This layout is when I was little and lived in the redwoods in northern California in the 1940’s. The journaling reads:
From 1944 until 1948 we lived in Myers Flat, California in Humboldt County. This was in the very northern part of the state among the beautiful giant redwood trees. When my dad and brothers built our house, it was just as WWII was over and there wasn’t enough wood to finish the inside walls or even the outside of the house. We didn’t have any running water and the electricity wasn’t installed for almost two years. Since there weren’t any televisions then we had a big Philco console radio and we used to listen to programs at night like The Phantom Knows, Inner Sanctum and Amos & Andy. We had to drive for miles to see a movie and when we wanted to go swimming we would walk to the Eel River...we lived in the woods.
Mom and dad had eight children and six were boys, so Mom would cut their hair instead of going to a barbershop. There was a spring not far from the house and since we didn’t have running water the family would carry buckets of water for baths, cooking and washing dishes. My brothers took a 50-gallon metal drum to the spring and made an outside bathtub. We didn’t have a toilet but we had a “three hole” outhouse and at nighttime we used a special ceramic bowl as a “pee-pot” if we had to go to the bathroom. Using this pot kept us from having to go outside to use the outhouse during the night...we lived in the woods.
These are some special pictures taken in 1948. Mom is sitting in our car and Denny (2 years) and I (5 years) are standing outside. Two pictures show mom & dad with me, Denny and Jim (7 years), Denny was making funny faces in both pictures. The picture with the three of us with mom and dad shows how cute we looked with our hands in our pockets. On the tree stump, Denny is in front with our dog Mike, Jim and me. Back row (left) is Tom (11), Dick (13) and Bill (15). We really did live in the woods.
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