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Letter: 7

November 18,1994

      DEAR JEFF, Happy birthday. However the amount of happiness you can get from $10 is quite limited. Put together with some other money, it will help.

      I hope your big toe is getting well. You can't do without it. It's the main balancer on your foot. I had my left eye operated on yesterday. Five years ago I had my right eye taken care of. This time the operation was a newer and different method. There was only a small incision and the cataract was removed by something like ultra sound. Then the new lens was inserted and no stitches were made because of the smallness of the incision. They put a patch on it to protect my eye the night of the operation and this morning I went in for a followup examination. The patch was removed and I will now wear it only at night temporarily to protect it when I'm asleep. I have to put a drop in every two hours while I'm awake and will continue until the doctor says it's OK to discontinue them. I will see him again Monday and in a couple of weeks I'll get a prescription for new lenses. The eye is going to be very good.

      The doctor says everyone, including small kids, should wear sunglasses in the bright sun. Too much sun causes cataracts to develop sooner. Almost everyone gets cataracts but with many people they are not bad enough to need an operation and they get by. I think I got mine by sitting on a mowing machine and hay rake in the bright sun all summer mowing Emerald Reinecke's hay. We didn't have sunglasses. We just squinted and scowled at the bright sun.

      During the depression we didn't get paid much and felt very lucky to get what we did. I started working for Emerald when I was 9 years old. My feet would not reach down to the foot rests on the mower and when I crossed an irrigation ditch in the alfalfa field, I would fall off the seat and slide down the steel bar that held it and have to climb up on it again. I worked for him most of that summer. He gave me $15 when I went home go back to school. Of course I was fed well. My sister Elaine was a very good cook. In later years, I got paid 50 cents a day and was fed. We worked six days a week in the field 7 A.M. to noon and from 1 P.M. to 6 P.M. Of course the day started at 5 A.M. He would holler out to me and a couple of the hired men, "More hay,"and we would get up. One of us would jump on a saddle horse and bring in the work horses while one of the others would put hay and oats in each stall for the horses. When the horses got in, they knew which stall was theirs and we would harness them. We then ate breakfast and were out in the field by 7 A.M. The summer weather there was hotter than the hinges of hell.

      One time he asked me how I liked farming. I told him that if I had my choice between 10 years in the penitentiary and 5 on the farm, I would take the pen. Of course this isn't true because I could have tried to rob a bank and would have spent some time in the pen. So that was a lie because I went out there every summer for several years.

      You are very fortunate to have a nice house to live in and a dad that has a very good job. During the depression a couple of guys who hadn't seen each other for some time, would ask "Do you have a job?"If the answer was "Yes,"Then they would ask what kind of work. So many people were out of work that anything available was welcome. I remember one guy In Los Angeles during the recession years following 1937 had been out of work for a long time and finally got a job. I saw him in a Presbyterian church - that Irma talked me into going with her. This guy was in a new suit. A friend of ours said, "Charlie, you look great, new suit and all." He replied, "It's my B & 0 suit. You know — best and only. I got this job selling clothing in a men's clothing store. They said I had to have a new suit and I told them I was broke and couldn't buy a suit. They agreed to sell me one, and they'd take a dollar out of my pay each week."Those were the good old days.

      My first job for 40 hours a week was at $18 per week. I got by. So much for the good old days. Hope you have a happy birthday.

      Love, Grandpa

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