August 18, 1942

Aug 18, 1942

1018 Avalon Ave

Wilmington, California

Dear father, mother, Snooty Poot, brothers and others,

I suppose that you should have gotten my letter and the cards I have sent so I will send you another letter to sort of keep you informed of what has been happening to me. First of all, I will be soon again moving because I have found a nicer place to stay in San Pedro, Calif. However, I will tell about that in its proper place.

Saturday I fooled around mostly. Sunday I went to church in San Pedro. It (the one I went to) is an Augustana Synod church, Bethel, located at 580 or something like that, West 5th St. The preacher is one Maynard C. Wellington. After the service, I met one of the people there, Carl E. Johnson, who is a chemist and metallurgist working for the company originated by the Kaiser of ship building fame.

At any rate he asked me if I knew Dwight Johnston and I replied that I did, that I had gone to school with him. Well, the way it turned out was that Dwight Johnston roomed with Carl E. Johnson’s mother in San Pedro. Carl E. Johnson is married and lives elsewhere in the city. Anyway, I got invited to dinner and afterward we rode around awhile, saw the ocean etc and then I visited with Dwight awhile. He told me a little of what he had been doing so that I got a little advance information. I surely appreciated the way my first Sunday in California turned out. It definitely was just the thing to keep me from becoming homesick. However, every once in a while I get to feeling that I wish I was home again but I suppose that that cannot be for awhile.

Monday morning I went to work, of course, signed some more papers etc etc. and spent most of the day in looking around. This morning I had to go over to Long Beach to get a Social Security number but this afternoon I worked in the laboratory some. It is all rather confusing at first but I suppose that that will take care of itself. I believe that I will not write anymore about my work until I become a trifle more familiar with it. However, it will be largely routine at first I expect.

Wilmington, as I said in my previous letter, is smaller than I thought it was. A large part of it is oil wells, or industrial plants. Many people live in Long Beach, Los Angeles or San Pedro and work in Wilmington. When I live in San Pedro (the place is on Cabrillo Ave., about 3 blocks from the church, but I forget what the number is) I will still use the P.E. railway to get to and from work. Strangely enough, it will not cost me anymore, altho it will be two miles farther. However, the room I will be getting ($20/month) will be considerably nicer so I thin the extra riding will be worth it. The rent will be slightly more than I would pay where I am now but I will be alone in my new room, besides which it is much nicer as far as neighborhood, size etc goes.

I think that I will have to spend about $35/month for food the way it looks now. I only wish that I had someone to fix me a lunch to take to work with me. That is the usual custom of most of the people working in the laboratory at the refinery. However when I get moved perhaps I will be able to make some arrangements in this respect.

It is barely possible that I might have to telegraph you for some money if my expense check does not get to me in time. If it does give out, I will ask you to send it to my new address which of course, I have partly forgotten. I will determine what it is soon for I plan to move over there tomorrow night (maybe) and I will write a note immediately telling you what it is.

The weather here in California is not at all what I thought it would be. It is always foggy in the morning, but the afternoons are sunny. Sometimes it gets quite warm during the day and it is always comfortably cool at night. Everything now is sort of dried up looking because it is in the midst of the dry season. I expect it will be somewhat nicer in the rainy period. I think when I get some money as a surplus I will buy some covert pants to wear to work. That is just as good as anyone wears who is working there.

I will write more later but I thought I should let you know that I am moving and that it is possible I hay have to send for some money before I get my expense check or pay check.

With love and some homesickness

C.P.

P.S. The blue ink is due to the fact that I had to fill my pen in a Shell Co. office when my pen went dry.

P.S. There is an oil well in the back yard of the place where I am now staying.

Leisure Time

When I lived in San Pedro, the Palos Verdes hills behind it were completely undeveloped. During the war they were simply open grassland and I don’t think they were used for anything. Before the war they had been used by the Japanese for dry land vegetable farming, but that of course ceased when the Japanese were interned. Since then the hills have been covered with residential developments. The road along the coast leaving San Pedro, rounding Point Fermin and ending up in Palos Verdes Estates, now passes such places as the Wayfarer’s Chapel, Marineland, and of course many houses.

During the first months I lived in San Pedro, the five-day week was still in effect and many a time on a weekend afternoon I would walk out to Cabrillo Beach near to Point Fermin. Growing up in the land-locked Midwest as I had, I was entranced by the beach and the ocean. I still am for that matter.

Another Saturday activity was to attend the double feature movie at a small theater not too distant from where I was rooming. Here it was that I became acquainted and enjoyed the Boston Blackie movies (which were the second half of the double bill). Other movies that I saw there that have stuck in my mind are “Laura” with Clifton Webb and Gene Tierney and “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby. The latter was certainly a producer of nostalgia in me for a clime far different from the southern California scene.

I remember a few other spots that were familiar to me at the time such as the Thrifty drug store which had a lunch and dinner counter. Here it was that Dwight Johnston and I had numerous dinners together on the way home from work. Oddly enough it kept operating all during the war when getting meat was difficult but ceased operation shortly after the war stopped.

I have been back to San Pedro a few times since I left in the fall of 1946. Once was after I was married and Jean and I had at least the older two of our daughters — I remember we took them to Marineland for the show with dolphins etc.

Another restaurant that I remember well was just outside the gate to the Wilmington refinery. Many times as an analyst or pilot plant operator on the graveyard shift I would stop there for breakfast. There were several pinball machines in the restaurant and these would be quite often used by the office staff from the Richfield refinery just across the road from Shell while I would be having breakfast. These characters were real addicts and had the technique of bumping the machine to direct the pinball without having the machine register a tilt down to a T. Although legally the machines could only pay off in free games, I think the restaurant paid these players off in cash. I tried the machines a few times but I was not nearly as successful as the Richfield personnel.