How we became gypsies

We became gypsies when I was four years old, my brother was 5 and my sister was 3.  This would have been 1940 after my sister turned 3 in May and before my brother turned 6 in June.  My father got a job as heavy equipment mechanic on a road paving crew.  This crew travelled wherever there was a road to be paved.  We all lived in little trailers.  Ours was a 16ft. Howard trailer.  We pulled it with our old Chevy 2 door sedan.  My father worked nights on the equipment that the crew used all day for paving.  We had to be very quiet children since my father slept in the daytime.  My father was the only man on the crew with children.  Some men left their families at home in regular houses.  Others were married and their wives were with them but had no children.  Some were bachelors.  There were not really very many trailer parks in those days.  The first time I remember staying in a trailer park was in Modesto, CA.  I must have been 8 or 9 by then.  Each space was delineated with rocks painted white.  Each space had an old tire in the front, painted white, serving as a flower bed.  There were no patios, no trees.  Pretty primitive and yet we were not allowed to keep our dog, Rusty, there.  Yes, we had a dog.  Rusty was a yellow lab, a puppy we found in the middle of nowhere in the California desert.  Someone had dumped him on the side of the road in a cardboard box.  He lived long enough to spend his old age in an actual house when we finally left the gypsy life.  In Modesto he had to be tied up where the crew parked all their paving equipment.  So my father was there all night and the rest of the crew was there all day.

Mostly, we just stayed in city parks or some vacant area of whatever town and the city officials provided water and electricity for our use.  Water came in a water tank truck that belonged to the company.  Electricity was really a very long and heavy duty extension cord from the nearest place with electricity. The city usually took care of that.  Sometimes there was no electricity but we all had kerosene lanterns, sort of like camping.  The trailers must have had propane tanks, I don't remember.  I do remember our cooking stove was gas.  If we stayed in a park, there was usually a playground, which we loved.  Some parks had bathroom facilities, most did not.  The city would actually dig a big hole in the ground, put an outhouse on top of it and that was our toilet.  Baths were accomplished in a big galvanized tub.  Each trailer had one.  This tub also served for washing clothes.  My mother washed clothes every day so we did not need many.  They were dried on a wooden, collapsible clothes dryer thing.  Once a week, my dad strung a line for her between the trailer and the car for drying big items, like sheets and stuff.

My parents slept in the bedroom.  My sister and I slept on the fold out couch in the living room.  It was the kind that simply folded out flat and the seat and back of the seat were the mattress.  Our couch sat upon a big box.  You could lift up the seat and that is where we kept our bedding, clothes, toys and canned food.  My mother did her own canning.  I can't believe she was actually happy with a positive attitude under these circumstances.  My mother baked a pie every day of her life except when there was a birthday.  Those days she baked a cake.  She baked cookies daily also.  She had a little Singer sewing machine and made all of my dresses and my sister's dresses.  She often made dresses to match for our dolls.  By dolls I mean my sister had one and I had one.  Our possessions were very limited.  There were built in "night stands" on each side of the couch.  Each had two little drawers.  One was for my sister and one was for me.  We each had our own flashlight in the top drawer.  Our treasures were kept in those drawers.  No one was ever allowed to look into them.  Our books rested on top.  

My brother had a canvas room that snapped onto the side of the trailer.  He had a big oil cloth that served as his floor.  He slept on an old wooden army cot.  He had another army cot that he used to keep all his stuff on up off the floor.  His room, floor, both cots, bedding and all his clothes and stuff fit into the trunk of the car when we moved.  When we were really little we all shared the couch in the living room.  When he got into the stage where girls had cooties, they bought the room for him.  He was thrilled.  My sister and I were so jealous.  He seemed to have so much privacy and room!  Never mind that everyone had to enter and leave the trailer through his room.

Dishes were kept in shelves behind the table top that swung down and rested on a single hinged leg when the table was needed.  Pans were kept in the oven and bottom drawer of the stove.  When my mother baked, all the pans were temporarily put on the swing down table.  There were 6 hooks on the one long wall.  These hooks held each kid's towel and their coat.  My parents had an actual closet, very tiny, in their room and some built-in drawers.  As children, we were never told we could not have something or that we could not afford something.  We were simply asked, "Where are you going to put it?"  If we were willing to part with a toy or book we could have whatever it was that we so wanted.

One special shelf behind the table was for games.  Every night after dinner and before my father went to work, we played board games or cards.  Mom taught my sister and me how to play jacks on the trailer floor.  We made paper dolls with lavish wardrobes out of the Sears catalog.  Mom usually popped corn after my father went to work and we would all eat pop corn and listen to the radio if there was electricity available.  If not, we read books by the light of our lanterns.

The men worked six days a week so Sunday was always the day for a drive when we explored the area around us.  Whenever we took a Sunday drive my father made it an educational experience.  We prepared during the week under our mother's guidance for what we were going to go see on Sunday.  My father seemed to know everything there was to know about wherever we were.  At least that is what we thought.  We just assumed that Daddy is the one who told Mom these things when she told them to us.  She always started every piece of information with "Daddy says."  My mother always took us the the library of whatever town we were in.  She had this huge collection of library cards.  She didn't finish her 10th year of school, so she was uneducated.  She always talked to us about how smart our father was and that he had finished high school.  She always said he could have gone to college, he was so smart.  She learned things so she could teach us.  Years later, when I was in graduate school learning to administer IQ tests, I gave one in secret to my mother.  This was when we were living on the ranch.  She didn't want anyone to know she was taking the test because she was so sure she was not very smart.  She cried when I told her her IQ was 132 and what that meant.  That was when I began to look at my mother in a different light.  But back to our Sunday drive, we all had to write a little essay about what we saw on Sunday, including whatever historical marker we went to visit.  We changed schools so often our "Cum Folder" could never keep up with us from school to school.  We changed schools as much as five times in one school year, sometimes less often but on average 3 times a school year.  So my mother began getting our folders from the school before we left and carried them to the next school.  Our family was always the last to arrive at the next job site because we stopped at every historical marker, petting zoo, reptile museum and scenic turnout along the way, sometimes even a little out of the way.  We missed so much school that I think my parents thought that would help our education.  We always had to write our essays every night on the road.  Route 66 was the best road to travel as far as we children were concerned - museums and oddities at every turn and we stopped at them all.  Growing up I always gave my father credit for everything and looking back I realize my mother was our home schooling teacher.  And she did a good job.  We were never behind in school, in fact we were always ahead no matter where we went.