Albright, Carl H. - Interview and Memoir

              University of Illinois at Springfield
Norris L Brookens Library
Archives/Special Collections
Carl H. Albright Memoir
AL15. Albright, Carl H. b. 1921
Interview and memoir
5 tapes, 450 mins., 91 pp.
Albright, retired Air Force Lt. Col., discusses his career in the Air Force, aviation
cadet training, European assignments and missions during WWII; return to U.S.,
discharge, and return to college; reenlistment, and assignment as a nuclear
chemist; and retirement. He also discusses growing up during the Depression in
Springfield and attending Feitshans High School.
Interview by Geraldine C. Albright, 1980
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© 1980, University of Illinois Board of Trustees
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright Memoir
COPYRIGHT @ 1982 SANGAMON STATE UNIVERSITY, SPRINGFIELD, ILLlNOlS.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the Oral History Office, Sangamon State University, Springfield, Illinois 62708.
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
PREFACE
This manuscript is the product of a tape-recorded interview conducted
by Geraldine C. Albright for the Oral History Office, Sangamon State
University. This interview was conducted in October and November of
1980, primarily in the home of the narrator, Lieutenant Colonel
(retired) Carl H. Albright. Geraldine C. Albright transcribed the
tapes and edited the transcript.
Lieutenant Colonel Albright was born in Springfield, Illinois in
1921. Remembrances about his life begin in Spri.ngfield with the
Depression and continue through his cadet training with the early
Army Air Corps. After a brief separation from the Air Corps,
Lieutenant Colonel Albright continued what became a twenty-seven
year career with the United States Air Force as a bomber pilot and
nuclear chemist. Upon his retirement from the Air Force, Lieutenant
Colonel Albright returned to his native Springfield and is presently
employed by the Department of Public Health.
The interviewer, Geraldine C. Albright, is Lieutenant Colonel
Albright's daughter-in-law and a graduate student at Sangamon State
University.
Readers of this oral history memoir should bear in mind that it is
a transcript of the spoken word, and that the interviewer, narrator
and editor sought to preserve the informal, conversational style
that is inherent in such historical sources. Sangamon State Univ­ersity
is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir,
nor for views expressed therein; these are for the reader to judge.
The manuscript may be read, quoted and cited freely. It may not be
reproduced in whole or in part by any means, electronic or mechanical,
without written permission from the Oral History Office, Sanga:mon
State University, Springfield, Illinois, 62708.
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Background
Childhood Memories
Carrying Papers
Papa and the Depression
Table of Contents
Grade School Memories (Iles Grade School)
High School Memories (Feitshans High School)
Post-High School and Miscellaneous Memories
College Memories (Western Illinois University)
Aviation Cadet Training Program Examination
Pearl Harbor
Cadet Training/Army Air Corps Training Experiences
Student Officer
B-24 Transition Schoo]; Westover Air Base; New Art: News
European Assignments
Return to America
More Reflections on Missions
Air Force Discharge and Return to College
Reenlistment in the Air Force
Nuclear Weapons Testing
Idaho and the Harmons
California and Alaska: Assignment as Nuclear Chemist
Japan
Project Cloud Gap
Air Force Retirement, 1969
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Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright, October 7, 1980, Springfield, Illinois.
Geraldine C. Albright, Interviewer.
A. My name is Carl Albright. Date of birth is the first of; March,
1921. Place of birth was 1526 Loveland Avenue, in Springfield,
Illinois. To the best of my knowledge, I was born at home. My
mother did not go to the hospital for either my birth or that of
any of my brothers or sisters. I have an older brother, and an
older sister, one younger brother, and two younger sisters. Early
life was in Springfield. Before the birth of my younger brother,
my family moved to Rantoul, Illinois, where my father worked on a
farm. We stayed up there for probably two years, I'm not really
sure. My life in that area is made up primarily of stories that
have been told to me rather than things I personally remember.
I can vaguely remember living in the house. I know my older brother
had a very, very bad cut on his leg on the side. He fell off of a
fence when he was climbing on the fence as he should not have been
doing, but did. Right now, I have, since the day it happened, a
very large scar on the left foot. It was acquired when I was walking
around in a pig pen and got tangled up with a piece of broken bottle.
It never caused a problem and I certainly don't remember it; but I
do know the accident happened.
Upon a return to Springfield, we moved back into the house at 1526
Loveland Avenue; and my two younger sisters, to the best of my remem­brance,
were born there. We lived at that house until such time as
I was in high school. I was either a freshman or sophomore in high
school when we moved into the house across the street and down the
block where my grandmother lived, my father's mother. This was after
the death of my grandfather. The house was much larger. My grand­mother
could not move into our house and live with us so we moved
into her house and lived with her rather than staying in our own
house. We lived there until after I graduated from high school.
During the senior year in high school, my father and mother and the
three younger children moved to Taylorville. My older brother, my
sister, and her husband, and I, stayed in my grandmother's house and
I finished high school living there. About that time, this was in
1939, in January, and things were pretty bleak as far as jobs were
concerned, rather than not doing anything, I started back to high
school again even after graduating, just to take some additional
courses, got an opportunity to go up to Caterpillar Tractor Company.
I eventually acquired a job at Caterpillar. So I moved then from
Springfield to Peoria and was up there from probably March of 1939
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 2
until approximately September, yes, September or October of 1939, at
which time they did me a favor and fired me. That fall, and by that
fall our father and mother had moved from Taylorville back to Spring­fie.
ld again, and I was living with them, for lack of anything more
to do, my father and I shucked some corn together, we worked part-time
jobs on farms together until December. Right about Christmastime,
in December, I got a job with Martin Oil Company and worked with
Martin Oil until the following September when I moved to Western
Illinois University for college. This really takes care of most of
the time from that point up unti.l I actually left home and really
didn't return again as a part of the family unit as such in that
they were at least helping to control my activities.
Q. Was it Grampa Albright that died?
A. Yes.
Q. When he d:i.ed, do you remember anything about the funeral or how
the family reacted?
A. We can go back and fill in quite a lot of these details but I
thought that for the beginning why we could at least get a kind of
an overview at which point we can then go back and start filling in
some of the spots. (clears throat)
My grandfather died, I guess it was in 1935, or maybe 1936, I'm not
real sure of the year, but for this purpose it won't make too darn
much difference, my brother, my older brother, Charlie, was in the
CCC camp [Civilian Conservation Corps] because he had gone out to
Oregon and he was out there at the time that my grandfather died and
he came back right about the time of the funeral or shortly there­after--
the sequences are somewhat fuzzy. But it seems like not too
far off from that time.
I guess the thing I remember most about the time of my grandfather's
death was the fact that he was at home. He had had a stroke and he
had become paralyzed on the right side of his body, or at least
partially so; and they had moved a bed out of the bedroom into the
living room. He was staying in that room and it seemed to me as a
child a little strange that they would move him out to that pla~e;
but perhaps it was so that he could be more available. He could be
around the family more for whatever comfort that would give him. The
place where he died was in that living room.
People came that I had heard my family talk about--my grandfather's
sisters, cousins, that sort of person came out. Down around St.
Genevieve, Missouri, if I remember correctly, that's where some of
his family came from; and they were still living in that area. He
had some relatives that lived in Jacksonville, and were in business
there for part of the time as bakers. This was one of the very, very
few times that I remember seeing those members of our particular family.
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 3
The family unit would be considered fairly close because my grand­mother's
two brothers--one to the best of my knowledge was a bachelor,
and the other one was either a widower, or he was divorced, and I
think he was a widower--both of whom had lived with him [grtlndfather]
after my grandfather's death, when we chose to move into grandmother's
house and live with her and help take care of her, we had the added
problem of what did we do with the two uncles? (chuckles) This
was an additional breakup of that family unit and I don't think
it's any more typical of a German family unit than any other partic­ular
nationality that the.y were this close. I think it was a matter
of time and convenience and probably economics that they did stay
together and managed to keep the family that way rather than to be
spread around quite so much.
The next thing, they decided that when grandmother died, and then
trying to put that in line with this, you know it had to be before
I graduated from high school, and probably about the time I was a
junior or thereabouts, my grandmother died, otherwise, I'm sure
that my father and mother would not have moved to Taylorville 11nd
there would not have been room for all of the family in it. That's
what we're talking about here: my grandmother, my father and mother,
my sister and her husband at that time, could not have all been living
in that house at that time so I know that she hadn't died by that
time and it had to be after I met Liz because I think she remembers
meeting my grandmother, so that was when I was a junior in high
school.
Going back to some early childhood experiences, and interesting
things that I can remember, probably one of the most vividly remembered
is helping my brother carry papers. He got a paper route right around
the Loveland Avenue area from south of South Grand to just north of
Laurel Street, from east of Eleventh Street to west of Fourteenth
Street, so not quite a four block square area in there that he carried
papers. I was about six years old when he got this route; and I
remember helping him carry, or at least walking with him. I thought
I was helping him, maybe I was, I was six years old. Rain or shine
you'd go pick up the papers and carry them. If my brother and sister
were gone for whatever reason, why somehow I would manage on a rare
occasion to get around and deliver the papers. I'm trying to remember
if I, yes, later I carried that route by myself, if I remember correctly,
because my brother got a larger route that had a guaranteed wage--$2.00
a week so he took the new route and I and my sister carried the one
around home [Twelfth] for a little while.
I can remember carrying papers when after a while, if it were raining
quite hard, why you got so you didn't care if there was a water puddle
there. You were already wet so you'd wade through it instead of
walking around it, which is not unusual for kids either (chuckles).
l remember wintertime coming when your feet were so cold they would
hurt.
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 4
The kitchen range was what we used to heat the back part of the
house and it was always fired up. One of the good things about that
was usually, if this were the case you'd come in and take your shoes
off and put your feet almost in the oven--it'd warm them up--it hurt-­(
chuckles) at least it got them warm in a hurry. Dry off your feet
and socks ...
Q. Was it a wood stove?
A. No, most of the time in the wintertime we would burn the coal.
Lots of time in the summer, what we would burn in them would be corn
cobs--you'd go out to one of the elevators and pick up baskets and
gunnysacks of corn cobs. The reason for burning these is they gave
you a real hot fire and burnt very quickly. You could get the stove
hot enough to cook a meal on and then they would burn out very quickly,
so that the stove then would at least start to cool down. During
the afternoon or in between meals, before you needed it. In addi­tion
the hot water supply for our house was the reservoir on the
side of the cook stove--that's on the side of the kitchen range.
We had running water :Ln the house but it was cold. The toilet
facilities were down in the basement which mean that you had to go
out the back door, down to the cellar door (laughs) into the base­ment
to go to the toilet. It was almost as bad as going outside to
the back door john.
Q. Was it a regular toilet with a stool and all that but it was
down in the cellar?
A. Oh yes, it was just down in the basement, in a little room,
probably, oh five feet by six feet square, that my father had quite
obviously just built with boards--nothing very secure. You had a
door on the front that closed; you were in there by yourself. Of
course for the kids it was kind of scary to go do~ in a dark base­ment.
The hardest part of going to the toilet at that time, partic­ularly
at night, was to get somebody to take the time to go down in
the basement with you so you wouldn't be scared. (laughs) Usually,
what you try and do is to talk your brother, or a sister, or a brother
and a sister, to go down in the basement and come up with some sort
of game to play while you were going to the bathroom--or maybe they
had to go~ too. You could make it a community affair. You stayed
down there with them. so it was a rather icky type of arrangement
maybe than you would have today.
Q. You didn't have electricity or anything down in the cellar?
A. There was a light down there. It was a dirt floor; and we had
at some time or other built a bin along one side of the toilet wall
because it was cool, dark, and the moisture level was fairly constant.
If we had a good crop of potatoes, sweet potatoes or anything like
that, which we often would go out to an uncle's house and plant
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 5
potatoes with him at his farm out at New Berlin, and plant sweet
potatoes as well, and if we were lucky and had a good crop, why you
could bring a lot of those materials in and the bin was a good place
to store them. They would keep most of the winter without too many
of them rotting. If there were extra squash or pumpkins, something
of that nature that was available that you could get when they were
plentiful, you could put them down in there and they would keep very
well most of the winter--you'd have them at least until Christmas.
The other room in the basement was probably even more dark. The
floor was about six or eight inches higher than the floor in the main
part of the basement and again it was dirt. Back in there my father
had constructed two racks that were hanging from the ceiling and were
a little taller than a half gallon fruit jar--perhaps they were hanging
eighteen inches from the rafters, or the floor joist really, and in
those, why any fruits, vegetables or anything like that that Mom
would can, that's where we always put those. We would go dowu in
there, and if you had anything left over from the previous year,
why you'd have to get in behind them and move all that forward,
then put in this year's canning in behind that; and it was not at
all unusual to have these shelves filled, which were probably, oh
four to five feet across and probably nine feet long, and there were
two of them.
A few other interesting things that took place in the back room was
if we would make sauerkraut, we'd make it and put it in a large stone
crockware pot that would probably hold twelve or thirteen gallons.
That would be covered over with cheese cloth and then a plate turned
upside down on the cheese cloth and then a large rock that had been
pretty well scrubbed would be placed on that to hold the thing
together and keep it pressed down. After that got to fermenting,
why, it didn't smell too badly down there for a while, then after a
while you'd smell the very pronounced odor of the sauerkraut working
and you knew it was there.
Dill pickles ... if we could find cucumbers at a reasonable price,
or had any luck in growing a crop of cucumbers, why always selected
as close to the same size as you could get, and we would make dill
pickles. Again we would put them in a large c;rock or large crockery
jug and then line the jug with grape leaves that had been taken off
the grape arbor in the back and washed, put a layer of cucumbers and
a layer of grape leaves, another layer of cucumbers and all of this
on up to the top until the thing was full, and then again, put a
cheese cloth cover over it and an upside down plate and a big rock
to hold the whole thing together. These. were very good. I used to
go down there and steal one once in a while (chuckles)
Also, one of the things that happened in that back room is if there
was enough fruit available and enough sugar available, occasionally
Dad would make a job of rhubarb wine. And so he always put his wine
in that back room, because again the temperat1,1re, humidity was at
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 6
least constant or fairly so, and it was a good place for it to work.
When it was ready to use, we were probably, as kids, introduced to
rhubarb wine at sometime around ten years old or a little less than
that perhaps, even, because it was not unusual for a glass of wine
or a jug of wine to be brought up for whatever the occasion might be
and being kids we always wanted a taste of it too--I'm not so sure
we liked it as well as we thought we did (chuckles) . , .
It was kind of an interesting place down there--a good place to go
and play on rainy days, a good place to get out of Mom's hair when­ever
she couldn't stand us in the house anymore. With six kids roaming
around in a three-room house, it did get a little tight. So even in
the winter, if it was Christmas vacation times, that sort of thing,
whenever you tended to be home, or all the kids tended to be home and
time would be hanging a little heavily on your hands, why you'd go
down in the basement on a nice dirt floor again. Down there, why
you'd shoot marbles and have a good time. You didn't have anyplace
else to go, or much else to do, so you could at least go down in
there and play.
The basement had another important feature, I guess, for my mom, in
that in the summertime, she always had a lot of potted flowers out
in the back. Amaryllis, Wandering Jews various and sundry kinds of
flowers that they would keep or try to keep in the house through the
winter. We had a rack made like stair steps, and before the first
frost in the winter, why we always had to get the rack down into the
basement and all mom's flowers moved down there so they didn't freeze.
They were always set then at the west end of the basement close to
one of the west windows where they could get quite a little bit of
sunshine to keep them at least reasonably alive; and then we had to
keep them watered down in there, but again it was a fairly easy job.
You didn't have to water them too often. They didn't really lose water
as rapidly as they would in a present day basement that was heated
and that sort of thing because there was no heat down there--we didn't
have a furnace in there at that time.
Our wintertime heating in the front part of the house was with a
coal stove and I can remember having the more familiar kind of a
round heater with the mica windows on the front and you could see
the coals burning in there. Sometime, I don't remember the time
frame, probably when I was seven years old, maybe eight, somewhere
along in there, we got a very, very heavy heater and I guess the
thing must have weighed close to two hundred pounds because it was
just all you could do for a couple of people to move it in and out
of the house. It had ribs on it like ventilating ribs and with that
heavy mass of hangar once it got hot it stayed and kept the heat for
quite a long while. To protect the people from that stove, just to
keep the kids from banging up against it and touching and that sort
of thing, it had a porcelainized frame that fit around it and the top
of it was open and then the lower part of the sides had air vents in
it so that the cool air could come in at the bottom and the hot air
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl -H. Albright 7
would move out at the top. This would circulate a little bit of the
air round in the house and again it was nice when you were close to
it. Some parts of the room were not always as warm as they might
seem to be but we didn't suffer. Again [it was] a good place to come
in and kick your shoes off and put your feet up against the side of
that and warm them up when they were cold . . .
Some of the things you remember as kids were sicknesses and that sort
of thing that would happen. Much in contrast to today's method of
taking care of people that have diseases such as smallpox or chicken
pox, mumps, measles, scarlet fever or whooping cough, any of those
[was] you always knew when someone had them because they put a red
quarantine on the outside of your house. Those who were outside had
to stay out, and those that were on the inside had to stay in. I can
remember some one of the kids, and I'm not sure who it was, it may
even have been me, that had one of the diseases, and Mom had to take
care of us. So to put us where we'd be warm, and she could watch us,
she would take. two kitchen chairs and put the front part of the chair
up against the wall with the back away from the wall and put some
blankets on it, and thCJ.t's where you'd lay dowu. The purpose of
putting the chairs thCJ.t way [we1s] so if you were squirming around
too much you wouldn't fall off of the thing and on to the floor and
then you'd be in the kitchen where she was and she could keep an eye
on you.
Probe1bly one of the most memorable times was when my sister had
scarlet fever and my father and my older brother had to stay out of
the house. They had been in the house when whichever one of us, my
sister, I'm sure it was, was sick, or first became ill, and before
they put up the quarantine sign, why the doctor chased them out and
said, ''Well if you're going to stay in here you're going to have to
stay, and if you want to get out, get out now, and then we'll put
up the quarantine sign and you can stay out." So they stayed out­side.
Actually they stayed across the street with my grandmother.
While the rest of the fe1mily, probably at least four other children
at that time and my mother, were quarantined in the house for two,
three, four weeks, whatever it was, I don't remember, but what makes
it rather vivid in the memory is the fact that my father's only
living brother was electrocuted in an accident while he was working.
This took place while we were under quarantine--the rest of the family
were under quarantine. It was kind of a memorable occasion. The
only thing I understood about electrocution at that time was the
fact that a lot of criminals were electrocuted, so it must be bad.
It took quite a long while for it at least to come to my mind that,
okay, this electrocution, there wasn't anything wrong with it. It
was an accident, and it was then, as soon as you said the word elec­trocution,
you ah:rays thought of punishment of a criminal rather than
an accident happening. I guess it's a matter of connotation and
knowledge of what the root words really mean more than anything else.
It seemed like our family, our immediate family anyway, was always
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 8
on the short side of money. From the time I can remember, of course
this, probably my most vivid memory, would start about the time of
the depression--! would be about six years old or thereabouts. And
I know my father always tried hard to work, [he] seemed to be always
looking for work. Very frequently, he would be out of work and many,
many times the major income for our family would be whatever, at
least during and up until the time I was somewhere in mid high school,
or maybe even a little bit later than that, very frequently, our
major family income would be what mom would make doing washing and
ironing for those who could afford somebody else to do it and what
we would bringhome from our paper routes. During this time, for
several years, my older brother, my older sister and I all had paper
routes. We were all three of us carrying papers, and as it ended up,
all six kids in our family at one time or another, and some of us,
as many as three, sometimes only one, would be carrying papers from
the time I can remember at six years old until the time that my
youngest sister was out of school.
Q. High school?
A. Bigh school, I think she was carrying while she was in high school.
Yes, because I carried while I was in high school, Butch carried,
Marg carried, and took over a route of mine when I left, no, Liz took
over my route. Marg, I guess, Marg and Butch, were carrying one at
the same time and then sometime later, after I'd gone to Peoria, and
Mom and Dad had moved back from Taylorville, why, Dorothy carried
papers--so we all carried them at one time or another.
END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE
A. We can try to pick it up at the time after we were carrying papers
(clears throat). Interesting things that happen when you carry papers
are, I guess, almost legends. People that have had that experience,
I gue.ss it's like most anything else, if something can happen some­time
or other, it probably will.
I can remember, during the very depths of the Depression, in which,
again, we were quite poor, I guess, and weren't really sure of it,
but we did manage to have enough to eat--no one in our family so far
as I know ever suffered severely from hunger. I suspect that probably
the.re were times when my dad would leave the house after having eaten
breakfast and go looking for work, and probably didn't have very much
to take with him, if anything. Of course, X didn't know this at the
time, but it probably wouldn't have made that big an impression. I
can remember, on various and sundry occasions, sometime during the
week, collecting, perhaps a quarter from the people on my paper route,
and stopping by a grocery store and buying whatever amount of hamburger
that would buy, which probably, at that time, was two pounds or so.
This would be of an evening, probably going home around five thirty
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl 1-1. Albright 9
or that hour. When we got home, if I had, or if other member~ of
the family came home with meat, why that's what you had as meat for
supper that evening. Again, I don't think we would have gone hungry;
but we might not have had hamburger--we probably would have had some­thing
else.
I remember one occasion--I'm not sure whether it thrilled my mother
as much as I thought it should have or not--but I, it was her birth­day,
and I'd collected some money and scrounged up a little bit some­place
else--wherever I'd saved it--and as a real big gift to her I
think I bought her two and a half yards of material to make herself
a dress. I thought I was being real nice and I don't know if she
really (laughs) appreciated the additional work at that time or not
because she was quite busy with a large family. I don't know if she
really had much time to sew for herself or not but she did eventually
make a dress out of it b0fore it was over. I thought it was a pretty
good deal and maybe it wasn't.
The paper route that I remember most carrying was over on the, at
that time, far east side of Springfield. It started on the east
side of Eighteenth Street and went from there clear on out to the
east side of town. It was a very poor neighborhood. People were
really hard pressed to get the twenty cents a week to pay for the
paper. A lot of polored people lived in the area. Some of them
were very, very nice people--as good as you'd ever find any place.
Some of them were not the nicest sort of people, but then, the same
is true for whites.
At that time there was a saw mill on, just east of Wheeler Avenue,
at about Kansas Street. It was always an interesting place to watch
them work, for someone who wasn't at all familiar with saw mill oper­ation.
There would be one or two people there and, they would work,
oh, very regularly for a period of time, and then, all of a sudden,
why there would be hardly anyone around--or there might not be anyone
there for days on end simply because they either did not have any
logs to cut, or they had no one to buy what they did have cut already.
They had huge piles of sawdust around there which they must have
hauled away because they never burned it, as was the case with a lot
of other saw mills that I've seen in various parts of the country
since then. sawdust was a waste product that burned instead of used
for whatever useful purposes it could be converted. I don 1 t ever
remember that saw mill burning any of the by-products other than the
first slab that was cut off the side of a log which had a lot of bark
and really unusable wood in it. Why they would then cut that up
into short lengths and either use it in their own stoves at home or
sell it to somebody for a few pennies, probably, a cart load or what­ever
size you could haul away. There was usually a fair stack of it
around so that you could get it.
It wasn't at all unusual at that time, particularly when you would
carry papers on Sunday morning, before most people were up, you would
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 10
very frequently see some of the more industrious people out going
along the railroad tracks in that particular area--at that time it
was the Illinois Central tracks--and picking up the coal that had
dropped off the trains. They were hauling a lot of coal cars through
that area. There was a long curve and frequently why, when the cars
would get rocking on the curve, why some pieces of coal would fall
off. It wasn't unusual to see people out there picking these up in
a bucket to take them home. That may have been the only coal that
they had--the only fuel that they had, or at least it was augmenting
that which they could buy. So the earliest ones are the ones that
get up early and get out there first and got the best pickings, or
probably got it all, because you didn't see very much coal laying
along the railroad track, it would be picked up too quickly.
I remember one discussion with a customer, a Black man, and this
took place right about the time that Mussolini had taken his legions
into Haile Selassie's kingdom. We were discussing whether or not
the Italians would carry the day or whether or not the native in, I
can 1 t think of Haile Selassie 1 s land, it was ..•
Q. Greece?
A. No--it was Ethiopia--or whether the Ethiopians would manage to
carry the day. This particular individual seemed to me like he had
at least some ideas about it anyway. He said, well, that he didn't
see how the Italians could ever take all of Ethiopia and conquer the
land because they would, when they got into some of the desert areas,
they would run out of water, because the Ethiopians would probably
poison all the water holes. There they'd be~ you know, out in the
middle of the desert and no where to go and the Ethiopians then would
know all of the secret watering places. They could get to those and
manage to save the day, which they didn't do. But, again, kind of
a little strange some of the things that you can remember that did
happen.
Everyone asks me where the tattoo onmy left forearm comes from. And,
when this took place, when I acquired it, I was carrying this paper
route. It was a man who was not really very talented as a tattoo
artist, but he was a tattooe.ranyway; and I think he owed me thirty­five
cents for papers that I had delivered to him. He had no way to
pay me so he one day offered to give me a tl'ittoo for the thirty-five
cents so we struck that bargain and so I still carry my thirty-five
cent tattoo(laughs).
One particular house out there, the man had quite a collection of
not very good used cars; and I'm sure he was not any sort of a
licensed dealer. Maybe he didn't even have to be licensed--if he
had two cars you could open your own used car lot--and he had, oh,
quite a number of them around. So rather than wax them what he'd
do is he'd get a very, very thin oil, almost like a kerosene, and
he'd go out and wipe all the dust off with a rag that v.:ras soaked in
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Carl H. Albright 11
this sort of material. It did indeed make them shine for a little
while--they collected a lot of dust (chuckles) by the next day, but
then they shined for a while. He had somewhat of a turnover in his
cars because they would be around there a while and then they, that
group, would move and then a new group would come in, so he was
managing to sell some.
Q. When Grampa was, well, what kind of an occupation did he ...
If people asked him what he did, did he ever really have just one
thing that he aligned himself with?
A. Probably a farmer more than anything. I think that he would
have been most happy if he could have really made a good living on
the farm. I'm not always sure that this was my mom's desire. Maybe
that's why it was very difficult for him to do that, or it may have
been simply a function of the times that he did not have a farm.
Trying to work on the farm for somebody was not a very lucrative
type of an occupation.
He could do most any kind of work. A very powerful man--probably
six feet, twQ inches tall, would weigh around two hundred fifteen,
two hundred twenty pounds and he was not fat [a] very, very strong
man. He could do the kind of electrical work that would work in
most houses or around most jobs or places of business at that time.
I know that he put in, for example, gasoline pumps at a station and
[would] do work like that. He could do minor plumbing. He did
plumbing in our own house. So most any job that needed to be done,
he was capable of learning it if he had any sort of an opportunity
to learn it; but as a trade he didn't have one until, oh, after,
1940.
He went to Rock Island Arsenal after the economy started to recover.
At the beginning of the war period, they sent him to a machinist's
school. He became then, a machinist and worked there for a year and
a half or so, maybe, maybe as long as two years. At that time, Mom
did not go up there with him because he actually went in as an appren­tice--
to learn the trade; because they did need machinists so badly
all over the country. Then he later came back from Rock Island and
got a job at Allis Chalmers which he kept all during the war.
[He] worked at that job until such time as he became sick and could
not go back to work; but, I can remember very vividly when he worked
for a local rose garden. [It] was out on south Sixth Street, and
this was probably two miles, two and a half miles from where we
lived. My dad would fire the furnace, fire the stoker, and then
run the temperatures through the green house to be sure that it was
proper. I know that he would, on occasion, shovel as much as eight
or ten tons of coal into a hopper in his one twelve hour shift on a
cold winter night just to keep the particular green house warm, to
keep the temperatures where they belonged. Then they would also,
although it was a stoker, you'd have to fill the hopper. He still
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright
had to shovel it from the storage bin into the hopper and then you
had to haul and get the ashes moved out of the ash pit. That and
then run the temperature through the house about once an hour, so
he was a busy man. I think [he] probably made twelve or fourteen
dollars a week for this.
12
I guess what made it most vivid in my memory is that I can remember
on occasion having to carry his lunch out to him. He -would leave
home and didn't take his lunch with him for whatever reason, and
then we'd have to take it out to him on occasion. It -was such a
long walk out there and you'd wait for him to eat lunch or eat his
dinner and then bring the lunch bucket back or just sit around -with
him while he was eating. Then it was kind of a treat though to walk
around through the green house with him and see the flowers and how
they were being cared for. You'd walk into the gardenia house and
it was a most delightful place with the very heavy smell of gardenias
in there.
Q. I remember reading somewhere where the men during that time really
were ashamed if they were out of work or felt less manly. Do you
remember your father ever talking with you about those kinds of
values or encouraging you to better yourself so that you -wouldn't
end up the same way?
A. Yes, he insisted very much that we go to school. Of course~ he
didn't finish high school, or he didn't finish grade school. But he
was very adamant that we were going to go through high school. You
could [not] get a good job if you didn't have a high school education~
and I think there was a very distinct attitude on the part of people,
particularly that we.re able to work, that there ought to be a job
for them some place. It was not at all unusual to have them, the
father of the family, leave early of a morning, and maybe be gone
all day, either looking for a job, or just staying away from [home]
so that the kids wouldn't know that he wasn't -working.
Somewhere in that period of tin1e, I remember my dad talking about a
guy who was very, very poor--had to be--that they hired where he was
working. I think at that time he was working for Sinclair Oil Company,
at their fuel storage area at Ninth and South Grand. They hired this
I!k'ln for a day. He came along looking for just any sort of a job--any­thing
that you could get--if it were an hour's work, you took it, if
it were all day~ you were grateful. If you could get a job for a
week, why you were really one of the fortunate few. This man had
come to work carrying a lunch bucket. When the other people sat
down to eat lunch, he walked away from the group and sat down, kind
of with his back to them. The men invited him over to eat with them;
and he said no, he had his lunch--he'd just sit over there and eat
it. They got a little suspicious about it and walked over to him
and looked in his lunch bucket. What he had in his lunch bucket was
potato peelings. The other men that had been working there on a
more or less steady basis had sandwiches--whatever they would have
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 13
been. So they asked him, and he said, well, we had some potatoes
left in the house this morning. My wife peeled the potatoes to cook
for the kids and I brought the peelings with me. And that's what he
had for his lunch. So it hurt his pride very much, enough that he
was not going to sit down with the other men and eat. But they did
manage to make him share a part of their lunch with him.
But I think this is kind of indicative of what the times were there;
but it was very, very hard on many people [and] not at all unusual
to see people walking around with Adlai Stevenson shoes--that's the
ones with the hole in the bottom of them--that you'd walked, just
completely worn the sole through, and cut a piece of cardboard or
fold newspaper and put it in the bottom and go to school. By the
time you got back at lunch, why you had to put a new piece of paper
in the bottom of your shoe because you didn't have whatever, fifty
cents or a dollar, whatever it was, to get them half soled--probably
not even that much--I suspect maybe closer to fifty cents.
One time we got a basket of food from one of the government programs.
It may have been around either Thanksgiving or Christmas. It wasn't
unusual for those sorts of baskets to be passed any more so than it
is today. But probably, well, the Horner Baskets, that people
remember, the Horner Christmas Baskets and Thanksgiving Baskets. I
suspect that it was probably around that time, and I think it bothered
my dad very, very much that we had to take this, or that by taking
it, why, we were much better fed for that particular holiday than
we had anticipated being.
I do remember, very clearly, for a number of years, at Christmas­time,
they would frequently ask the route carriers for the newspaper
to accompany the men that were taking these baskets from the central
location out into those areas that the carriers would know best so
that you would be sure and find the right family for that particular
basket. They would have a list of all of the people that were to
get the baskets, and you would say, yes I know these people and they
live here, and, this is that address, and then they would deliver
the basket. We used to go out to the Department of Transportation
garage at Third and Ash and they would have the trucks out there and
the whole building--it seemed to me at least--at the time, that it
would be lined with all of these tremendous baskets of food. Then
you would load them on the trucks--the men would do the loading--and
young boys like myself would, thought we were helping--and perhaps,
maybe we were. We'd pick up a basket and slide it over, or pick it
up and carry it if we could, and help them load the truck. Then
you'd leave and be gone, oh, half a day or better, at least on a
Saturday, delivering the baskets. This would probably be the Saturday
before Christmas. I know that there were a lot of people that got
those baskets. If they hadn't gotten them they--I don't know what
they would have had for Christmas--probably very little.
Q. The year that your family got the basket, do you remember how
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 14
you felt, or were you too young then?
A. I guess, the best that I can remember is that I was really surprised.
You know they had that large amount of food that -was packed into one
basket. TI1ere was a canned beef product that I thought was pretty
good, most of us liked, most of us in the family liked it pretty
well. Maybe it was because we were hungrier than we thought, I
don't know; but .I know my dad was never very enthused about it. He
just--it just really bothered him tremendously.
Q. You don't remember your feelings or anything?
A. No, no, it wasn't, it didn't seem like, that we were ashamed that
we got it; and yet after a while, you didn't go out and tell anyone
that you'd received it. It was something that, okay, if your neighbors
knew it, they knew it because they saw someone deliver it; but you
didn't go out and say anything about it.
Q. That was just kind of an unspoken sort of thing [that] you just
always understood.
A. Yes, well you didn't, and you don't--you didn't go around and
say, well we delivered baskets to so and so, and so and so, if you
were on the delivery end of these things when I was helping with
that. So far as I remember, the time that we got that basket, I
guess I wasn't really old enough to be helping deliver them; but you
still didn't go around saying anything about that well you knew that
so and so got a basket of food or you know somebody else did, or
these people didn't. Sometimes, within the confines of your own
family, why you would say, well I know that so and so's over there
got a basket and they didn't need it nearly as bad as some other
family and I can't understand why the number two family dldn't get
one too. They may have later gotten one through some other source
or something like that, but there was a lot of publicity given to
the fact that these baskets were made available to the poor people.
But there was also not a lot of conversation among the people that
received it.
They were extremely happy to get it because most of them were, I'm
sure, were hungry. Maybe they were not starving--very few of them
were starving--but I'm sure that there were items in the baskets,
such as fresh fruit, that they probably had not had in several weeks.
Turkey--who could buy a turkey? It was something you didn't have,
only on very rare occasions.
I guess the first turkey that we ever had, that I can ever remember
our family having, was, oh gee, I must have been maybe five or six
years old. We went over to my grandmother's for either Thanksgiving
or Christmas dinner, and I think it was Thanksgiving dinner, and she
had a turkey. It was the most tremendous thing you ever saw. You
know to a five year old kid (chuckles), a turkey like that is something
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 15
almost beyond belief. I realized at that time, or at least I thought
I did, that I didn't like turkey as well as I did chicken because it
was too dry. That may have been in the cooking as well as some of
the other things. But we, it was kind of a consensus of opinion of
the kids, that chicken was better than turkey. Perhaps it was
cheaper too, I imagine (chuckles). Well our whole family.
I guess one of the things we haven't talked about's school. The--all
the kids in our family--went to school at Iles Grade School for
either all, or most of their life. They all graduated from lles
Grade School. We all went to Feitshans High School and we all
graduated from Feitshans High School.
And I guess as you go down the line, it was a little trying on the
younger ones because many of the teachers that taught my older brother
and older sister taught me; and they taught my younger brother and
sister. So I guess by time the last one came along, why they knew
the whole family, and they already had their mind made up about this
particular one before they ever got through. I'm not • . • I think
that's probably not true because ..• But they did know us all.
There was no question about them knowing who the Albright family
happened to be because we were always, there was always one of us
in their class someplace up and down the line.
And the oh . . And an 1nteresting, episode at grade school I,
took place, when I was probably 1n the fifth or sixth grade [or]
thereabouts. I was fortunate to skip a half grade 1n grade school
but, they . . . What was much more interesting for me 1n the grade
school line is that Mr. J. C. Gannon, who was the pr1ncipal of Iles
Grade School during this time, called me into his office one day.
Of course that was one of the things you were never--you were never
called to the principal's office for anything good. But anyway, I
was called into his office, and he said I need someone to ring the
bells for me and do some odd jobs around here in the office and you
have been recommended. Do you want the job? Well, a job was some­thing
that you took if some.body offered you (laughs), so I was really
a big shot around school. I was--worked for Mr. Gannon--[!] had to
get there early enough every morning to ring the bell for class to
start; and then had to stay around the principal's office long
enough to ring the tardy bell, so you were always tardy for class
but you were--it was all okay--because you were working for the
principal. I usually would leave class a few minutes early to get
from whatever the room happened to be, down to the principal's
office to ring the bill for recess; and then you'd stay--got to ring
it to bring all the other kids back in and then you went to class.
You repeated this thing in the afternoon. I think I worked fox
Mr. Gannon, I think it must have been two years that way and .••
Q. Did he pay you for that?
A. I, yes, he paid me something--1 don't know--it may have been two
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 16
dollars a month or something like that but it wasn't very much; but,
gee whiz, I was really important! Not only did I have a job, but I
worked for the principal! I had an in at the head of the school
there--you know I was really in.
And one of the other fringe benefits of this job, this, at the end
of the semester, after all of the lost and found items had been lost
and found and refound and lost again--whatever was left over--and
gee whiz, every once in a while, you could find a good knife in
there. If you found something in that lost and found bo;x after it
had been in there for at least a semester, why, if I wanted it, I
could have it. I think I found a good pocket knife or two in there,
a few things like that--you know, treasures. But you could find
always one glove, or one shoe, or one boot, or what have you. Coats
were always claimed pretty rapidly, or jackets or sweaters, or any­thing
of that nature. The small pocket items that kids are always
losing, why there were always a treasure of those in there; and
they never think to go to the principal's office and look for them
because you just didn't go to the principal's office for anything
hardly--reluctantly even when you were called.
One of the, had to be the, bane of all mothers at that time, was
boys about fourth or fifth grade or so, had to be the hardest thing
in the world on clothing because we were always wrestling. You'd
get to school early so you could wrestle before you went in to
class. You wrestled at lunch time, on your way home, on the way
back to school, recess. And it had to ruin clothes--not only tear
them, grind grass stains, (clears throat) into them, all the dirt
and so forth that at least energetic boys of that age can get into
clothing. I often wonder how mom kept them clean and patched together
as much as she did because I was forever wrestling. It seemed like
that was the only thing you knew to do in high school or in grade
school at that time. Had some . . . They did play ball occasionally
on the playground; but if you had a wrestling team set up, why you
wrestled, whether 1lnything else was going on or not. And I know
Mom used to raise all kind of hell whenever that would happen, you'd
come home with [a] clean shirt that she'd put on you that morning
and it was ruined by the time. you'd come home for lunch.
Q. Was this just playful or .
A. Yes, it was just play. It was a form of play. Girls would skip
rope and play hopscotch; and in the, well, early in the Spring, you
always played marbles. Then a little later on, as soon as it got
where you could be out long enough and the ground wasn't completely
sloppy and wet, why then you'd wrestle.
The greatest thing in the world, probably, was to come out of the
school building in the wintertime and there would be a slide. A
kid, the first one at school of a morning, would start making a
slide; and, by the time the school bell rang for you to go in, why
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 17
there would probably be a slide--maybe as long as twenty feet--and
it might be a foot or foot and a half wide. It would be just a
sheet of ice and it would be on the sidewalk and the kids would
just take a turn. There'd be a long line. You'd get in it and
you'd get back away from the slide and you'd take a run and see who
could slide the length of it. If you could slide the length, why
then that'd help lengthen it a little bit. More kids would fall.
Soon as you--it didn't make any difference--you'd take your turn
sliding and you'd get back in the line and off you'd go again.
Very few people would bring sleds to school. You had no place to
keep them. They didn't like to have them around because, well,
there was just no place to keep them. They would either get broken
or somebody would get too many kids on them or something like that
and then they'd have an unhappy child because his sled was no
longer usable--it had been broken with half a dozen kids piled on
it.
But the slides were always there, it seemed like, all winter.
END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO
A. We'll try to pick it up from the winter~ime and the sliding at
grade school and see if we can remember some more of the things that
occurred. It was always one of the things that you had to do--you
bought your books in those days. You would always have to find some
place that would sell you a used book. Very, very, few of us could
afford to buy new ones, so you always bought a used one. And pencils-­you
had to furnish all your own equipment.
We used to go to Ratz' s store. [It] was about a half a block from
school, and you could buy brown wooden pencils for a penny a piece.
They had a little conical-shaped eraser in the end of them and, as
that eraser wore down, you could put that end of it in a pencil
sharpener and erase, or trim off the end a little bit, so you could
get some additional eraser. The pencils weren't very good but they
only cost a penny so that's what most of us had to buy.
The books, again, like I said, we always hoped--or I'm sure that
Mom and Dad always hoped--that they didn't change books this year;
because if they put a new book into the system, then there were no
used books available. You had to go out and buy a new one; and a
new book might cost all of two dollars or something like that;
whereas, you could buy a used one for, I would suppose, anywhere
from twenty-five to seventy-five cents--! don't really remember how
much the prices were.
One book that you usually got that was a real~ real good one--and
parents didn't mind paying too much for a real good book--was your
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 18
speller. Because you could use your spelling book for several years,
up through, most of it all the way through grade school-~from the
time you started having spelling until you got out of grade school-­so
you always got a good speller. It didn't help you learn any
better; but you had a good speller, so it'd last you the whole way
through.
Most of the tablets that we used in those days were like the yellow
steno pads that we use in offices nowadays. You could get a white,
vcry,very, poor grade paper tablet that was somewhat cheaper. The
teachers didn't like you to use that because they liked for you to
use the yellow--it was easier on your eyes when you were in school~­for
whatever, if it were so or not, I don't know, but then that was
at least the excuse that you should use the yellow tablet; and we
all had those.
You could get a spelling tablet. It was a special little tablet with,
I think, twenty or twenty-five lines on it. You always had either
ten or twenty spelling words as your lesson and then that lesson
might be for a week. When it came to the end of the week and you
had your spelling test, why, you always had to write it in the
spelling tablet. This was about the same length as a regular tablet,
but probably four inches wide--just long enough to write a word in
most of the words weren't terribly long, it didn't seem like. I'm
trying to remember our, always remember the English books that we
used in grade school. They were Our English. Very few of them after
more than two weeks in school read Our English--they mostly read
Sour English (chuckles), which may be a reflection on the teachers,
I'm not sure. But there were always, someone had always penciled in
the S in front of the our for a sour.
I can't think right now of any more interesting things, or any really
very important things, that might have happened in grade school with
possibly one exception. When I first started in grade school, I met
a boy there whose name was Harry Patia. Harry and I went all through
grade school together, all through high school together. We started
college together; and it wasn't until I went into the Air Force, and
Harry went into the Navy, that we were separated in school. Today~
I still bowl with Harry; and it's been a friendship that has carried
on since. we were both about six years old, which is kind of neat,
really, in many ways.
Interesting things that, when talking about Harry, that would come
up, is that close to his house was--and I can 1 t remember the people's
name now--and I intended to ask Harry about it today, were, was a
family that had an ice house. They sold blocks of ice. Very, very
few people at that time had refrigerators. It was very frequently
the job of a couple of the younger children in the family to take a
wagon and walk the half a dozen blocks or more from our house over
to the ice house and pick up a twenty-five pound chunk of ice, cover
it with paper, or a gunnysack, or something like that, and haul it
back home so that you could put it in the refrigerator--or into the
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 19
ice box really--so that you would keep the butter cool, and the milk
cool. Any of the other foods that were left over why, you tried to
keep them in there. It was always nice to be able to go to the ice
box and chip off a chunk of ice and make a lemonade or ice water or
something of that nature. If you were going to have company in for
Sunday, you always managed to get an extra block of ice and tuck it
into the ice box someplace so you could use it to make ice tea or
lemonade.
Probably the unhappy time of the day for Mom was when the ice, the
drip pan under the ice box, would run over. Somebody was supposed
to have emptied it and didn't, and it would very promptly be forgotten
until you were wading through the water on the floor. That wasn't
where most of the water came from--by the time you try to slide the
brimming pan full of water out from under the ice box why, then,
more of it would slop out and you 1 d e.nd, usually end up mopping
about half of the kitchen floor--probably not very well, but at
least it had water on it (chuckles).
Going along with the seasons, and summer into winter, why your biggest
job then, and it was always one that most generally the boys in the
family had to take care of, was being sure that there was kindling
split and in the house in the evening; that the coal buckets were
filled so that you'd have enough coal to bank the fires for the night;
and usually, you didn't haul the ashes out. Once in a while~ if it
was extremely cold and you had a lot of ashes, why you might haul
them out of an evening; but usually, you would haul those out of a
morning. Again~ by the time you'd bank the fires for the night in
the heating stove and in the kitchen stove-~the range--you'd used up
most of the coal that you'd carried in--a couple of buckets--and so
then in the morning, when Dad would get up and get the fires going
again, he'd take the ashes out of the stoves and put them in the
coal buckets. Then we'd haul the coal buckets down to the alley and
dump the ashes and fill them with coal and bring them back to the
house so Mom would have coal for the day. If you were lucky, you
got kind of chunk-sized coal so that it was easy to handle. Well,
1t wasn't really easy to handle because sometimes it would come i_n
big chunks. But i_t was a lot better fuel because you w-ould break
i_t up then into smaller pieces so that you could get it into the
coal buckets and haul lt to the house. Then you'd always bring a
couple of big chunks into bank the fire with, if you had it. If the
economy was really low, and you d1dn't have any money at all 1 and
you were really trying to skimp down to the last penny, why you would
probably buy, I think they called it "mine run coal" at that time.
This had a lot of real trash in it--a lot of dirt or coal dust. It
wasn't hard to shovel into the buckets, but it didn't burn very long-­it
didn't last very long. It was really, probably in the long run, a
more expensive type of fuel to use than the lump coal. So if your
dad was working, and we had a few extra bucks, why, that's where we
would probably spend some of it would be to buy a bett~r grade of
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 20
coal, because I'm sure he was well aware of the fact that he wasn't
getting very much for the money that they were spending for that
low grade coal. Well, we'll go on to ..•
Q. Grade school went through what, eighth grade?
A. Eighth grade at that time, yes. I didn 1 t start to kindergar~~n
and a lot of kids did not start kindergarten at that time. A few
years later when, probably my youngest sister was going through grade
school, why, they had changed the rules and you had to start in
kindergarten. But we went from eighth grade, I mean from first
grade through eighth grade in grade school.
Usually, at that time, until you were about the fourth grade, you
didn't change rooms. Most generally you had one teacher for most of
the subjects. After you got around the fourth grade, maybe into the
fifth grade, if you changed or had different teachers, the students
would stay in the rooms and the teachers would change rooms. Then
I guess in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, maybe in the fifth,
I don't remember, but at least in the sixth, seventh, and eighth
grade, why you were in upper grade school, and you got to change
rooms, which meant that when the end of class came, you got up and
you marched out of the room in a line in a file. All of th~m that
were going in one direction would be on one side of the hall and
all of them going in another direction would be on the other side of
the hall. The teachers would usually be in the center to see that
there was no fighting or any of that sort of thing and you moved as
a class. You would just walk down the hall to the whatever the next
room was and then go into that particular class and the teacher would
be there waiting for you.
One of our, I'm trying to think what to call her, she wasn't a bad
teacher, she was a very good teacher as a matter of fact, but I
guess one of her jobs was to monitor the kids coming into the school
up the stairs and heading into their homerooms. And it wasn't at
all unusual to see her standing at the end of the hall over the
stairwell where she could see from essentially the time you walked
in from the outside. In that same stairwell, you could go down into
the basement where the lavatories were and there was a big playroom
down there and that's where you went to eat lunch. When it came
time for school to begin, why you'd look up there and she would be
standing at the head of that watching the stairwell with a long
paddle in her hand. One of the things she was not averse to using
was the paddle. I think she probably had a whole lot worse reputation
among the kids than she really was because the paddle was not spared
but it was not used to near the extent, I think, that most students
would have thought that it was. But you could see her standing up
there every day with her paddle in her hand.
But the very difference in teachers . • • The one that was monitoring
a same stairwell at the other end of the, or a similar stairwell at
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 21
the other end of the building, would be standing down there without
the paddle and no problem at all--no more fussing or fighting with
kids coming in her door than there was with the ones coming in the
door where the teacher with the paddle would stand.
The girls had a playground on one side of the school and the boys had
a playground on the other. When the bell rang, particularly in the
morning, and after the lunch break, for classes to start, if the
girls were not close to their room, to their end of the building,
to come in through the door that they were to come in, then they
had really to hurry and run and get around there and get into that
door because they were not supposed to come in the door where the
boys did. If the boys were, it was the same thing for them. They'd
had to hurry around and come in their door. I guess the lady with
the paddle was always standing at the boys' end rather than at the
girls' end (chuckles).
The playrooms down in the basement of the school were separated.
The boys played in one end and the girls played in another. You
could, they had around the playroom, there were benches up against
the wall, and if you carried a lunch to school, why then that's-­particularly
in the wintertime where you would have to go and eat
lunch. Of course it was used much more so in the wintertim~. _
it would be in the summer. I don't remember [being] restricted to
the use of the playroom in the summer or in the warm, nice weather;
but it may well have been, because no one really went down there
during the nice weather during recess or the lunch period.
Our family only lived three blocks from school, so it was cheaper
and more convenient really, for us to come home for lunch. We would
leave school, hurry home, and Mom would have whatever lunch w-as
available. You'd eat lunch and then get back. Seems like vte had
about an hour to do this, which, apparently was ample time. With
there always being at least two of us in grade school, why--and some­times
three--in the same grade school, why vte would come home because
Mom could feed all of us probably for the price of the lunch--fixing
or packing a lunch for one.
In high school, when [I] first started over to Feitshans High School,
part of the building that currently exists was there as the whole
building. There were a lot of portable buildings. These were just
wooden school rooms--reasonably weather tight--I don't remember them
being unnecessarily cold or anything of that nature--that were moved
in and set on make-shift foundations around the school to accommodate
the growing classes. Then, as they increased the size of the school,
why they gradually moved all the portable buildings away. I'm sure
that they're still using similar buildings at schools, even today,
in which they set up the temporary classroom to meet class require­ments
and [accommodate] the student population.
Your high school experiences were really new from when you first
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 22
started there as freshman. You had to make up your own mind or with
the advice of, a counselor, or homeroom teacher, probably a--mare a
homeroom teacher than anything else at that time--and with a little
bit of help from your parents, and probably, a good bit of encourage­ment
from one of your grade school teachers or some of your grade
school teachers, at least, as to what type of a course should you
really pursue. You didn't really have to take algebra. It was one
of the courses that you were interested in, dreaming about a college
education or going to any school after high school, you needed to
have the mathematics. So they did encourage a lot of students to
take the algebra courses and to pursue a college preparatory type of
a curriculum. Other students that were not really prepared for
college--or maybe their grade school teachers didn't think they were
capable of handling college work--would be directed into, perhaps
easier, courses, and even more into the manual arts.
We had oh, a general, manual arts class in which you were introduced
to tin smithing. .. One of the things you'd build would be a little,
maybe a-funnel, out of light-gauge metal, a flour scoop or a sugar
scoop, and these sorts of things. It would teach you the basic
principles of tracing the pattern, cutting the metal, folding the
edges so that they would interlock, and then use a locking tool and
seal that seam down and then solder it with a soldering iron, a gun.
You would have a large, heavy iron that you'd heat it a gas, [a]
little gas furnace, and then you would use that to finish off the ..
Actually, more like kitchen gadgets and usable items.
Then there was another portion of the time that you would use heavier
gauge metals and make things like a garden trowel. You'd take a piece
flat iron and cut it, shape it down to a point, sharpen it, then
actually bend it so that it would have a, kind of a scoop, or a semi­circular
shape to it, take a piece of round iron rod, cut it to length,
and bend it in a shape so that whenever you had the handle in your
hand,your hand would clear the ground if the, if the scoop part of
the trowel was on the ground.
It also introduced you to simple DC electricity--you'd wire a doorbell
or learn how a flashlight would operate and, (I'm] trying to remember
one other area that we . . . seemed like there were three sections
of that. The mechanics end of it would, would logically be the other
thing that you would learn. I guess maybe that was it--you ~ould
learn to use pulleys, and why you got more mechanical advantage if
you put three loops of rope around a set of pulleys and tried to lift
a heavy weight as compared to one or why you would, if you wanted to
move a heavy object, you would move the fulcrum of a pry bar much
closer to the weight and then your weight and then your weight would
give you a much greater mechanical advantage. You 1d learn to turn
mechanical advantage and I doubt if very many of us remember it as
such, but you did really start to pick up many things that were quite
useful to, in a, vocational type of a way. I think that probably
the program basically was for that purpose--to introduce--a lot of
the students to those types of endeavors so that they would know
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 23
whether they might like to go into electricity more than into soldering
or into mechanics or something of that nature. I know that this took
place in our freshman class. We ... I don't remember when it was
[that] probably Mom threw away the last one of the sugar scoops or
flour scoops that she had around the house that Charles or Butch or
I had made while we were in high school.
There was a requirement for English. Everybody had to take English
whether you liked it or not. You had to take a certain amount of
physical training and physical education.
One of the things that it wasn't too terribly unusual to see was some
of the kids there out on the gym floor playing around in either their
sock feet or barefooted because they didn't have tennis shoes, You
were all supposed to have tennis shoes but some of them couldn't afford
it, so what were you going to tell the kids? Now if they said, well,
I got one pair of shoes and that's it--they may have been able to
talk--some of them may have been able to talk their parents into
buying one pair of tennis shoes and they wore them outside and then
into the gym as well. So they were, they had tennis shoes. But a
lot of people wouldn't go this route, so they were out there playing
in their sock feet.
We had, in the manual arts department of the high school, a printing
class in which you went in to learn how to set type. God, remember,
[I] can't remember what they called the type holder now, but you had,
the type would be in small individual characters in a case, and you
would have to pick them out of the case and set up your work projects.
Also had mechanical drawing, and wqqdwo_1;~.. To me, wQodwoTkine; _
class was always a much more. interesting one and I enjoyed it a whole
lot more. Your first introduction to ¥~odworking. in high school,
what you got to do in the introductory cl~ss depended upon some of
your work in grade school. Because in the seventh and eighth grade
in grade school, one year we would have to, one afternoon a week, we.
would have to go to a different school. I think in the seventh grade
we. took a mechanical drawing type of a course; and in the eighth grad~,
we actually got to go into a woodworking class. There you learned
what a plane was, and a sander, and how to use a square to make a
board square, a level, and so forth. So if you had this bit of
background in woodworking, why then when you were, went into high
school, you could actually start making something. What you had to
do was to get a rough piece of lumber, smooth down the sides, the
flat plane, the broad side of the thing, and get [it] nice and level
so your teacher, who was a real craftsman, was satisfied. If you
didn't satisfy him, you might start with a three-quarter inch piece
of board and it might be planed down to (chuckles) less than a half­inch
by the time you got both sides of it so that they were nice and
true and flat with a plane so that he would accept them as, the fact
that, okay, now you knew how to use a plane and use it properly.
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 24
Then your next task would be to square the edges of those boards-­again
using a plane--so that they could be glued together. The glue
pot was always a very fishy smelling thing because it, the glue, would
come in a kind of a translucent, amber-colored sheet of dry glue
really, and this would then be broken up, placed in the glue pot and
heated. The glue pot was kept hot all the time, with a little bit
of water to keep it fluid. When you were ready to glue your boards,
why you got the boards all lined up, had your clamps together, had
your blocks on the end of the boards so that you didn't mess up the
good edges that you had just fixed, and then you would take it up to
the, where the glue pot was, and glue the edges and slap it together
and put the clamp on it. You couldn't use that board for at least
twenty-four hours until the glue had a chance to set.
A lot of those pieces that were glued together are still holding now.
There's that one octagonal shaped table at our house, is one that I
glue.d together. Charlie made a cedar chest that was, so far as I
know, he still has it in his house today. A real craftsmanlike job
had to be done on these things.
Mr. Krebbs, the woodworking teacher, was, a tyrant in many ways (laughs)-­[
he would] scream and yell like mad because things weren't done the
way they should be; but when you finished the project, it was some-thing
that you would really, [be] glad, and proud to take home--you
could say, by gosh, I did it--it's mine.
It was a very, to us, at that time, an extremely well-equipped wood­working
shop--there were three lathes, I think, and a wood turning
lathe, a band saw, a planer, an edging planer, and a table saw. You
had to be . . . No freshman ever got to touch any of the mechanical
equipment--this was all for sophomores, or juniors. Freshman--you
couldn't touch it--you just stood there and watched.
You did all of your planing and so forth with a hand plane but there
are, no telling how many pieces of furniture still around in the city
of Springfield that were made in those woodworking shops that are
really still very, very fine pieces of furniture. You used the best
walnut in the world that you could find.
Probably the highlight of the woodworking career was whenever you
had your project all together and you were ready then to finish it.
You could go--there was one, area--a different room, a separate room-­that
was set aside. You would take your materials in there after
you had sanded them and run the steel wool over them to get the
wood itself just as smooth as it could be. You'd wipe all the dust
off of it, then you'd take it into the finishing room. That's where
you would fill it, stain it if it needed a little bit of staining,
and then varnish it. Mr. Krebbs was extremely particular about how
you went into the finishing room because he didn't want any dust in
there. When you finished and had that final varnish coat on your
piece of furniture, it ought to shine like glass because that was the
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 25
only way it was right. (chuckles) I would say that, at least on
some of the items that I made in the shop, I know that they had at
least four coats of varnish that were on them. You'd put a coat of
varnish on it, let it set, and get nice and dry and then you would
take a piece of fine steel wool and go over it and smooth out that
varnish coat. You might even take a pumice stone and oil and rub it
down so that it was nice and smooth. Then you•d put another coat on
it and you'd repeat thi.s process until Mr. Krebbs was satisfied that
that coat was just exactly what it ought to be. Then you would work
it down with a little bit of linseed oil and a very fine--just a
little bit of pumice in there--to take any shine off of it, or glitter
off of it. Then, when you were through, it would have a nice, soft,
satiny shine to it. It was a real project--it was a real good piece
of work when you came out.
I don't talk very much about my period in print shop because the
printing instructor and I didn't get along very well. I didn't
really enjoy mecha.nical drawing. So, I took what I thought I had
to in those areas, to get into the woodworking shop and to be able
to continue what I wanted to. What I thought I liked to do in wood­working,
which was really much more interesting to me.
In the area of classroom studies, it's kind of interesting to look
back at some of the people that we met, and some of the people that
we knew at the time. One of the good teachers that we had, one of
the enjoyable teachers that we had at school, was Carl Wilson, who
later was in the State Department of Education's office, Clyde McQueen~
who was one of our teachers there and was later the County Superinten­dent
of Schools~ [a] very nice man. As a matter of fact, when we
came back to Springfield after I'd retired from the Air Force, Clyde
McQueen was one of the people that I went to looking for a job. He
almost had me a job down here but some guy wouldn't take his word
for my capabilities and he couldn't get in touch with me so he
wouldn't hire me without seeing me and talking with me. So, I gu~?.ss
that ended my career teaching in Springfield. Charlie Kenney, who's
a lawyer, in Springfield today, was one of our teachers in US Govern­ment
and History. When I was in high school, Charlie Kenney was still
going to Lincoln Law College in Springfield. He hadn't quite finished
his law degree yet. He's a very good friend, even today. I know him
and he's in our Optimist's Club. Those are kind of unique friendships-­at
least it seems so to me--that were formed at that time, and are
still viable today, when I can see any of those people and still --
talk with them on a very, very friendly basis.
END OF TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE
Q. Carl, we were talking some about some of the people you'd met in
high school that you are still friends with today and some about your
woodworking classes on the last tape and I'm wondering if maybe you
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 26
have some other things to add about your high school years?
A. Continuing to, in the vein of talking about some of the instructors
that I knew in high school, and Charlie Kenney, of course, with his
background in law, was an extremely effective teacher in American
government, in American ldstory. It was always his unique way of
teaching that if you asked a question, he would most generally tell
you where you could find an answer and tell you to go look that
question up--or the answers to it--and then bring it back to class
and they would discuss it. If you got any misinformation any place
down the line in your research work, he would very quickly get it
straightened up for you, so there was never any problem in your mind
about whether or not he knew the answer. He was trying to, at that
time, create within the students, I'm sure, the desire to go look,
to use the library, to do your own research, rather than to have a
teacher stand up front and parrot out the information that is already
in their brain. It's so easily forgotten that way. If you go to
the library and look it up for a little while, or spend a few minutes
with a topic, then at least you get a lot more out of it and probably
find out a ~1ole lot more and remember much more in the long run,
than you would if he just told you the answer. The other unique
mark of Charlie Kenney is you never had a question about what was
wrong or what corrections were made on your paper. He always used
green ink. Everything that he marked on your paper, any note that
you would get from him, was always written in green ink. Charlie
Kenney still used green ink today in writing notes or making comments
and so forth on any sort of written matter-~particularly in his law
practice. He used green ink so you knew Charlie had been around if
he's written on your paper.
One man that I owe a great deal to was my chemistry teacher in high
school, John Hillemeier. I enjoyed the sciences very much, and took
biology under Mr. Rugg. He and I were very good friends as well as
[having a] teacher/student relationship. When I got into chemistry
Mr. Hillemeier was a very young, and what I thought, at least was a
very handsome young man at the time, and an interesting teacher to
me. He made chemistry a real challenge and a real part of what was
to be my future. He opened a whole new area of knowledge, or lack
of knowledge, that I had. So I took chemistry under him and then
worked for him, I guess, the following year, as a laboratory assistant
or [I] would come in and help him in his lab work with the new classes
as my time would permit.
He was a very good friend of mine at the time; and, if l'd been a
little more courageous or maybe not so naive, he would probably have
gotten me into Wast Point Military Academy. At that time, Mr. Rille­meier
was a major in the Army Reserve. This, of course, was about
1937-1938, perhaps. Some rumblings of the future were beginning to
make themselves heard. He talked with me at quite some length about
going into West Point. He got a bunch of books from West Point
showing what the entrance exams were, and went over those with me to
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 27
some extent, and tried to convince me in many, many ways that this
was something that I should do--something that he felt I had the
capability of doing. He, at least on two or three occasions said,
if you want to go to West Point, don't worry, I can help you get an
appointment. Well, at that point in my life~ to go to West Point
was beyond the wildest dream that a poor kid would ever have--who
could go to West Point? Someplace along there I read in the book
that you had to have, I don't know, maybe, five hundred dollars to
start because it took you that amount of money to get to school and
to have some initial outlay for uniforms. This would all come back
to you, but who in the world had five hundred dollars? Where could
you get that amount of money? It was just unbelievable. And, I just-­I
was scared. l wouldn't do it (chuckles) because, part of it, I
was afraid. I just knew that this would never be something that I
could accomplish.
The unfortunate thing that happened there is that shortly after Pearl
Harbor, or right about that time, anyway, Mr. Hillemeier was called
on, back to active duty with the Army. He was sent to the Phillipincs
and became a prisoner of war of the Japanese and later died while
he was a prisoner of war of the Japanese. And, so, to the best of
any information that we were able to find out, why, he did die on
the Bataan Death March, or at least that's where I think he died.
But, anyway, he was the man that got me interested in two things-­chemistry
and the military. So, he was, and still does, hold kind
of a special place in my memory as someone that I would like to have
known a whole lot longer than I did.
Oh, interesting incidents that happened in high school or things
that kids would do is we--Harry Patia and Freddie Pritchett and
myself were good friends; and [we] probably had a certain reputation
around school of being the ones that were always doing something-­maybe
not bad--but at least we were always bugging people. We have,
on occasion, gone down to the, in the wintertime gone down to the
dean's office and, eventually talk the dean into excusing us for an
afternoon so we could go out and shovel snow and make a quarter or
a half a dollar or something like that. Then, before we'd leave the
school the first person we'd ask if we could go out and shovel the
walk would be the dean and we'd only charge him fifty cents or some­thing
like that to get his walk shoveled. Once in a while he would
let us and sometimes he wouldn't; but we were not above doing something
like that.
The high school choir under Miss Curry, Catherine Curry, was kind of
an interesting group of people. Again, Harry and Freddie and I were
in it. Fred Fromm is another fellow that was in the choir with us.
Herb Havenar, Dorothy Sullivan is one of the girls, Pope, yl?.s, Jane
Pope was the other one and the girl that Fred Fromm married was, yes,
Florence Biederman. I guess I don't know whether any of those people
are still around Springfield, with a few exceptions. Dorothy Sullivan
is still in town. Harry and I, of course, are here. Fred Fromm was,
may be dead for all I know. I'm not sure; but anyway, we had a good
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright
time in high school. It was very enjoyable. A nice group of kids
that really didn't get into too much trouble, but then they had a
lot of fun, too.
28
Academic-wise, probably one of the smartest young [men] in our class
was a young man by the name of Leo Povse. He was a neighbor of ours,
as well as a classmate. If you had to compete with somebody from a
scholastic standpoint why, usually Leo Povse was the one that you
had to come out ahead of if you were going to be number one. He
was, and to my knowledge still is, an extremely intelligent person.
Someplace along in high school, the American Legion gave an award for
scholastic ability and I was the person--one of the people--that was
nominated for that. Someplace around in our collection of junk I
still have a large bronze medallion that was given that night. [It]
was a very shiny night for me, it seemed, because, [it was] one of
the earliest times that I can remember really going out to someplace.
and having a dinner--a banquet type of a dinner--and it was sponsored
by the American Legion.
Q. What kinds of feelings do you remember having? Was Leo involved
in this kind of thing, or ..
A. No, I don't remember Leo being involved in that particular one.
I was, I know, very surprised that I was the one selected for that
particular award. I guess, scared like most children or young people
would be about something of that nature; and yet, excited about it,
that, okay, you know, well really, what does this all mean to me?
Some of the young people that I have contact with today would have
been about that age or, the same age that I was at that time, [and]
how much, much more mature [they are] than I was and [how] much more
at ease in a public situation, [they are] particularly when you compare
the way they handle themselves in such things as the oratorical con­test
and that sort of presentation. They were very mature and that
would have scared me completely to death at that time. I don't know
whether I would have been able to handle it or not. One of the things
that didn't come up [was] that I did [not] have to make a speech or
anything like that. Probably all I had to do, if I remember, was
to get up and say, you know, thanks, I'm glad to get it and sit down
and wonder if I'd said something wrong.
I guess during high school I had quite good grades; [I] didn't have
any problem with most of my studies. I ended up, I think, fourth or
fifty scholastic-wise in my high school class and would have been
eligible, I'm sure, for some sort of scholarship assistance had I
known such things were available. My graduation from high school
took place at mid-term--mid year--(clears throat) and so after
graduation, why we--that's where we had no jobs--we had nothing
specifically in mind to do so we . . . quite a lot of us would always
come back and take a post-graduate course. That's really what I
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 29
started right itnmediately after high school graduation.
One of the other people that I met in high school when I was a junior,
was a girl that transferred from Springfield High School, and recently
moved into the neighborhood. I guess I thought she was pretty cute
because I started chasing around after her and eventually started
going with her and finally married her and 11m still ma.rried to her.
That was Mary Elizabeth Howard. Since those days, why we've had a
lot of fun, a lot of traveling, and done many things that we--probably
neither one of us I know that I never thought we would do. [We have]
seen many places that we never would have expected to see together,
or alone--at the time when we first met.
Liz's relationship with Harry Patia has always been kind of an interest­ing
one to me. Quite a lot of competition between the two of them,
really. Good friends, I think with a very competitive spirit of both
of them. They get along, at least--at least, tenuously (chuckles).
Q. They're competing for you, then?
A. I don't know whether they're competing for me or just competing
against each other--I think that's it more than anything else. They
have been friends even as, ever since, really, the group of us have
been together. Now the relationship between Liz and the other one
of the three--Harry, Freddie and I--her relationship with Freddie
was, considerably different. They were very good friends, not the
competitive feeling between the two of them as there was between Liz
and Harry. So today we still keep in touch with Freddie on occasion,
although he's in Florida now.
Oh, following high school, as I said, it was not unusual for the
students to take a post-graduate course which meant that all you
were doing was coming back to, or going back to high school and
picking up some class that you think you would enjoy taking and just
taking it for fun, which is really, I think, a very nice way to do
something. You're not really competing for anything, you're just
doing it because you want to.
[I] don't even remember what courses I started to take at that time;
but then, somehwere along in there, probably February or so, of 1939,
I took a trip to Peoria, to Caterpillar Tractor Company. At that time
they were interviewing high school graduates for their tool and die
making apprenticeship course. I went up to Peoria and took the
test for this particular apprenticeship endeavor and passed the
acceptance test for it. They later hired me. I forget, this must
have taken place probably in March or thereabouts. So that meant
that I had to leave Springfield and go to Peoria to work.
My first few weeks up there--probably the first eight weeks or more-­was
not an apprentice program. It was working in their chemistry
laboratory. So maybe some of Mr. Hillemeier's background was already
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 30
beginning to rub off on me there. But I did work in the oil laboratory
at Caterpillar and one of the things that we learned to do was to
check the viscosity of oils, lubricating oils, used in tractor engines
and [to] do some work on the friction releasing capabilities of some
various greases. I did this for quite some time in the lab, whatever
it was--six weeks, eight weeks--before I actually started into the
apprentice course.
The introduction to the apprentice course was really moving out of
the lab into the factory. I worked under a man in the tool crib.
Part of my job was to take care of the large punch press dies and
forming equipment that were used there. If some machinist would
come up and want a particular die, why, I had to locate it in the
storage area, get it out to where he could move it up to his machine
and then certain hours of the day, why we would go to a class and do
the studying that was required for the apprenticeship.
This went on up until, around September, of 1939, and then at that
time, I thought it was disaster struck--and they fired me. The man
who was in charge of the apprentice program there decided I wasn't
smart enough to become a tool and die maker and wasn't making progress
to suit him so he decided that I ought to look somepJ.?ce . else for
work because he didn't want me there any more. So I came back to
Springfield after that.
Q. Were you really down about that,being that jobs were so short
in the first place--worried?
A. I don't think I was worried--I think I was very, vary, very
disappointed. It was quite a shock to someone who had really
thought, okay, now, you know, this was going to be something real
great because tool and die makers were quite an elite group in the
factory. They made some of the better salaries that were being made
there and I had no idea that I would ever be anything other than,
or would go in to something like [the] management area in a factory
of this sort and so becoming a tool and die maker would have been
really something quite great, for me, at that time. Yes, I was
pretty downhearted about the whole thing, for quite a while. I
guess it seemed like a pretty bad day anyway.
That fall, or the rest of that fall anyway, after coming back from
Peoria, why, the jobs were still pretty tight around Springfield and
I helped my father shuck corn and do whatever odd jobs we could find
until about oh, it was just a few days or a couple of weeks perhaps,
before Christmas, and, I got a job with Martin Oil Company. They
still have stations in Springfield. The station that I worked at
at that time was at Ninth and South Grand. I guess, there, when I
went to work there, I was probably making either fifteen or eighteen
dollars a week. I would work from three in the afternoon until eleven
at night. I forget whether it was five or six days a week--I gue.ss
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 31
it was just five days a week.
Going back just a little bit, when I was in the apprenticeship program
at Caterpillar, I started out when I first ~ent up there in the oil
laboratory at twelve dollars a week, which was [a] pretty good salary
for a young kid just out of school. When I went over and actually
started into the apprenticeship program, they raised my pay to four­teen
dollars a week. So, when I--that Christmas area time--when I
went to work for Martin Oil Company, why I was making more than I
would have been making in the apprenticeship program.
I guess some place along in there, why some of the memories of the
apprenticeship program got pretty well erased. At the time I didn't
think so, but they--I've later observed several times--that probably
Caterpillar did me the biggest favor in the world by firing me. I've
later used that story to [show] to a lot of young people that were
worried about failing in something that sometimes it's not the worst
thing in the world to fail: ---The worst thing is not to do. And if
you fail at something, and maybe, maybe it's a good thing--you triad
it and so you get canned--it's not the end of the world--it may seem
like it for a while, but it really isn't.
There was quite a group of characters at Martin Oil Company when I
worked there. One of the very nicest people that I've had the
privilege of knowing is Tommy Courtney. Tom worked at Martin Oil
Company with me and we became friends. He liked Liz and of course
that was a, all right with me, because if he liked Liz, why then he
and I would get along quite well. Torn had a girlfriend that lived
over in Quincy, Illinois, and her name--Janice Horning. And whenever
he had time off from work, why he'd always run over to Quincy to see
Janice. He later married her and brought her back to Springfield.
One of the first people that Tom and Janice met when they carne back
was Liz and Carl. Today Torn and Jan are living in Phoenix, Arizona.
They're still good friends of Liz and Carl. We don't write ... -maybe
once a year--at Christmas--maybe a little more often--sometimes not
even that often. But Torn and Jan are our very, very good friends--we
could walk in their home tomorrow and be as welcome as if we'd been
there forever. We have really enjoyed knowing those two people
tremendously.
One of the things that I found while working at the Martin Oil
Company is that there is probably not a much colde-r job in the world
than working on the ramp of a filling station, or at least it seemed
so at that time. It was not at all unusual to get a gasoline spill
on you; and, in the wintertime, why that can be very cold.
Around 1939, early 1940, you didn't use the ethyleJ~e glycol _o:f:_pre~-:- ..
tone type of anti-freezes unless you were rather wealthy. -The-~~­freeze
that most people used in their automobile was an alcohol;
and I would imagine that it was probably methanol or wood alcohol
rather than the grain alcohol type; but I do remember that we would
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 32
sell it for about ten cents a quart. One of the favorite things for
the customers to do would be to come in sometime in the evening on
a winter night and say, well how cold is it going to be? Well, the
only thing you knew was what you heard on the radio if you were
listening--you didn't know any more about the weather than they did.
So then the next request would be, well, how about checking the
radiator? So you'd check it. Well, do you think that's enough to
keep it from freezing tonight? Well, you didn't know, so the next
thing you had to do was to, well, drain out a quart and add a quart
of alcohol. This meant that you got down on the ground, and reached
up under the radiator to a pet cock there, and you'd drain out what
you thought was a quart of fluid that was in the radiator. Then
you'd add another quart to the top. You had to be very careful not
to drain out too much, because, if you did, why, then his radiator
would be low and he didn't like that. So, you wanted to drain out
enough so that you could add the quart without having to get under
there and get another armful of water down your sleeve because that's
usually where it would run--you'd open the pet cock and it would be
right down your sleeve, and if it wasn't when you opened it, then
it would be when you reached back up under there to turn it off.
So you'd usually end up with a wet sleeve and the alcohol and water
mixture would evaporate and make it even colder.
Gasoline--would sell for somewhere around 12.9 to, I guess, 14.9
cents a gallon. You always gave stamps with the purchase and people
would save them and trade them in like, much like Martin's used to
do in town. I don't know if they are still doing it--they're not
giving stamps now, I guess, at the Martin filling stations but,
you can trade them in for pots and pans, or toasters, all sorts of
kitchen gadgets mainly.
Q. Gasoline wasn't rationed at that time at all?
A. No. Not yet, and, the truck drivers, if you'd come in (clears
throat), with a big tractor trailer truck, I forget what the limit
was, perhaps twenty-five gallons, but if you bought more than twenty­five
gallons of gas at one time, why you'd get a discount. And I
think for truckers, the discount was two or three cents a gallon;
but they still got their stamps. It was not at all unusual for some
of the truckers to come in and put a hundred and fifty gallons of
gasoline into their rigs and collect up all their stamps.
Also at that station, we had a large enough parking ramp that they
could pull a tractor and trailer rig around behind the driveway
off the portion that was always being used for customers. We had a
bunk room in the back where they could take a nap if they had been
driving a long while. There was also a shower room back there where
they could take a shower. These facilities were all free. You could
come in and use them if they bought gasoline there so even at ten or
eleven cents a gallon--or nine cents a gallon--they were given prizes
and all the facilities that would save, actually would save them, a
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 33
motel room or a place that they would have to buy or rent--a room
for the night. So that way they could come and use, sleep there,
and save them that amount of money.
Oil--lubricating oil--motor oil, I think, was, about, fifteen cents
a quart. If I remember correctly, you could get a, if you bought
enough oil and had your oil changed, you could get five quarts for
the price of four and they [would] pull the car in over the grease
rack and we'd change the oil for you for free. So probably, either
sixty or seventy-five cents is what an oil change would cost you;
and that included that oil and having the work done, too. We always
liked to get oil changes because we got a commission on oil--we got
no commission on the amount of gasoline that we sold but for every
quart of oil that you sold, why, we, you would get a commission, so
we very carefully marked down the oil that we were selling. If you
thought somebody was coming in, or you knew that there was a regular
customer coming in on a particular night, and they always would get
an oil change when they would come in, why everybody would be looking
for that person to pull in the driveway and try and get out and to
service their car and try to talk them into the oil c;:hange. The old
timers at the station, of course, had their regular customers and
you didn't dare touch one of their customers--they'd come in and ask
for a particular, either Bill Shaw or Bill O'Bierne or Casey, and
that's who they wanted to service them. Particularly, if they were
corning in for a grease job and an oil change, why they would ask for
those people, and if they weren't there, why they'd drive away and
come back when they would be there. It was a very carefully guarded
source of extra money.
One of the things that you always had to do, and there was a big sign
up there, that if we failed to clean your windshield, why then you
could get your purchase free. So, usually, you would go out, if
you weren't really busy there would be two people go out to service
every car. One person would go to the driver's side and find out
how much gas they wanted and what kind and would start putting the
gas in the car, and the other person would usually go to the radiator
or to the hood of the car and open it up and check the oil--even
without the people asking. The reason for doing this is that you
hoped that maybe you could sell them a quart of oil. And if you did,
why, okay, that was your sale--even though the other guy was putting
the gasoline in the car, you got the oil sale. So usually you'd work
in pairs. One time why one guy would start the gas and the other
one would check the oil and then you'd switch on the next customer
that would come in. Then one or the other of you would start cleaning
the windshields as soon as you got that done. So, it was a nice
working relationship with most of them, with competition for the oil
sales, of course, because the commission was there. But then in
general you worked in pairs and didn't have to worry about somebody
slacking off very much. Tommy Courtney always went on the run. As
soon as a car would turn in the driveway, why he would be out there
almost before the car would get stopped because that was just the
Carl H. Albright Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield
Carl H. Albright 34
way he worked all the time. A very good salesman.
END OF TAPE TWO, SIDE TWO
Q. Carl, at the end of the last tape we were talking about some of
your experiences between high school and college and in particular,
about the Martin Oil Station that you used to work at at Ninth and
South Grand so we'll pick up wherever you'd like.
A. One of the most common forms of entertainment during the period
of time that we've been going over--high school and so forth-~was,
at least for the kids in our family, would be to go to a movie.
And I guess that was probably the major form of entertainment for
most children at that time. You, we've all heard of, people talking
about the old-time serials and the Saturday afternoon movies. This
was almost as much a part of our life as the present-day t.v. with
the cartoons and this sort of thing because you did get to see the
cartoons. There was ... the Empress Theatre was the closest one
to our home. It was down at South Grand Avenue between Eleventh and
Twelfth Street, and on a Saturday afternoon, you could go to the movie.
It would cost four cents. You always got to see, oh, a movie, maybe
it was a Tom Mix western or Hoot Gibson, or one of those type of a
westerns which were some of the favorite fare. Then there was always
the weekly serial. This would be Rin Tin Tin or Flash Gordon or,
gosh--I can't think of some of the others right now--Tarzan of the
Apes was one that was always a favorite. The place would just be
full of kids because that's all that would go. You'd get to see
the serial and probably maybe, fifteen minutes long at the most,
and if you missed this week, why, if you remembered what was on
last week and went next week, why you got to see enough overlap of
each one of them so that you really didn't miss anything. So it
had to be a fairly short skip--probably no more than fifteen minutes.
Then the regular feature would be, probably, forty-five minutes to
an hour. So you could go at one. o'clock or one-thirty, something
like that and be out by three. And if we went, usually we didn't
go on a Saturday afternoon because, so often, we were carrying papers,
and, frequently wouldn't get home from collecting your paper route
on Saturday morning unti.l about noon. Then by the time you had lunch
and did whatever chores you had to do, you didn't have time to go to
the movie because you had to go about three-thirty in the afternoon
again, then pick up papers and deliver them that evening and finish
up collecting on your route.
One of the fringe benefits of being a paper carrier at that time,
particularly if you paid your bill in full on Saturday night, was
you would get a free pass to the movie--one of the downtown movies-­and
this pass was usually good at any of the theatres in the downtown
area. There were quite a number of them. Once in a while if the
very plush Orpheum Theatre was having something like a stage show,