(Youth 7) Trip to Berkeley. Work in Emeryville.

My Model A and I headed for Berkeley (400 miles north). I stayed with Aunt Margery and looked for a job. I went to the State of California Employment Office. They sent me to the Doughnut Corporation in Emeryville. I became a card carrying member of the Warehouseman's Union.

The plant where I worked made barrels and large sacks of bakery mixes, largely doughnut mix for the military and large doughnut shops.

I learned how to sew up gunny sacks and install wooden barrel lids into large wooden barrels. I helped to unload train cars of flour, sugar, dried eggs, and barrels. Every morning I filled bins that went from the mixing floor to the second story. A man on the mixing floor filled large mixing machines with material. One machine mixed pie crust mix. It was a job to clean. I had to climb inside the machine to clean it of shortening. Lucky no one started the machine while I was in it.

I took a trip to Portland, Oregon. I had heard of big wages in the shipyards. I tried for several days but could not get a job. I returned to the Bay Area and a job at the doughnut mix plant. I stayed for a while at a rooming house a half a bloc from Lake Merritt in Oakland. It was and is a beautiful little lake. There were large houses in the neighborhood. My rooming house was in one of them. I remember a bed in a large room full of beds. We ate meals at tables in a large room and were served our meals. It was a nice place. I remember a cowboy bar in downtown Oakland. I just had lunch, to young to buy beer.

When I returned to Pomona some months later I drove down old highway 99. I remember the highway lined with oleander bushes in the Modesto area. Years later my son lived in Modesto. The oleander bushes were still there sixty years later. I can remember stopping near Fresno and laying on the ground next to my car to sleep. That is a cheap motel! I do not think motels had been invented yet.

The timing gear failed in my Model A. I did not enough money to get it fixed so I sold it to a car shop in Fresno for $10. I had bought the car for $35 (paid cash, no payments) some time earlier. I used it a lot. I got $25 worth of use out of it. I hitch hiked to Pomona.