IN THE BEGINNING

Mt San Gorgonio, more-or-less as seen from Beaumont

My 86th birthday is nearly here, and my kids have been urging me to write my "memoirs".  My opinion is that I am no where near important enough to deserve "memoirs".  What would I call it?  "Journal of someone who wasted a lot of time" leaps to mind.  But, for those few who might be amused, I will post some historical stuff I wrote for another reason about a half-decade ago.  This first installment concerns my parents and the origin of the Beaumont Hardware and Lumber Company.

WHAT I REMEMBER

7/24/14

I remember writing somewhere that it is a pity that people don’t get interested in their family history until the last member of the previous generation has died.  I know that doesn’t apply to everyone, but it does to most of us, especially me.  That’s why I am going to write down some recollections, stories and family myths – and email them to all my descendants.  Someday you may find this stuff interesting.  

I am also doing this to have something to do.  My execrable joints won’t let me do much outdoors, and I can’t write cancer blogs all day, every day.  It’s either this or read the financial sections of the Wall Street Journal;.  Writing won’t cost me anything; reading the financials in the Journal – and acting on what I think I have learned – would likely cost me plenty.

Okay, so here goes.  My father (Myrl) and mother (Hazel) both were born in Colorado.  No, damn it, that’s not right – Myrl Sr. was born in (near) Brookings, South Dakota.  His father – Peter – farmed a half section; wheat, probably.  Dad’s mother, Marie, was a remarkable woman, according to family legend.  She had at least six children: in descending order of age, Agnes and Tilia (identical twins), Oscar, Arthur, and Myrl.  Another child, Myrtle, died as a teen ager: I don’t know where she fitted in the lineup.  I think there was yet another child, probably named Arthur, who died as a baby. 

Anyway, it appears that my grandfather Peter contracted what sounds like Lou Gehrig’s disease, and died.  After Myrtle also died, apparently a doctor told my grandmother to get the family into a healthier environment.  So, she sold the farm, packed the kids and some belongings into a freight car, and moved to Alt, Colorado.  After a few years she re-married, a guy named Jerimiason – Ross, I think.    Apparently the boys didn’t much take to old Ross; the girls were long gone by this time.  So my father grew up in Alt.  He was a basketball star at Alt HS – at 5 ft 9 in  tall!  His nick name was Runt. (However, in a comment in his senior year book, which I have, it is written “Te amo, Runt.”

Runt and my mother met in college, in what then was known as Colorado Aggies (A & M).  It is now called Colorado State University, located in Greely, Colorado.

My mother studied education.  My father started out in agriculture, but swiftly switched to business.  He left Aggies before graduation, for reasons unknown to me, and ended up at Denver University.  By that time he and Hazel were married – but they couldn’t go public about it, because married women weren’t allowed to be teachers!  Strange world.

Good, Lord!  It’s a good thing I never let well-enough alone.  Lacking useful work to do I sat down today (8/31/14) to re-read and possibly revise this article – and realized that I had left out something very important – my Dad’s involvement in WWI.  This historical wrinkle is, however, mainly a mystery to me.  I know he was in the Marine Corps, because somewhere in my basement I have his dress uniform!  Given that WWI extended 1914-18, Dad would have been only 16 at the start of the war, and 20 at its end.  Somehow packed away in a corner of my brain is the notion that he enlisted in the Marines early in the war, was found to be too young, and discharged.  Then, apparently, he enlisted in the army – presumably when he met the age requirements.  I know that he was stationed at Mare Island, in San Francisco Bay, because he once told me that Mare Island was certainly the foggiest, clammiest, least healthy place on earth.  Eventually he got some kind of lung disease, and was discharged.  He received a monthly disability pension from the army for the rest of his life.  I think it was, like, $35.  He put it into my college fund.

So, how this meshes with the history of him and my mother being in college together I don’t know.  Perhaps he was one or two years behind her in school.  They were essentially equal in age – both born in early March, 1898.

The history of my mother’s side of the family is too well known in the family, and too complicated, for me to add anything here.  She was one of nine children born to Eben and Susan (Hooker) Bebee, in Cripple Creek, Colorado.  Eben was into all phases of gold mining, from prospecting to claim jumping (no, I don’t mean that), to foreman.  He ended up the boss of a big bunch of mines owned by the Carelton family of Colorado Springs.  The colorful life in Cripple Creek at that time is well known.  I only need add that my maternal grandmother was a sweet old lady whom everybody loved.  The Cripple Creek bunch will figure large in what follows.  There are many written histories of the Bebee clan of C.C.  I refer you to them.

Myrl and Hazel lived and worked in many places in eastern Colorado and nearby territory.  Dad managed several hardware/lumber emporia.  They lived in Deer Trail, Colorado, Lisco, Nebraska, and several other one-horse towns.  I have heard tales of chicken-chopping and rat-extermination to which I can’t begin to do justice.  Suffice it to say that I am glad it was them, not me.  And then all sorts of shit hit the fan…..

My father was summoned to corporate headquarters in Denver.  He believed that he had done such a good job that he was about to be kicked upstairs, or at least given a store somewhere a bit bigger than Lisco.    Instead, the corporate brass trotted out some asshole who accused him of skimming the profits.  Apparently he easily disposed of this accusation, extracted an apology from the high mucky-mucks, and glared.  They offered him a promotion.  He took instead a few weeks leave – and went to California, where he bought a hardware store, in Beaumont.  That was 1930, a very poor year to start a business. But the store prospered; a tribute to Myrl Senior’s intelligence and strength of character.  Dad wanted to run a lumber yard, too, so very soon he bought another building a few blocks to the east, which had property enough for lumber.  That became what I have referred to previously as the Old Store.  It now lies beneath the west-bound lanes of Interstate 10.

Later, gradually, one-by-one other investors in the Old Store came to live in Beaumont.  All of them were Hazel’s siblings: brothers Earl, Lynn, Dale, and older sister Ruth.  In my earliest memories the Lynn’s were already there – they settled across the street from our home (665 Palm Avenue), probably prior to about 1938.  Later came “the Folks”: Dale, Ruth, Florence and my grandmother.  They built a big house on Orange Street, near what was then a nice park.  Sometime in the 1940s the Earl’s migrated west from Cripple Creek.  Earl (Hank to the male members of the family) had worked in the mines up to that point.  Hank & Co built a house near The Folks: they shared a vacant lot between them.  It swiftly became a garden, with fruit trees.  Our home on Palm Avenue also included a vacant lot, on which my father and mother planted wonderful fruit trees, as well as various vegetables.  I came to dread early spring because my mother would require me to spade up what seemed like many acres of hard-packed earth.

So, by 1950 there were four related families living in Beaumont, and now it is time to introduce them.

The Folks: Dale and Florence, neither of whom ever married, and Ruth, who was a widow (she had been married to Charlie Crowder who died not long after WWI.)  And, of course, their mother

The Lynns: Lynn, his wonderfully lovable wife Mildred, and two girls – Charlene and Lynda. 

The Earls: Earl, his wife Opal, a daughter Virginia (called Ginger most of her life), and a son named Bill.

The Myrl’s: Myrl, Hazel, me and my sister Susannah, who was brought into the family in 1937.

The Lynns lived right across the street from us, so I had ample opportunity to torture Charlene – who was two years my junior.  Lynda was much younger; I scarcely noticed her until she was well into her twenties.  Bill was the only other Beaumont male of my generation, so I remember quite a lot about him.  Also, he worked at the Beaumont Hardware & Lumber Co.  (the “Store”) from an early age.  In fact, he ran it after all the original partners had died or retired.

Later I may post some follow-up:  TALES OF THE OLD STORE and MORE TALES OF THE OLD STORE.