AR Life in Berkeley

Life in Berkeley

After being introduced to our Neufeld cousins and visiting the family home on Friesen Avenue, Evangeline, Frank and I were soon housed in a neighboring cottage, where we lived until we bought our new home.

Although Heinie and Bill Neufeld were attending school at the UUniversity of California in Berkeley, we did meet Herman, the eldest, Margaret, John, Izzy (really Elizabeth), Herbert and Eric. Herbert was just a little older than me and Eric was somewhat my junior. Sadly uncle Wilhelm Neufeld’s liver cancer advanced rapidly, confining him to the sick bed. He passed away later in the spring.

Cousin Herman had attended the Agricultural College of the University at Davis. He was now in full charge of the family farming operations, vineyards and fruit orchards in the main. Although some of the Neufeld’s farm land was very close, right at the edge of town, the large 60 acre ranch was located about eight miles to the north upon one of the channels of the Kings River, that here divided into several channels, making large islands of the intervening bottom lands.

The arid subtropical climate of the San Joaquin Valley is, of course, totally different from the climate of the Ukraine. Palm trees of various kinds, Eucalyptus and various Australian acacias, evergreen magnolias, and lemon and orange trees were totally new to me, always green and never dropping their leaves. Along the branches of the Kings River, there were huge valley oaks and towering sycamore trees. For me, the land was filled with new birds: mockingbirds, hummingbirds, beautiful plumed quails and many others. In some cases, I already knew from my studies in Russia. I still remember the excitement of flushing a covey of California quails, which up to that time I had only known from a picture in the encyclopedia of my uncle Heinrich Dirks.

I was enrolled in the old brick Washington elementary school, within easy walking distance of our home on Friesen Avenue. Tall for my age at 13, I was assigned to the second grade to learn phonics. And to accommodate my tall frame among these little seven-year-old children, a large school desk was brought into the classroom just for me.

Before coming to America, I had also done my school work first in German and then in Russian. These languages and especially Russian are almost entirely phonetic. The letters or letter combinations of the written word correspond uniformly to the individual sounds of the spoken word. Therefore minimal learning is required to spell a word correctly once it has been clearly heard and to correctly sound out a word that is seen in writing or in print. In Russia, our ability to write correctly was tested by taking dictation, and if we misspelled a word we were directed to review the rules.

Not so in English! In America, I was introduced to a subject of instruction called “spelling”, in which the sequence of letters used for every individual word had to be learned by rote. Various letter and letter combinations could be used to represent the same vowel or even consonant, and various other letters or letter sequences, sometimes even whole words, could be pronounced in different ways, depending on the context or word origin. In many cases, individual words included silent letters not to be pronounced at all! Even now, after 70 years with the English language, I still am plagued with its spelling inconsistencies and I am sure that there are few English-speaking natives who automatically get it right. What a burden this situation places on all English speakers, even though their language has many other laudable idiosyncrasies.

But I did learn enough of phonics and spelling to be advanced to the fourth grade, and passed on to the fifth. Again I was advanced to the General Grant middle school and then graduated, without actually attending the eighth grade, at the end of the 1924-1925 school year.

During the two and one-half years as a pupil in elementary and middle school, funny things happened. Not only did my cousins and new friends at school and church sometimes tease me about phonics and occasional misunderstandings. I also thought it was funny what developed when not understanding the precise spoken word. When I was still in the second grade the teacher, addressing a reciting pupil, would say “Be seated”. I heard “B C D” and wondered why it was not “A B C D”. Or, when she said, “That’ll do”, to me it really sounded like a turkey’s gobble, before I figured out what she was really saying. In Reedley, I learned the English name of muskmelons, and much later learned about a confection called marshmallows. In the interim, I really found it strange to be invited to a muskmelon roast! My friend's way of saying marshmallow, a treat then still not familiar to me, sounds for all the world like the way they spoke of muskmelons. And we all laughed!

My graduation from General Grant school in 1926 was followed by high school. There I was able to advance my progress toward graduation by earning credits for two “solids” of the 17 required for the diploma by successfully passing an extensive written examination in the German language. Then, by enrolling for five solids at a time during each year, I was able to complete all the graduation requirements in three years. The crowning glory of that graduation for me was my selection as valedictorian! I was asked to give a speech, my first in English, to an English-speaking American audience. What a scary, heart-throbbing experience that was! A wonderful history teacher at that high school, Kile A. Evans, came to be a caring friend to me, whose loving friendship continued after her retirement until her death in Minnesota many years later.

I understand that my personal journey from Gnadenfeld in the Ukraine to Reedley, California cost the Neufelds about $350 of additional expenses. I was given the opportunity to pay off this debt by working on the farm together with my cousins on weekends, during school vacations and summers. During the earlier years when cousins Herbert and Eric and I were still minors, pruning vines or fruit trees or whatever needed to be done until noon. Then we would have the afternoon off to plat. As was already stated, the sixty acre ranch with its vineyards and orchards was some eight miles up river, with a waterfront on one of the channels of the Kings River. So we could swim, fish or just roam the bottom lands across the stream, sometimes trapping, or just having a good time, looking for cottontail rabbits or roadrunners, climbing trees and searching for bird nests. At one time, I climbed a tall sycamore tree up to the nest of a red-tailed hawk and threw out the fledglings. So the three of us had a pet red-tailed hawk whose broken wing healed, though a bit crooked. This bird stayed with us in Reedley until one day it took off for a life of independence.

During the late summer, when the fruit and grape harvest was in full swing, we all worked long hours picking peaches to be dried or canned, or raisin grapes that we spread on drying trays, or table grapes for the city markets. For several summers, I also worked for the local fig cannery, picking kadota figs and developing a real relish for this wonderful fruit. This was especially so since the most delicious figs were too large for canning, but had to be picked off the tree anyway and then discarded. Many of them were discarded into my mouth.

White picking peaches, workers would frequently find bird nests, especially those of mourning doves. Thus I acquired several ready to fledge squabs that by feeding them by mouth I was able to raise to maturity. During my high school years, I was given two males and two sibling females. These I kept in a wire cage measuring twelve by eight by seven feet, which I built for them and fitted with tree limbs. There these mourning doves formed two breeding pairs, building their nests upon the tree limbs and eventually raising a considerable progeny. For this operation, I was even issued an official permit from the California Department of Fish and Game.

The Central Valley of California, consisting of the Sacramento Valley in the north and the San Joaquin Valley in the south, lies between the southern Cascades and the high Sierra Nevada Range on the east and the coast ranges in the west. Reedley is situated near the Sierra Nevada foothills, with the snow-capped high Sierra including 14,595 foot Mount Whitney dominating the eastern horizon. Within a few hours driving time, it was possible to reach Lake Sequoia, and just a little beyond that was General Grant National Park, with its gigantic big trees or Sierra redwoods, the most ponderous trees in the world.  Farther beyond lay the deep and spectacular Kings River Canyon. Descending this from an elevation of 7000 feet to a little over 2000 feet and climbing up again at the end of the day was an experience of a lifetime.

Church retreats and Y.M.C.A. camps at Sequoia Lake were available to the young people of Reedley and of the First Mennonite Church. One of the most influential members of this church was C.F. Mueller, Y.M.C.A. secretary, who was also the director of the male choir. C.F. was a wonderful, loving, understanding and sympathetic man who, with his wife, lacking children of their own, became a model father figure and deeply appreciated counselor and confidant for the young people of the Reedley area, and of course also for those of our church. Many joyful and impressive camping experiences on the shore of Sequoia Lake, with its many inspiring scenes, and near to the giant redwoods, guided the youth growing up in this part of the San Joaquin Valley, and bequeathed upon them never-to-be-forgotten and highly uplifting memories. One of my abiding memories goes back to that demanding hike into the Kings River Canyon where we not only saw the stony curtains, stalactites and stalagmites in a deep limestone cave, but where I also pulled the largest rainbow trout out of the churning white water of the Kings.

During my high school years in Reedley my cousins and I, together with other young people, including some very special friends, were active participants in the life of the First Mennonite Church, some of us singing in the male chorus, conducted by C.F. Mueller, and all of us taking an active part in the Christian Endeavor Society.

In the summer of 1927, a new girl joined this group. She was Lucille Commerfield who, after the death of her parents, had left Upland in southern California to live with her aunt Anna, Lucille’s father’s sister and uncle Herman Dalke. The Dalkes had two daughters, Elsie and Verna. Lucille was taken into their family. Although I had for some time had a crush on another girl, my attention was now drawn to this stunningly beautiful newcomer, with whom I fell deeply in love, despite her regarding me as a foreign-looking stranger, Needless to say, it was not easy to date her, but when the opportunity existed I could not get my eyes off her.

After two years in Reedley, Lucille returned to southern California, where she had accepted a part-time job with an Ontario family while completing her senior year attending Chaffey High School.

After graduating from high school in 1928, I planned to go to college and learn the poultry trade. But, by that time, the farm depression was in full sway in California and my resources were nil. So, I decided to continue to work for my cousin Herman Neufeld as a farm hand. But he had only a limited amount of work for me and that could only be done when he himself had to travel to the river ranch eight miles to the north. The running wage at that time was 35 cents per hour for pruning or sulfuring grape vines, irrigating, cultivating with mules or whatever needed to be done. And although I lived with my cousin and his wife Elfrieda, the earnings for that year were merely enough to meet my living expenses, and when the year came to an end no reserve for college had been built up.

During the years I attended high school, a new junior college, presently known as Kings River Community College, was begun in facilities borrowed from Reedley High School. So, in the fall of 1929, I enrolled to take advantage of this new educational opportunity. Although without funds, I was able to continue to live inexpensively with the herman Neufelds and to support myself by weekend work with Herman, as well as with a janitorial job with the local telephone office where I cleaned up early in the morning before the telephone operators arrived and before I had to make my way to my college classes. During the first term of my college career, I played a major part in the selection of the school mascot by suggesting the tiger as appropriate, since earlier the student body had already chosen orange and black as the new school colors. This semester was also the time when on October 29th, the catastrophic economic crash plunged the world into the great depression of the thirties.

Since our arrival to America in 1923, my sister Evangeline, as well as my brother had left Reedley to continue their education elsewhere. Evangeline had moved to Oakland to take nurse’s training at the Fabiola Hospital and had earned her R.N. degree by the summer of 1929. Among the welcomers at the Los Angeles railroad station on that 2nd day of February, 1923, was a tall man, Dietrick Dyck, whose bed-ridden wife had been ailing for years, and who in addition to attending to his motel business was also caring for his son Paul and for his diminished wife. Since that time, Mrs. Dyck had succumbed to her illness and passed away. And now Dietrich Dyck proposed marriage to my sister, to which she agreed. The wedding occurred in the fall of 1929 in Reedley under the auspices of aunt Margaret Neufeld.

After their marriage, Evangeline and Dietrich Dyck, together with Dietrich’s son Paul, made their home in Pasadena where Dietrich and his first wife had lived for years. But before leaving Reedley, my sister and my new brother-in-law invited me to come to live with them. At the cost of $25 per month for room and board, which they would let me pay them later, I was to join their family of three, and also attend Pasadena Junior College. That college had made a very good name for itself in Pasadena’s pioneering six, four, four school plan: 6 years of elementary school, 4 years of junior high school, and 4 years of junior college. Thus I completed my first semester at Reedley Junior College at Christmas and then at the start of the new year of 1930, transferred to Pasadena Junior College for the second semester of my freshman year.