Then, we got orders to go to Camp Bowe, Texas, on Maneuvers. The reason we had been on the desert on maneuvers was because, at that time, they needed Armored Force people in Africa on the desert where Romel was eating up the British Armies over there. But, eventually, they got enough Americans over there to help them out, so we didn't have to go there. We went to Camp Bowe, TX, on maneuvers, which was more like Europe than Africa. So, we were on maneuvers in Texas for about five or six months until we got orders to move to Standish in Rhode Island. We went home on Furlow, and we drove the car back to Texas. We had a 1936 Ford Sedan that I had bought before I went into the service. Interesting story here… We owed about $150 or $200 on the car when I went into the service, and at that time, there were laws in government that stated that if a veteran was inducted into the service while owing a certain amount of money, that was forfeited. We didn't have to pay the rest of it. So, we got a little break there. That was free and clear. So, we drove it back to Texas. At that time it was real hard to get gas for it, because gas was rationed. So, I went to the Army Headquarters and got a card that allowed us five gallons a week. (It wasn't called an A Card… It might have been a B or C card…) We got along pretty well on that. We made a lot of friends out there. Ardis got a job out there at the Army Post. She was working in the laundry doing something… folding handkerchiefs, or something like that. I came into town just about every night. We had an apartment at a place called McCulley's Apartment. Actually, it was a converted hen house. Chickens roosted under our apartment every night, and there was a considerable odor coming up between the cracks in the floors. But anyway, it was a place to stay, and Clarks were right next to us. Then there was a couple next to them from Kentucky. The guy was tall, he was about a seven foot guy, and about a four foot tall girl. They made quite a pair. Anyway, we had weekends off there most of the time, so we'd go to Lake Brownwood, which was the name of the city right there by Camp Bowe. We'd go swimming, and have a heck of a time. We were on maneuvers there six months. Come December 23rd, we left Camp Bowe for Camp Standish in Rhode Island. That was our deportation point for overseas. When we arrived and got settled, we weren't to be there only two days before we got on a boat for shipment. So, Jim and I got together and called Ardis and Clara and we told them to meet us at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island right away. Well, Ardis got on a train right away, and Clara drove from Sudbury, Pennsylvania. We all met at the hotel. Jim and I jumped over the fence… We weren't supposed to leave the camp because of restrictions. We jumped over the fence and grabbed a cab and we went into the hotel and stayed all night with the girls, or most of the night, anyway. We got up about 4 o'clock, and we just barely made it back. We jumped back over the fence just as our outfit was loading onto the ship. This was Dec. 24th or 25th. We grabbed our socks and duffel bags and beat it to the ship. We got on without any penalties. That would be the last time that I would see Ardis for two years. Two lonely years.

From Pine Camp, NY, we went to Camp Ibis, directly on the Mojave Desert in California, about 80 miles from Needles, CA, which is also on the desert. We were on the desert on maneuvers for seven months. As soon as I got situated out there, I notified Ardis to get on a train and get out to Needles, CA, as soon as possible. I was going to get an apartment for her to stay in. Well, I got one, which was on quite a little hill. It was about a hundred steps to get up to it. We didn't have to stay there long, because Ardis the next day was looking for something else. She found that there were people by name of Samsell looking for a babysitter. They had two children and lived right in Needles. It was a place where she could stay, and take care of the kids at the same time. I could come in and see her whenever I wanted to. So, she stayed there while I was in the desert, and we had many good times out there because we met a couple by the name of Jim and Clara Clark, who were from Sunbury, Pennsylvania. He was in my outfit, but he was in another battery. I was in Headquarters battery, and he was in A Battery. But, anyway, he had his car out there… He had a brand new Buick, and we would come into town about every chance we got. Sometimes it was two or three times a week. Often, we would take the girls out on the desert for a picnic, or something like that, and we would have a good time. Clara and Ardis really hit it off good. That was the full time I was out there, which was about seven months.

April 1st, 1942 (inducted into the Army ) I'll mention here that this was after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. We got on a bus and left for Fort Custer, MI in Battle Creek, and we were there for a couple days until we took the allegiance. Then, we took a physical, and mental examination. I found out that I was more suited for the armored force training than anything else. So, I was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, which was the armored force training center. I was there for 13 weeks with several visits by Ardis and by her family. Then, each of us were assigned a permanent position with a Army, and a regiment in the Army. It so happened that I was transferred to the Fourth Armored Division in Pine Camp, New York. However, I'll go back a little bit… Prior to my permanent position, I was training in Fire Direction in the artillery. In so doing, I had to be able to ride a motorcycle to deliver messages and so forth to other regiments and artillery battalions. So, one afternoon, when I had to go from Shelbyville, Tennessee to Manchester, Tennessee with a message, I didn't have anything to do until the following Monday morning. (This was a Friday afternoon.) So I got the bright idea to ride the bike home to see Ardis. She was living on a farm at her folks at the time. So, I took off at about 4:00 in the afternoon, and it must have been about 450 mile. Anyway, I arrived up there in the wee hours of the morning. I stayed about four or five hours, then had to start back to be back Monday morning. So, I took the same route back that I did coming, because I knew that I was going to have to have gas. I didn't dare stop at a civilian gas station. I had to get it at an Army Camp. So, I stopped at Attabury Camp in Indiana coming and going, and got enough gas to get back. The next day, I telegraphed Ardis and told her that I got back ok. I was AWOL for about a day and a half, but nobody found out. When I arrived in Pine Camp, New York with the Fourth Armored Division, I telephoned Ardis and told her to get on a train and come to Watertown, New York. That was the biggest town as close to the camp as we could get. So, she made arrangements, and notified me when she would be at the train station. I picked her up and had a room in Black River, NY, which was just outside of the camp, at the mayor's house. She stayed there while I was in camp. We were there for five or six months. She got a job, eventually, at the dime store in Watertown and rode in to the town every day with someone else that worked there. So, we got along pretty good, until I got orders to move out.

Okay, let's return to the time when we came home from our honeymoon. We did not waste any time taking up housekeeping at the fairgrounds, as mentioned before. And also, we still had our same jobs; Ardis at Murphy's and I at Hillsdale Manufacturing Company. We did, however, move the trailer to a backyard of Bob Holliday's house in Hillsdale. I think we stayed there for six months or so, and then in the spring, we moved the trailer down to Cub Lake, 8 miles south of Hillsdale. Next to the skating rink. Ardis would go to work at 8 in the morning, and I would go to work at 6 o'clock at night and work until 6 in the morning. Usually, when I got home, Ardis was up, ready to go to work. Before I would go to sleep, I would grab my pole and go out to the lake and catch a mess of fish. I'd bring em in and usually we'd have fish for dinner on a weekend. This type of living continued until April 1st, 1942, when I was inducted into the Army, on April Fools Day.

I should go back to my trapping times in December and mention that I had a dog that was a very good mink dog. During that 1938 December, I had caught two male mink with prime coats. They brought $25 each. Which at that time was really high priced for fur, because the world it seems were short that kind of fur. A little later on, that probably was the reason quite a few people went into mink farming and raised them for profit. You might say that this is most of the action and reactions that took place during the time leading up to my marriage, which I will say is the second phase of this story. With the exception of this… I should go back to 1937, which was probably the most important year of my life, and other things that I remember. For one thing, I met Ardis Dickey. She was in the 11th grade. She was in the skating rink. (See other sheet). However, the other thing that I will always remember that year, was in July of 1937, that aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Nooman , disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first around-the-world flight. And, in those years prior to 1940, Adolf Hitler was invading Poland and Yugoslavia and those countries north of Germany, including eventually Russia, which eventually caused World War II.

Let the memories live on…

Don't forget the era, when I was 10-12 years old, my dream of someday becoming a pilot. I used to hear the planes coming, and I would run out and watch them until they were out of sight. It seemed to me then that that was one of the biggest dreams that I would probably ever have. I vowed that someday I would fly like a bird and fulfill my dream. (I did get my license to pilot an airplane in 1965.) This was a big accomplishment for me. In 1936-7, jobs were really hard to come by, but I did work on our neighbors' farms at the time. But, the wages were not enough for me to navigate the way I planned. Namely about 10c/hour, and the hours were from 7:00 til 6:00 at night. The following changed my mode of work, so to speak, and was much more profitable ( I believe the following is a duplicate anyway so be it ). I had to go down to Sam Crow's Hardware in Frontier one night, and I overheard a guy telling another fellow how many frogs he had collected that particular day. He also implied how much money he made at it. I knew the person who was talking, and later I got in touch with him. I thought maybe I would get some information on how to do this myself. However, he told me that he had so much business that he needed someone to work with him, and he would be happy to have me do it. So, arrangements were made that he would pick me up early in the morning, and we would go frog hunting that day. Of course, he had the locations and the experience, I might add. He knew where to go and what to expect, day by day. Well, this kept going on for about a year and a half. We really did well. For at that time, people were not making very much money. The person I was working with, Mike Flannery, was twice as old as I was, had given up farming to do this frog collecting business. We would go out on days and hunt the marshes and creeks and lakes for green grass frogs. We would get upwards of 500 frogs a day, and we would take them back to his place and skin out the legs and put them in a big tub with ice in it. The next day or so, he would take them to Detroit and sell them to various restaurants and hotels and so forth. And then, he would come back and we'd start all over again. We made approximately twenty dollars a day for upwards of a year and a half, maybe two years. Of course, that was pretty good money for a kid at that time in our lives. This allowed me to go out about every night with my swash-buckling friends. We would get into a lot of you-know –what. Probably, this is where I got my Hillsdale county rogue reputation. But, believe me, it was a lot of fun, and I could care less at the time! So, it went on for a couple years… Frog hunting in the spring summer and fall, and trapping rats and mink and coon and skunk and possum in the winter time. Sort-of a modern day Daniel Boone, so to speak. Only, I never killed a bear on that tree, so the story goes. In looking though my supply of relics of the past, I ran into a notebook that I made during these years. This happened to be when I was trapping. The following will indicate how I kept a record of what was happening. As my notebook reads, "This was Friday, Dec. 2, 1938. The first day of the trapping season came in Dec. 1st. However, the 2nd, I sold 18 rats on a Friday, and they came to 10 dollars. On Dec 6, Tuesday, 1938, I sold 5 dollars for 7 rats. These were muskrats, mind you. And on Dec. 9th 1938, I sold 31 rats at $25. On Dec. 16th, Friday, I sold 14 rats, which came to $12.10. On Dec. 26th, I sold 3 rats for $2.30. On Dec. 31st, which was the last day of trapping season, I sold 6 rats for $4.75. The grand total for the month of Dec was 65.20, which totaled up to 16.30 for every week, which wasn't all that bad for wintertime. And I could continue my nightly escapades without fear of going broke. As I mentioned before, I worked for farmers in the immediate area before I started collecting frogs. I'll read you some of the days work and wages that I made at that time, which was in 1937. For instance, on a Friday, I worked for Alvin Bell, who was a neighbor to our north. I worked 9 hours for $1.80. On the Saturday, I worked 10 hours for two dollars, and on the Monday 10 hours for 2 dollars, and Wednesday I did 8 hours for $1.60. Then I went the other direction, over by Ransom, to Clarence Curse. I worked there Tuesday for 10 hours for two dollars. I might mention here, during the December trapping season, some of my expenses for the car. Of course I had some driving to do. On Dec. 2, Friday, I put in four gallons of gas and one quart of oil, which cost me 88c. On Dec 5, Monday, I put in four gallons of gas and two quarts of oil for a dollar and four cents. On Dec 9th, Friday, four gallons of gas and one quart of oil for 88c, Dec 12, Monday, six gallons of gas and two quarts of oil for a dollar and ten cents. Dec 16, Friday, four gallons of gas and one quart of oil for 88c, Dec. 19, Mon, four gallons of gas and two quarts of oil for a dollar and four cents. Dec. 22nd, Thursday, four gallons of gas and one quart of oil for 88c. Then I go into January, but I'll give you a couple dates on that, then forget it, because the rest of it was about the same. So, Jan. 3rd, Tues, two gallons of gas and a quart of oil for 53c, Jan 6th, Friday, four gallons of gas and one quart of oil for 88c. Jan. 9th, Monday, four gallons of gas and two quarts of oil for a dollar and five cents. As you can see, the old bus took almost as much oil as it did gas! Anyway, we kept her running and it was a good car. Believe me, until Ardis and I wrecked it. And that, of course, is another story.

I must say that I think that I have reached most of my goals that I set when I was a youngster. However, I didn't envision the four years that you might say I lost during World War II. This would have quickened my attainment of the goals that I had set. However, I'm satisfied, and I've been very lucky. I've enjoyed the satisfaction of reaching those goals. However, these goals will be mentioned when I find the proper place for them.