Elizabeth Hurford

A View Into the Life of an American in Germany after World War II

Edward Dewey Killingsworth, my grandfather, was born at home into a household of fourteen people. As a child, he experienced what it was like to live during a depression and through a war. He and his eleven brothers and sisters spent most of their time doing chores on their farm or working at jobs while not in school. He has lived to see many historically significant events. After the end of World War II, he took a newspaper job in Germany. While in Germany, he witnessed the formation and destruction of the Berlin Wall. Through his experiences, he has seen the evils of Communism and the advantages of a democratic government.

My mom and dad was from the section of the country they referred to as the nation, [which was the town of]* Allen Town, Missouri. My mother had a grade school education. My dad had a high school education, and he was a newspaper man. My grandfather was a carpenter, a cabinet maker; and also at one time, was deputy sheriff of Worth County, Missouri. My dad started newspaper work quite young at King City, Missouri, where he grew up.

I was born at home. The doctor came to our house to deliver me, December the 21^st [1928] in Grant City, Missouri which is now called Worth County, Missouri. We were there (in Grant City) until I was about three years old. Then we moved to Cameron, Missouri, which is a town [with] a population now of probably about four thousand people more or less. My mom and dad were the parents of twelve kids, seven boys and five girls. [They were] Christine, Pleasant, Maxine, me, Annabelle, Claudine, Ben, Bill, Jim, Katherine, and Kenny, and then Bobby. With that many kids, my mom was strictly a housewife.

We raised a big garden, and she (my mom) worked in the garden quite a bit, along with us kids. In Cameron, Missouri we had a house with a big garden and we raised all our vegetables in that. We used to come in with a team of horses and we’d plow the garden up and then we’d plant potatoes in it. When we got ready to pick the potatoes, we’d come back and plow them back up; and then us kids, would have to pick them up and stack them up.

We had a barn at the back of the property. We had an old jersey milk cow we called Betty. In the winter time, we’d keep her in the barn lot; and then the spring of the year we’d take her out to pasture. We got to walk out to the pasture, which was probably about a mile, or a mile and a half and milk her and carry the milk back. We raised chickens in the chicken house. At one time, we had a bunch of rabbits that we raised. I remember one night either a dog or a fox got in and killed practically all of them. We had the barn, which we kept the cow in; and in the barn, we had three stances for one cow. Then we had another room we kept coal in, and then we had another room with a toilet--which was a two-holer--and a hay loft that put hay in the upstairs. Going from the barn to the house, on the walkway, we had a grapevine with great big grapes, and later on we’d have grape juice.

We went to school at the only school in Cameron, Missouri. The first school I went to kindergarten in was called Goodrich. It was a small school out on the south side of Cameron. I had to walk all the way to school, and we had to cross the railroad tracks to get to the school. I remember goin’ by the switch yard one day, and I spent the morning watching the switch engine train move box cars from one track to another; and by the time I got to school, it was lunch time. My parents didn’t like that very well.

When we moved to First Street, we changed schools and went to the bigger grade school. I can’t remember the name of that one, but they had the grade school and high school all in one big square compound. We had to go back and forth for lunch. We got an hour off for lunch; so we’d go home for lunch, then come back early enough to play in the play yard.

Back when I was a kid, we didn’t have much. I think my dad was makin’ thirteen dollars a week or thirteen fifty a week, and he was workin’ a lot of hours. I remember one Christmas I got three pairs of underclothes and that was that. The best Christmas I ever had I got a sled. One year I got corduroy riding pants and lace up boots. The gifts were always more or less towards the clothing line.

I was born right at, more or less, the end of the Depression. Everything was on the uphill grade when I was old enough [for the Depression] to really have an effect on me. You could buy a nickels worth of peanut butter, and you’d dip it out of a barrel; and you could buy probably about a pint of it for a nickel. Bread was about ten cents a loaf. Meat, we didn’t have that much; we ate an awful lot of beans and cornbread, and a lot of vegetables out of the garden because so much of it was raised out of the garden--from the home. My dad’s car, he’d only put a license on it six months of the year; and leave it set in the garage the other six months because he figured he could get by without it during the good weather. Milk, we got ours from a cow; but you could buy [it at] the dairy, Zimmerman’s in Cameron. If you went out and took your pail with you, you could buy a gallon of skim milk for a nickel, but you’d have to carry it back to town. Candy bars you’d get three for a dime, gum you’d get three for a dime. Before school would start, Mom would take us in to J.C.Penneys and buy us a pair of tennis shoes for school. They were Keds and the cheapest ones were seventy-nine cents a pair, and they were black.

In grade school we used to do a lot of hiking, or exploring as we called it, or went out to the reservoir huntin’ snakes or animals like that. Then we’d play football, tag football, softball, depending on how many kids we had. In the winter time we would always go sled riding. They had three blocks that was blocked off out by the school house that was downhill, and you could slide down two and a half blocks in the street. And then the last half of the block, was blocked off so you’d make sure you stopped before you got to the next intersection. We used to go sled riding there, usually after school, then go home to eat supper and then go back to sled ride again. There’d be so many kids up there that you’d either make a train and go down as a train, or you’d slide by yourself and slide up behind somebody and grab ahold the back of their sled, spin ‘em around or wreck ‘em. Another thing we’d do, when we was sled ridin’, is if we saw a car pull up to a stop sign, why we’d hook onto the bumper, and hold onto the bumper and they’d pull us wherever they was goin’; and if they was goin’ too far, why, we’d let go and then walk back to town or sled back to town. That was quite a bit of fun. We’d play until we got cold, and then go home cryin’ because we was frozen to death.

On Tuesdays and Saturday nights there was a woman and her family, a kid that I ran around with, would go to Weatherby, Missouri. They’d have free movies, but they’s all outdoor movies. So, we’d set on benches and watch the movie. We’d go there and play tag until it was time for the movie to start, and then we’d watch the movie and go home.

In Cameron, they bought a brand new swimming pool. Each Monday night they’d drain the pool; so Monday, during the daytime, they’d let the kids come swim free. That way we could swim in the daytime, and then they’d drain the pool, put in new water that night, and then start it up for business again Tuesday. That would be, probably about three quarters of a mile to get to the swimming pool (that we had to walk).

I delivered papers when we lived in Cameron, Missouri for the Cameron Sun. Every Thursday they’d print the newspaper, and I’d deliver it all around to the stores that needed the papers. And then I worked at the bowling alley setting pins, and at that time you had to set them by hand; and I think I got two cents a line for setting pins. When Dewey ran for nomination for President, I got a job handin’ out or puttin’ out political posters to people. I did that for one day because my dad found out and he made me quit, because he was a democrat and wouldn’t let me do it. At Cameron, I also got me a job once for this bakery. I carried two baskets around, and they’d have doughnuts and sweet rolls in them and I’d go house to house sellin’ ‘em until I got ‘em all sold. Then I’d go back to the bakery, which was in this woman’s house. Rather than get paid for it, I’d take day old rolls and take them home. I also delivered the Lady’s Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post each week. I had regular customers for that. For Lady’s Home Journal, I got a nickel a copy or so, and for the Saturday Evening Post I got two cents a copy. In the summer time, my dad had a lawn mower and I’d go around town mowin’ yards, it was a push back lawn mower. The most you’d ever make per yard was fifty cents a yard, and that would be a yard that would take ya all day to mow. I think, if my memory serves me correctly, stackin’ papers, deliverin’ papers, and meltin’ lead--I think I made about seventy-five cents a week. Out of that seventy-five cents a week my dad had me to put in twenty-five cents a week for war bonds. He’d save it up until he got seventeen dollars and seventy-five cents, and then you could turn them in for a war bond.

My parents moved to King City, Missouri when I was probably in the fifth grade and lived in King City, Missouri when the war started. [I was] thirteen [when World War II started]. My brother went to the war, to the Navy. I was surprised that everybody thought it was such a sneaking attack that [the Japanese] would bomb [Pearl Harbor] like that and kill so many people. There was so many songs that came out before the war or during the war like, “You’re a sap Mr. Jap.” A lot of people disliked the different nationalities. I know the Gantz drugstore in King City was run by Germans, Oscar Gantz and his brother ran it. All the people hated them because they were Germans and the Germans got in the war. People didn’t like the Japanese because of the attack.

Livin’ in a small town [the war] didn’t affect us near as much as it did people in the big cities. Livin’ on a farm, we had gas for the tractor; but if need be, we could use it for the car. The guy that ran the grocery store, you could always get sugar from him. We had ration cards for sugar, I don’t remember what all ration cards were for, but one of ‘em was sugar. Cigarettes were awfully hard to get, and they came out with lots of different brands, and then there’d be certain days of the week they delivered the cigarettes. They came out with a cigarette they called Longfella and they was about six inches long. It didn’t taste very good, but you could smoke part of it, put it out, and then smoke the rest of it later. You couldn’t buy farm equipment or a new car without payin’ a premium price for it unless you bought it off the black market.

The war changed life because more Americans got out and saw what other countries were. Like when we were kids, we didn’t know anything about a pizza, lasagnas, or anything like that. That was because we never did get out of our local area. And we really didn’t have pizza until we moved to Germany. We always had hamburgers, hot dogs, tenderloin sandwiches, milkshakes, and things like that.

I first met [my wife, Darlyne] when she was about the eighth grade [and I was in seventh grade]. She’d come to town with her friend Charlene Clay, and whenever she’d come to town we’d go in and have a Coke at Oscar Gantz’s Drug Store. I can’t remember who else set in the booth with us, but there’d probably be four or six of us settin’ in the booth. Her parents would always come to town shopping, Saturday nights especially. They’d go up town and park their car and set and visit until the show was about out, and then they’d head for home.

I started goin’ with [Darlyne] a little bit in her freshman year, and then I started goin’ with her more in her sophomore year. I was goin’ steady with her her junior year and senior year, and we got engaged when I was a senior and she was workin’ at Bell’s Café.

My parents moved from King City to Clinton, Missouri when I was in the seventh grade, but I stayed in King City and lived with Cleo and Dorothy Berry. I had a job workin’ on the farm with them. It was a farm that milked cows, had pigs, team a horses. Later, they bought a tractor so we had a Ford tractor. And I worked there until the ending of school. I never did live with them (my parents) from about the sixth or seventh grade on.

Fun in high school depended on what grade we were in. In the beginning of school, we had one week of school we referred to as dump week. If we’d catch any freshman in town, why, we’d ask them to give them a ride to go somewhere. You’d always tell them you was gonna go somewhere, they’d get in the car with us. It’d be at night, and then we’d take them out to the country and dump them; and then they’d have to walk back to town. With that, you could only do it for one week. We went to what they called Beacon and what they called the Tropic Hall to dance, usually on Saturday.

We went to the movies, we had a movie house which cost us I think fifteen cents to get in. When you got high school age, you had to pay a quarter and that’s it.

Every once and a while a bunch of us would get together and have a Scavanger Hunt. That’s where you go get into teams, you’d get four or five people on a team, and you’d have things written out on a piece of paper. Whatever was on this list, you had to go out and get, and come back. One [item on the list] might be a used car tire, a pair of pliers, or just odds and ins, things that you wouldn’t think to get. We’d have to go and hunt them up, and whoever came back with everything listed would win.

[Another thing we did for fun was we’d always have May Day or May Basket Day, and we’d make May baskets]. What we’d do is go down to the store that sold wall- paper and they’d have samples, get their samples of wall paper, and make may baskets out of it. Then go around and give people May baskets, hang ‘em on the door.

I graduated [from high school] in ‘48, but at that time there weren’t a lot of kids that went to college. It was quite a privilege in order to go to college, and I didn’t have the money. I wanted to get married; so, soon as I got out of school, I got a job at the Dodge City Daily Globe as what they call a printer’s devil. That’s where they teach the printing, it took five years for that. Then we (Darlyne and I) got married April the 10^th, 1949, at the First Baptist Church in King City. Then [I worked at] the TriCounty News. I worked clearin’ up pages and puttin’ case stack back in the magazines. Then the Dodge City Daily Globe I worked as a printer’s devil, fillin’ out pages, and pullin’ proofs, and then I made up ads. After I worked makin’ up ads for a number of years, I moved over to makin’ up the pages.

One week I saw this ad for a printer for Stars and Stripes in Germany, so I applied for a job in there. The application I put in for Stars in Stripes came back and wanted to know if I was still interested in the job, and that was in February of 1953. They said if I was, why, they’d send me the paperwork, and they wanted me over there by the first of the month. It took us about a month to get our passports, and I flew over on a TWA console airplane which left New York and went to Ireland and from Ireland we went to Frankfurt, Germany. And that was about a sixteen hour flight.

When we first went over, we were welcome because the economy was so bad and they just didn’t have anything. In fact, a lot of the Germans would work for the Americans. We had a woman come in once a week named Anna, and she would house clean, wash, and do the ironing for ten marks a day. To start with we didn’t have a washin’ machine, so she washed ‘em out by hand. In fact, nobody had a washin’ machine then. We’d give her ten marks a day, and a package of cigarettes. She just loved to smoke, and she always loved to eat American food that Darlyne fixed for her the day that she worked.

The Germans might have envied us because they just didn’t have the things the Americans had. There might have been some bad feelings there. There was a lot of envy because we could buy things off the economy and wouldn’t have to pay a tax on it. The Germans could buy the same thing, but they’d have what they called a Mervick tax, and they’d have to pay taxes on it. We’d just take in a form and not have to pay taxes. The Germans didn’t think that was quite right. We bought the same gas as they did. Our gas was, when we left [Germany] thirty-two cents a gallon and the Germans were paying about two more cents or so. It was the very same gas comin’ out of the same service tank and they didn’t like that too well, they thought we should’ve been payin’ more.

When we went over, you could buy a quarter master’s gas for nine cents a gallon; but you could only get it at quartermaster stations. We’d spend our day drivin’ the countryside, lookin’ at the country and everything. We also did a lot of weekend trips, we’d go to either Garmich or Chimsea, or Berchesgarten. When the kids were young, we always went to Garmich to a recreation area. It was about a seven hour drive from where we lived. I’d get through work in the dayside and drive down, take one day’s leave time and be down there three, four days and then drive back in the night shift. We did an awful lot of hiking up into the mountains. We’d go to Oberamergau and they had a lot of castles, beautiful buildings to look at down there and a lot of cathedrals.

At the home we lived in at Erfeldon, we used to take the fairy over across the Rhein River in Oppenhein, and they had a castle, a beautiful town, and summer market. At one time, right after the war, money was so scarce for the German that they’d come around door to door tryin’ to sell things for money. They had a lot of wood carvers that would be sellin’ door to door, so they could make money.

[Some differences were that Germans] didn’t eat corn, they had no Jell-O, and they didn’t have any peanut butter. In Darmstadt, you could walk down this street and they’d have a grocery store by the butcher shop. They’d have gutted rabbits, half a hog or a hog, hangin’ down. Also, maybe if it was deer season, they’d have a deer hangin’ out for sell. You could go in and buy a whole rabbit or you could buy the meat by the pound.

They always had a chimney sweeper; your house had to be inspected twice a year. The chimney sweep would have to come around and clean your chimney twice a year. They’d always say it was good luck if you ever saw one. They (the chimney sweep) always rode a bicycle. The mailman would deliver from house to house and they delivered on bicycles.

All the farmers lived in the city, very seldom did you see any of them livin’ on a farm. The bakeries sold nothing but bakery items and bread. They had funny hours on the stores. They couldn’t be open Sundays. In each town there’d be [a pharmacy] open in town on Sunday. There’d always be one (a pharmacy) listed [so you’d know which one] to go to get the medicine. They (the Germans) socialized medicine. The doctor was assigned to each area, and then he’d take care of the patients in the area. If an American went there, why, they’d put him in a different waiting room and wait on him quicker. Then he’d pay ten or twelve marks for the doctor’s help, visit.

We were in Germany when the Berlin wall was built, and we were there when the Berlin wall got tore down. What they did was they stopped all the traffic goin’ into Berlin. They were buildin’ this wall, and they’d always have barbed wire on top. Then people’d always try to escape out of it. They built a commercial wall, the base of it was very thick, and it went out toward an arch. At the top of this arch, there was a great big ball. They tested that to find out if any of the Olympic people could climb the wall and get over the arch. They couldn’t, so that was the wall they built.

At the Check Point Charlie, you could sign on to the German tour and the East German bus would take you over. They’d always have an East German translator on the tour bus to make sure that we saw and heard only the things they wanted them to hear. Then they’d always take you down this one street where they had a wall they built up strictly for tourists to make it look so nice. If it was possible, to get back away from the other main driving place, you could see how dilapidated it (East Germany) was.

[In East Germany,] you’d go into a store to buy things, and you’d have to wait in line in order to be waited on because they were all communist workers and they didn’t have a lot of get up and go. They didn’t have to worry about their job because they knew their job was there.

You’d go up on the train and along the railroad tracks, and there’d be fence, and then at the top barbed-wire, it’d be about twelve feet high. Ever so often you’d run across a East German soldier with a machine gun and a pistol, just walkin' up and down the fence line makin’ sure nobody tried to get in or out. You’d go by the train station and there wouldn’t be anybody there, then right in the city of Berlin they had what they call the S-Bon, which was run by the East German. They took over all the subways at that time, and nobody’d be ridin’ them. Then the West Berlin subway and train, everybody’d be ridin’ that. [There were] only two places [of] the West Berlin train or subway that [went] through the underground. The train wouldn’t stop because it was East German sector, and they wouldn’t stop. They’d just keep on goin’ until the next station.

West Germans could not have East German money on ‘em, it was against the law to have any. An American could go to the bank and he could buy West German D-Marks, at that time it was four marks to the dollar, and he could turn around and buy eleven to one East German marks. Then they’d be on American trust (Americans had special privileges) and go over shopping, but you always had to be back by midnight. You could go over there [to East Germany] and buy a hot bratwurst, Coke and fries for the equivalent for about fifty cents.

When they tore down the wall, the East Germany did a lot of celebrating. West Germany, to start with, thought it was a wonderful thing. After a time, the East Germans started thinkin’ they should have the very same thing the West Germans had. So, there was a lot of jealousy between the West Germans and the East Germans. The East German people were not used to working productive-wise. They just took things easy. If you went in a store, they didn’t care if they waited on you or not because their boss wouldn’t say anything. Then, when they came to West Germany, they tried to do the same thing and people didn’t like it very well.

We moved back to the states from Germany when I retired from the newspaper business in 1991. [What I consider my major accomplishments in life are] raisin’ a nice family, havin’ a nice home. We’ve had some set-backs, but we’ve always overcome them. Our daughter got real sick when she was four or five years old, was really sick and was laid up in the hospital for a long time. Our son was operated on when he was about a week old, and he came through that good. And we had a car wreck, and my wife had a broken neck and we came through that good. So, just lookin’ back on life, it’s been a blessing raising our kids and having as much luck as we had with them. One lesson [I would like to share would be], be honest and work hard and always look for the brighter things in life.

This oral history was researched and prepared by Elizabeth Hurford, January of 2004.

*Brackets indicate words that were not said by Mr. Killingsworth and were added to clarify his intent. Parenthesis were used to explain a word or phrase that Mr. Killingsworth said during his interview.