Growing Up In The Greatest Generation

Growing Up

In The Greatest Generation

Frank Clymer

ISBN 978-1-64079-839-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64079-840-3 (digital)

Copyright © 2018 by Frank Clymer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my dear wife of fifty-nine years, Leila.

She was always an encouragement to me and especially as she knew I wanted to do this new adventure.

Her constant comment to me as I was writing was, How can you remember so much and so many details about your youth so many years ago? She would laugh that maybe she could write one or two pages of her own first twelve years. I know that wasn’t true.

I don’t think she ever knew the full impact her words would have on me throughout our entire marriage when she said, Frank, I know you can do anything you put your mind to do.

I still don’t believe it.

She was the Lord’s gift to me.

We knew love.

Acknowledgments

To my three children Jim, Karen, Lois and their spouses, my grandchildren, my brothers and sister, nieces and nephews, and good friends who enjoyed the early writing of this true story and then encouraged me to get it published—thank you.

Introduction

Many of us have read accounts of the greatest generation, but they were always written by adults as they either read or experienced it. What makes this story different and will keep your interest from other accounts is you will be seeing it from a childhood view as I actually lived through it and had so many experiences to draw from. Children see and experience things differently than adults. I believe there is an honesty and simplicity in their observation that is many times lost as we mature into adult life.

Fortunately, I was blessed with a good memory and was able to recall details to all I will write about. If you like nostalgia, I know you will enjoy this book. I will take you back to the good old days, and you will live it with me no matter what your age.

I will try to show you how life was lived during the greatest generation and how the war affected everything we did by using our family, neighborhood, and community to tell the story. The things we went through were typical for the time, and yet our community and neighborhood was unusual.

For instance, our small town of 2,500, which was made up mostly of German people called the Pennsylvania Germans or Pennsylvania Dutch, produced five generals, one in the First World War, three from the Second World War, and one after the war. We were a very patriotic community. Sellersville, with our good neighbor Perkasie, through the sale of war bond stamps through schoolchildren and adults purchased a B-17 bomber for the US Army Air Force and named it the Spirit of Sell-Perk.

Because of our heavy German population, the Nazi Party established a German American Bund Camp before the war at the edge of our community. I’ll share the personal contact I had with a family on our street who had sons in this youth camp and our reaction from the community about this camp.

There was even a Warner Bros. movie called The Pride of the Marines, which showed our local hero’s part who died at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. He was an orphaned Native American boy named John Rivers, who was credited with killing over two hundred Japanese in one night. I will give you details of his life and this battle, which is quite interesting.

I had four uncles who also fought in the war. This made the war even more personal for us. The first two were US Army; one fought in Europe and enlisted as soon as war was declared and his brother, who dropped out of school to also join the army and fought in the Philippine islands. Of special note, I’ll explain later in the story that I had two uncles who fought in the Russian Army against the Nazis, and both were killed.

I will be sharing with you the sacrifices made by Americans during the war and how our everyday activities were affected. We will talk about the ration stamps for gas, food, etc. The scrap drives, music, movies, news, air-raid drills, purchasing war bond stamps, the military drafts, loved ones lost and wounded—all the things that changed our lives forever.

Was it challenging? Yes. Would I exchange it for anything? No. It was the greatest generation. I will be covering happenings in my life and family background in order to show how things really were at this time that led us to become the greatest generation.

As I looked growing up in this time period.

1

Sellersville

Main St looking north opposite of Post office and Washington House Hotel.

North Main Street and Washington House Hotel. Walter Baum’s house on left side with American flag.

The town this story takes place in is Sellersville, Pennsylvania, nestled in the rolling hills in rural beautiful Bucks County, approximately thirty-five miles northwest of Philadelphia. It was founded in 1738 and located on what is now known as the Liberty Trail because the Liberty Bell was moved from Philadelphia to Allentown, Pennsylvania, in order to hide it in a church building since the British were coming into Philadelphia.

There are still two buildings standing and in use today that have existed from the founding of the town, the Washington House hotel and the Old Mill building. Both are proud symbol of our heritage. Pictures of both are in the next chapter.

What makes this or any community different from other communities? It is citizenry. At the time of my youth, you really don’t come to appreciate the people who are affecting your life, but as time passes and you reflect back, you have a new perspective.

The community was friendly but reserved. Men especially held back all emotions except when it came to joking and laughing. It was a happy community as was our home. Even though love was seldom shown outwardly within the home, there was an atmosphere of love, peace, and caring that is difficult to describe.

As Sellersville had a strong German heritage, this was also reflected in our speaking. Older adults would speak a dialect of German called Pennsylvania Dutch, i.e., German. This was a mixture of German and English but definitely German sounding.

When I was a boy, I enjoyed hearing adults speak it. I never learned it but for a dozen words. We had neighbors who spoke it and two ladies who lived on either side of us spoke to each other every time they saw each other. They would always be laughing as they spoke; maybe they were talking about me. This was a great advantage older people had over the younger generation. Today there is hardly anyone who speaks it.

If you travel fifty miles to Lancaster County where Amish people live, you will hear it all the time. A step back in time.

My father could speak it but not very fluently as he aged because his generation was dying off. But he loved to converse because for that generation, it was really fun, and as I said, they were always laughing.

I asked my father once, Why is it always so funny?

His reply was, In Pennsylvania Dutch, it just comes out so different than English.

A note of interest, when he was a child, many homes only spoke German. In his home, they spoke English and Pennsylvania Dutch, so he had no trouble when starting school, but many of his first-grade classmates did have this problem.

Like most communities, Sellersville went through its own industrial evolution. From cigar making, 1880-1920 to men’s trousers, 1920-1970 and the U.S. Gauge Company, 1910-1990. The German population always seemed to have a special aptitude to anything mechanical and so it was with the success of the Gauge Company and many machine shops that followed in and around our community.

2

A Walk Down Town

Since we are talking about the people of Sellersville, let’s take a walk through the town and meet some of these people and go into the stores and shops as I did as a boy. I think you will find it interesting. We won’t walk too fast, but it won’t take long.

The dam at Lake Lenape, the beginning of our beautiful park system.

Autumn on the walk and bike trail at Lake Lenape.

The east branch of the Perkiomen Creek divides the town in half. We refer to it as Lake Lenape, named after the Lenape Indian tribe that lived in our area. The stream is about sixty feet wide and four feet to five feet deep with a five-foot-high dam that creates this depth. These dimensions hold true for about two miles. Because of the dam, there was made an outstanding, beautiful park system through Sellersville and our sister town of Perkasie to the east of us. It also features a beautiful bike and walking trails that extend for about three miles.

We will begin on the south side of town, which we also called Jersey. I’m guessing it was called this because it lay on the south side of Lake Lenape, just like New Jersey on the other side of the Delaware River.

We will stay on Main Street starting at Clymer Avenue. This street was named after our great-grandparents’ large homestead located on the western side of the railroad tracks and also two of Dad’s uncles, who had a woodworking and gristmill just off Clymer Avenue along the railroad tracks.

Typical grocery store you encountered while doing your grocery shopping. This photo shows the American Store at Main and Maple avenue. (Courtesy of Sellersville Museum)

At Main and Clymer Avenues was a grocery store owned by Franklin Mann. This was a typical grocery store that Dad shopped at for several years. This was one of eight grocery stores located in town. You must remember everyone shopped local. Many ladies walked to the store with a wicker basket on their arm and made several small purchases a week, or their husbands drove and parked the car at the curb near the store.

Once in the store, you walked up to the counter and either handed the clerk your list of groceries or read them off to him, and they would quickly find the groceries and bring them back to the counter. There was not a large selection, but no one ever lacked anything. The wives, I guess, had to do more real home cooking.

These stores were always warm and friendly because they could not afford to lose you as a customer. There was always conversation between you and the clerks or owners.

Mann’s Grocery Store was the first to introduce frozen food and grocery carts. This was really big stuff for a small town. They even had an opening night with food and drink treats and small giveaways. I was there that night with some of my friends from Hughes Avenue. The featured frozen food company was Birds Eye frozen vegetables and fruits.

Mann’s Store was located looking north, on the lower left corner of the intersection of Clymer Avenue and Main Street. The large US Gauge plant was located on the right side of Main Street and fronted Clymer Avenue.

Coming back to the left side again, there was a Hoffman Dairy Ice Cream Stand that was open in the summer, directly across the street from Mann’s Store. This was a small wooden structure with a wooden ground-level deck where you could sit and eat your treats. They were not spraying mosquitoes yet, so good luck!

Let’s journey down to Main Street and Park Avenue. This was always our busy intersection, and we got