My Twin Brother

Most people don’t know that I have a twin brother, Billy. Mom took the picture of us above. We were with the 1941 Chevrolet that I had bought in San Francisco with brother-in-law, Bill Raney’s, help. We went to school’s in Live Oak and, when I decided to go to Yuba Junior College, he went to Shasta Junior College in Redding. He was more athletic than me and was on their football team. I was more of a tennis player which I was pretty good at.

When the Korean War broke, we were both drafted. I had basic training at Fort Ord while he was sent to Camp Roberts at San Luis Obispo. I was sent to Okinawa where I was put into the Military Police and later, into the Ryukyus Island Command Headquarters Company. There, I was sent to Japan to go to Supply Specialist School at the former Japanese Naval Academy on Eta Jima Island. Three times, while there, I took the ferry boat to Hiroshima. The building that was just under the atomic bomb blast was left as a memorial to the devastation it caused. I also had a chance, on the way back to Okinawa, to wander around Tokyo and take pictures of the Imperial Palace and other landmarks.

Billy was sent to Germany and was in an artillery unit in Bavaria. He got married to very pretty German girl and they had a boy and a girl. They lived near Munich for awhile before he got out of the Army and returned home.

They decided to live in Canada and seemed to like the area around Quebec. We would call each other once in awhile and later, send Christmas and birthday cards. I haven’t heard from him for awhile but heard that they had moved back to the U.S. in the Buffalo area. I hope that sometime, we will get back together.

My Photo Site

I have been, for the last 3 or 4 years, with a photo site (Photo Sig) where people all over the world can look at my pictures and make a critique of them. I currently have over 650 pictures there. My first entrant of my son playing Little League, had critiques from China and Vienna. One recently was viewed by 45,000 photographers. The pictures are arranged in many categories, such as family, animals, documentary, humorous, etc. When you take a look at them, you can see what each person says about them. A few of my pictures are included with stories on my blog. Here is the link:

http://www.photosig.com/go/users/view?id=41139

Copy this to your browser line and photo site will come up.....I Hope )):>P

"Navy Talk"

The mother of a friend of ours had remarried, awhile back, to a retired Navy man. He had never given up the “Navy Way” and continually used Navy terminology in his everyday conversation,

His wife put up with this as long as she could until, after a few drinks at a party one night, she brought him up short by saying , “I don’t mind it when you call the floor, the “deck”, and the wall the “bulkhead, but I’ll be dammed if I’m, going to pipe you aboard!”

Private Joke

My wife had just come home from having major cancer surgery on her mouth. She temporarily required feeding of a nutritional supplement by means of a nose tube to her stomach. One day, a good friend of hers came by for a visit while I was getting ready to fix her “evening meal”. While they were talking, I called in from the kitchen to ask (our private joke) if she wanted steak or lobster and she answered, “I’ll have steak, I had lobster last night”. She and her friend kept right on talking while setting up the apparatus for feeding her.

About a week later, the friend returned to see my wife again. During the week, her elderly mother had come for a visit and she told us that her mother had also need a nutritional supplement . She had gone to the drug store and inquired about the brand we used. Apparently “our private joke” had completely gone over head, as she complained, “All they had was chocolate, strawberry and vanilla.

"Beatle Fan"

The little girl next door was an avid “Beatle” fan, both of the shaggy-haired and the crawling type. She was as happy with her record collection as she was with her bug collection. I was very surprised, therefore, to see her looking so sad and on the verge of tears one day that I asked her what was wrong.

“My praying mantis just died”, she said sadly.

“Oh, that’s too bad”, I said consoling her. “How long did you have it?”

“Twenty minutes”, she said

Bob Ramsdell and the Placerville Bank Robbery

I was working on the Placerville Freeway in the mid 50’s. After work one day, I went to the bank on Main Street. As I approached the door, I saw a nicely dressed older couple getting ready to come out. I held the door open for them to exit and watched as they turned the corner of the building toward the parking lot in the back of the bank.

When I turned to go into the bank, everyone was looking at me strangely. I had just held the door open to the couple who had just robbed the bank!

Dr. Bertha Devore: Chinatown Doctor

My aunt, Bertha Devore, graduated from Oakland College of Medicine and Surgery in Oakland, CA in the early 1900’s. She set up her first office on the edges of Chinatown in San Francisco.

Late one night, there was a knock at the door. A man needed a doctor to go with him deep into the opium dens in Chinatown to rescue a friend who was smoking opium. He told her that she was the last hope as no male doctor would accompany him so she went. They got him out and she treated him as best she could.

She told me that she had heard that word had gotten around that this female doctor was not afraid to go into Chinatown alone after dark. She also told me that she was never afraid even though this was a time of tong wars.

When she died, I found her doctor’s bag in the stuff sent to my mother’s place in Gridley and kept it. I came across the bag when I was getting read to move from Marysville to Magalia. I buffed up the bag with neat’s foot oil and sent it to my grandnephew, Dr. Craig Ramsdell, who is an anesthesiologist in Detroit. I had emptied out all the bottles of laudanum and other medicines used at the time. I really wish I had kept them to go with the bag.

My aunt was never called, by the family, anything but Dr. Bertha or once in a while, Dr B. I remember that when she came for a visit, she would check all our blood pressures and ask about symptoms. I remember her putting a mustard plaster on my chest for a cold.

She had been a doctor in Oregon for 40 years in Drain living with my grandmother Devore. During World War II, she was one of the few doctors in the area as all the young men doctors had been taken into the services. Later on, she was a doctor for 10 years in San Jose, CA. She was well known in the Oregon area. A college history professor wrote a book, which I have, called “Victorian Women Travelers” which was dedicated to her since she had delivered the author, a woman, I believe, teaching at the University of Oregon.

She died in 1971 and was buried in a family plot in Yoncalla, Oregon.

My Dad and Winston Churchill

During World War II we all listened to the radio. Mom listened to the soap operas at lunchtime and I did too. We liked comedy like Danny Kaye and Jack Benny to have a good laugh. We also listened to drama like The Shadow, Gunsmoke and Ellery Queen.

I would sit with my dad and listen to the war news since my brother, George, was a C 47 pilot getting ready, in England, to take paratroopers into France. He did at 11:30 PM on D Day.

My dad always had ideas for the war effort both at home and in Europe. One day, he told me about this idea that he had on helping the British beat back the possible invasion now that Hitler had conquered Europe and waiting across the Channel for the right time.

His idea was, under the cover of darkness, laying a network of pipes with gasoline in them , just under the sea level, at the few invasion beaches the Germans might attack along the Dover Coast. We couldn’t stop the German paratroopers, but as their landing barges got over the pipe network, the valves would be opened and the gasoline lit effectively stopping the invasion barges.

I typed this letter and sent it to Churchill and about 3 or 4 weeks later, I went out to get the mail and there was a letter from 10 Downing Street, London. Churchill thanked him for his idea on repelling the German invaders helping the war effort.

I saw a dramatization of William Stephenson’s book “A Man Called Intrepid“, with David Niven as Stephenson, and decided to read the book that it was based on. In the book, there was a mention that the idea my dad had had actually been done.

Later, there was a sequel called “Intrepid’s Last Case” and this event was also mentioned. Stephenson was a British spy acting as a diplomatic courier to Spain and was able to greatly effect the war effort. Both books were very interesting.

Churchill’s letter made us all proud of what dad was able to do. Even though he was blind and paralyzed, his mind was amazing figuring out many projects for our home and local area.