February, 1983

Our son, Grant, and our granddaughter Karen's husband, Lynn Wilkey, have been asking me for several years now to record some history of my life.

I was born December 27, 1899, on a farm in Carlisle twp., near Fergus Falls, Minn. My parents, Edwin Danielson and Lydia (Quindlog) Danielson, christened me Julius Chester and they chose to call me Chester. So in later years when half of my mail came addressed J. C. Danielson and the other half came addressed C. J. Danielson, I dropped the name Julius and have been known as Chester Danielson most of my life.

It must have been about 1903 when my folks moved into town, Fergus Falls, where my father worked on the State Hospital being built there. He was employed as a stone mason. My earliest recollections are about Christmas time in 1905, when I received a pop-gun for a present. On account of my birthday being in December, I was allowed to start school in the fall of 1905. I still remember my first grade teacher, Josephine Stringham.

Fergus Falls in that day was a town with wooden sidewalks and dirt streets. The main street intersections were lighted by arc-lights. Illumination was caused by a constant stream of sparks jumping from one electrode to the other. They made sizzling sounds when one stood near them. One electrode was a carbon stick that would erode away and would need to be adjusted or replaced every now and then. Every house in town had a hitching post so visitors could tie up their horse.

In 1907 my folks decided to take up a homestead in Western No. Dakota where my mother's brother, John Quindlog, had gone some time before. My father loaded a immigrant car on the railroad with two horses, two cows, some farm machinery, our household goods and started out. He rode in the immigrant car to take care of the livestock with water, etc. This car was attached to a freight train and I think it took about two weeks to make the trip. Mother, Margie, baby Morris & I followed about two weeks later. The train trip took about two days and a half, and my recollection is that baby Morris bawled all the way from Fergus Falls to Buford, N.D., our destination. While father was putting up buildings on the homestead we stayed at Uncle John's place; a one room tar paper shack about two miles from our place. Mother, Margie, Morris and I slept in the house. Father and Uncle John slept in the barn. It seems the only meat we were able to get was mutton and I got so sick of mutton I've disliked it ever since. I started school here while living at Uncle John's. The school house was a sod shack built partly into a hillside. The floor was dirt, but we had some boards laid on it to walk on.

As soon as Dad had four walls up and a roof on, we moved to our own place. He build a good house. It is still standing today and being lived in. Thinking back, we lived in that area before they had tumbleweeds. You need to cultivate the ground before tumbleweeds will grow. The piece of land my folks settled on did not have a tree or a bush on it. It did have plenty of stones. We were not far from the edge of the Bad Lands where scraggly cedar trees grew. Here we would find wood for the kitchen range and out croppings of lignite coal enabled us to dig lignite for the heater.

When I was eight years old, I was old enough to drive a horse hitched to a stone boat and was given the job of clearing stones off the land so the sod could be broken up by dad with a breaking plow and gotten ready to be planted. On a little knoll north of the barn there is a stone pile about 40 feet in diameter and about 5 feet high that was largely build by me. It is still there, of course. Everybody worked on the farm and I tell you, that after hauling stones, cleaning the barns, feeding and watering the horses, hoeing the garden, putting paris green on the potato plants to save them from the potato bugs, cutting-up wood for the kitchen, etc. We just did not feel much like getting into mischief at the end of the day.

The years we spent in N. D., it seems the western part of the state was going through a dry cycle. So after almost 10 years and getting three good crops of grain and seven poor ones, my folks were a little discouraged about farming there. So they sold the farm and moved back to Minnesota.

Thinking back about the years in N.D., we had no RFD. We had to drive to Buford, 6 miles to get our mail. Roads were just wagon trails across the prairie. Of course, no telephones. We had kerosene lamps and lanterns. There were no welfare programs of any kind. People had to manage for themselves one way or another. The winters were cold. I slept upstairs in a room unheated except for a stove pipe from the living room heater which ran through the room. But I did have a big tom cat names Tiger, that used to go to bed with me. He would crawl under the covers way down to the foot of the bed, (I don't know how he could breathe) and I could put my feet on him.

The automobile business was really beginning to boom now with over 200 auto factories in the U. S. at that time. I was really taken up with the automobile and told my folks I wanted to be an auto mechanic. My dad being somewhat disenchanted with farming was considering doing something else. So he thought he might find something to do in the auto business, too. So off we went to the Sweeney Auto School in Kansas City, Mo. We completed the course, and got our diplomas and went back to Fergus Falls.

I soon got a job as a helper at the Leines Motor Co., where they had the agency for Winston Davis and Dort Cars. My pay was 6 dollars a week. But my Dad, I guess, was a farmer at heart, so my folks bought a small farm 6 miles west of town and went back to farming. However, I was through with farming and decided I would stay in town and get along some way on 6 dollars a week, which I'm telling you, was not easy. The mechanics working at the shop got about 20 dollars a week and they could afford a mid morning snack each day at the Blue Bird Cafe; coffee and doughnuts 10 cents, but I had no ten cents.

Well, I struggled along. Then in May of 1917, James A Brown, a prominent attorney in Fergus Falls asked me if I would drive for him and his wife, (they were getting elderly), on a vacation trip they wished to make back to the east coast. They would pay me 25 dollars a month plus all expenses. Well, I was quick to jump at that. They had a 1916 Franklin car, air cooled engine, good car. So we started out in June, going through Mpls St. Paul, over to Chicago, on to Niagara Falls, New York City and through the New England states, as far as Arguta, Maine, stopping 2-3 days or 2 weeks here and there. We were gone 3 months, covering 8,000 miles. It was quite an experience for a 17 year old, just recently off a homestead in N.D.

After returning to Fergus, Mr. Brown asked me to stay on working for them and teach Mrs. Brown to drive. Mrs. Brown was about 60 years old, I think at the time, but after 2 months we had to give up. She just could not learn to manipulate the clutch pedal and the gear shift lever at the same time.

Well, here it is 1918, the war was going on. While working for the Brown's, I had taken them to the County Fair in Perham about 30 miles from Fergus where one of the attractions was an Airplane making exhibition flights. This got me fired up about airplanes. A local boy I knew was on recruiting duty in Fergus, Wesley Kaulum. He was recruiting for infantry only. I told him I wanted to get in the Air Service and get pilot training. Well he said you will have to go to St. Paul and see the recruiting people there about that. So I got on the train and went to St. Paul. Well, the recruiting office there turned me down flat. They said to be appointed a Flying Cadet you must show proof of 4 years high school and 2 years college. So that left me out. Returning to Fergus I told Mr. Brown about this. "Oh", he said, "I know Col. Green over in St. Paul. I'll write him a letter. You take it down to him. He will get you in some way". So off I went again to St. Paul. I hunted up Col. Green, but it was the same story. He knew of no way to help me.

Well, back to work at the Leines Motor Co. where now I was getting $15.00 a week and could afford to go with the boys for 2 mid morning snacks at the Blue Bird Cafe.

In 1917, I had gotten acquainted with a fellow named Jim Dowell, who had a livery business in Fergus. Livery being different from Taxi in that they specialized in country trips. Well, Jim left Fergus and went to Oklahoma in the oil fields. In Feb. 1919, I got a letter from Jim saying he had opened an auto repair shop at Cleveland, Okla. and would I come and work for him. He would pay me $18.00 a week. Being restless I guess, and never having been to Okla, I quit my job in Fergus, got on the train and started for Okla. To get to Cleveland required changing trains at Coffeeville, Kansas, where I had my first experience of riding on a train that had a Jim Crow Car, a special car for black people only. The day I left Fergus, it was 18 degrees below zero and I was dressed according, long woolen underwear, overcoat, cap with ear laps, overshoes, mittens, etc. When I landed at Cleveland, it was about 50 degrees above. Quite a change in about one days travel. I was called on to do different things at the garage in Cleveland, including getting up in the middle of the night and hauling a casing crew out across the prairie. No roads to a gushing oil well. Many gas wells in the area were just left burning day & night. Oil wells all around and the constant chug, chug of the gas engines working the oil pumps made it much different from Minnesota. Many wells on Indian land were newly rich so one would see bright shiny Cadillacs, beside their make-shift houses.

In Fergus Falls I seemed to know most everybody, but in Cleveland I really didn't know anybody, and I found it hard to get acquainted. So I was not too happy there. Looking at the paper one day, I saw a notice that the Army Air Service would be putting on an Air Show at Tulsa the following Sunday to stimulate recruiting for the Air Service. Tulsa was forty miles from Cleveland, so I got on the train Sunday morning and went to Tulsa. They put on a marvelous show. So here I was again, all fired up about airplanes.

Well, thinking that if they won't teach me to fly, maybe I could work around them. So I went back to Cleveland and told Jim I was joining the Air Service. I enlisted at Tulsa and was sent to Post Field, Ft. Sill, Okla. Post Field at that time was a large training field; 16 big hangars on the flight line and much activity in the air every day. Well, after temporary jobs as orderly, at the Hdqts of 135^th squadron, clerk in the supply room and dispatch rider, using a Harley Davidson Motor Cycle between Post field & Ft. Sill, all the time pestering the officers in charge, saying that I wanted to get out on the flight line, I finally made it.

One morning I got orders to report to Sgt. White at hanger Six. Sgt. White, about 35 years old, and a career man in the Air Service, and I got along famous. He soon found out that because of my experience with automobiles I could do more than wipe down the aircraft and he made me a crew chief. Being a crew chief exempted me from K. P. and guard duty and entitled me to ride with the test pilot when he checked out the plane. I got in quite a bit of air time as a passenger at Post Field. I remember so well our test pilot at Post Field. His name was Pleasant Carrier, a really nice fellow. So here I was, 19 years old, farm boy from N.D. a crew chief in the U.S. Air Service, who would believe it.

Now October, 1919 comes along and I was surprised to see on the bulletin board, that I, and some others, were being transferred to Talifferro Field, Hicks, Texas. What we would do there, of course, was not stated. Well, when we arrived, we found out that the Army was abandoning that field and we would be assisting in transferring the equipment to Love Field at Dallas. I was given the job of Stock Record Clerk. As the items were shipped out, I would remove them from the inventory. A rather hum-drum job, but while there I was raised from private to corporal, which meant that instead of $30.00 a month, I got $36.00.

I think it was in April, the Chief of the Air Service, issued a memo stating that enlisted men would be accepted for training as Flying Cadets, if they could pass the qualifying tests. Well, I really grabbed at that, was given the examinations, passed O.K. and ordered to March Field, Calif. to join the Cadet Class of June 1st, 1920. Now things were really getting exciting at least for me. Having had some air time at Post Field as a passenger, I found learning to fly fairly easy. However, I had one mishap where me and the airplane landed upside down.

When it came time for practice in aerobatics the instructor would watch us from the ground with binoculars. The army did not throw money around in those days. When it came time to start cross country work, our instructor told us we would need maps and said Rand McNally Maps were the best and that we could buy them at the drug store in the Mission Inn, in Riverside. So we bought our own maps. No highways in 1920. We relied on the railroad tracks to lead us here and there. Instruments for flying had not been invented at that time. We were not given parachutes but members of the Balloon corp. did have them. Cadets were student officers, so we did have quite a little class room work. Not all of the cadets made it through the course, but in Oct, those of us who did, were ordered to Kelly Field at San Antonio, Tex, where we would be flying larger aircraft. At March Field, we had curtiss JN6H airplanes with 150 hp Hispano Souiza engines. Now at Kelly Field we would be using De-Havilland planes with 420 hp Liberty engines. A note here about the Liberty engines built by the different auto companies during W.W. 1. Engines built by Ford were the most reliable, those built by G.M. & Packard were good but the engines built by Marmon were the least reliable. Our flying at Kelly Field consisted of much formation flying, lots of bombing practice dropping smoke bombs on the target at Camp Stanley about 50 miles north of Kelly Field. Also flying over Texas cities and observing freight train activity. We also would go to Dallas, Love Field, on the train and pick up new planes and deliver them to border stations, Laredo, Del Rio, etc. for use by the border patrol. At March field there were no fatalities, but at Kelly Field we did lose a few cadets.

In May 1921, our training was completed and it seemed the Army had more pilots than they knew what to do with, so we were given a choice of reverting to our former rank and returning to our old outfit or being discharged and placed on the Reserve list for five years. I chose the latter. I got my wings and rating as Airplane Pilot and commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the reserve.

Now I returned to Fergus Falls and got a job driving bus. Our runs were Fergus to Alexandria, Wadena, Pelican Rapids and Wahpeton. In Dec. 1922, I had an accident involving a train. No one was hurt, but the bus and the train were both badly damaged. You folks listening to this may not know much about Minn. roads in 1922. In December thaws, they became a trail of mud and slush. Our buses had two wheel external brakes which when soaked with slush, seemed to make the bus go faster. When you applied them, this all contributed to the accident. The owners of the bus line told me I could continue driving if I would agree to contribute part of my pay each month to the repair bill on the bus. Well, I did not like that idea, so I left the driving job.

Fergus Falls in the winter time was no place to look for a job, so I got on the train and went to Minn. No jobs there either, but I found an employment agency offering jobs in Milwaukee at the Bueyrus company so off I went to Milwaukee where I worked about a month. The job given me needed a two hundred pound man. I think at that time I weighed about 135. So I left Bueyrus. The Newport Chemical plant nearby was hiring people for the night shift, so I went to work over there. While working in Milwaukee, I kept reading the Chicago Tribune everyday and it seemed to me that wages were better in Chicago. So I left Newport Chemical and went to Chicago. Here I got a job right away as shipping clerk for the Jewel Belting Company on South LaSalle St. Much leather belting was used in those days. Manufacturing plants, through a system of shafts and pulleys with belts, and one electric motor, would drive maybe half a dozen machines. I did have relatives in Chicago, a Aunt Andrea Larson. She was an older sister of my mother's and she had two boys, Joseph and Alfred. Joe worked down in the Loop at the Chicago Board of Trade. Alfred was a bookkeeper for the Cragin Products Company. I was getting $28.00 per week at the belting Co. One Sunday, while visiting at the Larsons, Alfred told me I could get $30.00 a week at the Cragin Products running a bottling machine. So I left the belting company and went to Cragin Products.

Well, I soon found out that this bottling machine was so old and worn out that I spent most of my time trying to repair it in order to keep it running. I think I stayed one month at Cragin.

The Yellow Cab and Coach out on Grand Avenue were hiring, so I went out there and got a job on the assembly line building yellow cabs. We build cabs for all over the world. Some of the orders would be for right hand drive, but most were for left hand. Well, when they had lots of orders, we made good money. But when orders fell off they would call us in for half days, and of course, half pay. Well, I couldn't stand this so I quit yellow cab. While looking for another job, I saw an ad in the paper about a fellow who wanted some one to teach him how to drive. I answered the ad. I went to the address and it turned out to be an apartment on No. Clark St. and the fellow was a nice appearing man about 30 years of age. He had bought a used Model T Ford sedan and wanted some one to teach him how to drive it.

The next day we started out. I found a development on the north west side of Chicago where the streets were in and houses being built, but no one living there as yet. We spent two days there having him practice all the maneuvers I could think of with the car. On the third day I told him to drive the car back to his apartment on Clark Street. He did okay, but his parking spot was along side the building and necessitated going up a little rise off Clark Street. The throttle on early Model T's was a little lever directly under the steering wheel, so to get up this rise, it was necessary to speed up the engine. He set the throttle and got to the parking spot but instead of stepping on the brake pedal, he stepped on the reverse pedal. We went scooting back on Clark Street right in front of a street car. The street car hit the Ford on the right side where I was sitting, caving in the whole side. We were not hurt, but the car was ruined. He got out and said he was through trying to drive and paid me off on the spot.

Now I needed another job. I went to work at a large storage garage on the north side, apartment house district. No one in those days parked their cars on the street, and apartment houses did not furnish garages, so people rented space in storage garages and paid extra to have their cars delivered in the morning and picked up in the evening. I remember, what we called full service, cost them forty dollars a month. The pay was good here and we also got tips. This, however, was a seven day a week job, ten hours a day.

It was at this time that I got a postcard in the mail from a fellow I had known in Fergus Falls, telling me that he was in Chicago too, and giving me his phone number. So I called and found out he was living with his sister and working at a Piggly Wiggly store on the south side. The fellow's name was Bert Gale. He invited me to come down for dinner the next Sunday. Of course, I met his sister, Gladys, who was in Chicago studying music. I was quite taken up with Gladys and as she says I kept coming for dinner until I moved in and you know what, I am still having dinner with Gladys some fifty-eight years later. We were married January 4, 1925, in the pastor's study with two witnesses, Bert Gale and Ada Dahlgren, also of Fergus Falls, by the pastor of the Congregational Church where Gladys was organist.

We four had dinner that evening at the Cooper Carleton Hotel on Michigan Avenue and later went to a play where the Dolly Sisters were appearing. These were prohibition days and Gladys was working in the Loop as secretary for one of the big wigs in the Anti Saloon League. Now my work hours at the storage garage did not work out too well for newlyweds, so I left the garage and got a job as shipping clerk for the Alemite Lubricator Company, shipping the new grease fittings that were replacing the grease cups that had been used on cars up to that time. Gladys now was pregnant and we started thinking about possible doctor bills and hospital bills, so we decided we might feel more secure in Fergus Falls, where we were better acquainted, than in Chicago.

We got on the train and we went back to Fergus where I got a job as a mechanic at the Vore garage. Time goes by and on December 12th, 1925 our baby boy, Raymond Bruce, was born. All went well and we soon acquired a 1921 Ford Coupe so Gladys and the baby would be able to get around. In the mean time Gladys' parents had moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and in the summer of 1926 we decided to go and see them and look Cedar Rapids over. I got a job right away with the Rapids Chevrolet Company. Well, it turned out we did not like Cedar Rapids and I did not care about my job at the Chevrolet garage. So we took off and went back to Chicago. Here I got a job with a Packard Dealer located at 51st St. and Lake Park, and things went well. But we seemed a bit lonely in Chicago, so in the summer of 1927, we went back to Fergus Falls. I worked at several garages, and then on February 28th, 1928, our second boy, Grant, was born. Now there were four of us. So we bought a 1921 Pan five passenger touring car. No room in the Model T Coupe for four. About this time, I was working at the Minn. Motor Co, but repairs had slowed up and there was not enough work to keep us busy. We were working by the job, flat rate, so I decided to go to work for myself.

I opened up an auto repair shop at 321 So. Mill Street in Fergus Falls and did okay. My brother, Morris, joined me after a couple of years. I stayed there about six years, but the long hours finally got me down. I closed the shop and went back to the Minn. Motor as service sales man.

1936 came along and on December 26th, our baby girl, Paula, was born. Minnesota winters make garage work hard on a person. Every winter I would come down with the flu so bad that we decided we should seek a warmer climate.

In the summer of 1939, we packed up and took off for California. 1939 was not a good time to look for work in California. I worked six days a week for $20.00, but with Gladys' helping doing what she could find to do, we struggled along. Then in the spring of 1940, I got a job at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, where I worked for twenty-three years. Not always at the same job, but much of the time in Research and Development. I enjoyed my work at Douglas and thought I was well treated there. We lived twenty-six years in West Los Angeles during which time Gladys taught music at home. directed church choirs here and there. We bought a house, our children grew up, got married and moved away from home. It was a sad day for me when our children all left home. I could no longer look in on them at night and know that they were safe, etc.

In 1965, I retired from Douglas. We talked about moving from the busy Los Angeles area, and looked several places for a retirement home. Finally, we decided Santa Maria would be okay. So here we are in 1984 in Santa Maria. We have enjoyed living here. Our children come and visit quite often. We keep in touch by phone. Relatives and friends drop by, so we have not been lonely.

Our retirement years here in Santa Maria, have been very pleasant and one reason for this is that our children have not caused us any worry. They have gone out in the world and made their own way. My loving wife, Gladys, has been able to keep house, do the cooking, keep busy with music and other club activities. She has been a great help in making life for me enjoyable. So what can I say. Life has been good and I hope to live for some years more.

I wish to go back a moment to the homestead in North Dakota. No telephones, no radio to check time by, so how did we set our clocks? Well, on our weekly trips to town for groceries and supplies, dad would step into the Railroad Depot and set his trusty, heavy duty watch, so that it compared with the railroad station clock. Then when he got home he would set our eight day mantel clock to compare with his watch.

In recording this rather sketchy history of my life I have been bothered with lethargy, and here we are in 1985, so in looking back over eighty some years, I have rubbed elbows with a lot of people in different places, and found them to be a pretty good lot. In being able to survive this long, I must give credit to my wife, Gladys, who has seen to it that I ate good, nutritious meals. Also I have tried to live by the ten commandments which I think are a good set of guidelines. So long for now. Dad