THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MY FATHER, HENRY MCDONALD, Pt. 1

Childhood and War Years

(transcribed from an audio tape my father "left behind")

My name is Henry Webster McDonald Jr.

I am making this tape recording at the age of 80. I wish to leave something behind for my grandchildren and great grandchildren. I was born on March 23, 1926, (*and died on March 2, 2012.)

My father’s name was Henry Webster McDonald Sr., and my mother’s name was Ruth Daisy Cone McDonald.

The Cones owned thousands of acres in South Georgia. My parents lived on their land. When I was one, my mama died (due to a faulty heart valve.) Since my dad wasn’t fond of Grandmother Cone, after he married Mabel Turner McDonald, we moved to Jennings, Florida, and lived on the property of Mr. Turner, my step-grandfather.

In 1932 Grandma Cone wanted her grandchildren close to her, and built a house on the Cone land to entice daddy to move back to that area. My daddy took the bait, and we returned to Georgia. Grandma Cone deeded the house to my siblings and me. We resumed farming, but had only lived in the house for one year, when it burned down. After this development, daddy decided to get the hell out of there.

(Henry McDonald’s “footnotes:” My grandmother Cone died about a year later when a tornado destroyed her house. My aunt was seriously hurt, but lived as the result of having squeezed herself between two mattresses.)

(I returned to the old Cone property a year ago, and my son, Royce, and I found the old well my family used there. Back then wells were about six by six feet across the top, and 12 or 15 feet deep. We would lower a bucket to retrieve the water. While this old well, from so long ago, was littered with trash, there was still a little water in the bottom.)

The house in Jennings was just awful. It had no windows or screens. To circulate the air, we lifted shutters which were propped up against the house on sticks. The mosquitoes were terrible. The house was raised above the ground, and you could see the chickens walking around through the floorboards. It was such a sorry place.

Back in those days, farmers usually had many children since one man could never do it all. JW (John Warren, my brother) and I worked in the fields at a very young age. We filled two 50 gallon drums with water out of a nearby stream, and put them on a sled, and drug them up and down the rows of tobacco (or whatever other crops we tried to grow there) and dipped gourds of water onto the plants, and so we managed to irrigate the crops this way. We succored tobacco and worked in the cotton fields.

I was three and it was 1929. The stock market crashed and the Great Depression arrived. Jobs were scarce and most people had little or no money. We were poor, but we had a garden which city people didn’t have. My dad drove a furniture truck, and earned $1 a day for 10 hours of work. I saw him put cardboard in his shoes, since they were worn out and the soles were full of holes.

Herbert Hoover was president at this time (and times were bad.) When Franklin Roosevelt (a distant relative of Erma McDonald, Henry’s wife) became President, things improved. During his presidency the WPA (Works Progress Administration) was born. My dad went to work for this government agency, and remained with this job for a couple of years.

My dad knew that things were getting serious when our crops failed, and he only made one bale of hay. He sold the bale and all of our furniture, and decided it was time to move again.

Daddy sent us kids ahead of him and my step-mother, and we moved in with our Uncle Charley (Fields) and Aunt Ethel in Central Florida. My uncle was the First Deputy Sheriff (title) of Polk County. We stayed with them six weeks.

WWII began, and I was 15. Since my step mother and I didn’t see eye to eye, and I was rebellious anyway, I figured I better make my way in the world. I went to the Navy recruiter, and though I was only 16 at the time, I picked up enlistment papers. The Chief of Police in Winter Haven affirmed I was 17, and formally attested to it with his signature. I swore in in Lakeland, and caught (the bus or train) to Norfolk, Virginia where I attended Basic Training; (better known as “Boot Camp.”)

After graduation, I trained as a ship’s engine mechanic, and served on various ships during the course of my military career. My first post was at Montauk, Long Island. (Henry’s ship was somehow involved in testing a new torpedo.)

Next I was assigned to an LST (“Landing Ship, Tank”) in the Pacific Theatre, and then to a tanker ship which transported gasoline for aircraft carriers, and participated in their refueling. Since our ship was rated too slow for proper refueling, we received orders to return to Seattle, and were dry docked to have new engines fitted. About this time, the war ended and since our ship was old, the refit was canceled. From here, we sailed to San Francisco. Many returning ships were dry docked there. (Henry’s footnote: A year or two later these same ships were returned to the Pacific, and used for testing the explosive power of atomic bombs.)

I received a 30 day leave and went home, and was then reassigned to an aircraft carrier. It was fitted out with thousands of bunk beds, and we sailed for France to pick up 8,000 returning Army troops.

Since I was assigned to the engine room, and I wanted some space to myself, given the fact that the ship was so crowded with men, I preferred to sleep below decks. I discovered a little closet in the engine compartment, and piled it high with foam rubber. (Apparently, in spite of the loudness of the engines, the closet was insulated enough to shut out much of the sound, or daddy would not have slept very well.)

After returning home from Europe in 1946, (and though he was offered the opportunity for reenlistment, though many sailors and soldiers weren’t) I was discharged from the Navy. 8 million service men found themselves on the streets without work, and there was a severe lack of housing for many newly married troops.