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Pop's Oral History, Tape 4
Tapes by Gus Pagels, circa 1980
Posted September 15, 2010
© 2010, Herbert E. Lindberg
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Tape 1a -- Leaves Berlin
at 14 Tape 1b -- Begins railroad hobo trip west across U.S. Tape 2a -- Gets to San Bernardino and Los Angeles Tape 2b -- First stay in Santa Barbara, working at Ott's hardware Tape 3a -- Back east in New York, Key West, then Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Flint Michigan Tape 3b -- Returns to Germany, Marries Mom, returns to U.S., builds house in Sacramento Tape 4 -- Gus, Otto and Harry born in Sacramento, buys first car: 1919 Buick 1. Tape 4 (9 minutes) [Right click to download the tape] a. Gus, Otto and Harry are born in Sacramento, where Mom and Pop live for six years in the house Pop built. Herb is born during a stay back East. Wally is born after return to Sacramento. Mary was the only one born in Santa Barbara. Vern had been born in Germany. At the then-outskirts of Sacramento, the house was in the country with unpaved roads and no sidewalks. They had a cow and a neighbor had a goat, whose milk they shared with the Pagels. b. Pop buys his first car, a 1919 Buick, for $50 in 1924. c. Pop quits his job at the railroad in Sacramento in 1929, just before the great depression – ouch, what a bad move. d.
Mom injures her finger by getting it squeezed by a bedspring
as they were assembling the bed. It
was bone damage and didn’t hurt at first, but became much worse later
with gangrene setting in. Mom went to the hospital while Pop stayed home
with the boys. Pop took one
look at what the hospital had done and took Mom home.
An old sheep herder neighbor wrapped the finger with “loco
weed” (marijuana?) and in three days the finger was clean.
But internal rotting had eaten much of the bone, so the finger was
never fully usable. |
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