Jimmy Penner

AP English

January 30, 2004

George Kennedy: World War II Veteran

Born to a gambler and a carnival worker on July 13, 1915, George L. Kennedy, my great-grandfather, began his long and interesting life. From car sales, to building boats, to taking pictures for the United States Navy, you might say this man has done it all. His marriage to the love of his life and the birth of three children add to his list of accomplishments. Now in a hospital bed due to health complications at the end of his life, he laughs and acts as if he were a teenager, just like he has his entire life. His story now means more to me, and to the rest of his family, than it ever did before. This eighty-eight year old man’s life is like no other.

I’m George L. Kennedy. I was born in Kansas City, Kansas, at Bethany Hospital on July the thirteenth, 1915. My grandfather, L. G. Kennedy, was a photographer in Kansas City, Kansas for many, many years. The best, best photographer there. And he became quite wealthy for the times and everything. He had a beautiful old home down there.

My dad never had a job in his life. Never worked for anybody else. He started out one time with a construction site. He got a job, and he was supposed to take this wheel barrow full of bricks, rocks, whatever up to the masoners. And he had just a one-by-twelve board, see, and he got about half way up the path and the wheelbarrow turned over; and he just left it, he never went back. And he never had another job.

He was a playboy; he liked to have fun. He liked to gamble, and bootleg, and things like that. He was a pretty common bootlegger in Kansas City, Kansas. He was a gambler. He had, in those years, in those days they had road houses. And, uh, a roadhouse could be an old abandoned filling station that they fixed up. You could go in and have your illegal beer and gamble a little bit, things like that. So he had a roadhouse or two goin’ all the time. So it was, it was just a different world. You had to live it to understand it.

I don’t know as much about my mother in some ways. I don’t know anything about her mother. I know her name was Grandma. Grandma Dixon. She was, uh, she was the old school. She didn’t wear the short dresses and everything. She wore the old, baggy, gingham aprons and everything. She had a little house in Kansas City, Kansas, and a barn up in the back. And when it got [where] she didn’t have anything to eat, she’d move into the barn and rent the house. There wasn’t any water, or lights, or anything in the barn; but she’d live in the barn. When we went to see Grandma, we went to the barn to see her.

Anyway, she and Uncle Lawrence, her mother’s brother, got into the carnival by some method. I don’t know how. Anyway, Lawrence sold popcorn. He had a little popcorn machine; and Grandma had a little wire table there, and she sold peanuts. Every time they’d get to another town they’d have to go out and get a sack of peanuts. It [the wire table] had a oil burner under it to keep it hot and everything.

Well, when she [my mother] was thirteen years old she run the Berry Coal Company which was the Kansas City, Ks coal company. Everybody bought coal-- they had coal stoves, didn’t turn the knob to light the fire--you had a coal stove. They drove it, delivered the coal from the coal company to the houses with horse and wagons. They had a scale there, a little drive-on scale . A wagon would come in, they’d drive on the scale, and Mother would weigh ‘em. She’d send ‘em down [to] whichever coal they wanted and all. They’d come back and they’d drive on it, and she’d weigh ‘em again, charge ‘em for however much coal they bought. It was a big business for those days, Berry Coal Company--Howard Berry. She was thirteen years old now, runnin’ this place. Anyway, times change of course. Coal went out and other things came in; but she was always, she was intelligent. She could figure out most anything in the way of business, things like that. But like everybody else, she wasn’t perfect.

So, she got into the carnival business with the iron-claw machines. The iron-claw machines, properly operated at the carnivals, were fantastic money-makers. You open up and make a hundred-fifty, two hundred dollars. That don’t rattle you all up now, that’s not much money now; but a hundred dollar bill--Hey! all the little neighborhood kids would come if they heard that there was a hundred dollar bill over there, they came to see it. It [the iron-claw machine] was like a steam shovel. Have you seen these steam shovels? It sat in the middle of this glass-enclosed compartment and you could set the thing to where you wanted it to stop. Put in a nickel it would come around, go down, grab, of course it [the glass compartment] was full of prizes. You see ‘em now. But there they didn’t use those stuffed animals and stuff like that. They used dollar bills, and half-dollars, and nickels. I know they had eight machines, and every day they’d take the nickels and go to work. Come night they’d have to take all the nickels out. You couldn’t leave ‘em out on the carnival lot. Somebody would have broken into ‘em. So they took all the nickels out, usually had about two hundred-fifty dollars worth of nickels they’d carry in sacks. It was, like I say, a fantastic money maker ‘cause in those times when they’d make a hundred dollars a day, boy that was a lot of money! Carnival people are funny. They never worried particularly about the two hundred fifty dollars worth of nickels. The carnival people were not gonna steal ‘em. It was those bastards from town. But I remember one time they came out with the sacks ready to go home. Charlie set the sack up on top of the car, they got in and went home. Another time--cars had running boards--they set the sack on the running board and did the same thing. Nickels, you didn’t pay any attention to ‘em. I mean like they were like a can of pork and beans for dinner or something. It was there. To all of us, but to the outsiders, two hundred fifty dollars worth of nickels in a sack was really something. Familiarity! If you’re familiar with it, it don’t mean anything.

At some point, early on, she met Charlie Elliott. She needed a man to help her and Charlie was a nice guy. [He was a friend who helped her at the carnivals]. You’d like Charlie, but you’d hate his guts too. He was insanely jealous of Mother, I mean insanely jealous; but anyway, they made a lot of money. Spent a lot of money . We’ve still got things at home that Charlie bought. He bought pottery.

Well, [when I met Florine] I was sitting at one of the neighborhood beer joints, Dad and Eleanor, my step-mother at that time. I was sitting there at the counter playing with the dice, looked up, and there was a dream walking. She was the prettiest thing. I asked Eleanor after she left, I said, “Who in the world was that?” And she told me she knew the family, where she worked or where she lived. This was July the third, July the Fourth, of course, was the big day coming up. They had boat races down at the river and everything. So, July Fourth I was down there knocking on her door. I told her [about] the boat races down at the river, and [asked] “Would you please go with me?”

She said, “I don’t know, I have to go ask my momma.”

Eleanor told me when I asked who she was, “Well, she’s only fifteen years old.” Well, I was only seventeen. But anyway, she made a mistake, she went [with me]. I would never turn loose of her, until now. So, we were down at the river, there was farmland, you know along the river. They had a watermelon patch there, so we stole a watermelon and floated it across the river. She was horrified! Almost scared to be in the same car with us, guess with the same old stolen watermelon. Now, if she thought I wanted it, she’d steal it.

We got married in Kansas City, Kansas, at Aunt Florence’s house March 5, 1936. That’s the best day there ever was. After we were married, we went down and walked down Minnesota Avenue, stopped in Katz Drug Store, and had a Coke. That was our wedding night. Oh yeah! We went back [to the house later], Grandpa took pictures, pictures of us.

We used to have county fairs, you know, like Tulsa. You go to Tulsa, and then you go to the next fair, and the next fair, and all the fairs are arranged so it’s one every week during fair season. And the people book the concessions to go to the fairs. And a carnival, like the one here, will have a fair, and you book through them to take your concessions. We had the picture machine and the dig machine. Charlie had the diggers, and we had the big picture machine. In the winter time we’d go down south, down to Louisiana and through there to the fairs. In the summer time we ended up way up in Minnesota and Wisconsin, up in there--you progressed up weekly. And uh, Charlie--Charlie’s one of these guys that can do anything--but anyway, he bought a truck and built a motor home on it. They didn’t have motor homes then. That was really something unusual. People would come just to see the motor home.

As soon as we got married, and Mother and Charlie got out to California to set up out there with the carnival. They called us to bring over the picture machine. That was not a question of, “If you’re not doin’ anything else, bring the picture machine.” It’s “Bring the damn picture machine now!” Anyway, things were looking different traveling, too.

Well, we were going from Kansas City out to California, takin’ the machine out there. You’ve heard about the roadside traps and things like that, you know. Every little town had its officers in it and their job was to catch everybody that you can. He [the officer would] catch ya here, and take you over to Old Joe; and he’ll fine ‘em, and he gets the money and Old Joe’ll split the money with the rest of them. They got me once. They got me goin’ out. I had to unload the truck by myself. Now, this is a pretty good size truck, and [I] unloaded it so they could inspect it. Inspection, of course, was just a racket wheel. We had parked on Main Street of this little Oklahoma town. Like I say--there’s still a few around--and the officers saw the truck without a state license. And boy! You’re gone. They took us down, put me in jail, and [I] had to buy a Kansas license for this, that, and the other thing and pay a fine for operating illegally you know. [One time] we were out there [California] coming home. At the state lines, every state had an inspection--it wasn’t like it is now. You go in fill out a couple of forms, papers, and go on. Everyone was to milk every nickel that was possible out of everyone that went through. We were coming up to the Kansas border, and we knew the station was at Coffeyville. [There was] this long grade going down to the station, and I didn’t want to stop. [So] at the top of that grade I put it in gear, and stepped on the gas. We must have been going a hundred miles an hour in that truck when we went through [and] saw the heads come up. You know it was just roaring, but they didn’t quite get us; and if they had, we’d have lost a couple of hundred dollars.

After that, we had three little ol’ runny-nosed kids. I got the boat fever. I wanted a boat. I couldn’t afford one; so we built one. Plans, it was a little kit. If you’re gonna do something like that, you gotta have a go-fer. [My go-fer was Sandra, my youngest daughter]. Just wherever you are, you say, “Go over and get that wrench will you?” ‘Cause it’s not ever where you want it, and I had the world’s best go-fer. We built three, three boats. We built three real nice boats. If we didn’t have it, we made it. [Then] I got the fish fever. I got lots of fevers. I had tanks all over the house with fish in them, one of them was a fifty gallon tank. We sat there in the living room one night, it was just like a rifle shot, “pop!,” and that glass cracked right catty-cornered.

The Fourth of July was a big holiday. Christmas was big, things like that. But holidays, they had every , not neighborhood, because they were bigger than that, but every area would have a big Fourth of July celebration. They shot all the firecrackers and everything. Individually you’d have a, not a cooker really--because I don’t remember having cookers then--but anyway, you’d have a picnic in your backyard after the celebration was over, you know. A jillion little picnics around town.

Christmas, of course, we lived in a little-bitty house. The whole thing wasn’t much bigger than this [hospital] room. Anyway, [the kids] wanted a swing set, and they had to have one nice, big present for Christmas, and that was it. After everybody went to sleep, Santa Claus was all tucked in bed and everything, we brought that damn swing set in the living room and set it out, set it up, and it was all wood. It had two swings, and a slide, and a swing that you sit in to rock back and forth. It was a pretty good set, but I set it up on Christmas Eve when they were asleep. The next morning, Santa Claus had set that swing set up there. That was their Christmas.

The first shots about the war that I heard was in some little town outside Kansas City. They knew the war was coming, and they had built a big ammunition plant there and everything. We were driving home from Marshall [Missouri] one weekend past the ammunition plant, and a man came on the radio then. Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. So, of course, we hear Japan and Pearl Harbor, we knew what happened; but it was the rare times in the life of the world. The country instantly galvanized behind the war effort; and from that minute on, that was all you ever heard--was the war and what to do. Right at that time [I] had already applied for a job, but anyway I went to work at Douglas building airplanes and I was there about two years.

Oh, first really decent job I ever had was when I went to work for Douglas Aircraft Company at the beginning of the war. The United States was supplying England with war material to fight Hitler. That was before we were in it, before Pearl Harbor. So those jobs they paid pretty good, I got sixty-five cents an hour. That was pretty good pay. I was all right. To the best of my ability I kept things the way they should be as far as the airplanes were concerned. Along two o’clock in the morning one morning, the quality control manager called up and said, “George get up there and get that damn wing stamped out so they can sell it.”

I told him, “If you want the damn wing stamped out, you get your own hot little stamp and go out and stamp it on yourself.” They never let me back in the building. [Later on I sold cars.] Didn’t sell many. [Well, Harold and Mom bought one, Uncle Harry and Aunt Ruby bought one.] That’s what car salesmen did then--go out and sell to all the relatives.

The United States was just choking the sky with airplanes and guns and everything, but England didn’t build anything. So, we were supplying the war. But the thing I always came back to, there never was--and there never will be another time--when everybody had one view [of the] war. If it don’t help the war, we don’t want any part of it. If it helps the war, “Yes we’ll do it.” I was working at Douglas, had three children born before Pearl Harbor, and it finally got down to where there weren’t any more people, any more men to take. I mean, [the government], they’ve got to about draft everybody. So they were scraping the barrel. I had a 4F because I had my ears, a 4F meant that you were not physically able to go. I was drafted [anyway]. Was sent up to the Great Lakes. Well, they were scraping the bottom then.

[When I went into the Navy, I had to go to Kansas City.] It’s such a huge building [the Union Station in Kansas City], you go in there and you’re a little speck in there. There’s a hundred thousand other little specks in there with you. They’re either coming or going, or doing something with the war. We went down on the train, they call them the cattle cars, big old freight cars with bunks built on them every place, no chairs or seats. You went in, you got on a bunk, that’s where you stayed ‘till you got where you were going. In our case, the Great Lakes. With a hundred thousand young men at the Great Lakes, I was never so lonesome in my life as I was when I got off of that train. That was the most helpless feeling you’ll ever have, but they handled it well. I mean, get in line, go down here, go down there. Every place you go they handed you something, shoes or hat, something. It don’t make any difference what size you are, you figure that out later. Everybody gets some. Then you’re organized, organized into companies, and you’re assigned barracks. Everything they had was so well planned it just falls, falls into place. It was not a happy time. Among other things, on the way up, of course, we were in these cattle cars, and all the small towns along the way, they stopped. Everybody in town was down there with coffee, donuts, sandwiches.

You did everything they told you to do. Mostly drilling, the main thing, what they did at the Great Lakes, is they learned if somebody says “Spit,” you said, “How far?” I mean you never questioned anything they told you to do, and it was organized in companies, a hundred fifty of us I guess there was in a barracks; and we had our petty officers among ourselves. They appointed officers. You would not run your own company.

I was company clerk, which was one of the cushy jobs I stumbled into. You were given the schedule for the day; you scheduled your company to get these guys there, these guys over here, and these guys too. And all the training, and so on, and so forth. The training goes on all the time. We were in the Navy and one of the classes is recognizing enemy ships. You’re in a big, dark room and there’s a horizon over there that’s all it is, is a horizon. When the ships come along, they teach you to recognize that this is friend and this is foe. And then, you go to school. They had tests. You had to be tested to get your level of knowledge. One of the tests they gave was called the Eddy Test, and what it tested was your level of intelligence, a lot of questions that they asked. I learned too [late], keep your intelligence down. When they started my Eddy Test, they wanted me to go to radar school, it [radar] was new. As you go through, they test you for everything. Check you for your eyes, how far apart they are, are you gonna be able to use the Navy instruments? Binoculars--I can’t use Navy binoculars, my eyes are too far apart. My eyes won’t center up on the lens. So finally, they said, “Well, we want you to be a fire control man.”

I said “Fine, what is fire control man?”

They said, “Well, there’s a battleship you know. Up in the rigging there’s this little house. We want you to sit up there and tell them whether they’re coming close to the target.”

“I don’t believe I can do that. That takes too much intelligence.” Anyway, they were good people. This old sea dog that was running us through there, he must have been a hundred years old, but he was a sea dog. So he could see my words when I told him, “Look these guys are just eighteen years old, and they’re just coming out of high school, and I’m thirty years old, and I never did go to high school. I hope you’re not gonna put me in there to compete with them. I’ll end up washing the dishes for ‘em.” Well, things like that. They were nice, but they were a bunch of bastards; but they’re such nice bastards, but you kinda get to where you can handle it.

After boot camp, they sent you to your assignment station where they’re going to assign you to where [you would go to fight], you know. So they were sending me out to wherever the place was, where they were gathering up the people to go to Japan. This is for the invasion of Japan. Of course, that was one of the worst things--to invade Japan on the ground--but anyway, if they wanted you to go, you went. I had my sea bags already on the train. [When I was about to get on the train, they told me that they wanted me to be a Navy photographer in Chicago.] It took them thirty minutes to find it [my bag], [and] to get it off the train.

Going to Chicago was like going to heaven compared to going to Japan. [I worked for] Fleet Hometown News. What we did was letters from all the ships in the fleet when they came in. Joe Go was on so and so and his next assignment he’s going, you know. They’d write up these little articles, you send them to the guy’s hometown newspaper. Well, the Fleet Hometown News, the Hometown News is a morale builder. The articles go to the people’s hometowns and they read it. It makes them feel a little better.

We had offices right at 8000 North [Michigan], the best location in Chicago. But we were in a hotel there which belonged to the shore patrolmen. The shore patrol is the police department. We had maids. Somebody, I don’t know who, came through every day and made our beds, changed the bedclothes. There was a twenty-four hour, seven [day] cafeteria there where the shore patrol ate. So, we did too. You could go in anytime, day or night, and order anything you wanted, and you got it. We had T-bone steak and eggs at midnight, or anything you wanted. So that was how we ate, it was pretty good.

These teenagers [who I was in the Navy with] were Italians, and all and their folks were wealthy. So they had big transportation companies and everything. Gasoline, they had gas coupons by the bushel basket. But at one of these transportation companies, something was said. One day he [one of the teenagers] said, “George, do you need gas?”

I said, “Well, my wife does.”

He said, “Don’t worry about it. Take that basket full.”

There were so many things like that. It’s fun now, but it wasn’t then. We had, of course, the hotel, bounded by districts, you know. You don’t just go wandering around wherever you want to go. You don’t go to Topeka or something if that sounds good, you stay where they told you to. If the shore patrol ever stops you, he wants to see your out-of-bounds pass. Where are you allowed to travel? But we got our out-of-bounds passes universal, keep it good for any place, whatever you wanted to do. So, about three o’clock on Friday afternoon, we’d make a run for the railroad station to catch that two o’clock train to Kansas City. Of course, three o’clock was a bit early to leave the office, but the chief--I don’t know what she was now, but it was a woman, she never did know for sure what time we’d leave. She knew we always stayed until five o‘clock, so we could run at three in order to catch the train; but then coming back Monday morning was the same deal. We got in late, but was always signed in at the office. When we got there, she already had us signed in.

[I was only in the Navy six months.] When I got there, the war ended. We heard it on the radio one day at twelve o‘clock, lunch. Then when we were in the office, “Did you hear what the Navy has declared today? They said everyone with three pre-Pearl Harbor children is to be discharged immediately.” So me and two other guys were there that had three children. We got the C.O. and told him, “Did you hear that?”

He said, “No, what was it?” He said, “I’ll have to call and find out about it.” He went and called, and at four o’clock that afternoon we was on the charge going up to Great Lakes to be discharged. When we got up there, they didn’t have the paper to discharge us. I came about as close to starving as I ever did. The cooks were all gone, and all they had were some high school kids there fixing dinner. You couldn’t eat it, and then I found out that I had a friend from home that was in another station over there.

He said, “Come on over George, I’ve got steaks.” Went over with him, and he had a whole kitchen full of food. So we ate pretty good.

Well, [after the war] it wasn’t real good because some things were good, but remember that they just released eleven million soldiers into the job market. So, it wasn’t good from that standpoint. Some things, of course we got. A G.I. Loan to buy a house, they gave us the money to buy a house. I can still go down whatever street it is down here to the G.I. Doctor’s office, and I could get treated down there, this long after. They still try to help you. Like I say, with eleven million men into the country just almost overnight, jobs were hard. There were jobs. Some people got jobs, others depending on their experience and what they could do, all the experience they ever had was digging trenches in the army. About all that [was] left for them was all the new gas lines. But the war affected everybody. If you had somebody in the service, it goes down to where it affected everybody in the family.

The ration books meant a whole bunch. If you wanted to buy a pair of shoes, you had to have a stamp for it. Get a pair of shoes, if you wanted to buy five pounds of sugar--I don’t think you could get five pounds--two pounds of sugar, you had a stamp for it. Most anything you wanted to buy you had to have a stamp for it, [or] you didn’t get it.

[My last lesson about life would be] treat other people the way you want to be treated. If you treat other people the way you want to be treated, most of the time you’re gonna be treated real well. There are a few stinkers that take advantage of you, but not very many.

This interview was conducted by Jimmy Penner on Dec. 30, 2003.

*[] indicates words added for clarity.