The Blacksmith's Son E-Book

Paul A. Jensen

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 240

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The son of a Danish immigrant tells the story of his life and times, from the beginning of the Second World War to the state of the world today. He questions the wisdom of religious belief and the ever increasing growth of civilization. Will mankind be able to survive when confronted with a shortage of essential resources and over population, in the near future? Has the time come for nations to implement much needed limits to growth? Have governments failed to respond, due to political inaction or fallacy? Currently, the masses are on the move in the Middle East, Northern Africa and elsewhere, toward Europe, in search of survival and a better life. Europe can accommodate some of them but not all. Terrorism threatens Europe and elsewhere. How will it all end? In 1941 Paul's family move to the countryside in northern California, for the duration of the war. Later in life, Paul begins to worry about the future of the world that he knows and cares about. He asks difficult questions and expects intelligent answers.

Leseprobe

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the young people of today, that I believe will witness the greatest climate and living changes that our world has seen in the last ten thousand years. It won’t be easy or beautiful. I wish you all the best of luck.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: On The Ranch

Chapter 2: Growing Up

Chapter 3: The U.S. Navy

Chapter 4: Higher Education and Odd Jobs

Chapter 5: Moving to Denmark

Chapter 6: Consulting Engineering

Chapter 7: My World

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the help of my wife Uli and my sister Karen. They have remembered details of my life that I have forgotten. Furthermore, they have encouraged me on in the writing process when I have struggled through difficult to explain episodes and events.

Introduction

It was a warm summer day in Oakland, California, on the 16th of July, 1939. My mother was rushed to the Samuel Merritt Hospital early that morning, because of birth pains that had suddenly wakened her. At 11:29 AM that morning, she gave birth to me. My father had driven her to the hospital in the old Chevrolet pickup that he used in his business. A couple of days later, Father brought Mother and me home from the hospital, to our house on Sonoma Way in Oakland. That was my start in life. Not much happened to me in the following weeks and months, I just began to grow up like every child does. Many children are baptized shortly after they are born but this did not happen to me. My parents believed that every child should have the right as adults, to decide for themselves, whether or not to be baptized. I’m so grateful to them for giving me that possibility. Other than not being baptized, I grew up pretty much as any other child. I was subjected to the usual focus of attention, as the first born in my family. Photographs were taken of me, and I was visited by relatives, friends, and neighbors; all wanted to see the new family member.

My mother was baptized and confirmed in the Reformed Church in Zwingle, Iowa, where she grew up. For her there wasn’t a choice. My father refused confirmation into the Danish Lutheran Church, in Landet, Taasinge, Denmark, where he grew up. For him there was only a choice in regard to confirmation but not baptism, because he had been baptized in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he was born.

Father’s parents, had immigrated to the United States before they were married. They rented rooms in a house in Kenosha, where father’s aunt lived. Father’s parents got married shortly after arriving on November 7th, 1904 but returned to Denmark again after about two years, because father’s mother couldn’t adapt to the life in Kenosha.

My parents taught me the ways of the world, and how to survive in it. As I grew up, they showed me how to meet and have friends, peers and grownups alike; and they gave me the knowledge so I could succeed in school and plan my adult life. They told me that I’d live a long life, and that it would likely be quite different than they had experienced. Father and mother both told stories of growing up, but they grew up in far away places, that were much different than where we lived in Ukiah, California. Father told of his learning to become a blacksmith, like his own father had done, and I am sure, that he must have expected that I would also become a blacksmith. In his way, he gave me the chance to try it out as I grew up, by working in his shop when I was a teenager. At that point in time, I did not yet know about the consequences of my father’s vocation and our family’s “place in society”.

As I look back, growing up seemed both exciting and challenging, and as I grew older I realized that my parents had given me a good start in life. I was born in the United States, which was “a great advantage” some said. “The best country in the world”, anyone would tell you that. But it was 1939 and the Second World War had just started in Europe, and how it would end no one knew. I was a second generation American because my father had emigrated from Denmark, a tiny poor country in Northern Europe. My mother though was 100 percent American, and that was reassuring. I had no idea of how it would be to have been born in Denmark, a very far away place as my father told it. They spoke a different language there, my father said. He sometimes told what certain words were in Danish and I thought they sounded very strange.

My parents gave me a happy and meaningful life as I grew up, without the burden of religious doctrine playing any part in it. They taught me what was right and wrong, as most children are taught. The travels in my adult working life, to foreign lands and meeting with ordinary people, have convinced me that most people in the world have also learned what is right and what is wrong. Many of them have learned it without the help of a god and religion.

I’ve been fortunate, because of my work and travels, to have met so many interesting people with different life styles, beliefs, and political inclinations from my own. It’s been a great experience, and I have often thought of the similarities and differences I’ve experienced and what meaning they have for me and for our time. I’ve reflected on these issues for many years and now it is time to express my observations in these pages.

Even though my working life has been concerned with engineering and technical knowledge, I’ve long had an interest in science, philosophy, and literature. I’m fascinated when I read about historical events and the philosophy of great men and women and realize how useful it is for our time. What wisdom can we gain from the great thinkers in history, philosophy, and science? What can we learn from religious beliefs, presently in vogue or no longer practiced? I’m sure we can learn the most from the post Enlightenment thinkers and philosophers and very little from religious beliefs, superstition, and magical events, none of which have reason based explanations.

As Pearl S. Buck has noted:

“I feel no need for any faith other than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.”

My Father’s Story

In my first attempt at writing, I’ve written a biography of my father’s life and times. “The Shadow of the Dream” is about his immigration to the United States from Denmark. It’s also the story of our family. In his story, I played only a small part; nevertheless, his life has greatly influenced my life and place in society.

At eighteen years of age I graduated from high school in Ukiah, California, and my father told me that he could not afford to support me to go on to college. It did not surprise me, but made me realize that my life as an adult had started. I proceeded without financial support and consider my successes or failures as entirely my own responsibility. My father had seven years of education in a village school on the island of Taasinge in Denmark, but I was able to get an engineering education in the United States. It was difficult, but I did it my way, and I was successful. For what else can I ask? In my father’s story, I’ve told of my birth in Oakland, California, and the Second World War that had just started on September 1, 1939. Maybe it wasn’t the best possible starting point for a person who would develop ambitious expectations for his life.

Of course, I don’t remember the years just after my birth, 1939 and 1940, but by 1941 I remember a few events that took place. During that time, my sister Karen was born on February 4, 1941, and this was one of the few bright spots during those years. We lived in a small wooden house with a large tree on one side and a very small flower garden in front. I played in the front yard with some toy cars and sometimes our neighbor man would speak to me, but I was shy and not able to say very much. I also remember the details of the inside of our house. I remember Karen when she was just a tiny baby and unable to come out to play with me. I also remember once that Father took me along to a house where he installed one of his ornamental iron railings on the steps leading to the front door. I believe that he was babysitting me because Mother was busy with Karen and had no time for another small child. I see a picture of myself sitting on one of the steps, watching my father working with the railing. He had tools lying around, and I was given something to play with, perhaps a tool. My father kept a close watch on me, and then the lady that lived in the house, suddenly came out the door and smiled at me. She brought me a glass of milk and some cookies, and I was very impressed. It seems strange that such an insignificant event can still be remembered after all these years. Maybe it was the sheer simplicity and happiness I experienced that left an impression.

Prior to my birth, Father quit his job at Eandi Artistic Iron Works Company, after working there for two or three years. He quit his job in 1938 to start his own business, and named it “Metal Arts”, just after he had married my mother in 1937. He had saved up some money and rented a shop in Oakland, California to start the new venture. Father’s business idea was to produce artistically designed wrought iron products, such as railings for porches and stairways, fireplace andirons and tools, iron furniture, chairs, tables, and other decorative wrought iron products. This type of work is the artistic blacksmith trade that has been practiced for hundreds of years in Europe. Father learned the trade in his father’s shop in Denmark. The products that he made were of high quality for which there was a market at the time. The future looked bright, but in 1939 when war broke out in Europe, everything changed. But in those years, in the late ‘30s, Father imagined that he was on the way to achieving the American Dream. He was still young and determined in those years, and after his marriage to mother he had high expectations.

Father’s business used steel bars of various shapes that were formed into decorative wrought iron products, but when governmental regulations were put into place that prohibited the use of iron in industries that were not directly connected to the war effort, his business was shut down. Guns, tanks, and war items were more important than Father’s ornamental iron work. His business had to close down, and we moved out into the countryside in northern California, to a rural homestead that we called “The Ranch.” It turned out to be a significant time in our family’s lives. Father wrote about his “Ranch” some years after we had moved away, but even without his memories, I would have remembered it nonetheless. As Father wrote:

“The rugged mountains of northern California were first settled by homesteaders, who with their families struggled against the hardships impaired on them by nature. Perhaps they were contented with their harsh lot, for with every success of the backbreaking labor came a feeling of satisfaction and pride. Most of them stuck it out but none got rich from it. However, the offspring of those sturdy pioneers soon found out that there were many easier ways of sustaining life closer to civilization and drifted out of the mountains never to return. When the old folks died, the homestead would be put up for sale by the children or sometimes just abandoned and sold by the State for delinquent taxes.

Some years ago, my wife and I bought such a place. The small house which was boards and battens with a shingle roof was set on a gentle slope on the hillside above the Eel River. There was also a barn in the same style of building and luckily for us it was all made of redwood or it would probably have rotted away long before our time. Oak trees gave shade to the buildings whose age-mellowed boards blended so well with the lichen be speckled trunks. Still the small house was not obscure, for back of it, the continuously upward sloping hill was covered with green contrasting Manzanita bushes.

On the side of the house where the road came up, the hill dropped off at a steeper angle into a gulch with a creek at the bottom. On the far side, the creek bank rose abruptly to a great height forming a cliff of naked rocks on top of which a few Digger Pines were silhouetted against the blue sky. It is probably true what a neighbor later told me “just a piece of good for nothing straight up and down mountain land.” It is equally true that when we first saw it, the picturesque beauty of the whole landscape overwhelmed our senses and made a deep lasting imprint on our very souls that we shall never forget. Then, the homey little house and at the same time the realization that it was all ours, gave me, for that moment, the feeling that I would probably never come any closer to heaven than I was right there. We spent six of the most contented years of our lives on The Ranch, as we called it.”

Carl Jensen

Chapter 1: On The Ranch

Father’s plan was to move out into the countryside until the war was over and better times had returned. Father would then re-start his business, and life could get back to normal. He looked for a place in the country with a house suitable for our family of four. A place was found some 165 miles north of the San Francisco Bay Area, out on a graveled country road along the Eel River. The property consisted of about 20 acres of land with an old three room house with porch and a barn. This old rural homestead father and mother named “The Ranch” even though we kept no farm animals, aside from chickens. Our house in Oakland was sold, and I imagine that the ranch property was bought for a small amount of money.

We moved to our new home in the mountains of Mendocino County in northern California in 1941 when I was two years old and my sister Karen was just one half year. This is where I started the life that I can remember in detail and the life that our family always looked back upon with great satisfaction and longing. It, somehow, set a standard for how a family could live out in the countryside and be self-sufficient, and at the same time live a healthy life. The only drawback was that it was, perhaps, a little too far out in the countryside. There were no close neighbors and a village grade school was six miles away. Groceries could also be bought in this village, Dos Rios, meaning “two rivers” in Spanish. But on the positive side, it was exciting during my early years to experience nature, and it included fishing and swimming in the river and hiking with my father, where we often saw various wild animals, such as deer, squirrels, chipmunks and many kinds of birds.

The time that we lived on the Ranch was a great experience for us, but what was the history of this country and northern California in general? We knew that less than one hundred years previously, there had been hostilities between the arriving settlers and the indigenous Native Americans, that lived in the area. The Native Americans, the Yuki and other tribes, that lived on the Round Valley Indian Reservation, further north of where we lived, had been through terrible times at the hands of the early settlers that came to the area in the 1850s and later. It was known that a massacre had taken place at Bloody Run Creek north of Longvale, only a few miles south of our Ranch. The troubles apparently started in Round Valley when the first white man arrived in 1851 and the first Native American was killed. These terrible events were never mentioned in the public schools in California at any time while I attended. I am sure that there were, and possibly still are, people who would rather have the truth of these times forgotten altogether. In the last few years, however, I’ve noted that several books have been published on the subject by a few dedicated writers, including, When The Great Spirit Died by William B. Secrest, Quill Driver Books 2003 and, Killing For Land In Early California by Frank Baumgardner III, Algora Pub. 2006. These tales of bygone times are literally “skeletons in the closet” that need to be told.

We lived in the countryside from 1941 to 1947, six years, and as my father always said, “it was the best years of my life”. But it wasn’t so easy for Mother. She was a very social person who liked to have her friends around her. In the countryside, we met few people. Furthermore, our standard of living was quite low as Father earned very little money. He repaired things for a few nearby ranches and trapped fur animals for a time (mink and raccoon). There were, though, occasional visits from our friends in Oakland. It was an opportunity for them to visit the countryside, away from the city. Some friends went deer hunting with Father and others just came for the visit. Some had children about the same age as Karen and I. We could offer them swimming in the river and hiking or just lazing around on warm summer days. We were glad to see them and they were the first children that Karen and I got to know as children.

Our house

Our small house had three rooms, a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a porch with roof where the house’s water supply faucet was located. There was no electric connection to the property, making the use of electrical appliances and electrical lights impossible. We used kerosene lamps and candles. The toilet facilities were primitive; we used a small outhouse some distance from the house. There was also a barn with space for a couple of animals and a separate room for chickens. Father used the barn as his workshop, and even though he had brought many tools from his shop in Oakland, electrical tools could not be used. The area of the house had a view to the main graveled road, the Eel River, and the Northern Pacific Railroad line at the Tatu water tank stop, just across the river. In those days some of the train locomotives were still steam driven and required water.

We had an extensive vegetable garden and some fruit trees, and we collected wild blackberries. There was a lot of canning and preserving of fruits at our house. Father also went hunting to supply us with deer meat and there were salmon from the river. During the war, there was rationing of many food commodities, but we really only needed to buy sugar, flour, salt, and of course, father needed his cigarettes. Rationing was supposed to limit the use of certain critical commodities that were used in the “war effort.” The very term “war effort” was used often to explain things that took place during the war. Even “the war,” meaning “the Second World War” was a term used long after it had ended by those that lived during the war. Today it’s sometimes necessary to explain the meanings of these terms to a younger generation, which is not surprising since there have been a number of wars since then. We ate well in those years, but everything other than food was in short supply.

In the countryside, in California, there are poisonous “rattlesnakes” that are a danger in the summertime. Once when Karen was very small, she crawled under the front porch of the house one summer day. She hadn’t been there long when Mother suddenly couldn’t find her. She was soon discovered, sitting quietly and quite unaware of a rattle snake only a few feet away from her. The snake was not attacking or even disturbed. Father carefully and slowly separated the two, and no harm was done. We were all relieved. The snake, on the other hand, met its fate shortly thereafter.

Another time while we were in the house on a hot summer day, smoke appeared outside of a window in the kitchen. The kitchen stove was being used at the time, but the smoke seemed unusual so father went outside to see what was happening. He found that a section of the dry shingle roof was on fire. The house was all wood and very dry so a fire was a serious situation. Father immediately got a garden hose connected to a water faucet and began trying to put the fire out; however, the flames had a good head start and the water supply was not sufficient. Before long, the water supply ran out completely. At this point Father thought that there was no chance of saving the house, so Mother and I tried to remove everything from the house as fast as possible. In the meantime, Father called out to our neighbor who lived across the river. Mr. Bacchi finally heard the call and replied that he would come over immediately. We also started to carry water in buckets up from the creek that was just below the driveway to the house. Father would then climb up on a ladder and throw water on the flames that were now becoming larger and consuming more of the roof. Finally, Mr. Bacchi arrived, and he was engaged to carry water up from the creek with two buckets at a time. This added water supply finally made the difference, and the flames were extinguished, to our great relief. By that time, Mother and I had removed a lot of furniture, bedding, chairs, clothes, tables, and many other things from the house; so many things that it took us two days to move everything back in again. The roof of the house was badly damaged, but the inside of the house was intact. We were all exhausted from all that activity but glad that the house had not burned to the ground.

There was insurance on the house so, Father was able to get payment for the materials to repair the roof, which he did himself. This whole episode showed just how vulnerable we were living out in the countryside. Nonetheless, it was a time we, as a family, remember and were glad to have been able to work together to save our house.

Prince and Queeny

We also had two dogs, Queeny and Prince. Queeny was a female dog of unknown background, given to us by the neighbor from a nearby ranch and Prince the male offspring of Queeny and an unknown partner. The dogs played an important part in our time on the Ranch. One or both of them would always accompany us on walks or hikes in the countryside. They were entrusted to guard and protect us and our house against potential thieves and troublemakers both at night and during the day. Our house was never locked when we were away on a trip for shopping, and nothing was ever amiss when we returned.

Dos Rios

The nearest town was Dos Rios, a small village about five miles further north along the road that continued an additional twelve miles on to Covelo and the Round Valley Indian Reservation. At Dos Rios, there were a couple of grocery stores, one of them sold gasoline. The town also housed the grade school where mother taught school one year, and I was in the first grade. To have your own mother as your school teacher was something special. As I think back to those days, I suppose that the other children at school were careful not to get into trouble or pick fights with me, because they knew that my mother would be keeping an eye on me.

There was also a post office and telegraph office in the village, both at the train station on the Northern Pacific Railroad line. Father drove the pickup to Dos Rios every few days to check for mail at the post office and buy groceries. Karen and I would always ask to go along to see the village that we got to know so well. Also, father and mother would use the opportunity to talk with the attendants at the store and post office about the latest news of the war or other news of the day. Dos Rios had a kind of sleepy village atmosphere in which everyone participated.

One time when we came to Dos Rios, there had been a railroad accident, in which two trains had collided head-on. The locomotives had collided further north of the station, but they were moved to the station area where we could see them. The locomotives and the attached railroad cars remained on the railroad tracks, but the locomotives had been badly damaged. One locomotive was larger than the other, with the smaller one being very severely damaged. A number of people were standing around looking at the damaged trains and talking quietly about the accident. It was said that the driver of the smaller locomotive had been killed instantly by very hot steam that escaped when the two trains smashed together. “He was steam cooked,” they said. I felt a little uneasy hearing that!

About every two weeks, we would make a trip to the provincial town of Willits, some twenty miles distant, south on Highway 101, to buy groceries that couldn’t be found in Dos Rios. Father said that we always spent about ten dollars for several brown paper bags of groceries. On these occasions, the dogs would be tied up, or rather Prince would be tied up, on a long line in the front yard of the house. Queeny would not be tied up, but there was no danger that she might run away so long as Prince was obliged to stay on his post. When we returned after some hour’s absence, the dogs were as overjoyed to see us again as we were to see them.

One year, about 1943, Grandmother Alspach, my mother’s mother, came to visit for Christmas. I was four years old that year, and a snowstorm had deposited a layer of snow on the ground that stayed for several days— wonderful, I thought. My grandmother, though, was not particularly impressed as she lived in Iowa where there are great amounts of snow every year. We had a Christmas tree that year, as we had every year as I grew up. Having Grandmother there, though, made it extra special.

The War

While war raged in other parts of the world, where we lived in northern California, everything was peaceful or nearly so. However, there were some things happening on the west coast that not everyone knew about.

In a little-known 1944 ”Fu-Go” campaign, Japan released some 10,000 “balloon bombs” that floated across the Pacific and were intended to explode in the United States, causing forest fires and panic. Each balloon was armed with a 15-kilogram antipersonnel bomb and four 4.5-kilogram incendiaries, as well as a flash bomb to destroy evidence of the devices, according to Hugh A. Halliday in Legion Magazine. Japan said it was retaliation for the 1942 U.S. “Doolittle raid” in which American pilots bombed key targets in Tokyo, under cover of darkness, from aircraft carriers in the Pacific. A man and his pregnant wife and five local youngsters were at a nature park in Oregon when they found an odd-looking balloon device. When the children examined it, it exploded, killing the wife and all five children. This was the only deaths of civilians on U.S. Territory during the war.

As the balloons landed, the U.S. government tried to hide the information from the American public, hoping the Japanese would abandon the campaign as ineffective. The press largely cooperated with the government’s secrecy efforts. In April 1945, U.S. B-29 bombers destroyed the plants that produced the balloon bombs. The Japanese halted the project at about the same time because they thought the bombs were not reaching America.