After a week's stay in the hospital, they took us to Mother's in an ambulance. When they wheeled me down to the ambulance, there was no Betty! Carl went back to the nurse's station and said, "Where is my baby?" All the nurses cried in unison, "Which one!" He finally got Betty, and we got on our way. We stayed with Mother and Dad until I was strong enough to travel, and I took the train to San Diego to visit Carl's mother. On the way, Betty got hungry and I was [too] bashful to feed her in the coach, so I took her into the restroom. An old German lady came in and bawled me out: "Why are you feeding her in here? Why don't you feed her out there?" I told her I was too embarrassed! We stayed with Carl's mother about a week and Carl came from Brawley to take us home.

Maywood
I could not take the hot summers in Brawley, so in the summer of 1924 Betty and I went to Mother's and Dad's in Maywood [Los Angeles County]. I rented a little house across and up the street on Fishbone [Street]. I went back to work at Bullock's [department store, which now houses Southwestern Law School's library], and Mother took care of Betty during the day. Carl got tired of living alone, so he moved to Maywood also. He worked for Ralph's in Los Angeles for a while until February, 1925.

The Move to Taft
[Carl's sister] Verna and her husband Willard were living in Maricopa [Kern County] at the time, and talked Carl into taking a job at a bakery driving a delivery truck. So we moved to Taft in February, 1925. I stayed on at Bullock's until the first part of May, then I joined Carl in Taft. Our first house was at 100 Roosevelt Place: not much of a house, but that was all that was available as there were not many rentals in Taft at that time. The bakery job didn't work out, so Carl worked for the Ford agency in the garage for a while, then the California Market, and from there to the Jersey Creamery [which later became Peacock Dairy, then part of Meadow Gold].

Second Child
In December of 1925, I became pregnant with Barbara. [My sister] Helen was a practical nurse and she offered to take care of me during confinement.

The first part of August, Carl took Betty and me to Frazier Mountain Park, where we met Helen, Jim, and their children, who had a campsite all established, where we stayed a week -- swimming and hiking. From there we went to Maywood, where the Birketts [Bess' sister Helen and her husband Jim Birkett] lived at that time. On the evening of August 28, Helen fixed cheese, toast, and tea, which Jim had to have every night before going to bed. Soon after, I started having pains, so Helen called Dr. Ruth, who lived in Hollywood. He was there in a very short time. Barbara arrived about 4:00 Sunday morning [August 29]. Helen took care of us until I was ready to go back to Taft.

Homes in Taft
We lived at 100 Roosevelt Place until 1927, when we moved to 325 E Street. It was an old house and not very comfortable, so we moved to 403 South 7th Street, next door to John and Velma Springer, who became very good friends. John passed away a few years later, but Velma still lives in the same house. We didn't like our landlady, so we moved across the street to 402. We lived there until John Campbell, a shirt-tail relative on Carl's side, died of blood poisoning from a fracture of his finger [that happened] by sliding into second base while playing baseball after a flood in the area. His family left Taft, and we moved into their house at 401 A Street.

Learning to Drive
While we were living there, Carl had to go the hospital for [appendectomy] surgery, so I thought it would be a good time to learn to drive the car. I went out into the garage and learned to shift the gears, then I backed out. It was a downgrade, and I almost backed into the garage across the street. I took it out on a seldom-used road and drove back and forth, stopped and started until I felt I wold be able to drive downtown safely.

One day I took Barbara and Betty to visit Carl in the hospital. Barbara said, "Mother was afraid to park in front of the hospital, so she parked down the street!" I had not told him I was learning to drive, so it was a big surprise. However, he trusted we enough that he let me take him home from the hospital a few days later.

We lived in John Campbell's house until 1934, when we moved to Montview [Avenue]. While we were living there, my oldest sister Rea, who lived in Winnipeg, was visiting Nan. Nan brought her up to visit us. That was the last time I saw Rea, as she passed away the next year.

In 1935, we bought a lot at 522 F Street in Taft Heights. We built a small house, which was to have been converted into a garage, but never was. It had one bedroom, living room, bath, kitchen, and eating area upstairs, with a large bedroom and laundry downstairs. We had a large patio at the side with an outdoor fireplace and a barbecue. We spent many hours out there with lots of barbecued steak dinners. We moved into the house on Easter Sunday, in April 1936, a very rainy day. The front door had not been hung, so we had to tack canvas over it to keep out the rain.

Parents' Deaths
Dad [Samuel Edwin Davis Jr.] was very ill in White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles and Mother [Cora Vaught Davis] came to live with us. Dad passed away on April 24, 1939, and was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale. We took Mother down to Dad's funeral, and she returned [to stay] with us until she became very ill. We took her back to Los Angeles, where she was admitted into the hospital. She died on November 29, 1940.

War and Weddings
December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which changed all of our lives. Barbara was working at USGS when she met Albert Huber at a USO dance in Taft. They were married at the Methodist Church in San Jose, March 3, 1945. Betty was working in the office of the Sanitex Laundry. She quit her job and joined the Marines, where she met Richard Smith. They were married May 5, 1945, in the Methodist Church in Glendale. A reception was held at the home of Nan and Russell Priddy, who lived in Glendale.

In 1946, Carl's mother came from Santa Barbara to live with us until we could find an apartment for her. We finally succeeded and she lived in the apartment until she had a heart attack. We had her with us until she got so bad we had to admit her to the County Hospital in Bakersfield.

Garfield Avenue
In 1947, we bought Frank and May Turnan's house at 517 Garfield Avenue in Taft View Terrace. It was a much larger house on a steep slope, which gave enough room under it for a nice basement. We spent all our spare time digging out dirt. Then we lined it with cement block and built a 3/4 bath in the corner. Summers in Taft are very hot, almost as bad as Brawley, so we slept out in the yard. Some people took their camp cots up on Twenty-Five Hill and spent the night.

Bess and Carl circa 1960

In May 1948, Carl's Mother [Clara Louise Showalter] passed away in Bakersfield and was buried in Taft Cemetery just [north]east of Taft.

Diversions
Our vacations most of the time were spent in the High Sierra above Bishop, camping, fishing, and hiking. Sometimes we would go with Edna and Bing or meet them up there. Occasionally Nan and Russ would also join us. One time when we were camped on Rock Creek, there was a chipmunk picking up crumbs around the tent. I got a cookie, tied a string around it, and when the chipmunk picked up the cookie and ran to the end of the string, he took a big summersault, jumped up, and ran away.

Saturday nights in Taft were spent playing pinochle and canasta. The group consisted of John and Hilda Head, Bill and Agnes Pet, Marvin and Leota Ulrich, and Carl and I. [Marvin was Willard's son and Ruth's stepbrother.] Sometimes we would invite four more to make two tables.

To be continued...