The Family Moves to Spokane

The work of keeping up the apartment building and caring for a baby was a bit much for Icel so they sold the place and moved to Spokane in 1951. They bought a house on Martin street on the good side of Crestline. To the east was an area known as dog town and Icel found it an unfavorable place to raise children. 

Icel really loved her new home. There was a play house in the back yard which the 2 younger girls spent many happy hours playing in when Beverly got older.

A friend, Carl Brown, needed a helping hand so he came to stay with them for a time. He stayed in one bedroom upstairs while Barbara and Betty shared the other upstairs room. Beverly slept in a crib in her parent's room. 

Here is Beverly near the back porch of the house.

  Betty attended Bemiss Elementary. Barbara was a sophomore at John R. Rogers High School and her dad dropped her off at the corner of Wellesley and Crestline on his way out to Kaiser each morning. She walked home, but never alone, there were always groups of people walking the same direction.

The workers at Kaiser went on strike now and again but Ray was never without work. He picked up fill in jobs wherever he could. He drove a taxi, drove delivery trucks. Anything he could get.

Icel's friend, Evelyn, was working at a cookie store and said they needed help so Icel took a job there. She wanted to be able to buy clothes and things for the girls. Later she worked at some kind of potato plant where she fed potatoes into a machine that peeled and sliced them for french fries. Every day she took baby Beverly to her mother-in-law's house over by North Central High School.

Icel remembers a time when Betty got in with a bad crowd. I, the interviewer, said, "she was 8 or 9 years old. How bad of a crowd can there be at that age?" Apparently there was a girl in dog town whose mother also worked (in fact it sounds as if everyone worked)  but this mother would allow boys, not just girls, to come over to the house while she was gone!! Icel would have none of that and said the girl could no longer come to their house, on their side of Crestline ever again, nor could Betty go to her house!! So there!!

Barbara made some lifelong friends during this time, in this neighborhood. They all went to Roger's together - Ken Bradley, Marv Schwartzenberger, and Jim State. Hmmm, all boys... anyway they had a friend, Lloyd Gaines who went to school at North Central. The boys all worked at the Indians' ball park together. Lloyd quit school the summer of 1952, because he didn't think he would pass, and joined the Marines. When he came home from boot camp in San Diego, he asked his ball park buddies if they knew any girls they could set him up with. They told him they had a beautiful redhead friend and they set up a blind date. In the fall of 1952 Barbara and Lloyd met. Lloyd went for infantry training in Pendleton, Oregon and then on to Quantico, Virginia for ordnance training (which he said is where he was taught how to blow things up). From there he was sent back to Pendleton then two months later, to Korea. 

But I digress, Icel has such fond memories of  her home with all the beautiful wood trim and the hardwood floors. There was always a gang at their house, as usual. There was food and laughter and music and dancing, as long as everyone removed their shoes so they wouldn't scuff the highly polished floors. Friends and family played games and cards and danced and whooped it up until the wee hours of the morning.

In this photo Icel and Ray are in the upper left of the group. Ray's sister Vera is in front of him. The other lady in the black dress on the floor is another sister, Mabel with her husband Roy. And a third sister, Gertie, is sitting on her husband Mel's lap.

Ray and Icel in the center with Icel's mother to the right. The man seated is Mel Hubert with his wife Gertie standing behind. The lady on his lap is a family friend Janette Sloskowski. Behind her is Vera's husband Bill. The man on the far right is Ted Sloskowski.

 The guy that's standing looks to me like that guy who was in Indiana Jones and burned his hand with the medallion that had been in the fire and they were looking in the wrong place for the Ark because they didn't know there were intructions on the other side of the medallion. But it's probably not him.... in fact I found out he is Sollie (Solomon) Stromberger. His wife is Nita, another of Ray's sisters. She is the one with the scarf.

Icel was always baking and many times there would be a pie cooling on the window sill that would simply disappear. Of course the empty, but clean, pie dish would reappear a day or two later.

Ray and Icel bought and moved into a 4 unit building in Mead. They rented out the other units and during this wonderful time of their lives they became life-long friends with 3 families. Howard and Mary Skaife and Paul and Evelyn Taylor all who lived in two of the apartment units and Hershel and Joyce Kerns. Hershel's dad owned a garage and Hershel worked with him. Ray was often at the garage and the two men became friends. Hershel had met Joyce in England during the war and he had returned there, married her and brought her home to Mead. He soon asked Ray if they could introduce their wives to each other. Joyce was was eager to find friends being that she was so far from home and anything or anyone familiar. The girls became fast and dear friends. All of these friends stopped in at Ray and Icel's for a cup of coffee and a chat every day. Icel was always very welcoming and hospitable and Ray gave in to it even though he would have much preferred to have her to himself all the time.

(This picture of Barbara is stamped Mead Jr. on the back.)

Barbara, who was 12 or 13 around this time remembers having to mop the floors of the apartment and putting the couch in front of the door so visitors could not continually stream in and mess up all her hard work. Her dad really liked that idea. It gave them some time to themselves.

Here is a photo from this time period - on the back it says "Taken January 6, 1951. Janette and Ted Bloskowski."

It looks like they were good friends too doesn't it?


I am told that she and her dad won a prize at a company picnic for having the most freckles. I can certainly believe it. Oh how I wish this picture were in color so I could see just how red her hair was!!

Ray went to work for Kaiser as did many men during those years.

(This picture is stamped "Mead" on the back)

 Here is a tidbit about the  Kaiser plant "Though often referred to as a smelter, this was actually a reduction plant. The process of converting aluminum oxide into aluminum is known as reduction. It's an electrolytic process requiring large amounts of electrical current to separate the oxygen atom from the aluminum allowing it to combine with the carbon of the anode to form carbon dioxide. This plant had 8 potlines that ran in the neighborhood of 70,000 amps at 650 to 700 volts DC each. Built in 1941 by the Defense Plant Corp. and operated by Alcoa. After WWII this plant was declared surplus and bought at a discount by Henry Kaiser in 1946. Alcoa was not allowed to bid to buy it because of monopoly issues". As mentioned in an earlier post Ray had learned the craft of welding with his brother-in-law Ralph so they could work on ships during the war before they joined up themselves. He was hired at Kaiser as a welder. He later went to IR (a term Grandma Icel and Lloyd and Barbara threw out as if I should just know what it meant). Turns out it is Industrial Relations which I had to look up of course. (I love the Internet!) - Industrial Relations has three faces: science building, problem solving, and ethical  - and is associated with the Union. Management really liked him and if he had had a college degree he would have achieved an even higher position. He would have been sent to Oakland which Icel did not want to do so it seems she was somewhat thankful that he did not have a degree. Icel had been to Oakland and remembers it as a filthy place.

One night the citizens of Mead helplessly stood by and watched a home burn to the ground. The nearest fire station was in Hillyard. Ray and his friend Herschel found a used fire truck and rounded up some volunteers and Ray became the 1st fire chief of Mead, Washington. I tried to find this info online but Mead is sorely lacking in any kind of history whatsoever.

Icel, who has never been idle one day in her life, became an Avon representative. She was pregnant with her third child and would drive all over the countryside to the neighboring farms and up into the mountains to take orders and make deliveries. To her customers and neighbors her baby became known as the "Avon baby".
Beverly Ann Perkins was born on June 13, 1950 at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane.

 

 Avon afforded Icel the ability to give wonderful Christmas gifts to her family and friends using the free samples Avon gave her. Who else remembers those tiny white lipstick tubes?

She used her earnings to pay her baby doctor bills. After Beverly was born Icel just took her along and the people just loved her. Icel's dear mother came to Mead to help Icel with her new baby.



Ray returns home

Icel's brother, Harold was stationed in China.

Her brother Ralph was in England and Paris.

Ray and Terry and Vi with Linda, the little angel Ralph only saw one time before she left this earth much too young. 

 Ray Perkins was never sent overseas during the war. He was stationed in Tallahassee, Florida. Here is a great page concerning the troops in Florida during WW2: http://fcit.usf.edu/wwii/military.php. He was actually sent to a hospital in Spokane for a time because he had to have his appendix removed.

Vi and Icel wrote letters everyday to their "boys". Can you imagine the discipline, the tenacity, the lack of time watching TV that would have taken? I cannot. They must have just told them everything that was happening at home so they wouldn't feel they had missed anything.

Ray came home for good in June 1945. It became apparent that his father would never be able to run his farm again. He had severly broken his elbow and he was in his 70's. He wanted to give the farm to his son but that was not Ray's desire. Ray and Icel helped with the work it takes to get a farm ready to sell then they helped get them moved into Spokane. They lived out the rest of their lives in a house just next to North Central High School. After Grandpa Perkins passed away Grandma Perkins married a railroad man. After he passed away she 'rented a room' to a man whom she never married because of her previous husband's railroad pension. I think they were married in the eyes of God just not by the law of the land.

Icel Returns to Springdale

Ray's mother contacted Icel, almost literally, through the grapevine. She called Icel's mother's neighbor who rang a cow bell to let the elder Icel know there was a phone call for her.

Clyde Perkins, Icel's father-in-law, had been hurt and they needed help in getting their produce and eggs to market. He had been milking the cows, a cow had kicked and knocked over the stall, it had hit Clyde on the neck and he was in a terrible way. Icel asked her dad's advice. He told her she should sell her little house and go help them. Her Uncle Si helped her to ready the house for sale and move the furniture she wanted to keep to her parent's basement. She got $3500 for that little house, an amount which she seems quite proud of still today.

Icel cleaned up the remaining bus and filled it with gas then gifted it to a friend of theirs who had been one of the drivers. He offered to buy it but she said she knew Ray would want him to have it and carry on the work.

This was the year 1945.
Barbara had just completed the 3rd grade in Portland. She immediately began the 4th grade in Springdale as the school year ran on a different schedule. There were three classrooms - one was for 1st and 2nd grades, one for 3rd and 4th grades and one for 5th and 6th. She had a terrible time keeping up.They were learning different math concepts that she didn't understand. Icel can remember the hours she and her mother-in-law spent drilling her and helping her to learn the multiplication tables. It was a difficult time for Barbara.

This is the Perkins family:

Mabel, Gertie, Ray, Vera, Juanita (Nita), and Rose

Clyde and Myrtle are seated in front

They settled into their new life. Mabel and Gertie, Ray's two oldest sisters, were married and gone from home. Vera had moved away. Nita had gone off to college in Grand Coulee. Rose was still in high school so Icel drove to the market everyday.

Here is a picture I found online concerning Springdale:

This is Springdale in 1904:

Grandma tells me often that she would have her own pictures and documents to show me concerning so many of these things if she hadn't lost nearly all of her belongings, including the cedar chest that held her memorabilia, in a fire in 1973.

 Icel's parents went up to Springdale to visit:

William & Icel Clark and Mable and Clyde Perkins

Fawn

This is Betty with the fawn. It must have been a pet?

And Here is Barbara with it

WWII

Well Ralph joined the Navy. About a year later Ray enlisted in the Army. Vi asked Icel if she and her son could come and live with her in her little house. It made quite a houseful but they were all very happy making due and helping with the war effort anyway they could. Icel found a job in the shipyards marking metal plates with chalk on the assembly line. Vi stayed home and watched over the children and kept house.

Vi became pregnant when Ralph was home on furlough. A very vivid memory Barbara has of that furlough visit was that she was so excited to see her uncle she jumped into his arms just as he was bending down to give her a hug. Her head met his face and he developed a terrible black eye.

 Vi's baby, Linda was born while Ralph was away. Vi kept his picture on a small table and always talked to him so when Linda started her baby talk she would say "Daddy" every time she passed his picture. On his next furlough Linda was the first one to spot him even though she had never met him. Saw him and sped on her chubby little legs calling, "Daddy, Daddy!" Sadly, this was the only time Ralph saw his beautiful and lively young daughter as she contracted Diptheria and died when she was barely 2 years old.

Even though foods, especially meat, were rationed Icel and Vi never felt in need or as if they were suffering. They loved making due, making it stretch, being creative, being content with what they had. They knew their boys were living in harsh conditions and they wanted to have the best attitude they could muster. For meat they were given a stamp book. They could exchange  stamps for meat, providing it was available. Of course they still had to pay for it. The stamps just gave them the right to purchase the meat. Here is an awesome website I found that discusses rationing during WWII if you are interested - http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/events/rationing.htm. They learned to make it last. They didn't have room to store more than that anyway. Their freezer was a tiny box section within the refrigerator.
Here is a picture of one I found on the Internet:

They were lucky that they lived so close to Icel's mother. She had a cow for milk, chickens for eggs, plenty of fruit on her trees and vines plus vegetables in the garden for all 3 families.

The girls were lucky because Ralph would send silk stockings home for them. Nylon could not be spared to make nylons here at home.

During World War II, women drew lines on the back of their legs with charcoal to give the appearance they were wearing stockings when they couldn’t afford the real thing.

Ray sold one of the busses before he left.

Vi shared with Icel one day that her own mother was longing to have her near and of course Icel told her she must go. Icel took a trip to California to visit her Aunt Esther and see Ray who was there for a time.

Starting a Family

Here is Ray - I love those dimples. 

Icel became very homesick. There was no phone on the farm. She was a teenager, away from her family and living with people she barely knew. She found her way to the nearby small town of Springfield and called her brother Ralph. She told him how she missed him and the rest of her family. He told her not to fret, that he would send her a bus ticket and bring her home. This was an unheard gesture for Ralph to make. His money was hard earned and not easily parted with. When he took a girl on a date she paid for her own dinner or movie or whatever they were out doing.

 After his bride had been gone for 3 months, Ray hopped on a bus and returned to her.

He found a job with a furniture store - Doernbecher Manufacturing Company which was very modern and boasted a traveling assembly line five miles long! Icel found work at a local nickel and dime store. They stayed with her parents at their home and she was content once again.

On March 10, 1937 their first bundle of joy came along.

 Barbara Lee Perkins came into the world with the same fiery red hair as her mother! The hospital nurses were gaga over her hair. Icel's brother Harold would carry that baby around and show her off to anyone who would give him the time of day.

Isn't she too sweet?

This picture doesn't have any information on it about whose horse it is or where it was taken but I like it:

Icel soon quit her job to stay with her baby. It was too much of a strain nursing a newborn and holding down a job.

She devoted herself to finding a place they could call their own. She found a neighbor who had made over their garage into a small apartment. Ray and Icel decided they could afford the asking price of $5 a month. Icel truly enjoyed creatively furnishing and decorating her little nest. She acquired apple boxes from the grocery and made cute little coverlets for them. They served as end tables. She found an old table and four chairs that Ray refinished for her.

One day she met an attorney who was selling a cute little house. He was willing to work with her. He said she could buy it for $950. She was nervous at the thought of making such an enourmous financial commitment but her new friend assured her that it would work out. It was only a short distance from her dear mother and that was very appealing. The house came completely furnished and somehow they managed to pay the $15 every month. She was always adding her own touches and soon the little house was as cozy as their little apartment had been. Icel so loved her little house on 78th and Clickitat just off Sandy Boulevard.
Here is that little house where they lived and loved and grew into a family from 1939 until 1944:

I love the running board on this awesome old car. What a convenient place to have your small child stand for a photo op.

This is Barbara playing with Neighbors at her grandparents house. I can sure see a resemblance with Carri in this photo.

Icel and Ray's 2nd daughter, Betty Perkins came along on July 6,  1942. This is Barbara with her baby sister.

Here is Betty with her mama and half a man, well really only about a quarter of a man

Icel's dear friend Vi had married her brother Ralph and they had a boy, Terry,  who is between Barbara and Betty in age. The two couples shared wonderful times together.

Here are Icel's Barbara and Vi's Terry:

When WWII broke out Ralph and Ray quit their jobs - Ray's at Doernbecher
and Ralph quit his at B.P. John's. Here is an article I found which I decided to insert here because it mentions Albina which was noted in an earlier post:  "B. P. John Furniture - The plant was located on the east side of SW Macadam across from the current John's Landing.  John's Landing was named for B. P. John and was the "landing" where the logs for the factory were dropped.  B.P. John was originally a vice president at Doernbecher Furniture before starting his own business. B.P owned rentals in several areas in Portland. Many immigrant Russian woodworkers lived in his houses in Albina. The two friends, brothers-in-law, learned the skill of welding and went to work at the shipyards. Ray became aware of the struggles all the laborers were having in getting to and from the shipyards so he bought an old bus, fixed it up and started the side job of transporting. He drove to the shipyards in the morning and Ralph drove it back at night. Icel had the job of making sure the bus was gassed up and ready to go. After awhile Ray bought a 2nd bus. He charged 50¢ each way. He was a regular entrepreneur!!

They went to the movie theater every time a new show was playing. I think my Ray inherited the love of movies from his grandfather. They would purchase tickets for the upstairs portion of the theater because they were cheaper and it was a good place to be if you had little ones who had trouble sitting quietly.

Here is a beautiful picture of Barbara and Betty: