Chapter Four

Idaho to Alabama



Walter and Rose Foukal on their wedding day

Rose was driving the first evening on the road after leaving Buhl, Idaho for Alabama. It was dark and they were searching for some tourist cabins in which to stay for the night when the lights went out on the car. It must have been a full moon because she was able to drive in the moonlight until they came to a service station. Walter and Rose Foukal stayed at a hotel after finding the tourist cabins not to their liking. Rose described the registering at the hotel in her diary, we had to sign the register and Walter forgot and wrote just "Walter Foukal". The man looked at me funny and asked if I was his wife. Walter stammered and wrote Mr & Mrs before his name and we had to explain that we were newlyweds. As a wedding present, the Manager gave us a $2.00 room for $1.50. It was swelligent with private bath, spring mattress and everything.

Rose had not traveled very far from home during her life up until her marriage. It must have been a very exciting time for both of them. Saying goodbye to your home and family at such a young age and going off to a new life in a new location would be quite an adventure. Walter had to be very excited about bringing his new bride home.

Rose wrote post cards to her folks along the way. Their route took them through Utah and Colorado which Rose found very scenic. They passed through Dallas, Texas and saw the Texas State Fair in progress. When they passed through Louisiana, they noted all the bridges that had been built under the administration of Huey Long who had been assassinated not too long before that time. There was no bridge at Baton Rouge, the capital, so they had to cross the Mississippi River by ferry.

They arrived in Silverhill on Tuesday, November 3rd and it was just as cold in Alabama as it was in Idaho when they left one day short of a week before. One of the first things Rose noticed about Walter's home was that there was no bed. The lack of a bed was made up for by an abundance of weeds everywhere outside the place. They slept in the bedroll they had brought with them and the next morning they went over to see Walter's mother, Tiny Mayer. That day was the last day in 1936 that Rose made any entry into her diary.

Rose's first impressions of Walter's mother were good. There were letters from her parents and sister Lydia awaiting her arrival. Her mother wrote, we all wondered what wonderful magnetism Walter must have for you to leave us all like this. In a letter her mom wrote November 1st, she asked Rose how she was going to get along until her 4-H cookbook comes. Her mom was shipping a lot of her things that they had no room for in the car they drove.

Rose wrote her folks November 7th reporting that everything they had shipped to her had arrived in good shape. She said she liked it quite well in Silverhill. Walter's place was described as "shacky" from the outside but quite nice on the inside. It had a nice barn, garage, tool shed, and had a painted chicken house. She described the pecans as so nice and soft you don't need a nutcracker to break them. There were some plum trees, rose bushes, and an orange tree that actually had about three dozen oranges on it. The only bad thing she had to report was that neither Walter nor his mother got along with his stepfather. This was Joseph Mayer whom we discussed at the end of Chapter Two. In a letter written in late November Rose talks about how nice everyone has been to her. It is making her feel more at home being so well liked.

They did not have electricity or running water on their property. The iron they used to iron their clothes was heated by gasoline. They went to bed between 7:00 and 8:00PM every evening. Rose said she was able to bake bread very well in their kitchen stove. She reported a weight gain of eight pounds since coming to Alabama and figured it must have been the sweet potatoes because she was eating as many as four or five at one meal.

Walter's mom gave them twenty chickens and two roosters and they already had twenty-four that they had bought at a sale. That gave them a good supply of eggs. Rose did a headcount of the farm animals and came up with; two mules, two cows, a calf, two heifers, and forty-six chickens, including three roosters. The place was starting to sound like a real farm. Just for the record, with those two mules and a hand plow, the most that could be plowed in one day was one acre of land. Is it any wonder that most farmers today prefer tractors.

Walter made $3.00 every Saturday night playing at the hall. A new place called the Riverside Nite Club opened on the Silverhill-Fairhope Road the middle of December. It was described as really nice and Walter made $5.00 a night playing in the band there. They charged $1.00 a couple or $.75 for a single gentleman's admission. Rose was very excited when she got a job waiting on the tables around the dance floor there. Her first Saturday evening she worked there she made $1.50. You would have to read the account of this happening first hand from her letter to her family back in Idaho to feel her excitement over making that $1.50. Reading from this page cannot quite give you the same experience. That was the first Christmas away from home for Rose and everyone must deal with that at some point in their life. It was different without the snow, the sleigh bells, mom and dad, grandparents, aunts and uncles, sister, cousins, and all those that had been family from day one of her life. Rose sent out 58 Christmas cards. She had a new life now and enjoyed her first Christmas with her new family.

It was a new year (1937) and a new life. In a January letter to the her folks, Rose talks about the difference in raking up straw for use on the farm. Back in Idaho it was straw left from the wheat after the harvest. Now in Alabama the straw on the ground comes from the pine trees. She referred to it as "the fallen off needles" and said they were quite soft.

The store in Silverhill where Walter traded invited them to come in and pick out anything they wanted as a wedding gift. Rose picked out a tub so she would have two for washing. Obviously there was nothing close to a washing machine or a dishwasher, as we know it, in their home. Their clothes dryer only worked when the sun was shining.

A typical letter between the families would usually talk about the crops, weather, that day's health situation and social goings on. Now and then something very unusual or comical would find its way in such as one where Rose was telling about the cow that somehow got into the yard and ate all the leaves off the orange tree. No leaves, no oranges that season. Rose did all of the letter writing because Walter did not like to write. Her family pleaded with him to write but he always refused. It is always good to get to read something about someone that they actually wrote themselves. Sometimes we call that "getting the facts straight from the horse's mouth".

January 29, 1937 Rose writes telling her folks about her trip to Mobile. She says, Mobile is a city of 68,000 people and is about 30 miles away. We went there Thursday because on that day the toll bridge is only $1.00 both ways instead of $1.00 each way. The toll bridge isn't just one bridge but a series of 3 or 4 big bridges and several small ones. It crosses Mobile Bay. The road crosses three rivers that run into the bay, and the bay itself in some places. The road is built up in places. It covers 14 miles. The middle of the town is a sort of park and is just full of squirrels and pigeons. The squirrels are real tame. We fed them nuts and they ate right out of our hands. Walter took me down to the waterfront which is a solid dock with ships of all kinds along the edge. I saw a great big ship about 300 feet long and it was right next to the dock. I surely saw plenty of Negroes. They just swarmed the docks. I saw lots of factories and refineries. Mother, it's a shopper's paradise. One department store is 3 stories above the ground and 1 below with everything imaginable in it.

The government was trying to make electricity available if enough farmers signed up saying they wanted it. Walter said he did not want to sign up because he wanted to wait till they got a new house before getting electric power. Rose felt like that would be fifty years.

The middle of February the band Walter played in quit playing at the new club due to a falling out between the band leader and the club manager. Rose continued working her job and was getting $1.50 in wages and averaging $.50 a night in tips. She had received $10.00 in the mail from her folks and was elated. Sometimes parents are still good for something after we grow up, get married, and move away.

The weather was not very helpful from a farming standpoint during the early months of 1937. An April 14th entry in Rose's diary said they were planning a trip to Idaho for the summer. Walter did not want to go very bad but it would be understandable how much the trip would mean to Rose. Her folks were going to give them $300.00 and pay for their trip so that made it possible for them to hire someone to do the work to take care of the farm till they returned. April 24th 10 inches of rain fell between 10:00 AM and 2:00PM. That much rain washed out the bridges connecting Silverhill with Robertsdale and Fairhope. You can just imagine what effect it had on the crops that they were already struggling with but they kept on doing what they had to, to try and make something from all their hard work. The first of May it was time for potatoes to be dug up and sold, but it was just too wet to dig them. By the end of May they were making preparations for starting the trip to Idaho because there wasn't much they could do in Alabama to save their crops that they had worked so hard on, only to see the weather ruin the prospects of making some money on them.

They made the trip to Idaho for the summer and got to visit with Rose's relatives up there for a time. They stayed until the first of September before starting for home. On their way back they stopped in Roach, Colorado, not far from Laramie, Wyoming, to see a friend. While there, Walter took a job cutting down trees and cutting them into railroad ties. He was making between $3.00 and $4.00 a day and that was a lot more than he could make back home. They planned to stay at least a month so they could clear about $100 before heading on home to the farm. It was a good plan perhaps but it all came to an end when they received a letter from home saying that Walter's mother was sick and rain was rotting their corn. On September 17th they left for Alabama leaving the good paying job behind.

Apparently Walter's mother recovered because in a letter written after Christmas Rose said that they spent Christmas Eve at Walter's mothers celebrating his birthday. Her words to describe their Christmas were, We had a nice Christmas which consisted mostly of eating. Electricity was said to be just a few months away and Rose's folks sent them the money for the hookup fee and the required meter. The price of the electricity was to be $2.00 a month for whatever amount you used. The line to their house was not in place as yet but Walter's mother had the line installed on her property. The letters exchanged during 1938 were pretty much the same with one exception. By the month of March Rose was starting to notice some changes in her body and it didn't take long to figure out exactly what it was. She was going to have a baby. She told her mother in a letter dated March 31st. All during the term of her pregnancy she received bits of advice in letters from her mother on what to do and what not to do in order to have a healthy baby. No letters asking for such advice were ever found.

Back in Europe, at this particular point in time, Adolf Hitler's plans for expanding Germany's borders were now including Austria. On March 12, 1938 German troops entered Austria. With Austria now annexed Hitler turned his attention to Czechoslovakia. This country contained more than three million German-speaking people living in the Sudetenland region and many of them strongly supported the idea of union with Germany. In April 1938 their leader Konrad Henlein demanded full self-government for the Sudetenland. This brought about a threat of war between Germany and Czechoslovakia, which might involve other countries as well. Back in Baldwin County, Alabama, the Foukals had a pretty good season with their crops. They made enough to pay all their taxes, interest, grocery bill, and farming expenses and still had enough money left to buy a team of mules which were badly needed. No, I did not misspell "tractor". In June a letter mentioned that Bubie now had electricity. She had a electric iron and Lillie had a washing machine so Rose was hoping to be able to wash clothes at Lillie's and iron them at Bubie's.

The British Prime Minister at that time, Neville Chamberlain, was anxious to preserve peace at all costs. He flew to Munich, Germany in September 1938 to attend a conference with the French Prime Minster, Hitler and Mussolini. A settlement of the crisis was reached and the Sudetenland region and its population were transferred to Germany. On his return to England, Chamberlain said to cheering crowds, "I believe it is peace in our time". Walter Foukal's 80 year old grandfather, Joseph Foukal, died back in Rakvice, Moravia, Czechoslovakia September 28, 1938. His grandmother had died at the age of 71 there in 1929. Maybe it was a blessing that neither of them was still there when in March 1939 Germany marched in and annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia. If the families that you have been reading about since the last page of chapter one had not left Czechoslovakia when they did, the baby that Rose Foukal was about to give birth to would not have had a place in this story. All that read this book should be thankful that something led these people to give up their lives in their beloved homeland to come to America. Czechoslovakia would be under a dictatorship from March 1939 until the Iron Curtain fell in December 1989. Fifty years with no freedom.

In August they bought a 1935 model pickup truck to replace their car that was on its last legs. Walter needed this for the egg business and it was pretty useful in many other ways on the farm. The due date for the baby was November 19th according to the doctor. Rose wrote to Idaho September 20th telling about a baby shower that one of her girl friends had given for her. One of the gifts she received was a baby book from her sister-in-law, Lillie Foukal Krenek. That book was used by Rose to record facts about the baby and is still with us today. There was a baby shower held for Rose up in Buhl but Rose was not able to attend. She received a lot of gifts at that shower and they were shipped down to her.

In the same letter Rose mentioned that they had gotten 200 Rhode Island Red baby chickens that day. Now that would certainly give you something to do in your spare time. In a later letter, she reports that she knows the baby is alive because she can feel it move. The baby was going to be born right there in their house and she said that the doctor said he would be bringing his wife who was a nurse to assist him. All that would be needed was just a woman to take care of the mother and baby after the birth. She planed to use Walter's mother who had done this for several ladies in the past. Walter had worked out a way where he could get in touch with the doctor when the time came.

The presents from the baby shower held in Idaho arrived October 9th. Rose was surprised at receiving so many nice things for the baby. One of Walter's aunts had offered to give them a bed for the baby when the time came. In a letter written November 4th Rose told about her trip to the doctor. He said that all was well and changed his predicted due date for the baby to Thanksgiving. Well he was wrong on that call, because at 4:15PM on November 14, 1938, Doctor Holmes and his wife delivered a 7½ pound, 19½ inch, black-haired baby girl with almost black eyes. The girl was given the name Bernice Laverne. The name was Walter's suggestion and mother went along with it. He obviously was hoping for a boy but he was ever so proud of his healthy baby girl. Walter got an air mail letter off to the grandparents in Idaho the very next day. His mother and sister took care of the baby the first three days and then Walter's mom, Tiny, took over the task until she was ten days old. Rose was able to get back on her feet after ten days and was assisted by her sister-in-law, Yarmilla, until the baby was two weeks old. Baby Bernice had her picture made December 11th and it was sent to the grandparents in Idaho in a Christmas card. The family sent a letter dated December 26, 1938 acknowledging receiving the card and photo. Concerning the photo Grandmother wrote, "she looks very cute on that picture, but her eyes look like she was scared to death, or was she just posing?" Rose's sister Lydia must have traveled down to Silverhill to help out during Christmas because Mary asked, "was Lydia very tired?" in that letter. Bernice's first Christmas came when she was just a little over a month old. She enjoyed staring at the lights.

January 6th of the new year Bernice's grandparents wrote a letter to the Foukal family and in it said "everybody seems to like the picture of Bernice". They were writing also to daughter Lydia because she was still down in Alabama. Another letter on January 11th said they had taken her picture to the hall and all the women crowded around to see it. They had quite a discussion going concerning who she looked the most like in the family. Bernice's grandfather sent her a dictionary and would always ask if she was improving any on her language.

By February 1st, Bernice was smiling and at three months she laughed out loud. She refused to drink her orange juice out of a bottle so in her second month she was being fed from a spoon.

On January 14, 1939 Walter went to the Bank of Fairhope to borrow some money to buy supplies to get the crops underway for the year. He borrowed $175.00 and signed a note using the following as collateral:

One grey mare mule age about 12 and named Nellie
One brown mare mule age about 12 and named Jake
Two milk cows and all of their calves
All of my farming equipment

Isn't it nice that Bernice did not make that list?

Weekly letters went back and forth between Idaho and Alabama. Throughout the year, the grandparents in Idaho, mainly grandmother, were offering advice on how to raise a baby, and the mother of baby Bernice in Alabama giving a blow-by-blow account of everything that was going on in the daily life of this little darling that had captured the hearts of all of her kin. In one such letter, grandmother went to the trouble of listing in detail exactly what should be planted in the garden to provide the vegetables that would be needed for the baby that summer. March ended with a letter containing some information that probably no mother of a four month old today should be without. Grandmother Kucera writes, We are sending Bernice a baby jumper but don't let her go in it only a minute or so a day while she is so young. It may cause her to be bowlegged and have a crooked spine.

Before the end of April Lydia had finally gone back to Idaho.

Bernice loved the chickens and other live things. When Rose was working outside, she would sit Bernice in her baby basket in the chicken yard while she was feeding and watering the chickens. Bernice would feed her crackers to the chickens. That was a sacrifice because she loved most all of her food and especially mustard greens. A late May letter described how she was doing the hula in her bed. She would work her legs something like when you ride a bicycle only she laid her legs out flat and worked her bottom. When she would hear someone, she would lift up her head and try to sit up and see who it was. She really enjoyed the toys she had, especially the rattle. She even enjoyed the Cod Liver Oil she was given each day. When she would see her mom pouring it into the spoon, her hands and feet would fly to where it was hard to give it to her. She was healthy from all the fresh food she ate but for some reason just did not have much hair.

The middle of June in 1939 something came to the farm that gave Bernice a little competition for attention. No, it was not a brother or sister. It was a tractor and plow. That was something that had been needed for quite some time. In the same letter that announced the new tractor Rose was telling her folks that the house had been wired for electricity. The wires were in but no electricity as yet.

Before the tractor was a month old, Walter had a blowout on one of the tires. That day he said he wished he still had the mules. A lot of clothes for Bernice came by way of packages from Idaho. The letters back and forth continued weekly. The Kucera home in Idaho had a telephone when Rose was a youngster but there was no such thing as a telephone in the Foukal household. There was no radio either but a neighbor had one.

Bernice did not sleep so well at the dances she was taken to at the hall. She had her grandmother Tiny Mayer, her aunt Lillie, and the four Mayer girls there to entertain her, so her mom and dad had plenty of time for dancing.

Bernice was weaned from nursing when she was ten months old. It was not because of teeth because she did not get her first one until after her first birthday. She was drinking close to a quart of milk a day plus what was in her food. She does not particularly like milk nowadays but that is another story. On Walter and Rose's third wedding anniversary they all, Bernice included, went to Mobile to sell 60 of their fryers. On Bernice's first birthday Rose writes to her folks and said that their package for Bernice had arrived. Bernice wore the white dress with pink ribbons to a dance and it fit her perfectly. Rose drew a footprint of Bernice's foot and sent it with the letter so they could make her some house shoes. Rose said to make them large because her foot grows so fast. She weighed 20 pounds and was 29 inches tall. They bought Bernice a high chair at a sale. It needed a little fixing and painting but looked nice afterwards.

Rose said it was next to impossible to sweep the floor with Bernice around. She would crawl after the broom and spread the dirt. Bernice must have gotten a dog named Rex for her birthday because a letter from the folks dated December 11, 1939 is addressed to Walter, Rose, Bernice and Rex. Bernice got a red and white teddy bear from her grandparents for Christmas that she loved..

1940 was underway and Bernice was in to "bye bye". When her mother would be putting on her coat and gloves to go outside she would say "bye bye". She would go to the window and watch the road and every car that went by got a "bye bye". Would you believe that this sweet little gal did not get a rocking chair for Christmas because the cheapest one they could find was $1.50. She just had to continue taking her turn in the big rocker. Bernice was a walker in February.

Easter of 1940 Bernice received a new peach colored dress from her grandmother in Idaho. She wore it and it was said to have fit perfectly. She was sent a harness of some sort as well. Her dad hitched her up and pulled her all over the house like a dog by the collar and she just laughed and giggled. Her mom wrote, It will be handy when she is a little older and wants to run away. Rose was hoping to be able to go to Idaho in the summer so her folks would get to see Bernice for the first time. Walter said that they should be able to afford it if they could get at least $2.00 a bushel for their potatoes. Another way of looking at it would be to realize that whether or not you got to go home and show your baby girl to your family and friends was dependent on the weather.

Bernice was not the fastest kid in Silverhill at learning to crawl efficiently but once she learned that it was fair to use your knees and feet she was off and running. She made up for her slowness in learning to crawl by mastering walking almost overnight. Once she was up and going she was running all over the place. One day she went with her mother to the garden where corn was just starting to come up. She quickly pitched in to help and while her mom was pulling weeds she was pulling up the new corn. When she had a fist full, she came and showed her mom. On another occasion, she brought a fist full of yellow lilies from the flower bed in the front yard.

Grandmother Kucera, back in Idaho, was always concerned about her granddaughter getting enough of the proper foods. Rose wrote, The fruit man goes by and I always trade him eggs for oranges, apples and bananas so Bernice gets an orange and a banana a day. Makes you wonder who ate the apples.

April 1940 Rose was telling her folks what a good little girl Bernice was. "She can go outside and she finds some sticks and China berries and entertains herself by the hour". Imagine what she could entertain herself with if only they had electricity. Mom would have probably had an easier task keeping her clothes clean as well. An electric vacuum cleaner would have surely come in handy. She slept about 12 hours at night and then from 2 to 3 hours in the afternoon. She really loved her bed. In the evening when she would get sleepy they would sometimes try to put her in their bed and play with her. She would get angry, but the minute they put her in her bed she was fine. She would even sit up and pull a cover over herself, usually covering her head and leaving her feet out.

Bernice tried to act like a grown-up every chance she got. She would follow her mom wherever when she was doing her chores. One day she followed her to shell some corn in the sheller. Rose gave her an ear of corn and after she was finished Bernice put her ear in the sheller and tried to turn the handle. By now she had become a "do it yourself" baby. She would not eat unless she could hold on to the spoon herself.

1940's weather was not exactly what they were hoping for to have a profitable crop. In spite of all the bad weather - freeze, then drought, then floods, and then heat, they managed to pay their bills and if they did well with the sweet corn crop they had hopes of paying off their tractor. They didn't expect to have much left after paying off their bills but that's what farming was all about. If you paid off your bills and got just a little ahead each year you were doing good. You had to save when you came out a little ahead because there was no guarantee that it would be that way every year.

In June hopes for electricity must have been running high because Walter bought a second hand radio. July's letter to the folks gave a disappointing report on the corn crop and thus the trip to Idaho was off. Things were not all bad for Bernice though. Her Aunt Micker had carried some nice clean sand and put it by the porch. Bernice would sit in it by the hour and play.

Something new had found it's way into the Foukal household. They purchased an ice box in Mobile that held 15 cents worth of ice for three days. The ice man would bring the ice on Friday and it would keep things in the ice box cool until Monday. The ice man would come again on Tuesday. Have you thought to ask yourself - how did they keep things cool before this ice box entered the house?

Bernice had by now advanced to going to the door and saying bye-bye before going out the door and shutting it. When she was given something to eat she would go out on the porch, call the kitty, and start to divide it up. In August her grandparents sent her a bucket. She immediately took the bucket and left. After a few minutes Rose went to check on her. She had water in it and was adding some sand. Obviously she knew already what the bucket was for, she just needed one to practice with.

One day Rose started to burn some papers. Bernice saw her and came running and got her mother by the hand and pulled her away from the fire. Rose thought she was scared so she put her under a tree and resumed burning the papers. She jumped up and pulled her away a second time. This time she didn't want momma to go back towards the fire.

One evening they went to Mobile and Bernice sat in the car looking out at the colored lights as they went along. When they got out of the car there was a little dog and she started screaming and laughing with delight. Her mom wrote she wouldn't trade her dogs and cats and chickens for all the excitement of the city.

Bernice really liked to do chores like her mom. She helped her mom carry slop buckets for the hogs and milk pails to get the milk from the cows. When her mom was finished milking the cows she would run and open the gate for her and then shut the gate after she went through with the full pails. Then she would go find her dog Rex's dish and bring it for milk.

In September Walter took a job in Pensacola. There was a great need for carpenters there with all the building that was going on at the Naval facilities. He was making $1.00 an hour and working forty hours a week. By the end of October the project he was working on was completed so he was out of work. He needed some time off at the time so he could get the fryers to Mobile to sell. Right after Bernice's second birthday he was off on a job in Alexandria, Louisiana. He was working as a carpenter again, building barracks for the Army. This work that Walter was getting due to the world being drawn closer to war was renewing hope for Rose that she might get to go home to Idaho the next summer with the little girl that everyone up there was anxious to see.

Bernice received a birthday package from her grandma and grandpa in Idaho the day before her birthday. She had a new pair of house shoes and wore them everywhere, even to town. She also got a doll and went to sleep with it every day and night.

Rose and some of the other wives, of men from Silverhill that were working in Louisiana, went together to spend Christmas with their husbands. The men needed a car so the ladies took them one. The car belonged to Lillie, Walter's sister. Bernice was left behind with her cousins that were out of school for Christmas. Walter's mother was overseeing things back home. In the Czech language a grandmother was known as "babicka". Bernice had a little trouble with that word so she called her dad's mom "Bubie". One could almost hear the sound "Be Be" there that would someday be heard. Bubie's son Joe came down with smallpox so all the other kids, including Bernice, had to be moved over to the Foukals to keep them away. Rose returned to Silverhill after Christmas on the 28th. She immediately got Bernice vaccinated since she had been exposed and she never had any bad reaction to it. Christmas came a little late for Bernice because the package from her grandparents in Idaho did not arrive in Silverhill before Rose left for Louisiana. She got some books, a toy tractor, and Rose brought her a red car from Louisiana. She also got a tricycle that had been given to her by her Aunt Lillie. It had belonged to her cousin Elsie who was five years older than Bernice. Bernice loved her car and tractor and would take them to bed if her mom let her.

January 10, 1941 Rose wrote a letter to Walter back in Louisiana. She was explaining her financial situation back home which was quite critical. She went several days before she could even mail the letter to him because a stamp was 3 cents and she only had 2 cents. Can you imagine what that would be like to be there without your husband with a two year old daughter and on top of that she was keeping their niece, Elsie, while her folks were in Louisiana with Walter.

One thing she told Walter in this letter was that she took their wedding picture out of wherever it was being kept and Bernice would kiss mama and daddy every night before going to bed. She was hoping that by seeing his picture every night she would remember him when he came home. Walter caught the flu and ended up coming back to Silverhill sometime before the end of January. He had managed to save a good bit of his wages while he had the job and used it to pay off some of the bills when he got back. They were able to plant 30 acres of potatoes where they only had 19 the year before.

Bernice just continued to advance towards being a lady instead of a baby. In what should have been her terrible two's she is starting to have grownup ideas. She gets her own pencil and paper when mommy sits down to write a letter and does her own writing and chattering. When her dog goes away from her even a little way she either follows him or calls him and frets till he comes back to her. She imitates anything her mom does, sometimes to the extreme. She would sit in front of the mirror primping for half an hour. When Easter time rolled around colored eggs were nothing new to her because she gathered the eggs from the chicken house all the time. In a May 1941 letter, Micker tells of a time she was staying with Walter and Rose. When they would go out in the field to work she went also and took care of Bernice. She said, "she isn't a baby anymore". She said that they had fun playing and arguing. If she ask Bernice her name, Bernice would say, "my Foukal".

The trip to Idaho for the summer was again contingent on how well they did with the crops. As of the middle of June everything looked pretty good and as always, the sweet corn was the key. Potatoes had done well and most of the debts owed had been paid from that crop. They needed a new car and gave buying one some consideration but decided instead to make a payment on the mortgage against the property.

A lot of things can happen in a month's time on a farm. Rose writes to her folks July 16th saying that she will not be able to get up their way after all. This time it is not the money holding them back but the time element. Walter had taken a job in Mobile which paid $1.12 an hour and he was bringing home about $45.00 a week and still had Saturdays off to do farm chores. A new batch of baby chicks was just a week away. Rose had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to make breakfast and a lunch for Walter because he had to be out on the highway by 5:30AM to catch his ride to Mobile. The chickens demanded a lot of time because raising 500 fryers each year brought in a nice profit. They bought a 1939 Chevy pickup, a potato planter and digger, and half interest in a corn planter so they had gotten ahead quite a bit from all their hard work. The $800.00 mortgage on their property was now paid down to $500.00. They were keeping the possibility of still making it up to Idaho open but it would be more like in October if Walter worked his new job till then and the new chickens were all sold..

Bernice had taken a liking to a rubber doll her grandparents had sent her some time ago. Rose said she was in love with it now, but had never paid any attention to it in the past. She talks to it, sings to it, bathes with it, and sleeps with it. She left it at a neighbor's house one day. When she got home and remembered it, she wanted to go back right then and get it. Rose kept giving her reasons why they could not go get it right then but when evening came she just cried and wouldn't go to bed unless she had it. Rose had to go for it.

Rose wrote to her family about how much she wished she had spent more time when she was in school learning about chickens, calves, cows and crops. She felt it had been foolish to have run herself to death on so many things back then. She wished she had taken Business and Bookkeeping instead of Latin. To end that paragraph she wrote, Oh well one never knows, Lydia will probably marry a professor who doesn't know what end a cow is milked on but knows all the languages.

More information on Bernice in this July letter says, Bernice sure likes to dance. We go to one night club quite a bit and she feels at home there. She asks daddy for a nickel and takes me by the hand so I hold her up to reach the Nickelodeon. She puts in the nickel, then dances. She keeps step and tries to do any step she sees. Bernice was 2 years and 8 months old then. One day Rose said to Bernice jokingly, "You got funny face". Usually she would repeat right back the same thing. This time she said back to her mom, "No, me got pretty face, Mama funny face".

Bernice received some mail from her grandmother in Idaho in September of 1941 and it contained a dollar bill and a stick of chewing gum. She took to the gum and began watching for the mailman so she could go out to meet him and see if she had some mail from her grandmother. She could smell the envelope and tell if there was gum in it. In late October arrangements were being made that would allow her to take the gum directly from her grandmother's hand. Plans were in progress for Bernice and her mom to take the bus to Idaho. They went shopping and Walter bought Bernice a cherry red coat to wear.

Their bus trip took them through Houston where Rose mailed a post card November 11th to Walter. She said that Bernice had slept from 6:00PM till 6:00AM and really was having fun on the bus. While in the bus station in Houston she heard a bus leaving and was afraid it was theirs. They must have stayed up in Idaho for several weeks. Just imagine the excitement for grandparents seeing their first grandchild for the first time on her third birthday. Try to imagine the excitement in the heart of a three-year-old going off by bus and seeing so many new things. One has to be a grandparent with a granddaughter that lives far away to perhaps understand that.

While Rose and Bernice were away in Idaho, something very significant happened that would affect every family in the United States for the next four years. Early on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese conducted a surprise attack on the Naval Shipyard located at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. That attack put America at war with the Japanese Empire and since Japan was allied with Germany and Italy, it also put the country in the war that had been underway in Europe for some time. The United States had been preparing for war due to the situation in Europe and that is why Walter had obtained so much work as a carpenter around military installations in Pensacola, Alexandria, Louisiana, and Mobile.

Mother and daughter were back home in Alabama in time to pick up Christmas packages from Idaho at the post office on Christmas Eve. They went to Walter's mom's for Christmas Eve and Bernice ended up staying there a couple of days. She was so excited when she saw Micker there. For Christmas Bernice got a medium sized express wagon from Santa Claus. Her grandparents back in Idaho had sent her a painting and coloring book set and she was crazy about it according to the post Christmas letter written to Rose's folks December 30th. The PS at the end of the letter read, Bernice is sending you a kiss in exchange for some gum.

Bernice would receive many letters from Idaho from her proud grandparents over the years to come. Some would contain a stick of gum, some money, some both, but all contained words expressing their love for this little girl that they had finally gotten to hold in their arms.