December 3, 1045

Dec 3 1945

1046 W 24th St

San Pedro, Calif

Dear Father, Mother & the rest of the folks at home

As I wrote in the card I sent Sunday I didn’t get around to writing till now, and I am duly settled in my new quarters and have also worked another day for good old Shell Development.

After I said goodbye to you at Boone and boarded the train I went to bed for awhile but I didn’t undress because it was only a couple of hours till daylight. I just lay and attempted to nap for awhile but not too successfully. The train was late leaving Boone of course — about an hour and a half — and remained behind schedule till it got out of Salt Lake City. Then, since there is a considerable stretch where the roadbed is straight and level they made up time till the train was exactly on schedule at Milford, Utah. During the last night on the train, it made up some more time so that it got in an hour early, an unprecedented occurrence in my experience. I didn’t mind at all since train riding is not exactly a source of unbounded joy and happiness to me.

The trip back was much like it was coming home but in Wyoming and Utah the scenery was much nice now than then, primarily because it had snowed some more so that the mountains and trees were all snow covered. It was certainly a “Christmasy” sight to look at the mountains etc when the sun was out and they were all glittery and white. You could hardly look at them steadily, it made them water so. It wasn’t too cold tho since a little stream which follows the tracks for some time before the train gets to Ogden was not frozen over. There was hardly any snow at all in Nebraska and after we left Salt Lake City and went south, it soon disappeared there too.

In the berth below me were a marine captain and his new bride, at least I guess it was because they acted as if marriage was something quite new and different. Anyway, he was all attention etc etc and she was sort of flighty etc and all in all they didn’t realize there was anybody else around but themselves. I had to laugh because on Friday morning I said hello of course and we all introduced ourselves and we made a few polite remarks about ourselves. Then Sunday morning I was talking to the captain again and he certainly didn’t remember what was said then. I guess he had his bride on his brain. Oh yes, he was telling her what he didn’t like to eat and she was mentally cataloguing it all, I suppose resolving never to give him this or that. It was really funny.

There were a couple of other interesting people on the train but most of them were rather dull. There was an ex-jockey (race-horse rider) going to Calif with his wife and son. The parents weren’t much but they certainly had a cute little boy. There was also an Italian, a chief petty officer in the navy who was quite interesting. He certainly had no use for the navy and was going to get out at the first opportunity.

Most of the time on the train I didn’t feel so hot. I think I had picked up a touch of the flu at home so my stomach didn’t feel so good. As a consequence I didn’t eat much & had some of your lunch left, mama, when I got here. I went to the diner for supper one night but, except for the coffee which I really wanted, it was a disappointing meal.

Sunday afternoon I took a bath and cleaned up after the trip, since you always feel dirty after you get off the train. Then I unpacked my stuff etc. Later I went downtown and mailed the card and walking all the way back up to the house here since I had had no exercise to speak of on the train. I think I am going to like it very well here since the lady is very congenial and since the bus runs about ever[y] 15 minutes or so, so it isn’t very hard to get to & from downtown.

Today at work was like any other day there except that I didn’t feel much like working, but did manage to get some things done. Davidson said that Johnson was coming down in a week or so, so I could find out what, if anything, was holding up the transfer. I was talking to Ed Fisch (one of the guys from Iowa U) today and he was saying something about a new selective service directive that had gone out recently sying that you would be permitted to go back to school now & work towards an advanced degree if you had been working for two or more years. I would like to know if this was so, but I certainly don’t want to correspond with the draft board anymore than I have to. As long as they forget about me the better I like it. Incidentally, I didn’t receive any communication from them during the time I was gone.

This is all for now. I should write a letter to Vincent.

With love

C.P.

P.S. I haven’t got Verner’s new address. Could you send it along sometime.

Traveling by Train

When I started composing this personalized history, or it may have been after I began, I made an outline of the things in my life I wanted to write about. So far I have yet to start following this outline. At this point I feel the need for a more systematic approach and I shall attempt to follow one. Actually I have touched on some of the themes already so there may be some repetition of what I have already set down.

In considering the events of my life, one dominating pattern seems to have been forming or influencing my life, and that is that I seem to have drifted for the most part along the path of least resistance. An avenue would open up and without much evaluation I would move in that direction. This kind of pattern of philosophy does not produce a high level of achievement in any field, tends to dissipate one’s efforts and activities in rather numerous and random directions with no high degree of proficiency in any one of them and makes one reflexive and reflective rather than initiative and leading. But rationalizing what my life has been, I don’t think that I would have wanted to it be any different from what it turned out to be. Even for those parts or occurrences which may have seemed somewhat traumatic at the time.

To summarize, I evaluate my life as having been relatively interesting and varied, with no real “highs” or “lows,” no great achievements but no real catastrophes either. One ideal feature has been a relatively long period of retirement that has provided ample time for reflection and review of my life, the world past and present and the accumulated thinking of thoughtful individuals before me. While I shall doubtless continue the process as I live on the main features of my appraisal are I think largely set at this time and changes will be minor — just smoothing off the rough edges of thought here and there.

I was born on August 6, 1920, in the small town of Gowrie, in the southern part of Webster County, which in turn is located some 80 miles northwest of Des Moines, the state capital of the state of Iowa. The area around Gowrie, indeed most of Webster County, is rich farmland, perhaps not quite the best land in the United States and the whole world, but quite close to being so. It is perhaps somewhat less productive than farmland farther east, as in Illinois, but this is the result of rainfall patterns. Iowa has progressively less precipitation from east to west.

Gowrie was then, and still is a small town of about 1000 inhabitants. Legend has it that a Scot by the name of Gowrie had title to this tract of low-lying west area and in order to make use of it decided to establish a town. More probably the town grew up because of the intersection at the site of the Chicago Northwestern and the Minneapolis and St. Louis railroads. During the early part of the 1900s there were a considerable number of passenger trains, in addition to the freight service, on both of these railroads. The passenger service dwindled over the years, being discontinued first on the CNW. On the M and St. L there was still service at least once a day each way between Minneapolis and Des Moines. I rode on the M and St. L as late as my college days at the University of Iowa while coming from (or going to) Iowa City at such times as Christmas break. By that time the train was a diesel-powered unit of a couple of cars, but I can recall rather dimly the steam locomotive-powered trains of the 1920s. It was such a train that brought the vice-presidential candidate (the Republican Curtis) through Gowrie in the year 1928. Again I can recall seeing the event and the candidate speaking from the rear of the train.

The CNW line through Gowrie was a branch line; the main tracks went through Boone, east and south of Gowrie. When I went to California in 1942 to being my working career with the Shell company, my father bought my ticket from the CNW agent in Gowrie whom he knew. Passenger service on the CNW to Boone had been abandoned by that time; I needed to go to Boone to get the train to California.

At the present the only part of the CNW track still in service is owned by the Grain Co-op which uses it for the hauling of grain. The M and St. L track was refurbished 10 or 20 years ago and is in good shape. The M and St. L tracks run south from Gowrie alongside the old Joe Johnson farm which we purchased in 1960. Actually near the northwest corner of the farm there is a raised area along the track which was to have been a siding at the site originally planned for the town of Gowrie. Perhaps the site was moved to be closer to the CNW line.