though they didn’t wear gold braid, nevertheless found ways to twist, fold and crimp their headgear too. If you have complained about those darn kids wearing their ball caps all crazy, have at look at your great-grandfathers style.
Tuskegee 332nd fighter group ground crew in Italy WWII. Bobby Hall stylin’ his Dixie, US Navy
In Great Britain they run the Epsom Derby, pronounced Darby, is run in June of each year. The Stakes, more commonly known as the Derby and sometimes referred to as the Epsom Derby, is a Group 1 flat horse race in England open to three-year-old colts and fillies. It’s a major event in on British sporting calendar. The queens and kings have been running their horses in this race since 1661 and annually since 1740. Like other elite horse races, the Epsom Derby has grown into a multiday festival, featuring musical acts and events in addition to the race itself. The Oaks is also run during the Derby festival, held on the Friday before the Saturday running of the Derby. Derby Day is more formal than most contemporary sporting events: Epsom Downs maintains a dress code for male spectators in certain sections of the stands, and women often attend the event wearing extravagant hats. Hats are literally the most important reason for showing up for some. Troops of photographers flit to and fro capturing images of important people and their hats.
Queen to be, The real Queen, a Duchess and an the American Queen.
We’ve all seen the distintive Cloche hat which was popular in the 20’s and 30’s I always thought the were strange looking things. aort of beanie-like, blah and bland. When I was looking for examples I ran across a colorized video of a Parisian woman sitting outside a bistro wearing one and it completely changed my perception. The color and movement explained it all.
Janet Gaynor, American actress traveling to New York on the Queen Mary in 1929 and a sophisticated Parisienne taking tea on the banks of the Seine in 1927. Some people can make anything look good.
I’m sad to see the end of the Pork Pie, the Topper, the Skimmer, the derby, the merry widow and the little straw bonnet worn by Natty Bumpo’s sweetheart Cora Munro in the Last of the Mohicans,
Misstress Cora Munro.
My brothers and I though, are making an attempt to jump start the fine old art of hat wearing. Maybe it will work.
Good luck to us I say.
Cover Photo: My grandmother Annie Gray Shannon and Hattie Tyler, 1900
Michael Shannon is a writer and sure to take some abuse from his brothers for this.
The Hired Girl
Michael Shannon
She was only ever referred to as the hired girl. She worked for my Great Uncle Patrick Moore and his wife Sarah. She wasn’t a live in for her parents had a home just down the hill from the Big House called Grand View, that huge confection of a house built in the 1889 by My grandmother’s maternal uncle, the very successful Irish immigrant who had risen from a sheep farmer in Guadalupe to become one of the richest and most influential men in what were still known as the “Cow Counties.”
Grandview 1896. Annie Gray Shannon is the little girl in white up on the balcony.
The Moores could never have imagined how their life would turn out. They immigrated to the United States in 1847 from Cavan town in county Cavan where Patrick’s family raised pigs. Moderately prosperous they lived in what is known as the Irish Lakes District because it contains 365 named lakes. County Cavan is also the source of the river Shannon. According to legend, the Shannon is named after Sionnan, who was the granddaughter of Manannán mac Lir, the god of the sea. She came to this spot to eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which was planted by the druids. As she began to eat it, the waters of the pool sprang up and overwhelmed her. She was drawn down into the pool and its water began to flow over the land, forming the River Shannon.
Patrick himself had no desire to spend his life slopping pigs in that good Irish mud so he prevailed upon his father Michael to buy him a ticket on an immigrant steamer. He arrived at Castle Gardens New York in April 1847 aboard the SS John Ravenal out of Liverpool, he was 15 and he intended to stay. Like most immigrants he already knew someone who could show him the ropes so to speak. Chain immigration has always been the way. Over the next decade he would return the favor and bring his father Michael and his three sisters, Mary, Bessie and Catherine to this country.
They moved across the country. He lived Sandusky Ohio and in 1860, moved to the Sacramento area of California. Somewhere along the way he learned to read and write and became a citizen.
Patrick Moore. Family photo
He and Sarah were married in 1871 but old census reports indicate they were living in the same house for a few years before that. Perhaps you can imagine the rest, or not. Everyones life has been self censored.
In 1877 they were living near Salinas during the great drought of the 1870’s. He ran horses, cattle and herds of sheep and his stock was in great distress because of little feed and almost no water. He wrote to his old friend Patrick Donovan who was an Arroyo Grande pioneer asking if he had feed to sell. Pat Donovan told him that he had leased lands in the Oso Flaco area and that Moore should drive his herds south. When Pat Moore asked what would be the cost Donovan said it would be nothing as they were friends and Patrick Moore was a friend in need. Pat Moore never forgot this act of kindness. “Every cent I now have ” he would often say, “I owe to the friendly act of my friend, Pat Donovan. He never took a cent in pay for the feed he gave my starving livestock.” Pat Moore spent the rest of his life paying that kindness forward.
The entire family relocated to Guadalupe in 1877 where he farmed and ranched. Like many Irish immigrants he began buying land, Something no Irishman could do in the home country. For some like Pat Moore it was an obsession.
By 1891 he owned vast tracts of land. Much of the old Santa Manuela Rancho, Parts of the Bolsa de Chamisal, bottom land in the Arroyo Grande valley, three stone quarries and had become an informal banker, lending money to others. Some of his land in the hills of Santa Barbara county and in the flats east of Santa Maria produced the first oil in the area.
Fortunate had graced his efforts and in 1890 he began building the great house known as Grandview. It overlooked the little town of Arroyo Grande and the valley for which it was named. Pat was active in politics and in 1892 was elected supervisor of the fifth district of San Luis Obispo county, the so-called “Bloody Fifth.” It’s reputation was well earned. Saloon brawls, the little town had many more than a dozen saloons and there were land disputes which occasioned cold blooded murder and a non-judicial lynching. The regular clearing out of undesirables such as vagrants and the pesky Celestials who lived in the Oceano area. People then were no better than we are now.
In 1893 a singular event in their lives changed their lives. My eight year old grandmother came to live with the Moores in the big house. From a prominent Santa Maria family, her mother was a niece of Sarah Moore. Annie Gray left her family to be raised by the Moores who were childless. They promised to provide her with a first class university education and deed her a ranch when the Moores passed on. It was another selfless act of kindness by two Irish immigrant families. My great-grandparents to loan a child and another family to cherish her.
The Moores had also taken in a pair of sisters who had been orphaned. The inscription on Elizabeth Tyler’s headstone reads: “Remember friends as you pass by. As you are now, once was I. As I am now so you must be. Prepare yourselves to follow me.” Mrs. Tyler and her husband died of Smallpox in 1875. She is said to have been the first person to be laid to rest in the burial grounds of the old Guadalupe Catholic cemetery. Her two girls, Mame and Hattie would grow up with my grandmother in the Moore house. Just down the hill in the little area of small farms owned by some of the most prominent citizens raised boys and girls of the same age. The big ranching families all had houses in town because they were so far from schools and shopping that they sometimes lived in their townhouses away from the ranches.
Up at the house in the days long before radio, television and the like, entertainment for kids was provided by parties and family get togethers which were a constant occurence. My grandmothers little autograph book which her guests signed contains the names of kids from families like the Phoenix kids, the Harloes, Dixons, Lierely, Jack Shannon, my future grandfather, the Rice girls, the Griebs, Conrows and many others. Children were more than welcome at Grandview anytime and for any reason.
The gift of an education was not reserved for just my grandmother but was settled on several young women who spent time in that house. Girls attended the San Jose Normal school, Santa Barbara College and Cal, all paid for by Pat Moore.
So, a big house full of kids and adults, hence the hired girl. Her name was Clara.*
Annie Gray, my grandmother and the hired girl Clara. Rear. Mary Maguire and the Tyler sisters. 1893. family photo
Clara was a lively redheaded Irish girl six years older than my grandmother when she came to live with the Moore’s. Her parents had come from Ireland in 1879 and settled in Arroyo Grande. They lived just down the hill from Grandview. Her father farmed a small tract of land in the lower valley. He had come south working for the Southern Pacific railroad.
Clara began working for the Moore’s when she was fourteen. A house nearly ten thousand square feet took some work to keep up. The house had hardwood floors covered with rugs and you can bet that guests and families did not remove their high button shoes to come inside. The streets of the town were still years from being paved and the road out to the house was corduroy which was just basically logs covered with dirt. The Moores might have had a big house and dressed well but they still had horses in the barn, pigs in the sty and dogs in the yard.
Visitors from out of town like San Luis Obispo or Guadalupe came by train which ran twice a day. Come for dinner you had to spend the night. Pat and Sarah loved guests in their home and weekends especially the house would be full.
Clara must have spent many hours pushing that brand new invention, the carpet sweeper** and scrubbing floors.Thankfully for her most of the laundry was sent out to the Chinese laundry in Oceano so at least she was relieved of that chore. Outside duties were delegated to the hired man Clarence Seamen who lived upstairs in the horse barn. The house was set on an entire section of ranch land and was a busy place.
My grandmother grew up in that big house, leaving for university at Berkeley in 1904. She married my grandfather Jack Shannon in 1908 and had two boys. The family ran their dairy on the promised ranch, and retired in 1954. My grandfather passed away in November of 1976 and my grandmother Annie in April 1977.
Readers of stories about my family will know that she was a right proper lady. She was a turn of the century girl raised by two wealthy families. She was a churchgoer of the first order and anything improper was neither said nor done…or ever mentioned.
Annie Gray 1906. University of California Berkeley. Yearbook photo.***
On a visit home in 1977 I went out to the ranch house where she still lived and found her, always a small women, much diminished in stature sitting on her pink rose patterned couch where she spent her last days. She was lost to me. She dwelt in some foggy place where I could never go and barely recognized who I was. Cold and wrapped in a house coat and a blanket across her knees she sat in a ray of sunlight and took my hand when I sat down with her. The little hand I had touched all my life, the hand that had stroked the blonde curls of her first grandchild that I was. Any conversation was mostly mine offering questions that were things long past that she might recall. She offered snippets of stories, of the family.
I found a small autograph book in a box stored on the shelf below the folded towels in the guest bathroom along with stacks of old photos. The cover, a polished wooden piece of lovely mahogany with the crest of Queen Liliokulani**** of the kingdom of Hawai’i and filled with a decade of sentiments by kids who attended birthday parties, graduations or just any occasion to get together in the big house. Many names familiar to me for we lived in a small town where for decades families never left. I went to school with children whose grandparents had signed her book.
She didn’t have much to say. “She played bridge with that girl, or that was her best friend, that was my sister Sadie, he was a nice boy,” things like that. In a beautiful copperplate script there was a note that said “Think of me long, think of me ever? Think of the fun we’ve had together.” Your Friend Clara J. Arroyo Grande February 3rd, 1899. It was my grandmothers thirteenth birthday.
When I asked who Clara was because I had never heard it before she replied, “Oh that was the hired girl, she got knocked up by the hired man.”
Well now! Here was a voice from long ago that sent the family stories tumbling. Neither my father nor uncle ever heard of Clara. My grandmother even mentioning the word sin out loud was a surprise. Not exactly a peccadillo, but something very serious. She said “Knocked Up.” Did people in 1900 even use vulgar phrases like that? Yes they did, in fact you might be surprised that people were not much different then, than now.
One sentence is all, just one. This is what I had. A mention by a very old woman, a single inscription in an autograph book and Clara’s name written on the back of an old, old photograph. “Knocked Up” she had to be sent away. She married a Mexican it was said, not entirely a full throated congratulation for the poor girl. Clara was just six years older than my grandmother and a friend, judging from the inscriptions she left in Annies autograph books. She got herself “Knocked Up” as the old saying goes and had to be sent away. “At least she had enough sense not to marry the hired hand who made the baby.” My grandmother whispered, “But she did marry a Mexican.” The hired hand? He was sent packing. When she talked of these things eighty long years had passed yet to her they were as real as yesterday. Isn’t that time travel? And indeed Clara never had another child which would lead one to believe the outcome of the pregnancy was not good. Perhaps at twenty she should have known better, but she was a “lively” girl.
I thought, sent away which I think implies not just home but away somewhere else. San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria had lively Red Light districts where there would likely have been midwives employed for that very reason. Or was she sent by train to San Francisco and how did the Moore’s know where to send her. Abortion? Miscarriage, no one alive today knows just that she never had children. Of course the verdict of the time wold have been that she was “Ruined.”
She did marry a “Mexican” though in California that didn’t really mean all that much since it was once a Mexican province and like it or not many Californians are descendants of Mexican people and proud of it as they should be.
Clara married just two years later and stayed married for 61 years to the same man. Her family stayed in the San Luis county area and her sister even has a local valley street named after her.
Clara seems to have had a good life and her secret has remained one for well over a century but it’s a story that delights the discoverer and covers much of the history of what we might call real people don’t you think?
A secret buried for 76 years and never to be revealed as if somehow my grandmother was shamed by it. We have learned that the human does not change. Words yes, the world around us yes, but us, not so much.
*Though Clara had no living children, her husbands family has descendants living nearby so family and married name shall remain private.
**Invented in 1876, the carpet sweeper reduced the workload on housekeepers. Rugs had to be taken out and beaten at regular intervals. It was the latest mechanical marvel and a boon the housekeepers everywhere.
***We still have that skirt packed away in a cedar lined trunk.
****Hawaii was still a kingdom at the time and how or why she came into possession of the little book is a mystery.
Michael Shannon is a writer and found his own family to be very fertile ground. He writes so his own children might know something of that family.
My Fathers Big Fish
by Michael Shannon.
The River of the Kings was my father’s place of choice. Fast running, deep, frigid and isolated and in a most remote part of the formidable Sierra Nevada. The Snowy Mountains* are part of the American Cordillera, an almost continuous chain of mountain ranges that forms the western “backbone” of the Americas. He and his brother began going there in the late 1920’s. Still in high school, my uncle just 18 and my dad 16, both from a little town in coastal California over 200 miles from the Kings River canyon.
Río de los Santos Reyes headwaters originate along the Sierra Crest in and around Kings Canyon National Park and form Kings Canyon, one of the deepest river gorges in North America. The river was named by Gabriel Moraga, the commander of a Spanish military expedition in 1806, but it was not until California became a U.S. state in 1850 that many Europeans arrived and settled along the Kings River, driving out the original inhabitants the Yokuts. The Middle Fork flows for only 37 miles through some of the Sierras most difficult-to-access backcountry, including Simpson Meadow and Tehipite Valley.
Tehipite Dome
Two hundred miles of mostly dirt roads which they had to navigate into the mountains in my grandfathers old 1918 Model T Ford. Arroyo Grande to Paso de Robles, east on hwy. 41 through the central valley to Lemoore, Hanford and Visalia turning at Woodlake and starting the climb through the foothills and up to Badger and Pinehurst to the road junction east of Dunlap then following the winding one lane dirt track up to Grants Grove, past Hume Station and then down to the turnout at Yucca Point.
The road was so narrow that on sharp turns there would be a hand painted wooden sign tacked to a tree cautioning the driver to “Sound Klaxon” on all the blind corners. If you heard another horn, the downhill driver had to back uphill until there was enough room to pass. Dad said the driver going uphill would have a great view straight downhill to the canyons below.
The Ford had been outfitted with everything a wilderness fisherman might need. Two sleeping bags, a couple canteens though in those days you could still drink from the river, no Giardia. Couple loaves of homemade bread baked by grandmother, jam and a jar of peanut butter, small can of lard for frying fish, salt and pepper, skillet and a knife to serve all the purposes a knife might. Only one problem. In a hurry to get away the sleeping bags were forgotten on the back porch. Neither of them noticed until they got to Grant Grove where they had to dig into the back to get a water bag to hang on the radiator.
This created a little bitty problem for the nights in September in the high sierra can be a wee bit cold or very hot, you never know. You want to count on both. The went in a talked to the man in the little store there but they didn’t sell sleeping bags or blankets. He did suggest they might talk to the owner of the pack station just up the road he might be able to help. Sure as shootin’ he could and did. See, he had a stack of horse blankets which he was willing to part with for say, five bucks each, used of course. Knowing the were in desperate straits the two boys agreed. They riffle through the pile trying to find the least objectionable. They all reeked of horse sweat, some were raggedy and many sported holes where they sat up on the horses’s withers. Picking out two they forked over a double sawbuck and carried the loot back to the care uttering what passed for polite boy’s curses the whole way. The old cowpoke reckoned it was a mighty good day.
The two boys wore long sleeved shirts because of the mosquitos and yellow jackets, one pair of trousers and believe it or not high top canvas sneakers with rubber soles. No hiking boots, too much to carry, but they did have a coil of rope in case they needed to cross in high water coming down from the south fork. In some years the water was still dangerously swift and deep even on Labor Day. The river bed was entirely rocks and scattered boulders. Fording the river was always and adventure. The current was swift and everything slippery and in the twenties there was nothing or no one to help you if you were hurt. The trail back up to yucca point was very steep and unimproved and the only way out was walking. It would have been a walk out for the uninjured and then seek help and the return trip with someone else and again the return by stretcher up a treacherous steep trail crossed by tree roots, half embedded stone, mud and all in the early September heat and don’t forget the deer fly trying to drink from your sweat and tears. You could soak your handkerchief in water from your canteen and tie it over your face above the eyes, it was the only way to keep them out. The view through the wet bandana was minimal so you’d better step carefully. The first rule was to be very careful.
At the bottom of the trail they tried fording the river but it was too swift and deep though it was barely more than knee deep. They figured if they could get the rope across the be able to ford. My dad was an excellent swimmer and body surfer. He’d spent a great deal of his youth swimming in the ocean and had the confidence to give it a try. He said he couldn’t really swim at the ford but determined that he could get across at the deep hole just upstream. The best thing was to swim the center where the current was a little slower so he stripped off all his clothes, tied the rope around his waist and waded in.
Left to Right, Jackie, Jack Shannon and George in 1928, Family Photo.
The water was cold, cold, cold, so cold that he could hardly breath. He was really glad to crawl out at the other side. The sand bar he came out on had three sycamore trees just a little set back form the shore so he walked to the trees and tied the rope around the closest one. His brother tied off the other on the opposite shore. Now they could use the rope to steady themselves as they crossed and recrossed to move their packs across.
After spending the night on the sand bar where the middle and south fork came together they cooked up a little breakfast then hit the trail. That is if you could call it a trail. Even today it is marked as unmaintained by the forest service and in those days it was nothing more than a narrow single wide path scratched out by miners during the gold rush.
The middle fork drops hundreds of feet per mile bounding and crashing around boulders where it forms eddys and small falls around the great deep pools. To get upstream the original trail blazers had cut a very steep trail up the side of the mountain ridges that formed the canyon. They had to climb this switchback trail for several hundred feet to get to a spot where the trail leveled out. It was just impossible to go upstream along the river below because the canyon walls ended where the river ran. The only way was to climb up to a little bench in the mountainside where they had cut the original trail. Unmaintained no wider than a couple feet you could look down a near vertical slope to the river below and straight up at your shoulder. Boulders clung to the slopes by some mysterious force for there wasn’t any visible means that kept them from flinging themselves headlong into the water below.
About two miles along they found a rusted, crumbling piece of one inch twisted steel cable. Puzzled by the find they at first couldn’t figure out why it should be in a place where it made no sense. Who dragged it up there and why? You couldn’t get much farther from anywhere than this place. Standing together they looked around but they couldn’t find any reason for it until they noticed, way across the river on the opposite cliff side the mouth of a small tunnel that could only be a mine entrance. They could see some rotted old timbers in the entrance and a few rusted tinned cans scattered about. The cable had to be the remnants of a pulley system that head been built to ferry supplies to the men who worked the mine and to haul whatever ore they found back across. How in the world did those old forty-niners get up there while prospecting and once they found some color how did they ever get the cable across? With only a small bench of mine tailings at the mouth of the tunnel they must have actually lived in the mine itself. Just visible down slope of the mine they could see a small rectangular iron bucket with a pulley still attached which explained how they got across.
Dad said they tried to imagine how a couple prospectors in the 1850’s hauled all the gear up there. Did they come by horseback and a packtrain? Did they walk in with a donkey? There is no forage nearby, little vegetation other than stunted trees clinging to the mountainside and where would the animals go when they were working the mine?
Those old prospectors explored every inch of the Sierra, getting into places where you would think no one could. There are abandoned mines all over the mountains. No one knows who found them or worked them and the only clue is a dark tunnel and scattered and broken old shovels, picks and empty cans of tomatoes.*
Finally at the end of a hot and dusty hike the train crossed a monumental rock slide where there was no walking but a semi-stumbling, one hand for yourself crossing to a sandbar along the river. The trail had caught up with the Kings where Lost Canyon creek came tumbling down from the nearly twelve thousand foot height of the Sentinel.
La Cuidadela, the Sentinel peak.
They told fish tails about the trips, how the fishing was fantastic. There were no planted trout up on the Kings, and there are none today. A man had to be full of tricks to land one of the veteran, wily Rainbow and Brown trout. Always fish going upstream, never let your shadow fall on the water, when the sun is high enough retire to the shade and take a nap because the fish cannot see whats on the surface and won’t rise. Don’t fish when it’s windy which it normally is in the afternoon. Find a deep hole which is partially shaded and bordered by an eddy which delivers insects right to the fish and delicately lay a dry fly on its edge. Make your pole dance the fly in an irregular pattern just as if it was real and you might be rewarded.
Dad even had a favorite place. High on a rock where the river was scrunched between a nest of huge boulders that had tumbled down the canyon walls you cold climb on top of the largest and flip your Grey Hackle right under and overhang formed by a split boulder where, he always believed, the King of Brown trout lived. Deep down in the dark cavern of still water he would only rise to feed under the most perfect of conditions.
Since their first trip in 1929, they returned again and again over the decades. They began to take me along when I was thirteen. What we carried was about the same, peanut butter, Webers bread, some butter and a small bag of flour and the cheapest frying pan possible because it didn’t weigh much. My uncle Jackie always took his old sleeping bag. I’m sure it was the first one he ever owned.*** No one in the family though that fancy gear like waders and basket creels were necessary. They considered that kind of stuff an affectation. The were there to fish and they knew the fish didn’t care. A bed of willow leaves in a flour sack worked well enough for the fish who would be dinner and your Levis had pockets anyway.
Lying on top of your bag at night, it was too hot to get inside, my dad and uncle talked quietly about nothing important and I listened. We watched the heavens for our American satellite Explorer I as it passed overhead. When finally it moved quickly across the sky and didn’t twinkle you could wonder at it all. In a time where space was all new to us, I felt safe in the knowledge that our country was the best place. I was thirteen then and all seemed possible. A boy and his father sleeping in the remote wilderness of the King’s River. No sound but the melodious chortling of the river and the owl.
*The Sierra Nevada.
**Tomato processing began in 1847, when Harrison Woodhull Crosby, the chief gardener at Lafayette College developed a crude method of canning tomatoes. Prior to 1890 all tomato canning was done by hand. It was said that you could follow the empty cans from Kansas to California.
***We still have it.
Michael Shannon writes of his family so his children will know from whom they came.
THE NECESSARY
My Goodness, What to Do?
By Michael Shannon
My grandmother was born in 1885. Things were different then. The little Red house she was born in down in the Oso Flaco is long gone now like most old houses built in the days before electricity and indoor plumbing. She didn’t live there too long for her father was a fortunate man and found oil on his little ranch in Graciosa, todays Orcutt. he became an instant rich man and soon built himself a large modern home on west Guadalupe road. Though rich, he was still a farmer and he worked his land which stretched all the way back to the Santa Maria River. For an landless Irishman, which most were, the land held more importance than the oil.
When my grandma Annie was eight years old she came to Arroyo Grande to live with her aunt and uncle, Sarah and Patrick Moore. Patrick Moore had come to Guadalupe from Ireland and prospered in the sheep business. Though he had little education he was a cunning man and made himself a fortune with which he built a big house on the edge of little Arroyo Grande. He bought a big book of the collected works of William Shakespeare which he kept in the foyer of his house where all could see it as they entered. That was all the education he needed.
So, my grandmother grew in a life of privilege. Servants, beautiful clothes and the best of Arroyo Grande pioneer society. Her girlhood friends were, Phoenix, Harloe, Rice, Lierly, Porters, and the descendants of Don Francisco Branch. Families that sent their children to private schools in San Francisco and San Luis Obispo.
She was a child of the late Victorian Age and all it represented. A hundred years after the first American civil war or The Revolution as it’s now styled, fashionable society still looked to the European continent for guidance in societal affairs. We will dress this way, walk this way, speak this way and adopt the mores and shibboleths that decree customs, principles, or a belief that distinguish a particular class or group of people. The majority, under the influence of vague nineteenth-century shibboleths, understood that by associating oneself with these doctrines implied sophistication to the nth degree.
I never knew my grandmother as a girl though she certainly was one. She was 60 years old when I was born. She wore sensible low heeled shoes, cats eye glasses, plain print house dresses covered by an apron with the ubiquitous hankies in the pocket. If she wore any jewelry other than her slim wedding ring I don’t recall. She wasn’t overly solicitous of my attention but she was a calm presence rocking in her chair darning socks or knitting. It was the chair my grandfather bought her when she was first pregnant with my uncle Jackie in 1908, the year she graduated from California Berkeley. She would offer her hand with its delicate skin which had hardly ever seen the sun because in the forties women still wore gloves everywhere. A little cheek was offered for a boy’s kiss which was as soft as a down feather. She always smelled of White shoulders, powder not perfume for perfume was considered vulgar and only worn by “Soiled Doves or low class strumpets.
She played the piano in church, always wore a hat to go to town no matter how mundane or routine the purpose was and was unfailingly polite, no gossip that I ever heard. If there was it was confined to her bridge club, women who had sat at those old folding tables together for nearly fifty years and likely chewed, although the word chewed which she viewed as vulgar would never have passed any of their lips, they chewed on the same old conversations until they were polished to a soft sheen. Safe, familiar and soothing.
She was raised in a quite remarkable era which is almost unbelievable today. Things we take for granted were forbidden or lived under a series of shadow words that said one thing but implied another. Society had developed euphemisms to mask words and phrase which the well-educated and socially prominent practiced.
women were as energetic as they are today but har far fewer things to occupy their minds. A contemporary woman would hardly recognize my grandmothers life in 1900. She couldn’t own property under her own name, she couldn’t vote, there were few places she could go unaccompanied. She couldn’t initiate divorce nor was she protected from domestic abuse. She couldn’t wear trousers, smoke a cigarette, she couldn’t handle money even if she had some, that was her husbands job.
She a had an Irish servant girl, her name was Clara. Clara washed ironed, served dinner and kept house for the Moore’s. She is in one photo kept in the families collection. She was apparently a scandalous girl who’s secret my grandmother kept to herself for nearly her entire life. She let it slip in her mid-nineties when her memory of the present faded and the memories of the past sharpened.
When a girl reached puberty she was likely to be 16 or 17. Poor nutrition, increased physical stress from industrial work, and other poor living conditions during the Victorian era contributed to this delayed onset. Social standing at the turn of the century figured in the timing. Children went straight to adulthood as there was no concept of adolescent until roughly 1905 when the concept was published in a book. The word teenage was completely unknown. My grandmother graduated high school in 1904 and would have been constrained to act and dress as an adult. You can see in old photographs children dressed exactly like their parents.
As a young single woman which she was until graduation from college she wore her hair up. Nearly every woman did. She put her hair up as a young teen and it stayed up until she bobbed it in 1920. Wearing the hair down as an adult woman was a scandalous thing and indicated that you were of a lower class or a, horrors to even think about it, “Lady of the night.” A fallen woman in fact and if my grandmother and her friends saw you on the street in San Luis Obispo which by the way had a rich and teeming Red-Light district, they would turn away and point there noses skyward at the scandal of it. Hmph.
The girl in the rear, Margaret “Maggie” Phoenix. Our Margaret Harloe for which the school is named. Note the ubiquitous hankies.
This developmental stage was deeply shaped by Victorian social and moral codes, which emphasized female purity and restricted young people’s autonomy. Victorian culture strongly discouraged public discussion of sexuality and puberty. This lack of frankness contributed to a cultural “prudery” surrounding these topics. Some late-Victorian medical and social commentators viewed puberty with apprehension, seeing it as a time when girls were susceptible to disease or irrationality, swooning and the “vapors” more than likely brought on by too-tight corsets. There was a push for female health and physical activity for some, but this was often met with resistance from those who preferred to preserve traditional ideals of fragile femininity. Social mores were set by the extreme upper classes in order to distance themselves from the lower or even worse, the depraved gutter Irish.
Grandma of course was just like the girls of today. They aped the manners and dress of their elders but they still found occasion for hi-jinks. Dressing up as their fathers was apparently a regular pastime. We have many photos of she and her friends posing for pictures taken with her new Kodak Brownie camera in front of her home. No lawn though as a front lawn wasn’t even a concept in 1903.
Annie Gray and Tootsie Lierley in 1903. Patrick Moore residence Arroyo Grande
You might notice that they both are both hatted. No self-respecting woman would ever be caught outside without a hat. Notice too that the skirts hem is touching the ground. It was thought that the sight of a shoe or God forbid, an ankle would drive men crazy. One of her classmates at Cal in 1907 was expelled for wearing her skirts short enough to expose he ankles. A length of fabric called a flounce was whip stitched to the hem of dresses with a small loop that could be grasped and delicately lifted just a little if she stepped over a curb or ascended the stairs. I could be removed for cleaning as often as needed since hems touched the ground and could get very dirty in a town which had no paved streets.
My grandmother is the girl in the checked dress on the left. 1907. University of California Berkeley campus.
When a woman was menstruating she was “Indisposed.” Women were such a fragile things that too much stimulation of any kind could cause her to swoon. Those darn corsets again. If a man referred to a woman’s leg as anything but a limb he might be cast out of polite society. A woman could not be touched in any fashion other than to take her arm if the road was too rough for walking. Sitting on a buggy seat, the heat from a woman’s limb was known to cause temporary blindness in men.
When she was in her nineties she still wouldn’t cross her ankles since that was considered suggestive. My grandfather didn’t cross his legs either, at least in the presence of women. You had to be careful because you were surrounded by vulgarity, it’s nasty fingers aching to clutch the unwary sophisticate.
Grandma frowned on anyone mentioning the number six, I think for obvious reasons. Animal horns were considered obscene, vulgar to the point of being devilish. Once I found a beautiful copper chaffing dish she had received as a wedding gift in 1908. That dish spent it’s entire life in the barn because the handle was a section of Elk horn which she wouldn’t touch. No goats either. My dad and uncle Jackie had to give their pet goat away, it had those devilish cloven hooves. The milk cows and bulls were also polled or dehorned, either for utility or because she wanted it that way.
She wore a silk chemise and pantaloons for underwear called, always, unmentionables. They were never seen by men. The pantaloons were basically a set of short leggings with no, dare I say, crotch. Probably shouldn’t. They wore so many layers of clothes that they simply could not undress quickly. A woman doing her business would have looked the same as a woman sitting in a chair. You see, this was because there were a couple things about feminine hygiene which were quite unknown at the time. Most homes had no toilet and many no running water. Finding and using the “Necessary” cold be very difficult when out and about. This was a woman’s dilemma. No business had a public toilet, Toilet comes from the French Toilette by the way. Toilet is French in origin and is derived from the word ‘toilette’, which translates as “dressing room”, rather than today’s meaning. This was another dodge around a seemingly vulgar term such as “The Jakes”, the outhouse, the Crapper* or the chamber pot. If I may, there was no toilet paper in a necessary unless the owner was well off . Paper for the toilet was invented by the Chinese in the fourth century BC. It took until 1857 until it first appeared in America and was sold in individual packs of five hundred and, of course quite expensive. Think of this, splinter free toilet paper first appeared in the 1930’s, multiply paper in 1942 and thanks to modern inventiveness, scented in 1964. Speaking of this would have been absolutely taboo in front of my grandmother. No lady could possibly utter the word toilet. She went to the bathroom where she did things that were secret from the world of men.
Remember that ancient Rome, Greece and Persia over three thousand or more years ago had running water, sewers and public baths and “Necessaries.” Arroyo Grande at the turn of the twentieth century did not, certainly did not.
This somewhat limited the distance a woman could go from her home. Timing was of the essence. She certainly could not just drop in to the Capitol Saloon on Branch street. She and her friends would have been forever shunned.
Saloons were places where Demon Rum lived. The men inside were considered vulgar beyond description. A woman who approached too closely would likely be subject to catcalls** and other unwanted comments.
I cannot imagine what she would think of our house when we had two rambunctious boys and one bathroom. On school days the door never closed and no one though anything about it. You all know what I mean. All that would have been incomprehensible to grandma.
As to engage in man woman stuff or Amorous Congress there was simply no word in her vocabulary that sufficed and it was never mentioned in any context, not even animals. She was a dairymen’s wife so she had to make her peace with sort of thing. She was seriously uncomfortable with both words and I’ve heard the act itself was only practiced twice, resulting in two children. Or so my father said, tongue in cheek, I hope.
Girls and boys didn’t have to wonder what the rules of courtship were, you could buy a printed card.
So my grandmother, her name was Annie Shannon was a steady presence in my life growing up. She never raised her voice, she always dressed the same, she never ever went out without hat and gloves even if she was going to buy groceries. She taught her grandchildren not to masticate with their mouths open, keep our elbows off the table, not to speak unless spoken too and keep our opinions to ourselves. I’ve done poorly with the latter but I hope she will forgive me.
I loved her for who she was and I miss her.
Jack and Annie Shannon as I remember them. Arroyo Grande about 1950.
Cover Photo: Annie Gray formal portrait high school graduation 1904. Stoneheart Studios Santa Maria California.
*Thomas Crapper was an English plumber and businessman. He founded Thomas Crapper & Co in London, a plumbing equipment company. In 1861, Crapper patented his first invention – an improved ballcock mechanism. The device was used to regulate the flow of water in cisterns and is still used today in toilets across the world. I cannot not imagine my grandmothers reaction to the word ballcock, it may have killed heron the spot. Crapper’s notability with regard to toilets has often been overstated, mostly due to the publication in 1969 of a tongue-in-cheek biography by New Zealand satirist Wallace Reyburn.
**Catcalling is a form of street harassment, typically sexual in nature, where a man makes unwanted comments, gestures, or sounds toward a woman in public. It is not a compliment but a demeaning act that makes the target feel threatened, degraded, and unsafe. The motivations behind it can include asserting power, misogyny, or a desire to express sexual interest, but it is always a form of harassment that infringes on the target’s dignity and right to feel secure in public.
Michael Shannon, the author of this piece loved his grandmother. Both of them actually because they were characters in their own right.
Dear Dona
Page 15
Michael Shannon
As the shipped nosed her way past Grande Island and the passing of Spanish Point off to Port she entered the Philippine sea where she picked up the two destroyers who were to be her escorts, the Quartermaster put her wheel over to Port and headed south. From the Philippine sea she swung southeast into the Sulu Sea. A 2 day run saw them turn east at the tip of Mindanao Island passing Zamboanga where the monkeys have no tails* then briefly south through the Celebes Sea until the could swing northeast for the open sea. The ship chugged along at 16 knots, her best speed while the escorts sailed in curlicues, on the hunt for submarines because even in June 1945 plenty of Japanese subs were still at sea hunting. Three days into the run to Guam where they were to pick up more casualties and returnees they passed within just a few miles of the spot at which the Japanese sub I-58 put two Long Lance Torpedos into a speeding cruiser which was not zigzaging but running on a plumb line. The Captain, James McVay was rushing to the Philippines to begin training his crew for the invasion of Japan. He was told there were no Japanese submarines in the area and his escorts had failed to appear so the cruiser was running alone.
The “Indy” leaving Tinian after off-loading the first Atomic bomb. US Navy photo
USS Indianapolis CA-35, sank in just twelve minutes. Her bow was blown completely off and the second torpedo exploded in the after engine room and set of the main ammunition magazine. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, about 300 went down with the ship. The after engine room crew boiled alive from escaping high pressure steam or were blown to bits by the explosion. Off duty sailors in the berthing spaces awoke to darkness and massive amounts of seawater which killed them in moments, their screams drowned in horror. The remaining 890 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the open ocean. With few lifeboats and almost no food or water they were eight hundred miles from land.
The Navy learned of the sinking four days later, when survivors were spotted by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol. U.S. Navy PBY flying boats landed in the rough seas to save those in the water. Only 316 survived. No U.S. warship sunk at sea had lost more sailors.**
Hilo and the rest of men aboard had no idea of the awful drama taking place just a few miles away. They wouldn’t know until the war was over either, for the cruiser had just delivered “Little Boy” to Tinian island the first of the atomic bombs which was dropped on Hiroshima City August 6th, 1945. The delivery was part of the biggest secret of WWII and the Indy was sailing under secret orders and radio silence. No SOS was sent from the ship.
The ship pulled in to Guams Apra harbor where she remained at anchor while more returnees and wounded were loaded. Fuel barges pulled alongside and began refilling her fuel bunkers for the long trip ahead. A repair ship floated at her side and lent the crew a hand in fixing or repairing anything on the list they could. Ships at sea are always broken. A welded ship nearly 442 feet long and rated for 10,000 tons of cargo, the Attack Transports suffered constant flexing and pounding while at sea caused all kinds of damage during operations. Though the Navy crew of 58 officers and 480 enlisted crew worked tirelessly to maintain the ship they could never entirely catch up.
Having traveled nearly two thousand miles, food to feed the crew and passengers was in short supply and barges coming out to the anchorage carried mounds of foodstuff which was winched aboard by the cranes on deck and stored away below. The quartermasters department was kept hopping seeing to the loading and storage of hopefully an ample supply for the rest of the voyage. Feeding and housing over 1,500 men and women returning to the states was a monumental job.
All this food was primarily stored in large, refrigerated and dry storage areas and consisted of both fresh and preserved goods. Cooking was done in massive galleys to produce thousands of meals daily for both the crew and the embarked troops. The logistical system was designed to provide as much variety as possible, though the quality and freshness of the food often depended on the length of the voyage and the availability of resupply.
A ship’s galleys were large-scale, industrial kitchens that operated almost continuously to feed the crew. Cooks, “lovingly” referred to a “Cookie” in the U.S. Navy, worked in 24 hour shifts, 8 hours per watch to ensure meals were available for personnel at all hours.
During long periods at sea, the menus would rely more heavily on frozen, canned, and dried ingredients as fresh supplies ran out. This was always a problem on tropical islands where fresh vegetables were seldom available.
The sailors and Marine would look at the twentieth plate of chipped beef on toast and mutter to themselves, “S**t on a Shingle” again? For veterans, any desire to eat it would be long gone by wars end.
Leaving Guam for the west coast there were some things the troops and sailors could rely on. Chow was going to be monotonous. There would be much standing in line with more than two thousand to feed three times a day and by the time they arrived at the coast of California the mess crews would be like the walking dead, exhausted. For the galley crew these Magic Carpet voyages would be some of the hardest duty of the war for which they would receive scant praise. Perhaps a pat on the back from the Chief mess cook. There was little space for physical activity either, it was just too crowded and most of the passengers weren’t inclined to tolerate much spit and polish or discipline. How does the Shore Patrol or the Master at Arms keep them in line? You can guess. The Master at Arms who is the sheriff of the boat picks equally large and aggressive mates for his department and the officers generally turn a blind eye to the obvious bumps and bruises meted out in lieu of Captains Mast. Most Captains think that is a fair trade.
As always, things on A deck where the officers were housed was pretty plush, it was white table cloth, sterling silver and high quality food served by friendly Filipino stewards in white gloves. This increased the enlisted man’s mortal hatred of officers. While those below ate their monotonous meals the officers ate meals that were hardly less elegant than first class passengers had been served in more peaceful days. For supper it was dress whites or Suntans, shoes polished by the same stewards who served them and polite conversation. On some returning ships there were even army and Navy nurses to break the monotony and add to the hatred of the privileged. Most soldiers hadn’t seen an American woman in years and likely wouldn’t see those aboard their own ship.
What infantrymen know is that officers for the most part never share a foxhole with a Dogface. Few officers above Lieutenant ever get any closer to the fighting front than they can avoid. Those that did were revered but they were few. The thousands on the main deck or herded below seethed with bad will at the injustice of it. A famous phrase that came out of WWII concerned “old Blood and Guts” General Patton of whom his own troopers in the 3rd army were wont to say, “Yeah, his guts , our blood.” There are newsreels of him standing up in his staff car, ivory handled pistol on prominent display, speeding down the muddy roads of France, splattering mud on the tired an dirty troopers walking alongside and jauntily wave and pumping his fist in encouragement. Hardly a Doggie bothers to even look up. He slept in a French Chateau with Marlene Dietrich, they slept on the open ground under a dirty wool blanket. Hatred was putting it mildly. A pretty universal sentiment in the military wherever you went.
The last part of the voyage was over 6,000 miles, a quarter way around the globe. The attack transports had been hard used and most had never returned to Mare Island in the San Francisco bay for serious overhauls, they’d had to make do with bandaids and bailing wire. The boiler tubes were warped and caked with scale. Much engine room machinery was just capable of limping along at reduced speed. There were no places in the vast distances they were traveling where they could just pull over. The high speed destroyers racing around on patrol, duty they hated, it was monotonous and crews were frustrated by these voyages. They wanted to get ashore too. The navy was crewed by farm boys, mechanics, shoe salesmen and soda jerks, they were not or ever intended to be lifers. Their officers were reservists and would mostly go ashore once the war was over. Lifers were the men who manned the transport ships, civilian Merchant Mariners who had or would spend a life at sea. They shared the same dangers but the sea was their life.***
In the weeks at sea, Hilo and his mates were not afforded any special accommodations like the trip out in ’42. No more converted ocean liners for them, no private berthing, they were now veterans and their value to the army and marines were well understood. Though the MIS service was classified the people they worked with in the field knew what they did, they had seen them coaxing prisoners out of caves and half-destroyed pill boxes. They had crouched in foxholes with Marines and soldiers while the air buzzed with rifle and machine gun rounds. They had saved thousands of live across the Pacific. They had proven themselves.
First Class accommodations. USN photo.
The most serious way to pass time at sea in a crowded ship was to sleep, play cards, roll “Dem Bones, or fight, of which there were plenty of takers. Books were rare though the ships had a small library and by the time they pulled into Long Beach Naval Base people were reading the instructions for operating machinery printed on the bulkheads. They read mattress tags, read and re-read letters from home until they literally fell apart, they read each others letters.
Without thinking the were putting away the memory of war and replacing it with the possibilities of the future.
Traveling the southern route in July and early August they were likely spared any serious bad weather but the monsoon in the southern hemisphere generated long swells which traveled north across the equator. smoothing out and lengthening in to long rollers that marched across the mid Pacific like ranks of soldiers. The Pacific or Mar Pacifico, the “Peaceful Sea” can be anything but. Named by Ferdinand Magellan as he crossed the southern hemisphere to his eventual fate in the Philippine islands. He passed day after day on a smooth almost oily ocean with most days, just a faint ripple of wind. The voyage from Patagonia to Guam took three and a half months. To quote Coleridge:****
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Coming at right angles to the ships course they caused her to roll from Port to Starboard and back again. The motion caused some serious sea sickness. The old saying about seasickness is absolutely true. “At the first you think you’re going to die, by the second day you want to die.” By the time the ship reached the vicinity of the west coast near Point Conception on California’s western shore it drifted in a miasma of farts, the odor of unwashed bodies, their clothes and a skim of dried vomit coating her berthing spaces. No one had any desire to linger aboard.
Turning eastward into the Santa Barbara Channel the voyagers could, through the almost ever present fog clinging to Point Conception, poking into the Pacific like spear at the turning of California’s coastline from north-south to east-west, faint as a dream the sere brown and tan hills of home spattered by the greasy green chaparral, the hard dark green of coastal oaks and perhaps best of all the smell of home. Hardened soldiers and sailors were seen to cry.
Point Conception California. Hank Pitcher.
Hilo could not have been an exemption. He had been away for nearly four years. He could not have known exactly what to expect. He did know that the country he was returning to was an unknown place. His family was still in the concentration camp in the Sonoran desert of southwest Arizona, his Arroyo Grande friends scattered to the four winds. Where, exactly was home anymore?
Homecoming.
Page 16 of Dear Dona is next.
Cover Photo: returning troopship, Operation Magic Carpet, 1945
*”The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga” is the official regimental march of the 27th Infantry Regiment, as the “Wolfhound March”. The lyrics of this official version were written in 1907 in Cuba by G. Savoca, the regimental band leader (died 1912), after the regiment was formed in 1901 to serve in the Philippines. According to Harry McClintock, the tune was borrowed from an official march of the Philippine Constabulary Band, as played at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. One version was collected as part of the Gordon “Inferno” Collection. As with many folk songs with military origins (such as “Mademoiselle from Armentières” from World War I), the song becomes a souvenir of the campaign for those who served. See below
**In the movie “Jaws,” Quint the shark hunter relates his experience as a survivor of the USS Indianapolis CA-35
***The Merchant Marine suffered the worst losses of World War II. During World War II, the U.S. Merchant Marine suffered high losses, with about 9,521 mariners perishing out of over 243,000 who served, representing a higher percentage casualty rate than any branch of the U.S. military. These losses occurred from enemy submarine, mine, and aircraft attacks, as well as the dangerous elements at sea, with 733 American merchant ships sunk and 609 mariners captured as prisoners of war. The US government ruled that they would receive no veterans benefits though their casualty rate was only slightly less than the Marines. In 1988 partial benefits were offered primarily for schooling but not on the scale of “Combat” veterans. Though sailors serving in wartime take an oath and are paid by the government they were not considered true servicemen. The author served in the Merchant Marine in the early 70’s and shipped with many veterans of WWII. Ask a man who was torpedoed twice in the Pacific if he considers himself a veteran.
****”The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Written 1797–98
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails,
They were bitten off by whales,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga.
Chorus:
Oh, we won’t go back to Subic anymore,
Oh, we won’t go back to Subic anymore,
Oh, we won’t go back to Subic
Where they mix our wine with tubig, (Water)
and on and on…
Michael Shannon is a Navy veteran and former Merchant Mariner. He lives in Arroyo Grande, California
Dear Dona
Page 14
The Last Battle
By Michael Shannon
“The God of Death has come.” Shouted by a Japanese Imperial Naval Marine* upon seeing Marines landings on Betio, forever enshrined in the notes taken in interviews by MIS translators during the battle for Tarawa.
The filth, the crawling over sharp coral, running crouched, hunched over with every muscle in the body nearly rigid with fear, the noise which never stopped, artillery, flamethrowers, grenades and the constant pop of gunfire. Battleship shells weighing a ton, Destroyers nearly run up on the beach duking it out with gun emplacements at point blank range. A miss is a miss but the M-1 round still can kill at 6,500 yards, over 3.5 miles. The Japanese Arisaka type 99 rifle could kill at 3,700 hundred yards. No place on the island could be safe for the soldier. The air is full of them. There was no place safe. No one could think or conceive of any other universe. The Battle of Okinawa (Operation Iceberg) was the final major land battle of World War II, lasting 82 days from April 1 to June 22, 1945. It was a brutal, large-scale engagement where U.S. and Allied forces fought Japanese troops on the island of Okinawa, the last step before a potential invasion of Japan. The battle was exceptionally bloody, resulting in massive casualties for both sides, including a significant loss of civilian life among the Okinawan people, and heavily influenced the U.S. decision to use atomic weapons on Japan.
Soldiers are so young. Is it impossible that they should be able to process the situation they are in? When they awaken at the bottom of their waterlogged foxholes after dreams of home they understood there was no escape.
Witness this Marine Ambulance driver’s letter home written about half way through the invasion. He would celebrate his 19th birthday on Okinawa.
Dear Folks. I know you have been worried about me but as you see I’m still very much O K. I’ve had a few close calls but that can be expected on this Rock. They say in the stateside news that this island is secure but, but they still have eight more miles to go so you can figure that out. We are three miles back from the front licking our wounds now and waiting for I don’t know what. Maybe we go back and maybe we don’t. I guess I’ve seen most of this island so far—enough anyway.
Private John Brewster Loomis USMC, Headquarters company, 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division. MOS 245, Truck Operator. Just before shipping out to the Pacific, 1944.
Shuri Castle was a rich joint and Naha used to be quite a town. I am sitting in Jap truck now that we picked up in our travels. It is something like a ton and a half and something like a Chevrolet but right hand drive. I’m a little thinner but feel alright. (He entered the Marines at 5′ 11″ and 160 lbs.) Instead of “Golden Gate in ’48, it’s from Hell to Heaven in ’47. Old Snowball, a friend, is still alright as far as I know. We sure took a beating but took our objective.
Dad I’m sorry I couldn’t write on your birthday but Happy Fathers day and Fourth of July.
The weather is better now, cold at night. Last night was the first time I got to take off my shoes when I hit the sack. They brought us a little better chow for a while. Boy! Am I tired of C-Rations. My old ambulance is still running but it doesn’t look the same-no windshield. bumpers, paint, top or sides-just one seat and the stretcher racks.
I had my picture taken the other day by Division. I don’t know if it will get in the papers or not. I sure didn’t look like much that day.
Well, folks, I’ll write when I can and I hope from now on that will be very often. Much Love John.**
Modified by Holden an Australian body building company, this is the Jeep type ambulance John Loomis drove on Okinawa. The Marine Corps used this much more, go anywhere ambulance instead of the big GM trucks used in Europe. The rugged terrain and mud sloppy roads couldn’t be navigated by trucks and Sherman Tanks were sometimes used as tow trucks if they didn’t sink in the mud holes themselves. Almost everything was hand carried by exhausted Marines themselves.
As the battle for Okinawa came to a close, many of the Nisei translators were ordered off the island. The almost complete annihilation of the defenders meant there was little to do. In preparation for the invasion of Japan there was a mountain of captured documents to be gone through and they were needed back at headquarters.
The Lieutenant gathered the Nisei translators in a shell hole covered with a tent fly then read the names of those who would take one of the LCIs out to the attack transport (APA-139, the USS Broadwater) for transport back to Manila for further orders. Hilo and his team were leaving the island.
MacArthurs headquarters were now in the ruins of Manila. After unloading at Cavite Naval base in Manila bay, the MIS boys were trucked to the city and reported for duty.
Hilo and his team were issued new orders and upon pulling them open with a mixture of excitement and dread inherent in the action were delighted and almost giddy with the news that they were to report to Subic Bay for immediate transport to Naval base Long Beach, California to begin a 30 day leave. They were being sent home to rest before the invasion of Japan.
USS Broadwater APA-139 and USS Bellepheron ARL-31, a landing craft repair ship at anchor, San Francisco 1944
They were going to be transported by one on the Navy’s APAs or Attack Transports such as the USS Broadwater APA-139. The APAs*** were the real workhorses of the Navy. They were designed and built on Liberty and Victory ship hulls for the purpose of transporting men and supplies. With their boats they were able to house, feed and land an entire marine battalion of fifteen hundred men. Anchored just offshore, in harms way, they would swing out the landing craft, load the Marines and their equipment and then the Cox’ns would drive them into the landing beaches. When they had unloaded they would wait to receive the wounded and other men pulled off the line and return them to base. Equipped as emergency hospital ships they would offload casualties to the larger dedicated hospital ships waiting outside the arc of Japanese artillery fire and Kamikaze air strikes.
An Aircraft carriers hanger deck loaded with casualties from Okinawa, April 1945. War Department Photo.
The Navy operated over three hundred of these ship along with freighters of the Liberty and Victory types, over fifty oilers, and a myriad of specialty support ships. This allowed the Navy, Marines, and the US Army to operate efficiently more than 7,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean where there was little infrastructure to support operations. The logistics of the operations are literally mind boggling.
The APA’s were to serve a special purpose beginning in the waning weeks of July and August 1945. In the service any action needs have a name to identify it. Most, such as Okinawa which was dubbed “Iceberg” and the invasion of Guadalcanal “Operation Watchtower” general have no meaning other than to confuse the enemy but the name for the last major movement of men was oddly prescient. Operation “Magic Carpet” would return veterans of the Pacific home. By August the allies had just over 23 million troops and support service men in the western Pacific. The Aussies, New Zealanders, British, French, Dutch and the Mexican Air Force were all going home. Magic Carpet would be the largest mass transport of men and women ever attempted. Every ship type was going to be utilized for transport.
On July 25th Hilo Fuchiwaki and his team boarded an APA in Subic bay. The boys must have leaned over the ships rail and watched the sailors on the dock cast of their lines and felt the ship begin to vibrate as she backed into the stream and headed for home.
Dear Dona Page 15 is next.
Cover Photo: Holden Jeep ambulance. Missing one fender, other one dented. Shrapnel hole in hood, broken windshield. The exhaust pipe is extended to get it out of the mud. No paint and tow strap wrapped around the bumper. Hard used.
*Rikusentai, Imperial Japanese Naval Marine Infantry.
**The letter must have been written after the the capture of the Katchin peninsula by the 1st Marines. The battle for the island still had about ten weeks of combat left. He was, after a short rest to participate in some of the most brutal fighting ever seen in WWII. Private Loomis earned the Bronze Star for his actions on Okinawa.
***The book “Away All Boats” which was made into a movie of the same name based on the 1953 novel by Kenneth M. Dodson (1907–1999), who served on the USS Pierce (APA-50) in World War II and used his experiences there as a guide for his novel. It is considered a classic in naval literature.
Michael Shannon is a writer and lives in Arroyo Grande, California.
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