Charlotte’s Frackville Days
July 24, 2008 – 6:00 amI visited my long-time friend Charlotte yesterday, hoping to get a World War II story from her. Aside from a delightful visit, I think I now have three stories. Today I’ll start with her early life in Frackville, Pennsylvania, in the coal region.
When Charlotte graduated from high school in 1943, the war had begun. She remembers collecting things – tin foil, scrap metal, the usual. Along with other high school girls, she cut up sheets to make bandages for the wounded soldiers. The knitters made the long, narrow strips, which were rolled up to make bandages similar to our familiar Ace bandage. It’s strange to think that the bandages we now take for granted were not household items back then. Even in my home I remember cutting up sheets for bandages.
Charlotte’s dad ran a large surface Walker, a coal top stripping machine. When the war came, all hands were needed in our defense factories, so he moved to Chester, rented a room and worked at the Sun Shipbuilding Company six days a week. He was a crane operator.
Her mother took a man’s job delivering produce for the American Tea Company, the forerunner of the A&P. She rented a garage that the company would stock each week, and she would then deliver produce to people’s homes all over the surrounding area. They, in turn, would place an order for the following week. There was no such thing as a supermarket.
A story has passed down that her mother’s truck broke down on Locust Mountain. Instead of towing the car backward, the tow truck towed it frontward with her mother in the trucker’s cab, The axle broke and the car went down the mountain into the town of Shenendoah, as her mother and the tow truck drive watched in horror.
Meanwhile, Charlotte was thinking about her future, so when the Civil Service exam was given at the high school, she passed first as a typist/copier, and on a later test, as being typing/shorthand proficient.
She was offered a job in Washington, D.C., but knew that housing was very scarce and difficult to find. Instead she was welcomed at her grandmother’s home in Yeadon, Delaware County, and began working at the Army Ordnance. And that’s for the next entry.
For more World War II stories, go to www.peggeorge.com.
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