MUNCIE, INDIANA HARD TIMES AND GOOD TIMES FROM 1925 THROUGH 1950 BY RICHARD W. BRICKER ii MUNCIE, INDIANA HARD TIMES AND GOOD TIMES FROM 1925 THROUGH 1950 Printed and Published By RICHARD W. BRICKER Shoreacres, Texas April 2010 Phone 713-344-3294 Email [email protected] Picture web site www.galvestonbayphotos.com iii DEDICATED TO JANIE June 11, 1929 August 31, 2001 To Janie Salinas Bricker I always wanted to paint but could not, I always wanted to write but had nothing to say My wife and constant supporter said otherwise. My greatest reward in life was the love and support of Janie. iv CONTENTS: PAGE Preface-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2 Chapter 1: Home Life in Hard Times--------------------------------------------------3 Chapter 2: Early School Years---------------------------------------------------------11 Chapter 3: Playtime and Socializing--------------------------------------------------17 Chapter 4: Muncie in the 1930s--------------------------------------------------------26 Chapter 5: Travel-------------------------------------------------------------------------32 Chapter 6: Junior High School---------------------------------------------------------37 Chapter 7: High School Years----------------------------------------------------------46 Chapter 8: Boot camp and Training in World War II-------------------------------52 Chapter 9. Overseas Duty in the South Pacific--------------------------------------58 Chapter 10: Post War Years at Rose Polytechnic Institute ------------------------66 Chapter 11: Back to Muncie-----------------------------------------------------------74 Chapter 12: Don, Muncie, and Parachutes-------------------------------------------80 My Mother’s High School Commencement Invitation-----------------------------83 Don’s Balloon N Number--------------------------------------------------------------84 FRONT COVER: Scene from front yard at 1820 West Ninth Street circa 1930 1 PREFACE One frequently hears of the importance of obtaining oral histories from our elderly population be- fore they are gone and their first hand knowledge of past events are lost forever. Each individual has a unique and varied past compared to his other contemporaries, so every history will be different at least in many aspects. This is a written history rather than an oral history, which usually has a specific subject ob- jective and a relatively short time frame of coverage whereas this history will cover twenty-five years. One goal of technical writing that I was involved in at NASA was conciseness and leaving out all unneces- sary details. That was not my objective in this history I once had a boss that frequently stated that a thing worth saying was worth writing down. A favo- rite quote of his was “criticism is our cheapest form of entertainment” and he very frequently entertained himself lavishly. The significance of writing things down is that it makes people think which some people don’t like to do. One can outline, organize, and revise repeatedly without having to work to a schedule. Hopefully that won’t lead to embellishment and in reality may reduce it. Many people do not have the education, experience, or patience to write their history down and perhaps it is more tedious than answer- ing questions from a skilled interviewer. What should a history covering twenty-five years encompassing the second quarter of the last century consist of? I think many areas compared to today would be of inter- est such as advances in science, transportation, entertainment, health care, humor, social mores, family and neighbor interactions, educational techniques, and the list goes on. What is the difference between a personal history and an autobiography? Actually not much ex- cept the personal history should have some different goals and emphases. My objective in this history is to describe the character of Muncie in the period covered as experienced by myself and also other events of the time that are historical. By necessity it must include much autobiographical content to reach it’s non- autobiographical goals. If the goal of personal histories is to get everything that is significant then what should be omitted? What is chicken feed to one person may be gold and diamonds to another. An addi- tional result of personal histories is that they show not only the major differences time makes but also how many things haven’t changed at all. 2 Chapter 1: Home Life in Hard Times In this chapter I discuss my earliest pre-grade school and later memories pertaining to home life. On my fathers side I descended from German immigrants in Pennsylvania and Adam Bricker who I direct- ly descended from was an Indian fighter during the Revolutionary War as verified by pension records from the military branch of the National Archives in Washington, DC. My mother’s family (Krichbaum) was also early German immigrants to Pennsylvania. Both families had come to Pennsylvania in the mid-1700s and later moved first to Ohio and then to Indiana at about the same time. I was born at home as was usual at least in poor families in those days in Muncie, Indiana on March 29, 1925 on west Eleventh Street. At my birth my mother was 38 years old and my father was 50 years old. My mother had been previously married to Wade Wood who died from tuberculosis leaving her with Garnet, eighteen; Austin fourteen; and Don twelve, their ages when I was born. These siblings are half sister and brothers but we all responded to each other as sister and brothers and I will leave out the half designation. My mother Estella Elnora Wood married William Walter Bricker in 1923 whose wife Grace had died some time before. When I was a few months old we all moved to the country near Eaton, Indiana so that my father could farm. His main crop was rye and the year was very wet causing the rye to be attacked by a fungus resulting in ergot, which is lethal to both humans and animals thus ruining the whole crop. We were poor on the farm although we had a cow for milk and chickens for eggs and meat and a garden so things weren’t too bad food wise except with no crop my father couldn’t pay the farm rent. This farm stay became an important qualification for later employment. After moving back to town to 1820 west Ninth Street we were extremely poor with no income for a while and as a result were on relief, a disgrace even felt by myself at that early age. Being “on relief” was something one didn’t like to admit or talk about. Weekly my father loaded me onto a little red wagon and towed me about two miles to the local agency that passed out relief food. This consisted of cheese and canned beef from Argentina, which actually tasted pretty good. I imagine we also got other staples but these are the only foods I remember. We then walked home with both me and the foodstuffs in the wagon. My sister and brothers paid some attention to me and Austin always kidded me by saying that when I was born they didn’t know whether I was going to walk or fly because of my big ears. Don had a newspaper route and sold magazines during this period and he was very interested in all aspects of aviation. Later when Don had transportation he would take me with him sometimes and occasionally it was for swim- ming. All of this occurred around 1930 and the start of the hard depression. Along about this time my fa- ther got a job at a local lawn mower factory making eleven dollars per week. In those days everybody mowed with a push mower with a reel type four-bladed cutter, which did a very neat job if the blades were kept sharp. Even today the elite mowers used on golf courses for fine bladed grasses on the greens are the reel type though no longer pushed by hand. The main handle of these mowers were of good wood usually hickory or ash and the cross handle at the top for the operators hands was also of good wood. A following roller behind the cutting blades and the same width was again wood so quite a bit of wood was used in the lawn mowers construction which resulted in considerable scrap wood, chips, and sawdust. Now my fa- ther’s job was to put all of this scrap into an incinerator as it accumulated. The incinerator was called the pig and my father was called the pig feeder not a very glamorous job title. For my mother’s use my father brought home from work a traditional paddle sometimes called the “board-of-education”. My mother used the paddle on me when I had committed certain cardinal sins such as using a cussword and then lying about it. I frequently heard much cussing from my father and he didn’t care who was around when he got started. My mother abhorred this but couldn’t do a thing about it. From the time I was very young until I was thirteen years old I had thirteen dollars saved from what source I don’t know. For a while it was kept in a small wooden bank. One time I took a small amount out of it and somehow my mother immediately knew about that. I had probably acquired some candy from an unknown source. When she interrogated me on the subject I denied all knowledge of such a dastardly act. Well she persisted until the truth came out. Several good whacks with the paddle was ad- ministered. I don’t recall that I greatly resented these punishments realizing they were well deserved. 3 Subsequently the money was placed in a savings account in my name and I was not greatly impressed with the earnings. I believe the interest was around three percent but it was not enough to get the principle much above the thirteen dollars in the several years it was in the bank, which was my first disappointing lesson in economics.