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Riding The Rails

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Through the Years

This group picture is of the people who migrated to California from Oklahoma. We stopped on the way at some relatives in Texas. Starting on the left is Grandpa Thomas Wiley Gudgel, my dad Marion Floyd Gudgel, then me, Doyal Gudgel, over a little is Mary (Tootsie) Gudgel, Schuh, Opal Gudgel, Otto Gudgel, Grandma Gudgel, then in front below is Marion F Gudgel Jr., and last my sister Flora Nell Gudgel Godfry.



Subject written about so far.

Early family history1910-20 with grandparents
Moving to CA and Blythe where I was born
How poor we were
Opossum hunting
The migration
Chowchilla and Central School
Rusty almost died and I burned my self very bad,
Working in the fields near Yakima
Working for school lunch money.
Selling newspapers
Riding the rails
Sailing a fishboat to Alaska
Kay's story of our trip to Alaska trip on Loyal's boat. A must read!
Robins back operation.
Check out my blog on World War 2 experience

This picture from a tintype is great grandfather Thomas Jefferson Gudgel and Sarah Jones Gudgel. The baby I do not know. This was in the his family bible which was in tatters and no binding. All the pages were loose. It was a leather bound bible. I tried to get it restored but the guy who was to do it never got around to it. So eventually I had to get rid of it. I have left only the page where their marriage tintype photos were. It had been through fire and flood. Especially flood as there was some water damage. He is in his Civil War uniform. He went to Indian territory after getting married in Springfield Missouri after he got out of the army after the Civil War. This was in 1867. As he was from Indiana her folks must have moved when he was away during the war otherwise there would be no need to marry in Springfield Missouri.





This is a biography like no other I know of. It will be written by anyone who has had contact with me since I was born August 23, 1921. Anyone who has been in contact with me, my wife Kathleen, and our children Dianne, Tom, Robin and Bob are invited to contribute your memories to this biography (history?). You are not limited to one time contribution but the invitation is ongoing. I hope you will reflect and when the spirit moves, write it up and send it in. I will set it up so you can log in and post it yourself. Or you can just email it to me and and I can post it. To post directly you will need a Google account. It is easy to create an account with Google but you may not want to do so in that case email me and I will post it for you. If you have a Google email account, answering my invitation already signs you up. I hope you will contribute whenever you think of something. It doesn't and cant be done properly all at once. So humor me and do it!

This is a picture of my great grandfather and grandmother who went to Indian Territory after they married in Missouri.

This will be a biography or history of our family. Not just me. I want not only text but pictures also if you have any. If you need more details or have suggestions you can write me at lfp2@comcast.net, ralphj@eskimo.com, or layod@comcast.net. (doyal spelled backwards) If you already have a Google account or want to create one so you can contribute directly let me know and I will put you on the list of authors who can make their contribution directly to the blog whenever they feel like it.

About 1910

I am going to write some of what I remember of my life. The early stuff will be from my mother. Dad went west because of the poverty in Oklahoma. When they were in Coleman there were no jobs and except for farming and perhaps cattle raising there was not much to do. With transportation by wagon it was too far from the markets to do anything else a means of making a living.

Some of the early stuff will come from my mother who I interviewed in te 1990's. Like a good genealogist I interviewed everyone I could sit down with on my travels. I also made copies of all family pictures I could find. There is a strong possibility of it being extremely boring to you. Hopefully when we get others adding their input it will make up for the lack of excitement in my life. This was first written in about 1996 and has been updated. Eventually to the present.

Mother and Dad were married in the fall of 1913 at Boggie Depot Oklahoma. This place was named after a supply depot for the army during the 19th century Indian wars. At this time it was just a place with a name. My parents stayed there until 1919. The reason the family was here at this time was that my Great Grandfather moved here right after the Civil War so it was still there when my parents married. Why they picked this place to settle I do not know.

When they first married, they had to live with his parents. This was a very bad situation as it was a very small house. On the other hand I don't think a big house would do either. When Mom and Dad were first married in Oklahoma they put in a crop of cotton. That didn't work out so Dad took a job in Yuma in 1918.

Mother followed to Blythe California in 1919 and stayed there four winters and summers. I was born there August 23, 1921, One summer was spent in Orange and another year that I did not get straight. I think was in the Imperial Valley. Dad said I learned to speak Mexican because we lived with them so closely. I remember some words to this day.

Dad in his new Naugahyde chair about 82 or so. We kids replaced his old worn out one he used




Floyd was an Odd Fellow and they helped Nellie (my mother) with money for travel to join Dad. In 1918-19 my mother Nellie, chopped cotton before joining Dad and with the money she bought shoes for the children. That would be the older ones as all the young ones were born in Calif. Grandma Gudgel got mad at mother for buying the shoes and told her she was wasting money on non-essentials before having a home. Shoes were not essential I guess. Or was this just a mother-in-law criticizing? This I suspect was the reason.

Grandpa Gudgel lost all his hogs from cholera. This was important because with no hogs to slaughter they would have no bacon or ham to make. He went to cutting cross ties for the railroad. Mother bought furniture for 24 dollars after they got married. A stove, bed and something else. I suspect the money came from the remainder of the money she had after she bought the other kids shoes. Times were hard for the farmers and farmworkers in those years. I have a picture of my grandmother Fergerson picking cotton near Fresno about that time. I call that sad.

About 1920

Mother told me they lived with the Gudgel's until she couldn't stand it any more.

The following are memories after moving to California from Oklahoma. In all this runs the thread of internal family problems not relating to financial problems. This could happen to anyone not a member of the family. Daughter in Laws were fair game for Grandma Gudgel.

I don't remember a lot about Oklahoma but do remember Grandpa giving Loyal, my brother, a hard whipping once which Loyal has forgotten since. It had something to do with a water melon. We were always conscious of tornado's and each house had a storm cellar. There was a place under the house below ground level to go to when a storm was approaching. One time we had a tornado in the area which ruined some trees. We didn't have a car either and got around by wagon. By the looks of the news they prefer to take their chances with tornado's as the news never shows storm cellars any more it seems like.

Because we moved around so many times in California I was held back in the first grade when we returned to Oklahoma but was advanced during the next year to the second grade so I didn't lose a grade. I was in the first grade in California but in first and second grade in Oklahoma.

I remember we used to go opossum hunting in Oklahoma and I guess we would eat them but other people apparently look upon them as more like a big rat. But then some people don't understand about having to put food on the table. Opossum sleep by hanging by their tails from a limb.

Poverty was always with us. Mom and dad had gone somewhere leaving us kids at home. Such as home was. I was hungry. There was a box of excelsior in the house and I thought it was shredded wheat and wanted some to eat. Leota my oldest sister had the sad duty to tell me it was not something to eat.
1930

Some of the family relatives had moved out to California before 1930 and from the description they were sending back the family decided to move too. You must remember that a move like this would not be taken lightly. To move from the only place you knew for so many years no matter how bad it was, was a traumatic experience.
Dad worked at building the bridge over the Colorado River at Blythe when we first moved there.

I don't remember much about the family move to California in 1931. Opal said we stayed in a motel the first night but it was so expensive that we camped out the rest of the trip. Actually grandma had packed the truck as she would a covered wagon. The family actually did make a move in a covered wagon in about 1900 so grandma did know a little about covered wagons. We still used a wagon for transportation there in Oklahoma. The picture of the truck coming up the hill on Route 66 looks like a covered wagon. Opal said we didn't have one flat on trip out to California. Early automobiles were plagued with tire troubles.
The truck was so slow someone just ran ahead and took this picture out in New Mexico or Arizona perhaps.

We did have other mechanical problems though. One time when making some repairs way out in the desert a nut was lost down in the transmission I believe and Rusty (Floyd Jr) was small enough to get his hand down to where it fell and retrieved it. Peoples future depends upon such small events. Route 66 was not paved all the way even this late in the century.

I remember one night near sort of a cliff. I had slept so soundly as kids tend to do that I thought I'd not moved all night but Dad said he had to pull me back from rolling down the hill during the night. Also when we got to the inspection station at the California state line the inspectors made us remove almost everything from the truck which was packed with everything we owned. I think it was meanness as we were obviously just Okies coming to California. What could we have to pollute California? But if you have read Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" you know how unwelcome Okies were.

This migration had been going on for some time I believe and I think a lot of Okies (Generic term for people moving from the dust bowl) had already arrived in Calif. before we got there. In Opals recollections of entering at the state line he does not, mention this nor did he remember it much later when I talked to him. But I remember it somehow. There must have been quite a bit of grumbling that affected me quite a bit because I was quite young. Ten years old actually. Looking back over his life Opal probably considered other things more important to remember. Also the merchants near the station gouged the newcomers. I remember we having to buy drinking water and a loaf of bread which was a dollar. In 1931 bread was usually more like 5 or 10 cents a loaf elsewhere. Finally we made it to the highway going down into the valley from the Techacaphi pass. If you haven't driven it it is a long down hill highway. Opal decided to let it all hang out and let the truck coast. Well, it could not stand all that speed and something went wrong. The transmission I think. So we had to get it off the road and contact a relative at Chowchilla to come and get us back to Chowchilla.

Chowchilla is a little town in the Central valley named after the Chowchilla Indians. It's only claim to fame other than a nice retirement community is it is the place where a couple kids hijacked a bus load of school children then buried it expecting to get some ransom. I went to school there with the driver of the bus. Chowchilla is a week end get away for commuters on the coast. They stay during the week but come home to Chowchilla on weekends. That was the way it was developing a few years ago. I don't know if the economy has maintained this system since that time. Chowchilla is in the farming area of San Joaquin Valley. Good clear warm weather as the valley is. In fact if it wasn't for the water brought in from other areas and pumped from underground it would be a desert. Because of the farming it is getting harder and harder to get water. When I lived there as a kid in the 1930's the water table was about 30 or 40 feet under the surface. But now it is hundreds of feet under. Getting water is a problem and is going to get worse. Some day this area will be desert again.

Rusty almost died when we lived in Sugar Pine. We left there in 1923. At Richmond near San Francisco in 1924 she took Floyd Jr. when he was 3 weeks old to join Dad at a logging camp for the summer. There was arsenic in the water which is actually not uncommon today. Floyd got sick. Nellie's brother, Lewis was there also. Nellie rode a train with Jr. to a sanatorium (hospital?) in Merced down in the valley where it was thought he had meningitis and TB of the colon. Finally Nellie told the doctor who had his office in Merced. She didn't like it that Jr. was kept in the kitchen near a hot stove. Merced is very hot in the summer and probably no air conditioning. Hardly anyone had it in those days. Apparently Grandma Fergerson and Lewis were taking care of the family in Sugar Pine. Finally mother told the doctor she was taking Jr. home.

We have a picture of all of us except dad at the house at Sugar Pine. This is where Rusty fell off the porch and cut over his eye. One of mothers brothers used to visit us. One time he gave us a dollar and we thought it was so wonderful. A whole dollar!

The Dr. said OK if she would do exactly as he said. The doctors name was Dr. Dearborn. Dr. Dearborn was thought a lot of by the Gudgel's but I think he was a
quack by the description mother gave about the treatment here. Jr. had had
diarrhea for 30 days. Finally mother told the doctor she was taking Jr. home.

Mother gave Jr. rice water and it cleared up the diarrhea.

It was here in Sugar Pine that I had a serious accident too. There had been a forest fire close to our house there and after it had been out about a week we thought it was ok to play where the fire had been. I was playing on the burnt ground and fell down. There was hot ashes under the surface. I put my arms out to break my fall and they went down into the ashes and seriously burned me. As mother was busy trying to get Rusty well I had to stay with an aunt while I recovered. Us kids always had a wonderful relationship with aunts and uncles. We took care of each other. Especially we who lived in a broken home.

It was a Sugar Pine that I got the only spanking of my life. Dad had told me not to follow my brother and friends when they went up into the woods. I was about 4 or 5 I guess. There were bears in the woods. This was just seven miles outside Yosemite Park. It was on the highway to Fresno from the Big Trees. Well one day Loyal, my older brother and friends started up the road going up the hill in the woods. I started following them but my dad saw me and caught me and spanked me all the way home. Probably just paddled me with his hand I think. Probably not all that far but it seemed far to me. As fast as I could run I could not escape the spanking. But this was the only time he ever spanked me. I loved my dad. One day at another time when he and I were over on the coast and he was working in a orchard while he was gone I cried all the day he was gone. The people I was staying with tried to console me but I could not be consoled. You can get so lonesome for your dad or mom.

After we got to Chowchilla we lived in a house that had no water or electricity. This house was near Central school two or three miles out of town which I attended. It was my job to get milk from a farm across the fields. One day I forgot to get the milk. Grandpa made me go to get it after dark. I was afraid of the dark but after forcing myself go I wasn't afraid of the dark anymore.


The picture is of me next to the teacher at Central school.

Around this time I got something in my eye. No one could get it out. So I had to wait a couple days before I could get to a doctor. I used to fall asleep in a corner and Loyal would pick me up and put me in bed. I don't think anyone can imagine just how desperately poor we were. I cant remember any furniture at all in the room at the time.

Soon the Gudgel brothers acquired an old car with a propeller on the radiator that spun from the wind when the car was moving. One day I was playing around swinging a rope with a knot tied on the end of it trying to make it spin. by hitting it with the knot. Instead of spinning it broke off, just being made of pot medal. My brother Rusty (jr) was accused of it and I did not tell them that I did it. For years I felt bad because Rusty got the blame for it. I don't remember if he got a spanking for it but suppose he did or maybe it wouldn't have made such an impression on me. I confessed to him a few years before he died so my conscience is clear. He didn't remember anyway of course.

Later when Dad moved out and took us to live in another place it was an old barn with a small sort of travel trailer for a kitchen. Mother and dad had separated for good by now. Between the trailer and shed we had a bed. One day a chicken was laying an egg on it and us kids raised her up to watch it come out.

This period must have been pretty hard for us as we had only dad to take care of us. It's amazing how little we dwell on the bad times. When dad was out working we would play with the neighbor kids. So in spite of the horrible conditions we remember the times we played with the neighbor kids. What we ate must have been very poor. As dad was working we would have to make do with what we had. Peanut butter and jam a large part of the time I suppose. I dread to think of the unhealthy conditions. Bath? I suppose if we went swimming was about the only time that happened. It was not unheard of to skip school and go to the nearby reservoir. Later dad moved us to a house on the other side of Central School. He made beer which would blow up bottles during the night. He would occasionally make raison pie. We loved and still do raison pie. I don't know how it compared to those your mom used to make but for us it was great. We almost never got any candy or sweets living out in the country as we were.

One time Dad got us a couple rabbits. We kept them in the detached garage. Before long there were lots of little rabbits and some got loose. They they were in the fields and all over.


It was here in the house that dad allowed a cousin to come in and stay. Either to baby sit or just a place to stay. This guy was at least a teen ager. I am not exactly sure of his name but the guy I remember was still alive not that may years ago. I am sure now he is gone. But what he did to us little kids would put him away for life if he got caught doing it now. Some years before Flora Nell died I asked her if he had abused her. She told me she would tell me later. She never did but no doubt he did. If you wonder why I hate pedofiles this is the major reason. Not that this was the only incident in my young life where I was the object of sexual assault by relatives. Some people like Kay never had this to contend with because of the entirely different enviorment she was brought up in. I was approached by another relative who I was in contact until he died but I never made an issue of it even when I became an adult. We had cordial relations until the day he died.

The period when we lived in the separate, barn, trailer big enough for a kitchen and the bed outside

Mother said she divorced Dad in Klamath Falls Ore. But Leoma said it was
Reno. Which I think is probably correct. Later through a letter from Floyd via
Nellie's sister Hattie mother learned that dad would allow her to take the three younger children. (Me, Flora and Rusty ) She had the 3 older ones at the time. In 1933 Nellie went back to get us three children. She sent a tent

ahead so she would have someplace to stay without having to stay with anyone.

Some of the relationship between mom and dad is not clear to me. The relationship between mom and dad was so contentious that I can't understand how dad managed to get with us to go up into Oregon. But according to Loyal and Leoma

Floyd returned to Oregon with her with all the children. However my oldest sister Leota was married by this time. Mother told dad that if he wanted to live with her he would have to marry her. He would not do it even though she got a minister to talk to him. Finally Mother told Loyal that he would have to get his father away from her. Loyal convinced Dad to leave and return to Calif.

Loyal does not remember how he got back to Oregon from the trip to California with dad. They went south on the freight train. A town in northern California, Red Bluff I think, took them off the train but put them up in the jail for the night and fed them too. I think the RR Bulls had kicked them off. The depression was on in full force at this time. The city had an understanding with the RR that if hobo's came in on the train they went out on the train.

During the summer and fall When I was about fourteen or fifteen we used to go over to the Yakima area and do farm labor. This was the first few years we came to Seattle. There is a picture of us us in front of an old Ford getting ready to go to Yakima. Some of these years we used go to Renton or Kent to pick hops. This was before all the industry built up in the valley of
course. These days there seems to be a bias against farm workers. In those days any work that earned money was good money. There just wasn't much of it. Mother did not make me work if I didn't want to. Sometimes I would play and swim in the Yakima river by myself. One time I was trying to swim across
the river but swallowed some water and started to panic. But I got across OK.
of course because you kids happen to be here now. I probably wasn't in much
danger as the river wasn't very deep except at that particular spot it was
quite swift. So before long I would have been to a spot that I could have
stood up fairly easily. This migrant camp was still in business in 1990. It

is located where highway 410 crosses the river just a short way out of Yakima
I might not have been in much danger but it sure slowed me up some as I
remember it to this day. I had another swimming incident shortly before I married your mother. We were swimming at Seward park and was out on a float a hundred yards or so from the beach. It might have been on a small boat. But I was swimming and heard this man nearby start calling for help. I swam near him but was afraid to get hold of him from the front so told him to turn around so I could get hold of him from the rear. That way he could not panic and bear hug me and pull me under So I started pulling him to shore Before long a boat came along and took him from me and got him ashore. It didn't seem like much at the time but thinking back on it he might have been in much more trouble than it looked like at the time. Because I had such an easy time by having him turn around it seemed like it was easier than it might have been if I hadn't been there to save him. I never did find out who he was as he was too exhausted to talk to me then.

1930

I went to Washington Grade school on 18th and Washington I think the street is. It is now the Seattle Central Community College. That was the first school I went to in Seattle. I would have been about 11 or 12 at the most. Mother was very strict with rules. No movies, no dancing I was too young to smoke so suppose she didn't have any rules about that. In any event one day in class the teacher was going to show some sort of instructional film. Just when she turned the projector on I was terrified I was going to see a movie and got up and walked out and went into the hall. I stood there a minute and soon she came out to see what was the matter. I told her I was not permitted to watch movies and as I remember she allowed me to miss the film. She was an understanding and kind teacher as I remember and made me feel comfortable I think. This kind of conduct goes on to this day. You constantly hear of the cults that do the same more or less although they usually keep themselves in communities separate from the general population.

I am not sure how she managed to keep food on the table. Some welfare I suppose. I do know Leoma my sister had a part time job to help out. In a year or two Loyal my brother bought me a guitar so he might have worked somehow although we went to the fields over at Yakima and worked. But I didn't know anything about all this. As any 11 or 12 year old knows about family finances. But at school I had no money to buy lunch in the cafeteria and there was no free lunch. You had to work for it. I was given the job of cleaning up the restrooms. Boys and girls. I was at the age that just being in the girls restroom made me feel strange. So I at least had something to eat besides peanut butter sandwich. Another thing about schools in that age was that some schools saluted with the raised arm just like the Nazis in Germany. Every morning Washington Grade school congregated in the hall outside their rooms and saluted the flag. All the classrooms faced the large spacious hall. My mother was very religious and strict about going to movies. We were forbidden to watch movies. One day the teacher had an instructional film for the class. When it came time to watch I was so terrified that I just got up and went into the hall. Remember I was about 12 years old. The teacher came out into the hall and kindly asked me why I left. So I had to tell her I was forbidden to watch movies. I don't remember what happened after that but I suppose I stayed in the hall. Later I made up for what I might have missed because today when I talk to Kay I learn that she had pretty much the same experience. She didn't go to movies until about the time we married. She went to the Free Methodist Church at Seattle Pacific College now Seattle Pacific University. In fact she attended the grade school at the college. That's when she lived at the foot of Queen Ann Hill. Close by.

About a year after moving to Seattle moving here and there in what is First Hill area I think it is. We lived on 12th Avenue where the Youth Jail is now. They have torn down the house by now as it was on the property they wanted. I used to listen to the radio statiion which was owned by the McCaw's. McCaw built channel 13 TV. At the present the McCaws are big in communications of varioys sorts. They also had other radio interests. J Elroy McCaw the cousin of the big wheel did the morning show. After playing a record he might put on some canned applause. A precourser of the laugh track. I was about 13 and I didn't know that the applause was recorded. So one day I decided to go to the station and join the audience. I think he started about 6 AM so I had to get there pretty early. I walked of course. When I got there I found out what the truth was. When he found out that I was there to see him he was really surprised that anyone would come down to see him. Just happy that someone would actually come down to the studio to see him. Even a 13 year old kid. For years we stayed in touch. Even meeting a couple times when I was in the TV News business. He would play any record I asked for and as I remember I asked for "Blue Moon" several times. Some time ago I contacted his nephew and told him of the incident. I cant remember the name of the cellphone company owned by the McCaws now.

There were absolutely nothing to do. No money, no job of course. I remember in Salem before we moved to Seattle once I found a popsicycle stick at the curb that gave a free popsicycle if it was turned in. So I tried looking for popsicycle sticks for a free popsicycle. But I never found another free one. Toys were in short supply too. Mother, after we moved to Seattle, would pick up toys from the Goodwill on Dearborn street just a few blocks from where we lived. However in those days people did not discarde toys that were useable so invariably they were incomplete and pretty much useless. I remember in particular erector sets. You couldn't make anything good because so many parts were missing. But mother tried anyway.

I tried to make my own toys. I tried to make a scooter. Now they sell them and kids have lots of fun. In those days scooters were made by getting a fruit crate which were fairly easy to find. Next was to find a cast off roller skate much more difficult for a 10 year old to find. But if you could find it you then took the front half of with the front wheels on it and nailed it on the front of a 2x4 board and nailed the back wheels on the back end of the 2x4 which was about 2 or 2 1/2 feet long. When mounted on the bottom of the fruit crate the scooter would turn by tilting the crate right or left. On the top of the crate crosswise you would nail a 1x2 of some such board for handles. That was the idea anyway. I am not sure I was ever able to accumulate all the parts to make my own but somehow I did get a scooter. Another toy for outside fun was to make a toy to push a wheel along in front of a board with a cross piece nailed to the end. It was not very hard to find a cast off wheel maybe 6 inches in diameter. You had to take the tire off so it would move easily in front of the pusher.

Eventually I got to the age I needed some money. In those days during the depression there were not many ways for a kid to do that. Selling newspapers was about the only way. In the 1930's there were 3 newspapers in Seattle. The Times, Post Intelligencer, and the Seattle Star. The Times and PI sold for 5 cents and the Star for 3 cents. It could have been 2 cents for a while. The Star and PI had pretty much a corner on home delivery I think. The Star tried to make a go of it by selling cheap and advertising money. But this had the disadvantage of not letting the paper boy make any money and that was where their sales come from. There were two ways I could sell papers. There was a black guy called Neversleep who had a paper shack on 12th and Jackson. In those days, especially downtown, the city allowed paper boys to make a shack and sell papers on the corner. So Neversleep had one on 12th and Jackson. His was on the east side of 12th so cars could get through the light coming home from work and stop to buy his paper. I think Neverslleep probably lived in his shack is why he was called Neversleep because he was always there. Now, Neversleep would give me some papers to sell on the west side of 12th but the sale would have to be made while the light was red. Selling on commission of course meant that what I made was very little. Even if I sold for the full price over the cost it wouldn 't have been much. So selling for something and still letting Neversllep have a cut meant I was making very little. As a result I was looking for other ways to sell papers. I could go to the Times, PI or Star and buy papers to sell but all the good spots were already taken. I could try selling door to door but that was extremely iffy, I could wind up with thepapers left unsold and out the investiment of the papers. I could scrape up a little to buy the Star and sell it but the commission was almost nothing because of the selling price. So that was what I tried a few times. I'd walk down to the Star on 8th and Union I think it was and buy a few papers with the few pennies mom would let me have. Now on top of all this I had to get the papers to 12 th and Jackson through the gauntlet of other paper boys territory between 8th and Union and 12th and Jackson. I can tell you these other paper boys didn't like someone going through their territory with papers. Looking back on it I don't think there was any way to make any spending money by selling newspapers. It would have worked out better if I had been a more aggressive seller on the corner but I was not and never have been a merchandiser of any kind. The Star couldn't see that pricing their paper the same as the Times and PI would have got more sales by paper boys selling the paper. If the paperboy didn't sell the paper itdidn't get sold. At 2 or 3 cents it was absolutely impossible even in the depression to sell their paper and make enough to keep doing it. So the Star was doomed without selling at a price that the Paperboy could make a little.

The only way to make money would be go over to Yakima and work in the orchards or fields. Here is a picture of us on our way to yakima with friends who also needed to work.




So until I managed to get a job delivering Western Union telegrams I was pretty much broke. But I never lost hope that some day I would succeed in getting a job. Turning to crime never occurred to me. Stealing and so on.

The statistics in the following about riding the rails came from the book Riding the Rails by Uys.

I am 1/250,000th part of the American generation fast becoming only accessible through history books. Two hundred and fifty thousand young Americans both boy and girls Some say as many as one million left home because they thought a homeless life on the road was better than what they then had.

When I first left home I was only 15 but some were as young as 9. In 1936 when I went on the road Roosevelt had already had congress pass a law restricting employment to 16 or over. I could have done migrant work on a farm with my family but at 15 that didn't appeal to me as the pay wasn't enough as far as I was concerned. My family had to eat so they had no other choice As I was 15 my mother didn't insist I work all day in the fields. So instead of hanging around camp while the others worked I decided I would go to California and stay with my father. I can't remember what we were doing in Wenatchee at the time. To get to California there two ways of doing it. Either hitch hike the highway of take a freight train. I decided that the train was the way to go. Part one of this narrative got me to Grants Pass Oregon.

It's really sad but Roosevelt stumbled and bumbled along until the Japanese put everyone to work on December 7, 1941 while Hitler got Germany back on the road to prosperity in just a couple years. People seem to forget all this. It's almost sacrilege to even mention this.

Through recorded history the history books do not talk about the lower dregs of society because what is there to tell? They lived and they died and accomplished nothing. So history books by and large tell us nothing about the great mass of people who lived below the society that accomplished something. Ancient Rome had it's unemployed and slums so what has changed. Nothing was recorded about them either. I guess that is to be expected because everyone can't be at the top. There is always the haves and the have nots. The have nots do not have a press agent so they are ignored.

It is for this reason that the book "Riding the Rails" is so different. It tells us about what the under achieving class was doing in this desperate time in American history. It is hard to realize from one who went through it that there are some who have not had the experience of going hungry or not getting the toy their heart desired. Yes and some even starved to death.

I never had any romantic ideas of riding the rails as all I wanted was just to get from the northwest to California. Some boys may have had ideas of that kind but the first time they had to do without a meal no doubt their romantic ideas went out the box car door. I did run into a couple boys who befriended me who apparently had enough money to just travel the country for the fun of it. I met them in Grants Pass Oregon. See my story of riding the rails to read about t hem.


I was 15 years old when I hopped a freight in Wenatchee Washington and started my journey to see Dad in California. The family was in Wenatchee working in the orchards or fields I cant even remember the date. I don't think it was in the .apple picking season or it would have been in October and I would have been in school
When I told mother I was going to California of course she begged me not to go as I am sure she was sure it was a dangerous thing for a boy to undertake. Of course I wouldn't listen as my mind was made up. Isn't that the case with all fifteen year olds? I cant remember what members of the family were in Wenatchee but I wasn't much for working all day as I would have had to do when I got older. But mother allowed me to work when I wanted to and not if I wanted.
So away I went to the yards in Wenatchee to catch the freight train.. I have practically no memory of that trip except that although the weather wasn't all that cold when riding on a flat car without much clothing. Especially in the Northwest close to the Sound. I also remember going through the 9 mile tunnel coming to Seattle.
My memory is that I stayed with Leoma here at least over night. She was not married at the time but it seems to me that is where I stayed as I had a bed overlooking a lean-to shed at the back of the house in Ballard. Ballard is near the Interbay freight yards. But still I had to get to the freight yards in the south in the Duwamish flats.
I took two trips to California on the freight and some of what I remember could be mixed up between the two. My memory isn't all that good so only the things that strongly affected me will I remember.
When I got to the Tacoma yards we (a group of hobo's and myself) were waiting for a freight going south. I was very much in a hurry to get to California so I disregarded the advice of an experienced hobo and took the first train out instead of being patient and taking the one that went where I wanted to go faster without any stops. What I got was a local that went down the valley in Oregon leaving me pretty much stranded south of Salem. This could have been caused because of an incident the night before I took the freight there were several of us in the box car. The only one open that we could get in. During the night a homosexual attempted to have sex with me. . Maybe that is the reason I decided to take the first train out the next day.
I cant remember going through Portland because of poor memory. In fact today I don't remember being in Portland at all. So the next thing I remember is south of Salem the local freight I was on was very slow and I was getting very hungry. I don't know how long it had been since I had eaten. I decided to leave the freight and try hitchhiking instead.. Highway 99 is close to the railroad. I was hungry and no restaurants around, besides I didn't have the price of meal I overcame my reluctance to beg and went to a farm house to the back door and asked for something to eat. She must have fed me but all I remember was that I begged for something to eat. This was the only time I ever begged for something to eat. I was just too embarrassed to beg.
I found that hitch hiking was not fast either but I finally managed to get to Grants Pass. This was in the afternoon or early evening. and all I had was 50 cents in my pocket. This I am sure of although I am not sure if it was this trip or the second one. It doesn't make any difference.. But my problem was finding somewhere to stay for the night. I was wearing a heavy mohair overcoat. So not wanting to spend my 50 cents on a hotel room as that would leave me nothing to eat on, so I lay down in the ditch beside the road on the edge of town and tried to get some sleep there. It was too cold, however, even with my coat on so decided to go into town and look around. While doing this I ran into two kids also bumming around. The difference was they were doing it for the experience and not because they had to. I remember they said I could. go to their room and sleep there, I don't remember eating anything but I could have I suppose with part of the fifty cents I had.
The next morning they had had enough of my company and told me they would be leaving without me. I was desperate not knowing how to get to California without any money. When they told me that I was on my own they were standing in front of me. When he said that and I realized I could no longer go with them I reached back and hit one in the stomach as hard as I could in anger and frustration. For some reason they didn't mop up he street with me. So they left..
The next thing I remember about the trip out of Grants Pass was that I was able to catch a a freight going south but across state to Klammath Falls. It was carrying trucks and equipment back to LA after making the movie Call of the Wild. There were trucks on the flat cars so I and another ‘bo got in the cab of one. He was under the steering wheel. I in the passenger side. Things went along just fine until we got to Klammath Falls. I was sleeping away just fine. The other guy also. We got in Klammath Falls sometime during the hours after midnight. The train stopped in the yards and while it was making up (switching cars) the Bulls made their usual rounds and one opened the door to the truck on the side I was sleeping and told me to get out. Well I was sound asleep. So I just stepped out into thin air not realizing I was about six to eight feet in the air. Well, splat. I went flat on my back between the train cars. I was stunned. Maybe even knocked out. That I don't know. I know that the Bull bent down when I woke up and he asked me if I was OK. I wasn't ok but I said I was. He told me to go to the end of the yard and I could catch it when it was leaving. That I did but I had a headache for three days until I arrived in California. So I must have sustained a concussion when I fell. This distracted the Bull so much he forgot to look in the cab and did not see the other man in the cab.

Some information from "Riding the Rails"



When we left our hero (me) the last time, I was picking himself up off the ground between two freight trains in the yards at Klammath Falls Oregon. I had just arrived from Grants Pass on the freight bringing the equipment used in filming the movie Call of the Wild.

I had been sleeping on the passenger side of one of the trucks on a flat car so when the RR Bull opened the door and told me to get out and that is what I did. The problem was I was so sleepy I didn't know I was about 7 feet above the ground when I took the step. At this late date I don't remember if it knocked me out but probably not for long as the bull helped me to my feet and asked me if I was ok. I was able to stand and understand when he told me I could go to the end of the yards and catch it as the train left because it would still be going slowly.
I was able to do this even though I head was ringing and I had a splitting headache. I also had it for the next three days.
My fall had distracted his attention from the other bo under the steering wheel of the truck and as a result he was not kicked off the train. What his treatment would be if we had been two adults I don't know. Some railroad dicks cold be quite cruel and nasty. One bull called Denver Bob was reputed to shove trespassers under the wheel of moving trains. At Niland California Henry Kocyur drew his gun and robbed two bo's of $2.70 cents. One of them had not one penny on him. Not all bulls were such miserable human flotsam because my brother told me about a trip he and our dad took where in Redding California. There they took them to the city jail and gave them a meal then put them up in the jail overnight.

Bulls though could be bad news. In Longview Texas Texas slim liked to beat young boys. Some young riders were made to do chain gang work. Age no problem. 14, 15, 16. All the same. You get caught you worked the chain gang.

Different areas of the country treated the hobos differently in a lot of ways. Hobos and bums had different definitions. A hobo offered to work for food. Yes really work for food. Bums lived by bumming his sustenance. I started out as a hobo. I just wanted to get to a destination. My fathers farm in California. But before I arrived I did some bumming because I had no money or food. In Deming, New Mexico a small town of 4,000 inundated with 125 hobos a day would have a different attitude from a town off the railroad who only a few each month. In one instance the RR bulls took a bunch to the jail and the next morning the city cops took them back to the RR yards and told the RR that they brought them in so they would take them out. Even if it took the whole police force to make them.

Not only were hobos resented but victims of the dust bowl who had to leave were just as unwelcome. You can read Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath to see how it was. We had our own experience when we made the trip to California as dust bowl migrants. Opal told the story and it can be found on Bob's Web site. I wont rewrite it except go over out experience when we arrived at the California inspection station that he didn't tell about. Opal didn't remember how we were treated at the California line but as a 9 year old boy I was impressed enough that I do.

As an impressionable 9 year old it certainly made an impression on me. Probably because there was a lot of grumbling. At the inspection station they seemed to be as nasty as they could to dust bowl immigrants. They took pleasure in forcing the people to remove everything they and had lay it out on the ground. To do this they made us remove every thing from the truck and lay it out on the ground to be inspected. If you see the picture you can imagine how much work it was for us. This place was also a rip off if someone needed supplies. We needed some bread as I recall and when bread was selling for 5 or 10 cents elsewhere they made us pay either a dollar or even two dollars. In any case it made a great impression one me although Opal didn't remember it years later.

In Weatherford they used the same excuse as was used against blacks in the south to deny equal rights. There, when a person came in with some sort of disease, they would ride them 7 or 8 miles out of town and leave them on the highway. One more recounting of an incident what stretches the imagination. There were incidences on the Arizona California border where the railroad would kick off the train 600 hobos and leave them in the desert to find their way to civilization. If you have ever been there (I lived in Blythe as young boy) it makes you wonder how many died from starvation and thirst.

The above information about treatment of hobos came from the book Riding the Rails, Teenagers on the Move During The Great Depression. It also gave me the inspiration to tell the
story of the time I rode the rails.

I took two trips by freight train or sometimes by hitch hiking. I did very little hitch hiking. Just one stretch in Oregon. This story combines these two trips because I can't remember which trip an incident happened. I can't at this late date remember which incident happened on which trip. But they happened and I remember the major ones because it made such an impression on me. Remember I was only 15 and very impressionable so some things impressed me so I remember them. Some of the trip was a blur and I don't remember what happened on which trip now.

Somehow I must have managed to make it to the end of the yards and catch the freight as it left. There was a box car with a dozen or so hobos in it and I managed to get in. Now there were two events where I was in a boxcar with a bunch of hobos and I cant remember on which trip the happened. On one when the train began to move, This was out of Tacoma and now I believe it was the second trip because I think I had learned to wait for the right train so it wouldn't go to the place I didn't want to go. From these yards if you got on the wrong train it took you to San Francisco and I wanted to go down the San Joaquin valley to Merced and Chowchilla. But anyway we were lying down and the bum next to me began to make sexual advances towards me. Fortunately because there were a lot of other hobos in the car I could rebuff him because he didn't want the others to know. Young boys on the trains were in danger from what was known as wolves. They used the hungry and innocent boy to entice them into homosexuality. I myself was in circumstances many times where homosexuals were a problem. From strangers to relatives. To this day I hate homosexuals for what they tried to do to me and did do to my younger brother and sister. But because the young boys were hungry and usually with no place to stay he was very vulnerable to these perverts, I wont call them men.

But getting back to the train leaving Klammath Falls, Or. This town is in the mountains and quite cold the time of the year I was on the train. In spring as I had left the others in Wenatchee working in the fields. To try to keep from freezing someone would close the door. Soon the stink got so bad that someone else would open it. It went this way until we got to Weed the next day. Now that seem funny. But it wasn't at the time because of the cold.

Further down in the northern part of the Sacramento valley it was quite warm and I had to take to the roof of a box car because there were no flat cars to ride on. Unfortunately it had a flat wheel which was not evident until we got up to cruising speed. Then the top of the boxcar just bounced up and down making it impossible to ride on it. So I decided to go to the car ahead being ridden by another hobo. To get to one car to the other I jumped between the cars. This was preferable to trying to climb down the ladder and reach over to the ladder on the next car then climb up. So I just jumped form one car to the next when the train was going 50 mile an hour or so.
When I got to the other car the other hobo jumped to the car ahead of the one we were on. I don't know why to this day he did that. He sure wanted solace.

This was on the trip I got on the train against the advice of the experienced hobos. The problem was that in Marysville California the tracks split to go to either San Francisco or on down the Valley to Sacramento Fresno and south. I had gotten on the one to San Francisco but I wanted to go to Chowchilla. Because these are huge switching yards the trains have to go quite slow and I was able to get off without killing myself. Now the problem was to get back on the right train without killing myself. That wasn't going to be easy as I am not the fasted kid on the block and although the trains are not going very fast in the yards anyone catching a train on the fly must be running at the same speed the train is traveling or you can't hang on. You usually have a bag or some luggage to slow you up too. I was watching the train going by in the direction I wanted it to go. Now I could either take a run at it or walk back to he yards where it was made up. That could be a couple miles. While contemplating the alternatives a black guy took a run at it an made it in fine style. Well, I figured if he made it maybe I could. Big mistake. I made my run but unfortunately I wasn't going as fast as the train so when I grabbed the ladder it jerked me off my feet and throwing me to the ground along side the train.
Riding the Rails tells of an enormous number of hobo's killed or maimed from train accidents. By falling under the wheels or killed on the cars somehow. Shifting loads was one primary way. In 1932 alone nearly 2000 were killed or injured.

When I began to fall I had the presence of mind and ability to roll away from the train until I came to a stop. Down the yards a couple hundred yards or so a couple RR employees saw me fall and came running up expecting to so see me with half my legs or something. But no, just my pride was damaged so I walked back to where I could get on a train while it was standing still.

This was the last major event that I remember so the remainder of the trip must have been uneventful.

On he way to Weed out of Klammath Falls I managed to get in a box car with quite a number of other hobos. It was cold but they stunk. One would get to the point where he could not stand the smell and would open the door to get some air. Then it would get so cold anther one would close it. This went on until we got to Weed. I changed trains there and don't remember what I was riding in from there on south to Chowchilla. It was probably a box car as Weed is up quite high in the mountains so is cold riding out in the open. Not far south of here is Red Bluff I think where in the early thirties Loyal and Dad were going south and the police let them stay in the jail for the night. After the bulls had kicked them off the trian. I don't know if they fed them breakfast as did happen occasionally I think Loyal said they did. They made it back on the morning freight because the Town and Railroad had an agreement. They came in on the train and by golly they go out on the train.
On down California just north of Sacramento is Marysville. This is a big switching yard, Trains split here to go to San Francisco or on south to Sacramento and on down the valley where I wanted to go. I waited in the yards with my bindle ( where the phrase "bindle stiff" came from I guess). The problem is here that the trains don't stop as they are made up north of this place. They are going slow but slow for them might be too fast for me. I'm not the swiftist runner in the block. Well, anyway, after a while a freight came by and a black guy ran and caught it on the fly. I considered the situation and decided if he can make it maybe I can. This is serious business. If you miss you can get dragged and go under the wheels. It was either make a run for it or walk back to where they make up the trains and get on there. I don't remember how far that was but far enough that I decided I'd make a run for it. Well,here goes, I ran and sure enough with the weight of the pack I grabbed hold and it was going considerably faster than I was running. So naturally it jerked me off my feet and I couldn't hold on. I fell down but was able to roll down the bank away from the train wheelswithout getting hurt other than my feelings. A couple railroad workers up ahead of me saw me fall and rushed to me to check if I was all in one piece.


Down on the Duwamish flats there was a Hooverville even after Kay and I were married in 1941. They finally demolished it when we were living at 321 8th Ave Apt.68 against the wishes of the occupants naturally. This was a holdover from the thirties when the depression was so bad. Even in 1941 there was a lot of unemployment. People think that Roosevelt got the nation out of the depression but actually World War 2 did that.
Every now and then here in 2008 they are kicking the homeless out of where they are staying. Don't ask me for a solution though.

This is an early picture of Dianne that I carried throughout my time in the service. All over Europe.

1940

After we moved to Richmond Highlands shortly afterWW2, Charley Brown Kay's uncles started a wholesale fireworks distribution business. He leased a lot just across the county line at 205th and Aurora where the Auto Dealer is now. It was illegal to sell in King County. I would take my vacation from Union Oil at the same time and go to a location he had found in other parts of the state build a stand and sell on commission. Sometimes in Oregon even. The picture here is of a boy I hired who lived in Yesler Terrace to help us out. Robin was just a few months old at the time.If you look carefully you will see what looks like the side of a hill in the background. Actually this was a dry gulley. It also was the cause of a near disaster. The boy shown in the picture slept a sleeping bag on the ground. That morning just after he had gotten up we had a heavy rain and a rush of water came down the gully about a foot or two deep. If he had been still in his sleeping bag I am sure he would have drowned because he probably could not get out of the sleeping bag. That was a real bad thing.

We had rented a corner of a tavern parking lot. People would park, buy fireworks then shoot them off. One couple had a very young baby in the car then would shot off the firecrackers and arial bombs right off the fender with the baby in the car. I should have called the cops but didn't sad to say. I wonder how that baby turned out after being shocked with the fireworks going off right above it. Sad. I was just as neglegent. They also went into the tavern and drink beer leaving the baby in the car.

My other blogs

See some of my other blogs
My WW2 experiences
The war memories of Bill Sheldon who is the husband of Virginia Sheldon Kays cousin.
A daily update of an apartment construction project near here. You can watch it grow as I take a picture from the same location every day it is under construction.
A very interesting blog of various slide shows showing Afghanistan, I have a friend in Afghanistan who sends me pictures. These are the real thing. He is in Kabul

1950
Family Scandals

Every family probably has family scandals and our family is no different. The Gudgel's are a proud people and would like their reputation to be how they would like to live it at church. There is the tendency to hide the scandals in our history. When I started researching family history before the days of the Internet it was not all that easy to come up with new information unless you knew someone who had already come across it. For instance you had to either send a letter to someone or go there and look for information in the government records. In any case when I was looking for my Great Great grandfather Henry T Gudgel who it was claimed had died Shiloh in the Civil War and was buried in Pine Bluff Arkansas I had a hard time finding out the truth. I didn't find out what had happened until I found out that he had died about 6 weeks after the start of the Civil War from typhoid fever and was researching his pension records. Of his widow of course who was number 715 in all the pension records of Civil War. I was looking over the records one day and noticed that one boy was born 18 months after he died. Now the light began dawn. The story that Henry T had died at Shiloh was just a smoke screen to hide the fact of the child born after he died. I wont go into it unless someone asks but there might be other reasons why this child was born when he was other than she was promiscuous. Anyone who wants this idea can email me for my idea and I will send it to you. I wont go into that now because this is the story of my family not the genealogy of the Gudgel's.


There are other scandals one of which I shrink from exposing so it will remain hidden although it is not unknown. But for now I will expose the other indiscretion that was hidden for about 50 years.

One day, I don't remember where I was, Kay called me and told me something about a sister I didn't know about wanted to talk to me if I wanted to talk to her. Now this was a big surprise to me because I thought I knew all my sisters. When I got home and called the number I found that this sister (Clara) was the illegitimate daughter of my father. Her name was Favre just like the well known football player. Way back when we lived in Blythe or thereabouts this woman who also had other children became pregnant by my dad and Clara was the result. The hardship and misery that this contributed to her and the children was incredible. They had to live in a tent in an orchard. She was befriended by an Asian man who was good to her. Clara lived with a step father who never let her forget who she was. All this made for a extremely difficult situation for those of us who have at least a semblance of family life can not comprehend. She eventually grew up and married a man who made up for the misery she grew up with. Unfortunately she did not live long enough after we met to let us get to know each other. She died of cancer about a year after she met us. She was not unknown to my aunts and uncles so her attempts to contact us was rebuffed. Eventually an aunt by marriage Cecil Gudgel, the widow of Lloyd, told her about us and that is how she was able to contact her family in the Seattle Area.

1960

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E:\Alaska trip-v2.wpd

In about 1964 my brother Loyal Gudgel had decided television was not for him. He decide to sell out to me and build a boat, then take it fishing in Alaska or off the coast of Washington. He then built a 46 foot motor sailor. At first he wanted to sail the south seas or around the world. For some reason he changed his sights and decided to go fishing. They say a bad day at fishing is better than a good day at work. Before I bought the business he built the boat and was in the throes of finishing it up when I took over the business. Now a 46 foot boat is quite a large boat. After finishing the boat he took it on a few short shakedown cruises on Puget Sound.

When the fishing season arrived and Loyal felt the boat was ready to go fishing he asked me to go along on its maiden voyage to Ketchikan Alaska. Kay, my wife volunteered to go along and do the cooking. Our dad, Floyd Gudgel, went along to help Loyal fish. My seafaring experience consisted mainly of two trips across the Atlantic. One on the troop ship Queen Elizabeth during WW2 and back home on a troopship banana boat after the war..
Loyal was always of an inventive mind and changed the standard link and chain steering mechanism to electrical powered steering. What could you expect really, from a guy who would jump out of a perfectly good airplane? He was a paratrooper. Dad could and did enjoy pushing the little lever to steer.
Ketchikan is about 600 miles north of Seattle on the Inland Passage. One of the most dramatic and scenic places on earth. My dad said on the trip that this was the most beautiful place he had ever seen. Cruise ships now make it a popular tour out of Vancouver Canada as foreign ships can not carry passengers between US ports. Kay and I were to fly back to Seattle as we had left our oldest son Tom more or less in charge of the two other younger boys. We have never questioned Tom or the other boys just how well he did. We may never know. Kay kept a diary of the trip on a 2 by 3 inch lined notebook paper in pencil and here it is. I am transcribing the diary in the language she wrote it at the time except for changing something to clarify wording or meaning. Most of the time notes at the bottom of the page will explain hard to understand things.

Going Fishing in Alaska
Kathleen Gudgel
May 4th at 2:20PM Loyal, Grandpa, and I left the Duwammish River dock and headed for Alaska. We had gotten a couple hundred yards out into the river when Dad (Doyal Gudgel) looked down into the engine space at the rear of the boat. Water was coming in an unused exhaust hole as fast as we were going over the water. Dad yelled at Loyal to stop. They both got out, stuffed rags and blankets into the exhaust hole to temporarily plug it up and went on down the river to fuel
up. 300 gallons of diesel. $50.00 even to the penny. They stuffed rags into the exhaust a little more. Loyal hadn't figured that this hole would become under the water line when under way but we were laden down with hundreds of pounds of canned stuffs, many tools of every description, even a garden shovel and hoe Loyal discovered later, so that the boat sat lower in the water than expected.
When fueling up, they had let air get in the fuel line and the engine wouldn't start until 5PM. So the first night we anchored at Pt. Madison off Bainbridge Is. About 6PM they noticed water under the floorboards up to the flooring in the bow section. Again we got out the bilge pump and pumped it dry, not knowing where the leak was coming from. Again at 10:30PM they same bow section was full of water. We pumped it out again through a hose to the kitchen sink and out of the boat. When everyone quieted down they heard a trickle of water and traced to the bow toilet, which did not shut off. The outlet was underwater. The toilet was not put together securely and during one storm, our boat rocked so much, that the stove, which is bolted to the concrete floor, started to sway so much we had to put out the fire and brace it on each side with table leaf and pieces of wood. That scared me.
The bilge pump in the meantime became stopped up. The oil cook and heating stove does not work well. It has to be hand fed through a float on the front of a control box on the stove. Not enough fuel gets to it to cook. This contrary stove caused much trouble during the entire trip and had to be taken apart piece by piece and put together many times. New valves were made leading to the fuel supply. Then we ran out of stove fuel and had to siphon out engine diesel fuel for it. Half of the time I cooked on a gas burner camp stove till we ran out of fuel for it too.
Tuesday May 5th breakfast dished done at 7:30AM. Grandpa and I rearranged extra canned and fresh food in little used compartments. Ruth had already spent several days buying and putting away food in cupboards behind sliding doors. These sliding doors were swell when we got into rough water because they were the only ones that didn't fly open spilling all the contents on the floor as did all the open cupboards doors.
Went to bed early with all my clothes on- very cold. Engine not running smoothly. Loyal and Doyal worked on engine three and a half hours .
May 6. Alarm at 5:00AM. I got up at 7.00AM. We had moved quite a ways by the time I served breakfast while underway. Weather is calm and sunny. Mts. with snow on left and green land on the right. I started taking pictures.
Cooked red beans with salt pork. And had lots of advise from people on how to do it. If they wanted home cooking they should have stayed home.
The fresh water pump doesn't work. We are using sea water for dishes and bath and hand washing with hand soap. Everything is sooty and grimy black. It gets cold here when the oil stove doesn't work and that's most of the time.
Boat died in the water several times today. Loyal finally looked at the oil in the engine. It badly damaged the engine because of a leak in the oil casing. From then on the engine used about 10 quarts of oil a day.
During spare time, I embroider pillow cases. (Finished one and a half on the trip)
The red beans cooked 7 hours but were watery.
Thursday May 7. 1964. Alarm 4:35AM. Headed for dangerous Seymour Narrows and what used to be Ripple Rock before the Canadians blew it up with a million pounds of TNT a couple years ago. It's just a sea of frothy whirlpools in every direction and one wave meeting another; boiling churning water in all directions there. At 5:15 AM Doyal; yelled for Grandpa and I to get up and out of bed as fast as we could. The boat was running completely out of control. It was impossible to shift to another gear and the engine could not shut off. Loyal scrambled down to the engine and worked around some relays and finally the engine died. We would have gone up on the bank of one side of the channel if we hadn't stopped. That would have ended it all of us and the boat. The problem this time was that the electricity had failed and as the boat is electrically controlled nothing would shut the diesel engine off or steer it. They temporarily repaired it with 2 spare batteries.
It is so rough we have to put out the stove fire and not cook or keep warm. Everything came out of the cupboards. You stand up holding onto anything steady and with your feet three feet apart. Most of the time.
Friday. Awake before dawn every day I add another item or two of clothes. long johns, stretch pants or ski pants plus quilted insulated sports jacket and pants plus 2 wool sweaters. Gloves and hat for out on deck if it gets calm enough to stand out there and watch the porpoise. They are pretty with white strips around their middle and tail edge. They leap in front of the boat and dive under the bow as you move along.
Queen Charlotte Sound. Very rough. I get seasick one day. The only time of the trip. Loyal said soda crackers and peanut butter were good for seasickness and stay top side. So I did. Every time anything goes wrong or breaks on this boat Loyal always asks Doyal what should he do? Or what suggestions he has of how to find the trouble or fix it. Same way with reading the charts and following the compass. Loyal did not have the boat finished at all when we left. He though he and Grandpa could work on it at Ketchican or after fishing or something . Loyal also did not know much about navigation or reading marine charts and following the compass. He took a course once in navigation at the YMCA and reads yachting magazines about the nice places to go sailing. This round bottom boat is a Motor sailor, not a fish boat, not an ocean going vessel. It doesn't have nearly enough ballast in it to keep it from acting like a cork. One boat builder who's seen it says it will capsize easily and we came so close to it, Now to go on.
We cook boiled new potatoes and carrots in sea water as it's already just salty enough. Very good we had good meals. When the oven heated up enough we had cornbread or Bisquick.
During this day, Friday, the boat had problems twice. The steering mechanism came apart and this meant stops in rough water to fix it.
By now the main toilet seat is broken off and they store it in a cupboard below. Nuts!
Sat. May 9th. Finlayson Channel not enough visibility it's cloudy and raining. Past two days. Quite cold. I wear a sweater on my feet at night beside sox long underwear flannel nittie, sleeping bag and wool blanket. I put a coat of resin on the new table and two chairs Loyal bought for the boat. Grandpa screwed and glued them together while underway.
Tolmie Channel, Right sound. Very rough Grenville Passage ok. This oil stove takes up to an hour to make a little pot of coffee. We rode til 9:45 tonight because it is still light.


May 10. Mothers day. Loyal started getting breakfast this morning but not because it was that he remembered it was Mothers Day. None of them remembered til I told them. Loyal was just hungry today, besides he doesn't like the way I cook bacon. He likes it raw. Just drug through the grease.
Today the coffee took one hour to make when it was done. Grandpa was glad to get his then found out after he tasted that it was made with salty seawater. So now we start in on another pot only we use the camp stove this time. If something on this ship doesn't start functioning properly this cook is going to mutiny! To get fresh water we flip a switch on a panel on the wall in living quarters run to the sink turn the faucet on (cold of course) and half the time you get air. When a spurt of water comes it is with such force it knocks the pitcher from your hand then go turn off the water pump switch again. (A leak in the line) Grandpa found his glasses finally. Nobody that lays anything down can ever find it again. Because there isn't a place for anything yet. Loyal just skinned by a large rock very close. He misread the chart. We brush our teeth in sea water too.
Grandpa just found a two and a half pound loaf of cheese in his belongings. That's going to help out because we are almost out of all fresh things. One egg left. It's so dark in the kitchen of the boat you have to look like Mr. MaGoo to salt and pepper food or see if it's boiling. We had the generator working a couple times enough to get a 12v bulb to burn for a couple hours and use the electric razor twice but they don't hook it up unless it's necessary so no light. We use candles to embroider and read. Since the stove is in the dark you cant do much if you try. To keep warm you have to sit by the stove.
In Chatham Sound off Prince Rupert Is. In the afternoon we were in Alaska waters and entered a gale which threw us around the ocean like whip cream being beaten up. Loyal even got very worried and called for four life jackets to be brought up to the wheel house. Doyal and I put ours on although a person couldn't live more than 10 or 15 minutes in the water like that. Too far to swim and dinghy wouldn't hold us all.. During the beating we took in that gale we tipped so far over to port side that the 300 dollar electric generator was tossed clear off the walkway and over the handrail to the bottom of the ocean. The smoke stack worked loose and we lost the muffler. The table, chairs, every dish and piece of equipment came out of their places on the floor below us., Rudder was straining under the pressure and bent.
We finally persuaded Loyal to head for a nearby bay to wait out the storm. It took two days of waiting. Meantime we had plenty of excitement like running aground. (Tides do go out further than expected you know) The boat hit submerged rocks, we were in constant danger of being dashed on the rocky shore where we had anchored. We only kept away by Doyal and Loyal using pike poles and pushing us away. Practically no water under the boat on one side although the depth finder machine said we had 15 feet. That's how steep the shore line was. Loyal had to get in the dinghy several times for repairs at the back of the boat and straighten out the rudder under water, Ice water. It was snowing of course.

Kay and Doyal Gudgel

The boat wasn't maneuverable in some of the bays we chose to hide from the storm. We stayed in at lest three places. Trying Dixon Entrance (to Queen Charlotte Sound) Each day to see if we could get through and on to Ketchican. We had to tie the boat to two trees one time because the winds and tides moved the boat in opposite directions all night rolling and tossing us almost out bed. No one slept Doyal and Loyal were up almost all night upping and lowering those two anchors to more favorable spots. The anchors wouldn't hold the boat at all. We had to allow enough slack in the lines to allow the tides so we were in constant danger of big rocks next to the boat.
Everyone was so sore from pulling anchors they could scarcely walk. I can still hear anchor chains above my head as I lay in my bunk. Loyal got in the dinghy on Monday to tie on anchor to a big rock on shore. He lost both oars and was drifting away fast. The wind was blowing so had Doyal couldn't do much. We could have lost Loyal and dinghy easily that time. The tides and winds are so fast and hard.
Tuesday May 12. The anchors are stuck fast in the mud 110 feet down, with the mechanical wench and two men working a half hour, as hard as they could, they finally freed the anchor and we pulled out from the lee of an island where we had anchored the last time. The wind had finally died down enough that we made it this time and an hour or so later we were in a channel being one of the ordinary Alaska Islands with reasonably calm water. So today we finally made it. The ocean is never kind to a small boat, that pitches and rocks as this one did. Once inside the passage we felt relieved because in a matter of hours we would be seeing Ketchikan at 1:00 PM. There was snow covering the town trees houses and hills. It looked very pretty. The local residents were very unhappy at snow this time of year. Our PBY and jet to Seattle were ready 25 minutes after arriving in town and it was an enjoyable trip home. We declined Loyal's and Grandpa"s invitation to stay another night on board.
Believe me we all said our prayers on this trip or we would never have gotten back. During one storm our boat rocked so much the stove which is bolted to the concrete rocked so much we had to put out the fire

Kay
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Robin is lucky to be alive today. During his graduation at Seattle Center Kay noticed that he was walking hump shouldered. He complained of his back hurting when he played the drums in the band. When Kay saw him at the graduation she decidedd we had to do something about his back. We took him to a specialist and he told us he had scoliosis. If it was not treated he would eventually start bending over until he would be looking at the ground at a 90 degree angle. At this time too, a friend Abrams I don't remember his first name.
was afflicted the same. The doctor said we had two options. 3 actually. Operate and put a steel rod down his back and fuse the vertebrea , wear a back brace or leave it as it was. We put it up to Robin and he wisely as it turned out elected to have the operation. I say wisely becausse the Abrams boy died when he was about 40.

To be continued with pictures.
1980

1990

2000

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Below this line are things to be posted at the appropriate time in the story

Robin builds the Titanic in his bedroom. Some of his friends launch it at the Kenmore boat launch. The big problem was the motor was real bad and would not run hardly at all. Probably a good thing as it would have been easy to drown. Note none of them had a life jacket. But that was the way it was done in those days. Kids still drown today even with all the laws supposedly to protect them.