Robert Richey
It happened a long, long time ago, about three years before the onset of the so called, "Great Depression."
I was only eight years of age; my sister was six and my brother was only four. On this particular Sunday
at noon we sat down to the table at dinner as we always did. It was a Sunday like so many others. We
always had dinner together after attending the morning church service at Robert Avenue Methodist.
We were all conversing as families did at that time. After finishing dinner our mother said to our father,
"Bob I don't feel well and would like to go to bed for a little while." So, they retired to their bedroom in
the front of the house. Us three children were told to play in the back room and try to be quiet.
But we were boisterous and full of life and kept making noise. Several times our father came back and
asked us to be a little quieter. I began to notice how concerned he looked. From what I could hear he kept
trying to get the doctor but he didn't come and he didn't come.
Finally along about dusk there was a knock at the door and the doctor hurried in. He was in the front room
for the longest time and as dark began to fall there was a bustle and we heard his footsteps as he left and
the front door closed behind him.
Our father then came into the room. I have never seen anyone with such an ashen face as he did. He then
told us, "I'm sorry but your mother is gone." It took a moment or two for me to grasp what he was telling
us. Then he took us into the front room where our mother lay. She was so pale and oh so still. My heart
sank like a stone.
There were two small mounds under the blanket at the foot of the bed. Our father told us they were the
bodies of twins that had just been born and had just died also. All of a sudden all the joy in my life went
out and my childhood ended. My beloved mother was gone and nothing would ever bring her back.
There was no sleep in that household the rest of the night as friends and family members came by to
express their condolences. A few days later we stood by the graveside. There was this fresh gash in the
earth's surface and the casket was alongside it. After a few words of comfort by the Pastor, four strong
men held canvas straps that lowered the casket into the yawning cavity. The straps were withdrawn and
someone then threw several shovels full of earth down on the casket. The sound of that earth striking that
lid still echoes in my memory.
That sad event happened oh so many years ago, but to me it seems like only yesterday. My father's older
brother and his wife then invited us to move in with them until more permanent plans could be made for
three motherless waifs. They lived in a big, rambling house with enormous screened in porches. But there
were already seven family members and our four made it eleven. That is a lot of people in any house
however big it may be.
The two older sons and a daughter were young adults. The youngest son was about a year older than I but
he and I never seemed to have anything in common. The younger daughter was about my sister's age.
There were no toys in the house. There were no books. There was a radio but it was a big ungainly thing
with lots of big glass tubes that got hot when used and two huge batteries to power it. The Antenna
consisted of two wires strung under the eaves of the house on one side and reached the length of the
house. Reception was atrocious. It was only used in the evening for special occasions.
I lay on the floor one night and listened to the second Dempsey versus Tunney Heavyweight
Championship Fight. That thing had what was called static. It seems it was an electrical discharge of
some sort and created a very unpleasant noise that would just about rupture the listeners eardrums.
I was a very restless energetic child and there wasn't much of anything to occupy me. The grade school I
attended was diagonally across the street. It had small Ferris wheel and some horizontal bars that kids
could chin themselves on. Most kids could chin themselves with either arm. There were two fire escape
slides from the second and third floor of the tired brick building that housed the school.
However, one wonderful day I heard of a place downtown where there was a building called a Library
that would loan books to members. One thing I had acquired at that tender age was the ability to read. The
problem was the Library was about a mile and a half north and a short distance east of where we lived.
The only public transportation was a streetcar. The tracks were only about five blocks east but the fare
was a dime and I didn't even have a penny, never had. But I had two very sturdy legs so I walked
downtown where my father worked. His company was in the same block.
I found the Library by asking someone nearby. It was a gray stone edifice with stained glass windows. It
was called The Terrel Public Library. It had originally been a church and since that fateful day I have
always thought of libraries as being temples of knowledge and learning. After getting my Library Card I
started reading and have never stopped. It opened up a whole vast exciting world to a little boy. It was
wonderful.
The world I grew up in has vanished with the past. Even in Grade School each morning before class
started we were lined up and put our right hand over our chest on the left side and recited the pledge of
allegiance to the flag. "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United State of America and to the republic
for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all."
That time in the history of this great Nation, at least in that part of the country, was the dying days of
chivalry. Men were expected to speak softly and conduct themselves with dignity and always maintain
their self-respect. Even as boys they were expected to treat women with kindness and consideration. At
any social gathering or on the streetcar they were expected to yield their seat to any woman especially if
she were carrying a child. Men and boys were expected to open doors for women and step back until they
had entered.
In the state of Texas the Alamo was considered a shrine and the lesson was obvious. Little boys were led
to believe that the Texas heroes who died there should be an example to them how they were expected to
conduct themselves and be willing to fight and die for what they too believed in if the need arose. And to
many of these same little boys the need did arise in their lifetime when they were very young.
All of these things in one way or another contributed to the writing of this book. A reader might think
mentally at this point, "O.K. so what started the writing of the book?" About three years ago my wife's
daughter, her son in law and her two granddaughters, Catherine and Christie came for a visit one
weekend. Catherine, the older one, seemed to be troubled by something. When we inquired she told us a
woman teacher, in one of her classes had given each student an assignment. Each student was to write a
love poem to a member of the opposite sex. As she said at the time it seemed like a dumb assignment as
she had never been in love and how would she know how to write such a poem.
So I volunteered to write a love poem to my wife and she could use that as a guide. The poem I wrote is
in the book titled. " To Jeannie. " She then wrote her own poem using it as a guide and fulfilled her
assignment. After that incident it seemed to open the floodgates of my own limited poetry writing and the
poems just seemed to write themselves. I would mull over an idea in a general sense for a period of time
and more often than not would wake up in the middle of the night with a poem about that subject
completely in mind. I would go in the kitchen and write it down and then go back to bed. It has been an
unexpected source of personal enjoyment and satisfaction to me.
As a young man I read many wonderful poems by some of the really great poets. I read Evangeline, The
Highwayman, The Vision of Sir Launfal, the Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven and many others. Perhaps
this is my way of trying to pay back these great writers for unselfishly sharing their poetry with me. And
that is how if happened.
A problem with any literary effort of this sort is the question of, "Where does one begin?" On my fathers
side I am a fourth generation American. The limited information available indicates my grandfather, as a
young man, emigrated from Ireland during the potato famine. He and two brothers then settled in the
southern state of Georgia. Apparently he then immigrated to a rural farming community located in
northwestern Alabama.
When my father was a young adult the parents, his two older brothers and a younger sister progressively
immigrated to Mississippi, then into Louisiana and finally settled in a small farming community east of
Bryan, Texas. At that time it was considered the frontier.
A world away a young man grew up in Oslo, Norway. As an adult he captained a ship that plied between
Norwegian ports and various ports of call along the eastern seaboard and along the Gulf Coast.
He retired from the sea and settled in Algiers, a small seaport town across the river from the city of New
Orleans. There he married my grandmother and my mother Magdalena, an only child, was born. My
grandfather captained a number of river vessels on the Mississippi before finally retiring from the water.
The family then moved to the same farming community where my father's family had located. My
grandfather ran his own dairy.
My mother and my father met and were married in a small non-denominational church at a small
crossroads called Steep Hollow I was my father's first child and was born near the waning days of the so-
called "Great War to end all Wars." My grandfather then died during the great flu epidemic that
decimated nations worldwide.
When I was on two or three the family moved to a town on the Gulf called Port Arthur. In a year or so the
family moved a few miles north to the city of Beaumont. This city fronts on a river with a 40-foot channel
to the sea.
My sister was born two years after I was and my brother was born two years later. When I was only eight
years old our mother suddenly and unexpectedly died in childbirth. The two twin babies died with her.
The family never recovered from that tragedy.
When I was only eleven years of age in 1929 the Stock Market crashed worldwide. The Banking System
also collapsed due to the unwise excesses in the Stock Markets. The entire industrialized countries were
then plunged into a decade long Economic Dark Age.
In this country millions of men lost their jobs and their means of earning a living. Countless numbers of
men rode atop boxcars vainly seeking work. They grubbed out an existence living in Hobo Jungles and
selling apples on street corners.
I managed to pay my way through two years of junior college by delivering newspapers on a paper route.
I delivered 124 papers morning and evening and had to collect for the papers. I only earned about a dollar
a day and many times walked eight miles doing so.
After finishing the two years and with no employment opportunities in sight I applied for and passed all
the tests and enlisted for four years in the Regular Navy. During the next four years I served in a
Communications Division on Battleships. On the Battleship USS West Virginia I was assigned to an
Admirals Staff.
In the fall of 1940, at the expiration of my four-year enlistment, I left the navy and departed the Battle
Force in Pearl Harbor. On December 7, 1941 the pilots of Japans six big carriers attacked and virtually
destroyed the battleships that were the backbone of the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor.
In a short time I reenlisted in the Navy and was ordered to report aboard a new destroyer (The USS
Woodworth DD460) being made ready for sea in the bay at San Francisco. Several months later in the far
Pacific this ship was assigned to Destroyer Squadron 12 which became part of Admiral Bill Halseys
Third Fleet.
The Squadron was heavily involved in the early fighting in the Solomons Campaign. Of the fifteen ships
that served in the Squadron in 1942-43 eight were sunk (The O'brien, Duncan, Meredith, Monssen,
Barton, Laffey, Aaron Ward and Gwin). Many lives were lost. Many of the surviving seven destroyers
suffered damage, some extensive, and loss of lives (Fahrenholt, the Squadron leader, Buchanan, Grayson,
Lansdown, Lardner, McCalla and Woodworth, the one this author was on).
After the war this nation experienced a decade long period of turmoil as it struggled to return to a peace
time economy. A vast number of young men returned from all the far flung battlefields unprepared for
jobs due to the depression. Women and older men had manned the factories and defense plants and had
acquired all the job skills so desperately needed by the returning Veterans. It was a truly stressful time in
the history of this great nation.
This writer became a teamster in one of Jimmy Hoffa's biggest Unions on the west coast for fifteen years.
It was a difficult and physically demanding profession at that time with few if any labor savings devices
available. It was like they built the pyramids a grain of sand at a time.
The last seven years of the above mentioned fifteen this writer attended and graduated, with honors, from
one of the biggest California State Universities in Engineering mid term 1963-64. My first job assignment
in Engineering was on the Apollo Project as a Structural and Thermal Stress Analyst on the Apollo
Command Module Heat Shield. I worked for three years for North American Aviation located in
Downey, California and the Space and Information Systems Divisions. After a brief stint on another
Space Program after the Apollo phased out the Space Program collapsed.
The Space community then was plunged into its on Dark Age where hundreds of thousand of former
Aerospace Engineers and Technicians were cast out into the Jobless market. Too specialized or too
experienced in a job market that no longer needed their kind of expertise.
During my remaining work years I was a Traffic Engineer for eleven years where that part of the society
struggled somewhat vainly to move people and goods efficiently and safely on the nations highways with
marginal success due to the ever increasing an inexorable demand. During this time I passed the test for
Registration as a professional engineer in Traffic Engineering in the state of California.
My wife Jeannie and I have enjoyed retirement and being together with each other. Grateful for good
health where we have been blessed with being able to join in the things we mutually share and have an
interest in. So what did I learn along this journey we call life? Well for one thing I learned how deeply the
average American has always loved their country, with a passion. Also I have learned that it is a rare
privilege to having been born an American. I have learned how well and wisely the founding fathers
crafted our Constitution and the Laws that help maintain order in and an ever-changing world.
And a long time ago when the ship I was on made landfall just off the California coast at San Francisco in
about the first week in March of 1944 I was excited as a small boy at a birthday party. When I ventured
topside just about daybreak to catch that first glimpse of the Golden Gate bridge to my chagrin the fog
was so thick I could hardly see ten feet ahead. As I stood there with that damp fog swirling about me and
the ship proceeding slowly and cautiously under Radar control I could hear the fog horns on the buoys in
the near distance. With my hands plunged deeply into my pea coat pockets I stood there on the bow of the
ship peering through the fog.
Suddenly I heard a shout behind me and to my left; "There she is!" I could see one of the crew on the
port wing of the bridge pointing upward. As I turned and looked in that direction I saw probably the most
beautiful sight I will ever see; there emerging through the fog was the Golden Gate bridge. It brought
tears to my eyes and all I could think was, "Thank God I have been spared and I am home at last."
When the author of this collection of poems was a young man he ventured out on the open sea for six
years. During that time he saw all the various moods that the waters can display.
There are times when the ocean can be a place of utter peace and calm, with little if any chop. The winds
can be like gentle zephyrs and with air that is crisp and clear. The sky above can be the most beautiful
azure imaginable while the sea that reflects the sky can be the richest of indigo hue. On such a day there is
no more beautiful place on earth.
But the open sea can be like a capricious mistress whose mood swings are never predictable. And yet the
latent power and mindless ferocity that lies just beneath the surface attracts some men like a magnet and
they return again and again to thrill to its allure and charm. For it is only on the Open Sea, that the viewer
in such a sacred moment witnessing such a celestial awe inspiring panorama, will feel closer to God than
anywhere else on earth.
Then again without warning the winds can begin to increase in violence. The water being lashed by the
wind become more and more disturbed and the waves build up into watery mountains towering a hundred
feet high.
Even the biggest most powerful vessel conceived of and built by the hand of man is helpless when caught
up in such a cauldron of violence. Heading into the wind and the waves is a matter of life and death. To
veer either to port or starboard or try to run with the winds is to invite disaster. To broach is to wallow
briefly in the trough before capsizing and sinking into a watery grave.
Even a ship as big as a battleship can be like a bit of flotsam caught up in the flood. It will toboggan down
the trailing slope of the preceding wave only to knife its bow into the face of the advancing wave.
Burying itself so deeply it virtually comes to a halt. Then after a brief pause the bow drunkenly starts to
rise as the propellers try vainly to drive it forward. The turbines whine and groan with stresses far above
the designers red-line. Just before it breaks the surface, near the crest of the wave, green water thunders
and crashes down the foc'sle smashing all in its path.
Then the bow protruding out unsupported into the salty air, comes crashing down sending tons of water
skyward. Tilting precariously downward the propellers rise up out of the water and spin wildly. Then as
the vessel plunges downward again the propellers regain their purchase and the sudden shock causes
massive surges of pulsations to wrack the hull. After many hours, perhaps even days, of this sort of
punishment the weary seafarer thinks longingly of the Man from Galilee who calmed the angry waves on
the Sea of Galilee saying only, "Peace be still." And to his companions saying, "Oh yea of little faith."
And his disciples marveled among themselves saying, "What manner of man is this that even the winds
and the waves obey him?"
Below the equator the ocean is warm and humid. It has an unworldly aura not to be found anywhere else.
At night at sea with no moon or clouds is to sail thru inky darkness. Masses of phosphorous glow in the
water and with a full moon out flying fish can be seen gliding from crest to crest of the waves in the
ghostly light. Occasionally a lunar rainbow will appear when the atmospheric conditions are right. Sailing
under darkened ship conditions with no man made lights to detract from the scene is breath taking. The
stars in the firmament are so bright and so numerous that it literally surfeits the viewers mind. Their glory
and magnificence leaves memories that linger in the mind of the viewer for a lifetime.
In the inky darkness where danger can lurk just over the rim of the sea there is a certain degree of comfort
knowing the all seeing eye of Radar will detect any foe who may wish them ill harm and provide a brief
moment to decide to flee or fight.
As one stands there in awe and wonder at the gloriousness of the scene it seems a small door in a recess of
the mind opens just a whisper and a tiny child's voice begins reciting lines from childhood, "Twinkle,
twinkle little star; how I wonder what you are; way above the world so high like a diamond in the sky."
And then from childhood the mind recalls words recited while kneeling by ones bedside with the parent,
"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the
Lord my soul to take. Amen." For in times of extreme stress a man must draw strength from within
himself if he is survive or retain his sanity.
In times of extreme peril when young men venture into harms way one finds there are no atheist. Either
one finds comfort in faith and hope otherwise lies madness. And from the past again that still small voice
seems to recite, "Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God believe also in me. In my father's
house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you and if I
go I will return again and take you unto myself. For I am the truth and the life. He who believeth in me
shall never die." Comfort was also found in one of the Psalms, "Yea though I walk thru the Valley of
Death I will fear no evil for tho' art with me. They rod and thy staff they comfort me."
Any reader of this collection of poetry will find threads of that time at sea woven throughout the fabric of
this work. And that should not be too surprising.
It is the writer's hope that these poetic lines will provide inspiration, comfort and encouragement to a
reader who at the moment may be discouraged or bowed down in grief or where a cherished goal has
always been just out of reach. For it has been said. "It is always darkest just before the dawn."
