Streeter's Story

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Streeter Gilbert King wrote a series of letters to his three children, starting sometime in early 2003, documenting his early life’s story. The history that follows was adapted from those letters.

Last week: As tenant farmers, the King family had moved around, with stops in Thompsonville, Harwood, Elm Grove, Waelder and, finally, Dilworth, where a 183-acre farm was bought for $2,973 and semiannual installment payments of $120 each. But when the Great Depression gave way to World War II, Uncle Sam came calling. And Streeter answered.

Daddy woke me up with “Streeter, it’s time to go.” It was 5 a.m. I got dressed and carried my shoes into the kitchen to have coffee with Daddy. By the time he laced his high top boots, the coffee was bubbling into the glass knob on top of the pot. He poured a drop or two into his saucer to cool, blowing at the edge and taking a sip. I followed suit, neither of us uttering a word. While Daddy got the ’37 Plymouth out of the barn, Mama came into the kitchen, and when I told her goodbye, she said, “I sure hope you don’t have to get into that mess.”

In the Plymouth, we are on our way to Gonzales. We didn’t talk, there was nothing to say. Moving along the narrow dirt road at 25 miles per hour, sometimes speeding up to 30, we rode into town at about 6:45. Sure enough, there was a Greyhound parked in the square, and in a few minutes, other cars arrived, dropping off young men for the ride to San Antonio. As I got out of the Plymouth, Daddy handed me a $5 bill saying, “I’ll pick you up when you get back tonight.” Neither of us would guess that would not happen.

When Daddy bought the Plymouth from August Kaspar (the founder of Shiner’s Kaspar Wire Works) in 1938, he stored the Model-T in a shed alongside the barn. Sometime in 1946 or ’47, Uncle Scott Vaughn retrieved it from the shed, fired it up and took it home for my Cousin Billy’s transportation to Waelder High School. They lived 10-12 miles south of Waelder near Hickston on the north end of Peach Creek.

Arriving at Fort Sam Houston

On the bus, I sat down next to former Dilworth School classmate Burgess Kridler. His older brother Thedo was in the National Guard, Company L, 36th Division in Italy. After the war, Thedo, badly wounded in Italy, came home a hero. He married the prettiest girl in Gonzales and was elected county sheriff in 1948.

We didn’t say much. I certainly didn’t feel like talking. This day was perhaps the climax of the worst period of my 20-year life. After “dump truck” driving in Kerrville, I had come home penniless waiting for the draft. Daddy hardly spoke, while Mama spent the days agonizing about me and the draft. For almost a month, I had been sitting on the porch looking at the mesquite and post oak trees growing out of limestone rocks. I was glad to get on the bus, my way out.

Leaving the bus in San Antonio, an Army PFC escorted us into a huge barn-like building in Fort Sam Houston. The base was established in 1879 and was once home for Black Jack Pershing during his 1916 pursuit of Poncho Villa. General “Dugout Doug” MacArthur also spent some time there. In the building, everything became a blur – undershorts on, undershorts off, anuses peered into, testicles squeezed, and chests thumped. In between, we had a sandwich.

You’re in the Marines

I took the oath and got dressed to board the bus back to Gonzales. As I walked out toward the street, I saw two Marines in dress blues sitting at a card table. “How the hell can I get into the Marines,” I asked? The Corporal left the table and took me by the arm out to a Marine Corps truck telling me, “You are in the Marines now, the Sergeant is advising the Army.” With the Sergeant in the truck, the Corporal drove us to the Menger Hotel, adjacent to the Alamo, in downtown San Antonio.

“Across the alley from the Alamo

Lived a pinto pony and a Navajo

Who sang a sort of Indian ‘Hi-de-ho’

To the people passing by.”

The Mills Brothers, 1947

In 1898, Teddy Roosevelt recruited many of his Rough Riders in the hotel bar. Before we left the induction center, I found Burgess to tell Daddy I had joined the Marines.

Back to Dilworth before shipping out

That Friday night, seven of us were stashed in the Menger Hotel basement to sleep on Army cots. After a Navy physical Saturday morning, all seven were sworn in and told we would be traveling by train to the USMC Recruit Depot in San Diego — travel orders for us on Southern Pacific’s Sunset Limited, boarding at 1300 hours next Tuesday, March 23, were mimeographed and stuffed in a brown envelope. I don’t know why (I was the tallest?), but the sergeant gave me the envelope with instructions to meet the other six at the train station on Tuesday afternoon.

I don’t know what the others did that March 19 afternoon, but I took a city bus out to Highway 90 where I stuck out my thumb for a ride. Two rides delivered me to downtown Gonzales, and there, a fellow I knew at Mang’s Café and Pool Hall, drove me out to Dilworth with the brown envelope.

At the hilltop house, Mama greeted me with a flood of tears. “Why in the world did you do a thing like that, joining the Marines. Why, they are the first ones to get killed.” Daddy only asked when I had to leave.

A great, good-bye feast

With Grandma King and Mama in the back seat, Wayne on my lap in the front and Daddy driving the Plymouth, we were on the way to Gonzales on a typical Saturday afternoon. Along the way, Mama wanted to know how I would get to San Antonio on Tuesday. “I’ll catch a ride on Monday and stay all night on a Menger cot so I can be sure to catch the train on Tuesday,” I said. After several minutes, Daddy spoke, “When we get to town, let’s go over to Michelson’s Café and I’ll buy you a bus ticket for Tuesday.” The bus would leave Gonzales at 7 a.m.

For Sunday, March 20, noon dinner, Mama fried chicken, made mashed potatoes with lots of white gravy to go with the freshly made biscuits and pinto “red” beans. A great feast.

‘Be sure and write’

Monday morning, Daddy and I were waiting for the bus by 6 o’clock. Daddy seemed restless, so I asked him not to wait, and with a tear running down his cheek, he said goodbye with, “be sure and write.” With a lump in my throat, I watched Daddy turn the Plymouth around the corner and head east toward Dilworth. I boarded a mostly empty Greyhound with the Marine Corps brown envelope and a small canvas “overnight” bag Mama made.

The Greyhound parked in the San Antonio bus station about 9 o’clock. I walked to the Sunset Station, where I found a bench to sit on, and a copy of the San Antonio Light to read.

On the train to San Diego

Soon the rest of the enlistees straggled in, some not too sober. Three of them had never gone home, they had sneaked into the Menger to sleep on an Army cot. When the Sunset Limited pulled in, everyone fell in behind me while I talked to the conductor who directed us to the “Sleepers.” Hylton Hicks was the only one who had slept on a train, so he showed us how to fold down the beds. There were several Marines already on board.

Going west, we crossed the famous Pecos River High Bridge before dark. I was interested in seeing the bridge, but none of the others looked up from their pinochle game. Just outside of El Paso, the conductor announced the dining car open for “the Marines.” Civilian passengers ate first, and if that wasn’t discourteous enough, we got smaller food portions.

Early morning March 24, we were speeding along at 10-15 miles per hour through Mexico’s Carriso Gorge, just west of Yuma, Ariz., with Mexican kids running along the tracks selling what looked like old catsup bottles of Tequila for $1. I bought one that tasted like kerosene.

Streeter meets Gunny

Late afternoon on March 25, we rolled into the San Diego Union Station. Looking out the window, I saw a red-headed man in a green uniform, with an armload of little red slash marks and three red chevrons with a “rocker” up by his shoulder. He was yelling, “All Marine recruits gather around, I need your travel orders.” I would come to know him as Gunny.

Hilton tugged at my sleeve. “The sergeant wants the brown envelope,” he said. With a bad head cold, I hadn’t heard Gunny, and when I handed him the brown envelope, he said, “What the hell is it with you boy, are you hard of hearing or do you have dirt in your ears!? See that bus over there!? You and the rest of you ‘rednecks’ better get on it now!” The bus was a “fifth wheel” cattle trailer with seats, and by the time I got aboard, all the seats were taken. While I hung onto a ceiling pipe, Gunny was at the door screaming, “Move it, move it, cheek to cheek!”

Lights out, no more talking

On the base, we got off the trailer-bus at the Recruit Depot “Receiving Barracks” near sunset. Inside, we were assigned bunks and told where the bathroom was. Two “horsecock” sandwiches and an apple was a welcome dinner at outside picnic tables. We were given 20 minutes to eat, and back in the barracks we were told the lights would be out in 15 minutes.

After the lights were clicked off, there was lots of talking, and some yelling: “I’m from Atlanta” or “I’m from Brooklyn” or some other big eastern city. From the bunk below me, Hylton yells, “I’m from Kirbyville.” After a short silence, at least 50 recruits began yelling, “I’m from f***ing Kirbyville, ho, ho.”

The lights came on. A DI stood in the doorway giving us three minutes to get downstairs. Outside, the DI stood watching us running to the end of the block and back for 30 minutes. Back in the barracks the lights were out in 15 minutes. There was no more talking that night.

A few good men

We had breakfast for our first full Marine Corps day March 26. It was good. Pitchers of cold milk, scrambled eggs and little round objects that looked like small cigars. I asked Hilton what they were. “Those are pork sausages,” he said.

We spent the morning getting a bayonet and scabbard, blankets, cartridge belt, green uniforms, shoes, a World War I doughboy steel helmet and an M1 Garand rifle that required solvent to remove the heavy Cosmoline coating. After lunch, we put on our new uniforms for picture taking. Uniforms off, new dungarees on. We were allowed to keep a wristwatch, all other items were packed in a box and shipped home.

Close order and extended order drill, riot drill and lectures, swimming, bayonet practice and, most of all, memorizing Marine Corps General Orders were the orders of the day. Platoon 273 included 60 recruits with Sgt. Guidry leading. Sgt. Callies was second-in-command, with Cpl. Dunn bringing up the rear.

Boot camp was a breeze

Kirbyville’s Hylton Hicks was my best friend. When we got instructions for making our bunk, and how to break down an M1 rifle, with a cold and fever, I could barely hold my head up. Hylton told me not to worry. The next few mornings, he made my bunk and helped me through the day. Going to sick bay and losing my platoon was not a choice. Over the next few weeks, I learned that Hylton Hicks was famous for having appeared in Ethel Barrymore’s Broadway play, “The Corn is Green.”

After following a walking cultivator behind a pair of mules over loose ground from sunup to sundown, chopping cotton, picking cotton and corn, sleeping on the porch floor because it was too hot to sleep in the house, boot training was a breeze. And no matter how dirty you got, you could take a wonderful hot shower before going to bed.

Cross-country duty

Back from a one-year tour of Adak, Alaska guard duty, I reported to the Norfolk (Va.) Naval Air Station in October 1944 for more guard duty. There I got a letter from Mama saying Daddy had been going to Shiner’s Dr. Wagner about pain in his left arm and shoulder.

On Jan. 29, 1945, I was transferred to a Camp Lejeune Casual Company in North Carolina. Then, after a four-day cross-country train ride, I reported to California’s Camp Pendleton on March 1, 1945. For my second Pendleton tour, I would be managing the post laundry with a lot of civilian help that included Patricia Brown.

When I picked up my mail at Pendleton I found a new letter from Mama saying Daddy had arthritis and had been in Shiner’s Wagner Hospital, Sievers’ Hospital in Gonzales, and hot bath treatments at a Marlin clinic.

In late June, Mama wrote that Daddy was worse, he was bed-ridden with unrelenting pain. I got an emergency leave to go home on July 7, and when I saw Daddy at Wagner’s Hospital, I was shocked. He had lost so much weight, he looked like a Dachau prisoner. He was in severe pain, and for the pain, the doctor was prescribing morphine injections. (He was probably addicted to morphine by then.) He cried and said I needed to come home, run the farm and take care of Mama. For the prior 18 months, while Daddy couldn’t work, Tom Alexander managed the Dilworth farm.

A Dilworth funeral

On Aug. 15, 1945, the news of the end of World War II reached the Sunset Limited as I was headed back to Oceanside, Calif., and Camp Pendleton.

On Sept. 8, 1945, at Pendleton, I got Mama’s Red Cross message noticing Daddy’s death. With an emergency leave to go home, the Pendleton Officer of the Day loaned me travel money (completely against Marine Corps rules). I reached Los Angeles by bus and boarded the Sunset Limited to Luling, where I hitched a ride to Gonzales. Gonzales County Sheriff Burnett gave me a ride out to the Dilworth hilltop house, and at the road gate I could see that Daddy’s funeral was underway. I rode in the funeral coach to Moulton’s Stonewall Cemetery with Daddy, Mama, my 6-year-old brother Wayne, and 77-year-old Grandma King. It was Sept. 11, 1945.

Streeter gets married

I left the Corps on March 23, 1947, at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. By bus, train and airplane, I reached Las Vegas, got a job in a lumberyard, and married Patricia Brown on May 27, 1947.

Epilogue (2003)

Sometimes when I awake in the early morning, I think I can see Mama in the Dilworth kitchen making biscuits in front of the enameled shelf of the Sears kitchen cabinet, her hands down in a large white bowl, she kneads a softball size of dough. She breaks off fist-sized pieces and places them in a large bread pan. When the pan is full, she presses her right knuckle into each one, allowing for a teaspoon of bacon grease on top. The biscuits are in the wood stove oven now. Her voice is hoarse as she tells me I had better get ready for school.

Streeter worked for Pacific Telephone, making sure the phones worked in Disneyland, San Diego, Costa Mesa and Riverside. He retired in 1978 and moved to Kerrville, where he built a home and dispatched trouble calls for the Kerrville Police Department. He died on Jan. 13, 2013, at the age of 89. His brother, Wayne, lives in Orange, Calif., and shared his brother’s story of growing up in Gonzales County. Wayne can be reached at healthcarenow@att.net or 714-633-5935.

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