Page 32 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

to tell a joke funnier than one sent in by a listener. They were pretty good because their
jokes had to be on the same subject as the one from the listener. I don’t remember many
sports programs, except the Joe Louis boxing matches, and Bill Stern’s broadcast of the
famous Army– Notre Dame football game. Army was ranked number 1 and Notre
Dame number 2. The game ended a scoreless tie with neither team crossing the goal
line. On Saturday nights, we’d listened to “Your Hit Parade”, a program of the week’s
top ten tunes. This was when the teenager’s heart-throb Frank Sinatra usually sang the
week’s top hit.

CHAPTER 07 - Trouble on the Home Front
I have mixed emotions about my home life. Being wartime, my mother drove the
shuttle van at NAS Jacksonville. It made stops all around the base, and she occasionally
drove it to Cecil Field, eleven miles to the west of the NAS. She planted a victory
garden behind our house where I enjoyed picking and snacking on Cherry tomatoes and
English peas. On Saturdays, she did the laundry on a GE washing machine. She placed
a tubful of clean water beside it to rinse the items she passed through a wringer near the
edge of the washer. My main chore was to vacuum and dust the house and to keep the
front porch swept. My mother was very outgoing and loved to go to neighborhood
parties. My brother and I had a few unpleasant memories of the evenings that she came
quite tipsy.

My father was rather quiet and reserved and enjoyed his work at the Benjamin Lee
Auxiliary Navy Base in Green Cove Springs. He car-pooled with a couple of
co-workers since gasoline was rationed during the war. Edgar Clancy, an electrician,
was one of the riders. One year for my birthday, Mr. Clancy gave me an electric motor.
I was really excited because when I had a Lionel electric train a couple of years earlier,
I disassembled it and raced the stripped “engine with wheels” around the tracks. When
I looked at my new gift, I said, “Gee, I wish every day was my birthday!” Mother
scolded me for saying that.

Mr. Clancy’s wife, Margaret, was a good friend of my mother. When our neighbor, Mr.
Dobbins, asked my mother if she’d like to go to California, she agreed after he
explained that his company had a car that had to be delivered to the west coast. Mother
and Mrs. Clancy drove the car that long distance, stopping at tourist sites along the
way. That’s when I first learned of the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
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