Summer and Fall of 1942

As I left Robert’s house I had lost all interest in joining the Marines. If he couldn’t go I would not join. I decided to head for home as I had not been home for several weeks, while attending radio school.

 

It was about two miles from Roberts’s home to my home. I started walking. I had walked a few minutes when a car pulled up and the driver asked me to get in and he would take me home. It was Buck Johnson. The police force for the IT. (IT was short for ITIO which was short for Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company). Buck seemed downright friendly. I had never known him to be friendly with anyone my age. I always thought of him as being an adversary.

 

What I remembered about Buck was his disposition had always been sour. His two favorite expressions were if you boys don’t head for home I’m goanna talk to your father or if you boys don’t head for home I will have to put you in jail. Even though he had a badge pinned on his coat and wore a gun cowboy style we never did believe he had the authority to arrest anyone. As I was getting out of the car he said, “It was sure quiet since school was out and all of you boys had to get a job or enter the service. You remember the time I caught three of you in a circulating tank I should have made you walk home without your clothes instead of leaving them by the highway.” I could hear him laughing about that as he drove away.

 

As I walked in the house the conversation quickly turned to my plans for finding a job. Since I didn’t have any plans I knew I would be presented with one. My dad was a kind and gentle man, I never remember him raising his voice at anyone, even me. I never heard him use a curse word or condemn another person. He still had a Georgia accent even though he had had been gone from Savannah for twenty five years. He had one trait that stood out and above all others. Work. He always had several projects going at once. If you were around him and did not have something to do he would find something for you to do.

 

 

LDT II 1952

 

Monday morning, dad said, “I have some business to take care of on Twenty-Ninth Street. You come along and we will see if some one will give you a job.” Twenty-Ninth Street was two miles of oil field supplie stores and contractors. Everyone on the street knew him and he knew everyone that had anything to do with the oil fields in Oklahoma. The first place we walked into, Western States Construction Company, hired me on the spot. Fifty cents an hour. Due to the draft there was no shortage of jobs just a shortage of people to fill the position. I can’t say I was excited about the job, because I knew it was going to be hot and dirty work.

 

I started to work Tuesday and by Thursday afternoon I knew there had to be a better job than what I was doing. About this time the gang foreman walked by and told me to dig a bell hole for the welder. Not to appear too stupid I did not ask the foreman what a bell hole was. After a short period of time he returned and could see I had not completed the bell hole he wanted dug. I can see you don’t know what a bell hole is. I replied “I did not”. It is hole large enough to allow the welder to put a bead around two pieces of pipe he is welding together. If you had spent less time leaning on your shovel, scratching your ass and picking yours nose you would have finished it by now. As he walked away I heard him mumble, “you graduated from high school and don’t even know how to dig a hole in the ground”. It took a few minutes for all of those insults to sink in. I had never had anyone talk to me in such a fashion. The more I though about it the more I was convinced, there was no future in what I was doing and there had to be a better and easier job somewhere else. With these thought in mind I pitched the shovel out of the hole I was digging and headed for home. As I left I told one of the other crew members to tell the foreman I had quit and would not be back.

 

When Dad walked in that evening and saw me home early he wanted to know if I had been fired or did I quit. “Well, it was probably a little of both.” I quit before I got fired. As we talked about the job and how grubbey it was he mentioned he had talked with Howard Bilbie and Jim Bob his son wanted to see if I was interested in working at the induction center. Jim Bob was the name his mother and father used. To everyone else he was J. R. which was short for James Robert.

 

J. R. and I had been friends all through high school and I probably spent as much time at his home and I did my own. My stepmother and I didn’t agree on to many things.

 

He arrived in a Ford model A. He was trying it out and planned to offer the owner one hundred twenty five dollars. The good thing about a model A was its ability to run just as good on drip gasoline as on the refined product. Every gas line in the oil fields had several containers, called drips, along the line to catch the liquids that would fall out as the gas moved toward the compressor plant. The owner would not share his scarce gasoline ration coupons, so J. R. had to visits a drip to secure enough gasoline to try the car out.

 

I agreed to accompany him to work the next day and apply for a job that was available at the induction center. We drove off and you could tell he was using drip gas as there was a slight odor of sulfur in the car.

 

We left the house not knowing where we wanted to go. We decided the only place in town for live country and western music on a week night was Chief Jim’s down in Packing T
own. Because of the reputation Packing Town and Chief Jim’s had, we had never ventured into that part of town. As we drove down main street of Packing Town the front of the building we were looking for was shaped like a teepee with larger sign above the teepee to let you know where you were. You were at Chief Jim’s. As we walked in the odor of smoke and stale beer was almost overpowering. The crowd was older and no one of ours age was there. The only flooring was a small area in front of the band for anyone that wanted to dance. We decided it was in our best interest to have one beer and leave. As we were getting up to leave who should appear but Chief Jim himself. One of the reasons we ventured into Packing Town was to see if Chief Jim really existed. He was a very impressive. He was dressed in buck skin shirt and pants with beads stitched into the fabric. Wearing mosicans and his trade mark head dress which had feathers around the head piece and down his back that almost touched the floor. If anyone ever wanted to know if we had ever been to Chief Jim’s we could say we had and saw the Chief himself.

 

My application at the induction center was accepted and I went to work filling out forms for draftees and finger printing each individual. After working there several weeks it was obvious if you waited until you were drafted you were told what service you would be inducted into. If you volunteered you had a choice of which service you wanted to enter. I also noticed the Army Air Corp Cadets were treated with much more respect than draftees.

 

I decided to check into getting into Army Air Corp Cadet training program as it was much more attractive than waiting to be drafted. The requirements were a High School Diploma, less than twenty seven years old, single and two letters of recommendation.

 

I presented the necessary documents and was told it was necessary to take an exam. I had to make a score of eighty or higher to be accepted. I took the exam and my score was two points shy of eighty. I made a seventy eight.

 

The recruiting officer said the Army Air Corps was recruiting and training pilots for liaison work and anyone making between seventy and eighty on the exam would qualify for a course, learning to fly an observation airplane. I had no burning desire to fly an airplane but it would beat waiting to be drafted. I knew first hand hour draftees were treated.

 

The course would take three months. I would be given room and board, all class room material and sixty hours of instructions and solo time in a piper aircraft. The class and Flying instructions were to take place at Oklahoma Baptist University located near Shawnee, Oklahoma. I had to join the reserve and would be called up as soon as I finished the course. Since I would be in the reserve there would be no pay or uniform until I was called up.

 

I discussed this with my father and he gave his consent. I joined the Army Air Corps and would leave for OBU the following Monday. He wanted to take me to the bus station but it was much easier for me to go the end of twenty ninth street and I would hitch hike the forty miles to OBU. I could beat the bus to Shawnee and save a couple of bucks. This was a beginning, it exposed me to things I never knew existed three months earlier.

 

- L.D. Todd