There was dancing in the streets, that late summer of 1945, there was a large Naval Base in Vallejo, about 15 miles away. Mare Island was a major shipbuilding and repair base and it was common to see sailors in our town.
During that period immediately after the war ended, a soldier or a sailor was everybody's guest. If a soldier looked at an apple in the grocer's bin, it was presented to him with a "Thank you". Sailors and soldiers were allowed in the movie house free of charge, we boys tried to con a few into taking us in with them, but we never found any takers.
I don't recall anybody ever saying that a soldier or sailor had taken advantage of their generosity, they were mostly boys very near ourselves in age.
A sailor or soldier was never left standing alongside the road, he would usually have a ride within minutes.
Some of the "boys" returning from war had problems; we would find a young sailor or soldier sitting in the city park, crying his heart out on a bench.
My Mom and Rack's Mom had no problem if we brought one or two home with us for supper and the Grange held picnics for them during the good weather.
Some of those friendships that I established during those years exist even today and certainly stood me in good stead when I graduated from high school.
Dad was finally out of the Army and he bought a new car, a 1947 Plymouth Station Wagon. Looking back, it was probably the worst automobile ever built! Dad had to put new rings in it about every 10,000 miles and it went through clutches with alarming abandon.
It had real wood paneling that needed refinishing every year and a heater that did nothing except make noise. We went on vacation in the summer of 1948 and Rack was invited to come along. Rack and I went swimming in the lake and Dad lay under the car repairing the engine.
I believe that both Rack and I learned some new words that summer, some that my Mother felt needed Life Buoy soap applied to our tongues!
By the fall of 1948 things were deteriorating, many men were out of work and looking for jobs. Dad got a very low price for our fruit and he was worried about paying all the bills. By spring, almost nobody had any cash money and we were living on food produced on the farm.
We raised chickens for our own use and Mom was a fantastic cook, but there are just so many ways she could disguise chicken! I was a father with teen aged children myself before I could drive by a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet without shuddering.
It was heartbreaking, young men would come to our door begging for work. Some of them were the very same boys we had cared for as they recovered from their war wounds.
Mom would always feed them and allow them to sleep in the barn. None of them ever caused a problem, and Dad did manage to hire a few now and then.
My Mother kept track of many of those boys, when she died in 1981 and we had to delay her funeral for three days so many of them could get there.
The Plymouth Station Wagon finally got so bad, Mom refused to go any further than to church or the grocery store in it. After we came back from a very short trip the summer of 1949, my Dad had all he could take of that car.
I was plowing the orchard in preparation of rolling it smooth for the pickers. It was early August and, as I made my turn to go down the next row, I saw Dad drive up in a brand new 1949 Ford Station Wagon.
He had used his "mustering out" money from the war to buy the car. It was bright red with wood trim and had white sidewall tires! I stopped the tractor and jumped off, I wanted to see that bright red baby.
I have always loved red since that time, and have today a bright red Ford pickup truck.
It was one hot car, he let me drive it around the barn and I never sat behind the wheel of any of his cars again until I was 15 years old.
High School in our valley started with the 7th grade and ended in the 10th grade. The 11th and 12th grades were Senior High School and were not required if you were 16 years old or older.
In September of 1949, Rack and I started as very frightened 7th grade freshmen. We had both gone to a small country grade school and we were bewildered by the crowded halls, bells ringing and the mystery of locker combinations.
Dressing out for gym was a horror, showering with twenty other boys was scary for two naive farm boys. It wasn't that we had never seen other boys naked, but so many at once?
But like everything else, it soon became commonplace and we survived. The changing classes every period was a bit harder, but, that too, we took in stride.
.
After a couple of weeks of riding the school bus, I started planning on acquiring my own set of wheels. I was 12 years old, so I knew I had to wait until I was at least 15, but it is never too early to start planning!
We had a huge crop that year and we farm boys would come to school with our backsides dragging. I became convinced that one didn't grow old as a farmer, they just looked that way!
Even the grapes overproduced that year, every afternoon, as soon as I got home from school; Dad and I were off to the co-op to deliver bins of grapes.
We dried our own prunes in a dry yard, the fruits had to be rolled every morning, while they were still hard from the cool night air, otherwise, mold would form where the fruit contacted the dry tray.
Our days during that period started at 4:00 am, Rack would be doing the same thing at his house and we would holler back and forth to each other, until Aunt Emma got tired of being awaked by our shouting.
Time has a habit of flying by, especially when one is remembering events 60 years and more in the past.
That year flew by and suddenly, we were being promoted to the 8th grade. We had both gotten new bikes the past Christmas, Rack and I, and the early summer in the Napa Valley was an ideal time to go somewhere, ANYWHERE!
We would gather up a bunch of kids, some younger and some older than ourselves and take our swimming suits as we peddled out to Oak Park Lake. It was an old resort that was barely hanging on by charging kids 10 cents to go swimming. If you wanted to use the change house, it was an extra nickel.
We would just hide in the bushes as we skinned out of our jeans and shirts and pulled our swimming suits on.