Pearl Harbor, California

Interviewee: Earl Strong, ae. 85, widower of Bessie  Pounds 

Interviewer: a nephew 

Chorus: two of Earl’s in-laws

1. Setting: Davenport OK, 1991

Uncle Earl, What were you doing December 7, 1941, when they bombed Pearl Harbor? Do you remember that day?

[silence]

Pearl Harbor, when the second world war began.

Yeah, I remember. 

What were you doing that day?

I was probably milkin cows. Yeah. [Silence.] Does that help you any?

Not much. How did you hear about it?

Milkin the cows?

No, Pearl Harbor.

I really was milkin the cows. 

Did you hear about it on the radio?

Well, we had a radio in the dairy barn. It coulda been.

It didn't make any big impression on you?

No not really.

Why not?

I was too dumb I guess. I didn't know what all was goin on. 

You were prime beef, 6’2” and over 200 pounds. You didn't figure you'd have to go to the war?

Well, they did tell me--when they had that examination they told me that when they started takin women and children I'd be the next in line. That crooked arm--you see that?-- always got me out. Yeah, I fell off a horse when I was just a little feller.

You're serious, aren't you. You can't bend it?

I can bend it but that's as strait as it'll go. 

[Chorus] He fell off and broke it, and that was back in hard times, like you don't know anything about. 

I've heard enough about it.

If you wanna hear more, come up to the cafe here some mornin and you can hear some more.

Which cafe's your headquarters now?

Dan's Barbecue. On the corner.

What time you start?

Sometimes I get down in the dumps, all shot out, and I can go up there and always find somebody worse. I've got a lot of friends there, and if I don't have a way home they'll take me or get me a way. 

I still want a story about Pearl Harbor. Where were you in December 1941? Where were you living when you were milking these cows? Oklahoma?

Yeah. No. California.

[Chorus] No, he was here workin for ol' Taylor Honey was what he was doin.

Well, I wasn't livin in California then on the dairy then.

I don't think you'd went to California in '41. I think . . .

Why no, I went to California in '37.

You ‘were workin for Tulsa Body Works in Tulsa.

Ol' Taylor Honey.

[Chorus] I don't know about that. You was either with ol' Taylor Honey or with Tulsa Body Works. [Silence.] You remember when Opal and I got married? [gestures] I do. 

That's kinda comin back to me now. 

We got married in 1940 . . .

[Chorus] Earl, how long was you at the body works up there? You was up there about eight years, wasn't you?

Yeah, about eight years. I was a welder then.

You were in Tulsa when the war started.

Oh, yeah.

So you weren't milking a cow at all.

No, I hadn’t even met the back end of a cow yet.

Did any of your brothers go to the war?

Yeah, yeah. About all of them I guess that was old enough, didn't they? I had five brothers. Harlin, he went. Harlin and uh . . . 

[Chorus] Don.

And Don. Huh. I'm gettin a way back there now. [Silence.] 

2. Interlude:  Kelseyville CA, 1991

Hazel Pounds's war story was short. Famous talker that she was, starting a story at breakfast and not ending it till supper, for her it was remarkably short. First she cautioned against relying too much on anything her brother-in-law Earl Strong said on the grounds that he was a quarter-blood Cherokee and didn’t think like regular folks. Then she got to it.

Sunday, December 7, 1941, she and Melvin had spent the day at his parents' house, where his mom didn't permit the radio to be played because it was Sunday. It was Monday before she heard. 

Monday morning, she'd gotten Melvin off to work, two-year-old Debbie was crawling around the kitchen floor, and she was preparing to do her ironing. “I always liked to listen to the radio when I was aworkin,” she explained.  “So I turned it on.  And I'll tell you Wayne, I'll never forget.  I heard, ‘Aah naawh declaah waah on the Japanese Empaah.’  It was President Roosevelt. That was the way he talked, and he was saying that we had just declared war on Japan. 

I tell you I didn't know what to think. So I called Janice Freeman, one of my oldest friends, and I said, ‘Lord, girl, what will we do? There's agoin to be a war and Melvin'll have to go.’"  

Hazel's eyes were wide and hot as she looked at me across the dead soldiers ranked between us on the table top.  “It scared the shit out of me, Wayne, I want to tell you now.  It scared the shit out of me.”

3. Davenport OK, 1991 (continued)

If I was up there in Tulsa, I was workin in a body shop, doin the oilfield trucks. Down home I've got pictures of them.

This would have been on a Sunday, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and World War II began.

Well, I remember that day. But I don't know whether I know where I was at.

Chorus: You probably would have been at home in Tulsa, because you wouldn'a been workin on Sunday.

On a Sunday I probably would'a been up at the lake fishin.

President Roosevelt came on the radio and declared "I heahby declaih wahh on the Japanese Empaah."

Then they shot up some of the Japanese over there. Yeah, I remember that. And they all, everybody here, swore that the President knew it. He was supposed to not a knew it.

About the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Yeah, and all of that.  They knew. 

Yeah, reporters and all said that they knew it was coming. Some of the Japanese ambassadors had been over here talking to the President.

Well, that was where I taken my physical exam, here in Tulsa. Me and Rick and all of us boys that worked there in the shop. We went up there. See, Bob Wills and them guys, they come down in our shop. I knew them boys. Johnny, Bob’s father.

[Chorus] Earl's shop was right there by where they broadcast from. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. Or was it Doughboys? Wasn’t it called Cains Ballroom?

Yeah, that big building where they broadcasted right across the street. I used to sit on the door there and see all them come out. Bob Wills, his daddy John, and all of them, they would come over there to the shop and we’d talk. 

Old John told me once, "One day in Texas, me and my brothers were all out in the cotton patch. We picked up our cotton sacks and hung 'em on our backs and said, 'This is the last day.'” And it was. They never did go back to the cotton patch anymore.

[Addressing the interviewer:] Now that might help you.

Yeah well I knew Bob. Even had seen that big fine saddle he had. They had it in the trailer. 

His ol' Daddy could fiddle--John--he was the state champion but Bob could make a fiddle sing. I talked to his dad, ol’ John. Me and Bessie went up to the north end of town to look at a house. Bessie liked it because it had a porch clear around it. She was gonna close it all in and make it screened-in all the way around. While she was in there lookin that house over, I was standin out there talkin to John.

Yeah? 

Yeah, and he was a nice old feller to talk to. He said "I'm glad to have you for a neighbor." I said "Well I'd be glad to have you for a neighbor." Yeah.