JANE M. HICKMAN
In 1987, I tape recorded an interview with my mother, Jane Margaret Hickman. My wife, Marcia, was listening also.
I transcribed the interview in January 1995.
(Transcription notes: "[?]" indicates that I was not sure of the spelling of the word; "..." indicates that there are missing words due to the low volume of the recording.)
Howard Hickman III
Howard: This is May 3, 1987, and we here in Cobb [Calif.] and Marcia and I and Mom and Dad are here. I am interviewing Mom about what she knows of her ancestors. Do you want to talk about your Dad; he was born in Wales and how he came to come over to the United States?
Jane: I guess I really don't know why he came over, unless it was the fact that... and I guess there just wasn't much that to do in Wales for building work. He was a carpenter, by trade. So, he came over and got jobs, Howie has found out in Canada, Washington or that area and then somewhat settled in the Portland area. And that's where he met my mother. They were married there. There was alot of building going on down in the San Francisco area so he came down there, as a carpenter.
H: Did they ever tell you how they met?
J: No. Through the church, I guess, the Welsh Church, because all of their friends were from the Welsh Church, in Portland.
H: How did you mother come over here to the United States?
J: Well, I never asked her, where she came in. I knew that she was born in Omaha, Nebraska. She was the only one of her family born in this country. She was the youngest. And my aunt was born in Liverpool and I assume that all the children before that were born there, although they were of Welsh descent. My grandfather was a stone mason. And then they came to Portland, I guess, for the same reason, for the building. There was more building going on in the western part of the United States.
H: What is your earliest memory? You were born in Berkeley, right?
J: I was born in Berkeley, but I don't remember, I guess we lived in Oakland for awhile. I really can't remember, mother said that we use to go to Mosswood Park, as a child, but I don't really remember that part as a child. The earliest I remember when I was around three, they bought a house on California Street in Berkeley. That's where I lived until I got married. That's right, he did build a house over in Oakland on Rosell[?] Avenue, that I've seen pictures of me sitting on the porch when I looked around two years old. It was on Rosell, over by Lake Merritt. My father built the house and then sold it. And then my mother and father and my mother's sister, Aunt Jennie, and her husband, Uncle Jack, bought the house on California Street together.
H: What schools did you go to?
J: Jefferson Grammar School, at the corner of Sacramento and Rose, in Berkeley. In Junior High, I went to Garfield Junior High, on Rose Street near Grove. I went to Berkeley High. And from there I went on to the University of California, just a few blocks away.
H: What did your father do, when you were growing up? and Uncle Jack?
J: Well, my mother never worked and never drove a car. But my father was a carpenter and worked for Standard Sanitary, whenever they had anything to build in the plant or something. They manufactured bathtubs and toilets and things made out of porcelain. And while he was there, he contacted, I guess, T.B. That was the doctor thought was the source of it. I was about five or five and a half, I believe. He was ill and they sent him down to a sanitarium for two years down in Banning. And then after that, he came up and was in Fairmont Hospital, which is out in East Oakland. Then he was recovered; he was home recovering. He couldn't do very much work. He wasn't supposed to work, but he had a good friend, Joe Berell, who owned a gas station on the corner of Alcatraz and San Pablo and he also had a retread business and he was really quite busy during the war...before the war it was. At that time people retreaded their tires during the depression. So he was able to work part time.
He was recovered and he would go over to San Francisco for what they called air shots. I guess one lung was collapsed but they had to be air in to keep the area from liquid forming. Whenever he got a cold, they would go to that area. The treatment then was to collapse the lung by removing parts of some of the ribs. And so he had that operation in Highland Hospital and he never recovered from the operation. He died of post operational shock. I was about twelve then. I had just graduated from Jefferson. I was going to start Junior High. The summer after he died, in 1935, mother and I went made a trip back up to Portland, Oregon and visited friends there and distant relative. I got off the track, that was my father's occupation.
H: Uncle Jack?
J: Uncle Jack was in construction. He worked for Dinwitty [?] Construction Company, in San Francisco, and worked on quite a few remaking of big buildings. They constructed buildings but also there was the Flood Mansion, (the Flood family had a big mansion) and they would tear it out and redo it. In fact some of that mahogany, he made furniture for me, out of mahogany that they were just throwing away. It was supposed to have come around the Horn for the Flood Mansion. He liked to putter around. He was always painting the house. He loved to work in the garden. And my Aunt, they never had any children, my Aunt worked and she was a manager for a food chain, called Pon Honor [?]. I think they were bought out by Piggly Wiggly. When she was manager, she would go to meetings. There were very few women that managed the Super Store.
H: Was there something about porcelain dolls?
J: Oh, she liked to do ceramics and paint ceramics. She liked to work with her hands. She went to school and learned how to do copper hammering. She picked that up as a trade. I think she did very nice work.
Marcia: ...contest with free groceries? I like that story.
J: Dorothy and I, when we were in High School, there was a radio station that had a sponsor of a big market, a wholesale market, that retailed down in Oakland. And they would come on and they would say very fast "ten pounds of potatoes for ten cents" and give you something "for" something and we realized that you had to very fast and not write the "for" because "for" is not a number, you know. And you were supposed to add up all the numbers that you heard on the program. So we got real good at it, because we would both do it and call back and check our numbers and then send in post cards. Well, we won $25 of free groceries, that was quite a bit. So we won some for our mothers and for our neighbors, and our neighbors would of course, give us the money from it. But, one friend of Dorothy's, she gave it to her and she [just] said "Thank you very much. I sure enjoyed the groceries." Ha Ha! We were doing it for money, we weren't doing it for the love of giving it away. Ha. Ha. That was funny!
Auntie and Uncle Jack lived in the house until we moved away from the area and Daddy went to work for Westinghouse. They moved up and rented a house up to Oregon City. He had a brother, who lived there. His father-in-law owned two movie theaters in town and that was when they had, you know, live music, and he played the organ in both of them on different days. I used to love to go up there and watch movies over and over again. We would be there for a week and I would watch the same movie over and over again, ha ha.
Well, let's see as a teenager, I was a girl scout. And with the same group we all went into the Jobs Daughter. And my circle of friends was kind of the same group, only a larger group, were in a sorority together, a spartan[?] sorority in high school.
H: What classes in high school did you take?
J: Well, I took as much latin as I could and I took, of course, all the math I could, but that's what I decided, when I was twelve, what I really wanted to do was to be a math teacher. I loved algebra. I had a good teacher, I had a couple of good teachers in junior high...get all the answers right, ha.ha. I enjoyed that. I liked sewing, too.
H: Did you mostly get A's?
J: No. When I was in Junior High, I got mostly A's. But I had to get at least a B+ to get to Cal. I understand now that the freshmen, even though they have straight A averages in high school are not being accepted. Oh, then I took the Subject A. I took an English course, a special composition course in my last semester in High School and I came back from vacation and went up there and took the Subject A and flunked it. So I had to take that, dumbbell English, the first semester, ha, ha. I majored in math. It was difficult. It didn't come easy, but I got through. I like to teach, that was the best part, in my last year.....I really enjoyed it.
H: Did you take any art classes?
J: Yea, I took art. That was my minor, decorative art. I took quite a few decorative art classes in college. Weaving was one of my favorite. In fact,....when I was in my third year, it was during the war, I had a choice of three things: I could continue on to get my degree, or teach, or I could, they were offering real good jobs in the shipyards, architecture type of thing, if you had a math major. Oh, I was then taking my second reading [?] class and my teacher sent some samples, she liked my work, to Dorothy Lucas. She was in San Francisco.........
H: Do you remember any particular dates while you were at college?
J: No, I don't. Oh, well, yes I do. When the first exam that I had, was with Professor Heinz. There was a large course, it was Geology 1A 1B. Our finals were in the Men's Gym. And just before we were all there, just before we were started, he said, "Well, I understand that we have....problems, with the blackout. Nobody is going to get an F on this final, ha. ha. That is really the only part of the war that I remember. I remember celebrating, with the Williams, the "V-E" day, in downtown Broadway in Oakland. I wasn't active in college. I used to go to the football games.
H: Did you work any part time jobs?
J: Yes. I worked at the Bookstore, the A.S.U.C. Bookstore, and then the Library. That was my main job, a general page. Then I took the filing test and I did well on that, so I became a filer.
Do they still page the books, for you?
H: They still page. What did you do upon graduation?
J: Well, I had job contract for teaching in Daily City. I taught there for two years. For the second year, I was the main math teacher. I really don't know how many students there were. Like in my solid geometry and trig classes, I had only about five students in the classes.......
H: Did you live over in Daly City?
J: No, I commuted. I took the bus over to San Francisco, the Greyhound bus, the first year. And in the second year, there was a teacher...I mean I rode in his car.
H: What did you do after that?
J: Then I met Daddy! Ha. Ha.
H: How did you do that? What were the circumstances?
J: Well, I knew Verona, who was engaged to Ted Andrews. Ted and Daddy were shipmates together. And so when they came into port, they set up a blind date. So I think there were about four of us all together and three of them were blind dates. I am not sure. There was Verona. I think there were four couples. Daddy was still in the Merchant Marines. So he was gone five maybe four months, then he would be back in port again. He went down to the Gulf, and then Mexico, New York. Then he came back.
M: ...?
J: Well, you know all the stories, don't you? Ha Ha.
M: I like to hear them again.
J: Well, about the third date, I had a date with him to go somewhere bowling. It was a long day. And the other time, it was about the fourth or fifth time, we were supposed to go to church together and five minutes to eleven, and he still wasn't there, ha. ha., but he came with red roses, so we were late to church but we finally made it.
H: You went to church when you were growing up?
J: Yes, several churches. I went to Northbrae Community Church, I think it is still there, at the grammar school level. Then I went during high school, I went to the Congregational Church at Dana and one of the streets just south of Campus. And we would go Easter and Christmas with Auntie and Uncle Jack and friends to church, but we weren't...
H: Was there any formal engagement with Dad, before you were married?
J: Well, we were engaged in, like, December and then we were married in the following July.
H: What do you remember about the wedding?
J: I can't remember a thing. I didn't wear my glasses. I say I can remember the people that were there. But, like the cutting of the cake, I don't remember that part, you know. It's funny. It's all kind of a blur, I guess. I remember throwing the bouquet. And we went off on our honeymoon, and we stayed our first night in Sacramento, found a motel. Then we went to Tahoe, stayed at the "Y". We went over to Salt Lake City....
And Daddy didn't have a job, but he ...to marry me, ha. ha. So we went down south. He couldn't find one in northern California. And he had bought a house.
H: Where was that at?
J: In Inglewood. We lived there for a year. Then he had a job up in, worked for the Port of Oakland as an engineer on a fire boat.
H: Did you or he do anything when you were down in Inglewood?
J: No, my ......grandmother......
H: Did he get a job when he was down there?
J: Oh, yes. He was working for Miller Brothers. They had this type of painting, called electrostatic painting. The paint is positive and the metal is negative. They had different contracts to paint different things... And when Ted saw Daddy he would say, "Well, how's the picture frame and bed board business?" ha. ha. He took care of all the equipment. That's all he really could find, using his ability. After the year, we lived with my mother for a short time. Then we found an apartment over on Panhandle Boulevard, in El Cerrito and we lived there. Then we bought the house on Mountain Boulevard. On Panhandle Boulevard, is where Howie was born. The following November, that you were born in June, well that November, we made a trip down to, for Thanksgiving, down to Grandmother's. That was your first trip. In the car, you slept practically all the way. We got up early. When we came back, our house had gone through escrow, our house on Mountain Boulevard.
H: Did you do any teaching at that time?
J: No. I went to school, extension, an audio visual course.
H: That was about the time you had the car racing down in front?
J: You don't want that on tape?
H: Sure.
J: Daddy can tell that one. ha.ha.
H: We liked it in Montclair. We had neighbors there, who had a boy who was born in October. So your Grandmother could get together. Pat Kaunert. Well, lets see, while we were there, Jack Haggard, my best girl-friend, Dorothy's husband and Ted Andrews had looked into a lease on some property up at Wright's Lake. They asked if we would all like to go in together. There were five couples: Dorothy's brother, Frank, and his wife Becky, Ruth and Bill Lambert. We had fun with them. We first dug the well, built the cabin up to the sub flooring so it would be level and in that year, there was a very (Daddy can tell this better, than I can, ha. ha.) there was a very bad wet snow, a high snow and a wet snow. The next year, they had to start all over. We would go up there in the summer, but we could not camp on the site. We had to camp in the campground. The fellows would work from dawn until. Then we would come back and do the dishes by Coleman lantern, ha. ha. It was quite an experience going up with Marcia and Howie this time. We went up and there was a little snow up there.
H: Do you remember any stories about me when I was growing up? You were saying about when you first found out that I was red-green color blind?
J: Oh, yea. Uncle Jack was in the hospital, and we went out and you had a gun, a little gun that shot ping pong balls. You were shooting red and green ping pong balls all over, and you could never see the red ones. No, they were yellow and red, maybe, that was it, they were yellow and red. You could see the yellow one right away and the red ones you could never see. "There it is, right by your foot." and you would look down and you would hardly able to see. We found out then you were color blind. I guess my uncle must have been. I didn't really know that at all.
Oh, I know that when you were young, you were very shy. Up on Mountain Boulevard, there were not a lot of people coming in and out. There were not a lot of door to door salesman or like that. There weren't sidewalks. When anyone did come, why, there once a man from Hoover came for some reason, for parts or what it was I don't remember. I knew he was coming and I opened the door and the next thing I knew Howie was missing. I didn't know where Howie was, ha. ha. He was under the table cloth. I had a big round table and he was hiding under the table cloth, ha. ha.
H: Do you remember any other stories about me?
J: Gee, I'm trying to think now. I remember that I thought you were very intelligent. You drew this picture on the board when you were two, I think. I said, "What's that?". And you said it was a "Shmoo[?] rocking chair" and that's what is was, too. Ha. Ha. A shmoo, remember, their body and a little rocking chair? Ha. Ha. And, of course, I think your Aunt Jennie gave you a set of wooden tracks of wood, that you could put together in different ways to put little wooden cars on. And I don't think there was a day between the time you were two and four that you didn't play with that. You just loved to break it down and make it up again. You had all kinds of little bridges and things. Remember? You never do that again. Ha. Ha.
H: How about things about Margie?
J: Well, I remember that when Margie would come along or go anywhere, you would really look out after her, make sure she, "Oh, No. Oh, Oh! Don't go too far there, Margie", because she was the kind that would walk right off, you know. And Howie would look after Margie. One thing I do remember when they had a school bus that would come and pick all the children up, there were people that lived in back of us and in back two doors down, and including Pat, I guess there were seven of you all together that kind of got on the bus at our house, all congregated. There was Jennie and Faye in back of us, Graham and Randy next to them, and Pat, and you and Margie. And I remember, maybe it was just when you were in kindergarten, it wasn't the younger ones, it was the just older ones that were just starting school. And Harvey, remember him? He had a nickname for all of them. You were Howdy Doody. Graham was Graham Cracker. Jeannie was Jeannie with the light brown hair. I don't remember what Pat was, now. Everyone liked Harvey. Do you remember him? He had a moustache.
H: I remember on Fridays, he had a piece of candy or something like that, when he let us off at the end of the day. Did I have a problem adjusting to Kindergarten? Did I go to pre-school?
J: No. You didn't go to nursery school. The only thing I took you and Margie to (when Margie was at a later date), it was a cooperative type of thing. It was really a course that I took through the Adult Education. You went with your child. It was held for awhile in our Church that we went to, St. John's Church. I took Margie there. I think there was a school we went to, for you. No, you went to the Church also. Do you remember? It was really good for you, because you had only Pat, really, to play with. And Pat really got his way, quite a bit, and you just let him have it. So when you went to this, you did find out how to keep the tricycle if you wanted it, you know. I thought that they had a lot of educational things. We, as parents, went there and observed for a time. We went to school part of the time and had to make observations of our children and the other children and make comparisons. It was really good for the children and it was good to have music and different activities more than just a free play time. Both for you and then I went with Margie when she was young too. I think it was two days a week.
H: Then I went to first grade.
J: You went to first grade there. Then I was sick and thought I had tuberculosis, because I always had a positive reaction. So I had pneumonia. They thought I had the start of tuberculosis ...drugs, and of course the children should be out of the house. So you, Howie, went with Grandad and Connie and Margie with... And you would gone just, lets see, I was sick with pneumonia at Christmas time and came back after school was out. Margie was able to come first, I guess.
H: It seemed like half a year.
J: A semester, yea, but you weren't in Kindergarten, you were in first grade, weren't you? Of course, we used to go on picnics quite a bit, because Daddy was on shift work. You might not remember. We went down to Temescal and go different places sometimes in the middle week because he worked one day on and two days off...
H: And we moved to Idaho?
J: Idaho falls. That was in '57. We lived there a year. That was our first time away from the family in California and friends.
H: Before we first moved into a house, we lived in like a hotel.
J: Yea.
H: We had peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
J: Yea, you remember that? Ha. Ha. I had forgotten. I know there was another girl staying there too and we took turns taking you to the school. We knew where we were going to live, we couldn't live right away, because Daddy had the, oh, it wasn't until our furniture came, that was it. Daddy made a trip there and was able to lease the house, actually, before we came. But we couldn't move in, until our furniture arrived. When Daddy was there, he really got a bad case of the flu, before we moved there. Then we came, and the day the movers came, the three of us had the flu too, but it wasn't the flu, it was the water. Everyone got sick if you weren't use to the water. That was a nice house, because it was an area, all flat. You hadn't had a bicycle on Mountain Boulevard. You had tricycles and things, but there was no place to ride bicycles safely in Mountain Boulevard. So you got a bike there and it was all flat and it was all a confined area, no through traffic. So we enjoyed that. We had some neighbors that attended the little Church and we made friends with them. The children were just about a year or so older than you. The Tabbs, Triphena and Frank.
Then, we knew there that we were going to Belgium. We would have to stay over in Pittsburgh, before we left, so we moved from Idaho Falls to Penn Hills. We lived in a duplex in Penn Hills on Idylwood Road and that's when you met and made a lot of friends, because you were active in Scouts, Cub Scouts....the Lockarts. So you met those people and we then we built a house, we bought a house when we came back, right near there, so you did know some of your friends that were going to the same school. So, we were there, I think, about nine months and we went over to Belgium. And we were in Belgium for three years. Before we went to Belgium, while we were staying in Pittsburgh, we all took the Berlitz class for French. We would go to downtown Pittsburgh twice a week and all tried to learn French, Ha. Ha. It helped you, I'm sure, later on, but I didn't use it very much, because we were in the Flemish section, in the northern section, and even if the people knew how to speak French, they wouldn't admit it or speak it. But, we got along pretty well, because Flemish is similar English. It is a lot more similar than French; the words "welcome" and "komen" and things like that. You can almost understand what people were saying.
H: So when you went shopping-
J: Everything was all in Flemish, yes, in the local town of Mol. We lived in an area that was just for the nuclear power studies and there were a lot of people from Europe, there, not necessarily working where Daddy worked, they were doing other studies. And so when we first went over there, there was an International School, but because there were eight, (were there?), American children, they were going to just have a teacher from England come for a one room school house for grades one through six. So, I went to the school before I came, why, I got all the books for all the grades from one through six in Penn Hills and took them over to the teacher there, because the Thees, ____ and Irene Thee, were there already and they were planning on going to establish that section for all the American children. So they were in that school for a year, I think. Then quite a few of the other American children left. Their fathers were transferred. And they said, "We can't afford to have one for just the English speaking students, so both you students will have to go into the International School. The International School was provided in four languages, French, Italian, German, and Dutch. And of course, because we had French, why, we thought maybe that would be the best. So, that summer before you went there, we signed you up to go to a vacation school, they called it, and you lived with a French family. You went to school in the morning and your afternoons were free. You and I think it was Guido, from Italy or?
H: Switzerland.
J: Switzerland, were living together with a French family. You were there six weeks, I don't how long it was, four weeks. You really learned the language. Grandmother visited you and when she came back said, "Oh. You just can't believe it." She said, "We would just go on the street car and he would...,he goes off in French, and there is no problem at all. He really picked up the language."
H: We got a car over there, right, and did a lot of travelling?
J: Oh, yea. Right. We ordered the car before we went, but it wasn't ready, so we rented a Renault for about four months, and we drove a little Renault. Remember the.....? ha. ha. Well, finally our Jaguar came. We bought a Jaguar, Mark II.... It was grey with red leather upholstery. It was a very comfortable car. We did a lot of travelling. Of course, at that time, my father was the only one of his family to come over from Wales. I had never met any of his family. So, in one May, we made a trip over to Wales and visited and saw a lot of my cousins, my aunts and uncles. At that time, my Uncle John was living, John Hughes, and Aunt Maggie and Aunt Jennie. That was my father's family, his brother and sisters. And the next time, we went back in '78, I guess it was, the one still living there was Aunt Jennie. So, we made many trips. We went one trip to Scandinavia for ten days and we toured all the Scandinavia countries.
H: Was it off season?
J: No, it was in-season, I think, because you were out of school.
H: We didn't have reservations on that trip?
J: Oh yes, that's right. They said we didn't need them, or something, but we found out that we should have. I remember in Denmark, I guess it was, there were no places to sleep. We stayed in, like, this attic of this place. The beds weren't very comfortable. On one trip over, Grandmother came over. She was going to meet us in London and then we got tickets to the Shakespeare Theater at the Stratford-on-Avon. So, we were going to meet her on the Library steps in Cambridge. And we were going to take the boat over from the Hook of Holland[?]...and the boat broke its screw or something and it was delayed. So, we couldn't go when we were supposed to. And so we had to change somewhere. We had already checked the car through. If you wanted your car on, the Duane, the Custom people were only going to be there that night. So, we had to check our car through and then we were the mercy of finding a place. There were people already, there was sleep on the boat, but there was no place really to sleep. They were in the chair and all over and there was no place in the station. So, one man said to us, "I have a friend, who maybe has some room and I could take you there." So, he made reservations for us at his place. They had a bed and breakfast. So we stayed. But it wasn't fancy. It was right on the water. We got up and it was on the top floor too.
H: It was right near the lighthouse and all night long the light, the room would turn on and off.
J: Right. There were no curtains on in there, and when the beam came around, it was like someone turned on the lights, you know, and turned them off again. Ha. Ha. But, reflect[?] We gone on the boat and Howie, you didn't feel too well on the crossing, I remember, you were kind of sick and had a headache, but the majority of people on that were really sick and I think that the main reason were sick was that they hadn't slept and had eaten well. We had a good breakfast. Oh, and we had to call Grandmother and tell her that we weren't going to make it, so we tried to make the call. We knew she was staying at the Y.W.C.A. in London on Russell Street. We found out that there two Y.W.C.A.s on Russell Street. Ha. Ha. Finally, we got the right one. Well, they don't have phones in the rooms. So, they said that the best thing for you to do is to call early in the morning. So we did. We called very early in the morning. I've forgotten the whole story, now, Dad knows. Luckily we just, no one could go up. The man that was answering the phone couldn't go up and tell her to come down and there was no way he could get a message to her, but anyway luckily we got a message to her. And she knew that we couldn't make it there and we had the tickets. So, we said just go ahead to the, there. We were going to be so late that we probably won't make it. So, we didn't make it to the theater. So, she went there and told the theater, she said, "My son has five tickets", but she said, "I'm sorry but I can't let you in." There were five seats front and center, beautiful tickets, that were empty. Ha Ha. So, he believed after the first act. She went in and sat there. Ha. Ha.
So we spent, we used to go down to the beach in Belgium. There was a lagoon there and rather nice little beach area that you go and swim. Daddy took the Shakespeare down (Midsummer Nights' Dream?...I can't remember) and tried to read it through, so we would know what we were going to see in the theater. Ha. Ha.
H: The lagoon was the site of one of the practical jokes there, wasn't it?
J: Yes, Daddy could tell you more about those. A fellow woke up in the morning and there was this volkswagen floating out on the raft. Ha. Ha. We lived at the first site, when we living in Belgium, the first site was, we just had the two bedrooms. And in the second two years, when we moved down to Site II, we were able to have a little larger apartment. The second site was right near the school. In fact the children used to come over and Howie had a basketball hoop and we had put it up. So, at recess time, the boys used to come over there and play basketball. And I kept hearing them out there "Ah, oui!" I thought they were saying "Howie". They were saying, "Ah, oui", Oh, yes. Oh, Yes. I guess when you make a basket, that's what you say. Ha. Ha. Because they don't pronounce the "H"s, you know. So "Ah, oui", sounds kind of like "Howie."
You all had bikes there. When we lived in Site I, why, Daddy used to bike to work. You used to bike to places. You didn't have to bike to school there because... I remember once we were right near a, where the barges go, a canal and there were locks not too far, with boats going by. Once I was hanging clothes out or doing something on the porch and looked out and saw this swing set. I couldn't see where I was looking, actually, and realized that somebody put a swing set over there by the canal? I realized that it was on the barge! Ha. Ha. They were their homes. They were all really beautiful. They had these fancy lace curtains, you know, that the Belgians have. And you would often see a play pen up in the captain's deck. And this particular one had a swing set. I don't know if I ever would want my child out there. If they slipped out of the swing, they would be right in the water, if they went too far.
The people in Belgium were very friendly to us, Holland also. We used to go to Holland, The Hague, Rotterdam. We used to go up there mainly to shop, to get the cereals, peanut butter.
H: We used to go to church up there, too.
J: Yea. That's where we met the Weeks. _____ Weeks and his wife Gabe[?]. The Church of England is the same, you know, as most of the Episcopal Churches. So, we heard that there was a chaplain that would come over to a base in Holland, once a week, on a Sunday evening. So, we started going up there, I think it was the first Sunday of the month, going up to ______. The Chaplain came over from Aachen Germany, over near Eindhoven. So, we met the Weeks there. We would go places with them and they would visit us.
Remember one time, we went out to a chateau? Verona's, Ted's mother had a friend, whose name is Robert White. He is a teacher at Bret Harte, in northern California. His mother who had married a third time, (the second time, she married a millionaire...beautiful furniture), the third time, she married a baron. And so, the baron died, but she was still living. She spent part of her time in Belgium. So, he would go over in the summertime and visit. And he was history teacher and he took us to a special showing in Ghent... Then we went out to diner, but he took us back to the chateau. It is unbelievable that people still live like that, you know, a huge big round table. And, we had there a meal there, that's right. We had a meal, because I remember all the gold and the girls, that waited on us, all wore white gloves. It was quite unusual. I remember two big lions in front. They had a house on the side that was called the "Orange House" and they had a garden. During the war, the Germans had used this chateau as a headquarters. The swans, a lake, and a pond. And they also had a place in Brest, on the coast of Belgium, right on the Channel. It was like a gambling...
We went down, also while we were there, we went down to Italy and saw... We didn't go to Spain, mainly because there was going to be another job and we thought that there might be chance that we might come back and go to southern Belgium. So, we didn't tour the southern part too much. We went to Florence.
H: Yugoslavia on that trip, too?
J: Yeah, Yugoslavia. We saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa, down through Nice, where you had been.
H: What I remember about Yugoslavia was the soda pop.
J: Terrible tasting. We thought it was hot and so we would buy a coke, it looked like it was a coke, but it was not. [Pause]
H: Do you want a break, now?
J: That's fine.
H: We're almost at the end of the tape, anyway.
J: Yea.
[End of tape. The interwiew was not conitnued.]