1928 to About 1942 at the Earlimart Emergency Landing Field
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When my mother Alice Amelia (Bowen) Titus was a child the area around Earlimart was much wetter than it is now. Mother was born November 22, 1901. Aunt Anna Geneva [Bowen] Sprague was born August 3, 1879.
Mother and Aunt Neva talked about there having been artesian wells in the area and I think in the town of Earlimart. The shore of Tulare Lake was then much closer to Earlimart. Aunt Neva once mentioned that the town due west of Earlimart known as Alpaugh had been an island in Tulare Lake accessible by a ferryboat. It is very had for me to imagine Alpaugh as an island as when I knew Alpaugh it was much more like a desert.
You can see indications of the position of Tulare lake as it was in the 1890's in a map of Alila that follows. You will see that the shore was quite close to the town of Pixley.
I have a map of Tulare County as it was in 1895. I will insert a portion of it here. This map shows the name Alila that was Earlimart's original name. As I understand it the name was changed to Earlimart by some Los Angeles land developers.
The name Earlimart was chosen because the farming area was known for its early market. That is melons and so forth came to market earlier than other regions.
During my grade school days there was a packinghouse at the north edge of town and watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew melons, etc. were loaded into railroad boxcars and shipped to a market in the east. The railroad boxcars had compartments at each end that were filled with huge blocks of ice and the space between the ice compartments was filled with melons. The walls of the boxcars were heavily insulated.
At that time before World War II there were a number of Japanese-American truck farmers in the area. They were the predominate producers of the melons
The soil in the area was sandy-loam and it was very deep. It was easily tillable and was ideal for many types of crops.
During my years at Earlimart the area was much dryer and west of the Southern Pacific Railroad the land was pock marked with Alkali spots. Not many plants would grow on the Alkali spots. The alkali was due, of course, to water coming to the surface and carrying the Alkaline minerals upward when the land was much wetter.
The Gordon Titus Family lived on the Earlimart Emergency Airport during the early years. The airport was then a part of the "Light Line", that was a navigation system for the airplanes and airlines of that time.
Please click on the following thumbnail for the full-sized image.)
I like this picture of the Gordon Titus Family because it was taken at the airport at the time we were living there. Gordon, Alice [Mom], Clifford G. Titus[Buddy] in Mom's arms, Ben [me], and then Lowaine are the people in the picture. A small piece of Dad's Model "T" Ford Touring Car can be seen directly behind Mom in the picture.
I was born May 7, 1924 and my Dad once said that the rotating beacon light and tower was erected in about 1928, but I think it may have been 1930 or 31. I can remember the beacon light as it was shortly after the construction. I don't remember the actual construction, but I do remember the features of the beacon and I do recall how "new" it all seemed.
Dad, Gordon Titus, was paid a monthly sum for tending the beacon and field lights. That is he changed the lamps in the rotating beacon light when they burned out and he replaced the lamps of the field lights when needed. A supply of lamps was on hand in the little building near the rotating beacon. I don't know how much Dad was paid to do that. I know that it was a small sum because it was during the depression years. Since photoelectric sensors automatically controlled the operation of the beacon and field lights, there was not much of a call on Dad's services. However the big lamps in the rotating beacon would burn out at the most inconvenient times, usually during a heavy rain. Dad would have to climb the 50-foot tower while carrying the replacement lamp and then stand in the downpour while he replaced the lamp.
During World War II Dad worked at the Navy Shipyard at Mare Island as a civil service Shipwright and after the war he worked in the model shop at Ames Laboratories, Moffett Field, CA which was a branch of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. This was also a civil service job. While at Ames he requested credit for the time that the CAA had employed him. Credit to be added to his seniority. For a long time the Ames administration was unable to find any record of Dad's, but finally the records were found in the Bureau of Lighthouses which I believe was then located in St. Louis, MO. As you know the NACA became NASA.
The Earlimart airport had field lights for a short time only. They were installed quite some time after the beacon and then a year or so later they were removed. Why they were removed I have no idea. I know that once a biplane landed after a little rainstorm and he ground looped at the end of the field and wiped out one of the field lights at the end of the field.
There were two other lights on the beacon tower at the same level as the rotating beacon. On the north side there was a large red light that flashed and on the south side there was a green light that flashed. I think that they flashed the Morse code letters N for north and S for south, but I can't be sure of that since I didn't then know Morse code. All I know is that the flashed after the rotating beam had passed by the direction in which they were pointed.
President Warren G. Harding appointed Herbert Hoover as his Secretary of Commerce in 1920. Herbert Hoover reorganized the Department of Commerce and the Bureau of Air Commerce was renamed and reorganized as the Civil Aeronautics Administration. The CAA became the FAA in 1958. The airport at Earlimart was then under the auspices of the CAA. The lightline as I remember it ran from Los Angeles to San Francisco, through the Central Valley. There were rotating beacon lights every 15 miles. This was an aerial navigation aid. The line also crossed the country from San Francisco to St. Louis. I don't know what took place beyond St. Louis, MO.
Today's sophisticated air navigation network has its roots in the 1920s, when pilots relied on scattered radio stations and rotating light beacons to hop from one landing field to the next. During periods of poor visibility, however, the usefulness of light beacons was severely limited. By the end of the decade, the Federal Government had introduced the first of many navigational aids that could serve the pilot day or night, fair weather or foul. This was the four-course radio range, a device that transmitted radio signals in four directions. The Government installed a network of these facilities to guide pilots to their destinations.
The above paragraph came from the publication "Highways in the Sky". See also the Lighthouse Service Bulletin, which is also a part of the FAA Web Page. I'm going to insert a drawing of a beacon installation here that also came from the FAA Web Page.
Please click on the following thumbnail for the full-sized image.
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Please click on the following thumbnail for the full-sized image.
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The first airliner that I ever saw was a Ford Trimotor. A little later the Douglas DC-3 was the most used airliner. I can't remember ever seeing the Boeing airliner in our region.
On May 7, 1931, my birthday, Dad and Mom took us to Bakersfield Airport and there we met Grandma Melinda Titus. She had just flown from Santa Anna, California on a Maddux Airline Ford Trimotor to Bakersfield. We were told that Grandma was the first woman passenger to fly on the airliner.
The land at the Earlimart airport was open pastureland for the most part and open terrain extended from there to the coastal mountain range. On cool clear days the coastal mountains were visible to the west. To the east the Sierra Nevada range was always visible although at times the view was hazy. Most of the time the Sierra Nevada range appeared as a purple wall as we were closer to the Sierras. The land was pock marked with white alkali spots that contrasted sharply with the green grass and wild flowers in the early spring. Prairie Dog towns also pock marked the land. The Prairie Dog holes were the chief hazard on the airport. There was no runway as such and the Prairie Dog towns were usually mounded up a foot or so above the normal ground level and the soil was softer and not as compact as the grassy areas. When an airplane wheel hit a Prairie Dog hole it meant disaster of some sort to the airplane. Any landing at the Earlimart Emergency Landing Field was truly an emergency either before or after the landing.
Please click on the following thumbnail for the full-sized image.)
I'm going to insert a picture here of two cousins and myself. The background in the picture shows pretty well the desolation of the land. The site of the picture was my Uncle Elmer and Aunt Neva's place. L to R, Lyndon Titus, me, Lela Titus. Directly behind us is Uncle Elmer's 20 acres that was fenced. Just beyond the fenced 20 acres was the land of the Earlimart Emergency Airport. The beacon light can't be seen in the picture because the camera angle was just a little south of the beacon location.
I used the term "desolation of the land" above and that was not always true. In the spring after the winter rains the land was beautiful with wild flowers. Brodelias, Poppies, Birds Eye, Lupines, Daisys, Dandelion, Wild Geranium, were some of the varietys of wild flowers.
We kids called the Wild Geranium, "clocks" because of the seed pod. The seed pod resembled a Cranes head or a needle, with a large head, where the eye of the needle would be. There were four or more seeds in the head. We kids would separate the seeds and with the seed, a portion of the needle shaft would be attached to an individual seed. As the needle shaft began to dry it would turn and wind itself into a spiral. The shaft looked like the hand of a clock as it turned, thus the name "clock".
Those dried Geranium seeds would be caught in animal fur such as praire dogs or sheeps wool and in that way the seeds were widely dispursed.
Another curiousity of the area was, "Trap Door Spiders". A black spider not quite as big as a Tarantula lived in a small hole in the ground. The hole was about 3/4 inch in diameter and I don't know how deep. The hole was lined with a spider web type material and the hole was covered with hinged lid made of the same material. I don't think the spiders were harmful in any way, but I never put them to the test.
Click on this For information about Trap Door SpidersI'm not going to write about the plentiful side-winder rattlesnakes of the area.
Jim and Violet Howard of Earlimart owned the land on which the airport was located. Jim and Violet were old friends of the family.
We had been living in a "Cook Shack" at the airport. The Cook Shack was a well-made little unit and I believe that my Uncle Harry Titus had constructed it. It was a one-room structure with bedroom and kitchen. Water had been plumbed into the kitchen at that location, but normally there was no indoor plumbing and we used an outhouse for the bathroom.
Cook shacks were used by wheat harvester crews and were portable units. The running gear had been removed from our unit and it rested on concrete pillars. Actually we had two units placed side by side with a hallway space between the units. The hallway space was roofed over and extended a little to the south, which made sort of a porch. A floor on the porch at the same level as the floor in the cook shack made a very comfortable and cool sitting area at times. It was cool on many hot days as it rested on the concrete piers perhaps 18 inches to 2 feet above the ground level.
Well, with a growing family we needed more living room so Dad and Mom decided to build a new house. I was going to first grade in Earlimart and my sister Lowaine was just a baby. Grandpa Robert Humbolt Bowen was still living on his place, which was about one mile further west and maybe ¼ of a mile south of the airport property. Uncle Elmer and Aunt Neva owned 60 acres or more about ¼ of a mile directly west of the airport.
Please click on the following thumbnail for the full-sized image.
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I don't have a picture of our house as it was on the airfield. Dad moved our house into the town of Earlimart in about 1935. I'm not too sure of the year except that I remember we were in Earlimart in 1936 because that was a flood year. I do have a picture of our house in Earlimart that we took in 1992 on a trip to California. There are a few differences, first the color then was white with a grey trim, we did have an evaperative cooler but not in that position, we never had a chainlink fence, there were at least two Umbrella trees where the driveway is now, there was a Cholla Cactus near the front door. Lowaine said the screen door still has the same tear in it and the sag looks familar to me. Near the back of the house you can see the screened addition that Dad and I added on to the house after it was moved to town. Notice the siding is starting to come off near the left corner, that had started to lift when we lived there.
Please click on the following thumbnail for the full-sized image.
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I do have a picture of Lowaine and me that was taken in the front yard when the house was at the airport. Lowaine looks very nice in the picture, but I look silly. The Umbrella tree also known as "Chinaberry Tree" was hardly more than a twig.
Please click on the following thumbnail for the full-sized image.
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I have a freehand drawing that I made of Earlimart that shows the locations of places as I remember them. Only a few of these places exists now.
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This is a picture taken at Aunt Neva and Uncle Elmer's place. The people are not in very neat rows, but the order is roughly: Front row, Lyndon Titus, Marian Woodcock, Lela Titus, Ben Titus, and Aunt 'Jack' Titus on the end. Back row: Harry Titus, Aunt Neva, Ruth Titus, Elsie Woodcock, Alice Titus holding Lowaine, Gordon Titus, Grandpa Bowen holding ?, Uncle Elmer Sprague holding ?.
Judging from some installations at Grandpa's place and Uncle Elmer's place they were probably good farms and perhaps moderately prosperous. Uncle Elmer had a big hay barn on his place with stalls for dairy cattle. There was also the main house and a "tank house" plus the water pumping plant. Grandpa's place also had a similar water pumping plant. I will describe these plants later as I think they were very interesting and also puzzling to me.
Grandpa's place didn't have a tank house, because Grandpa used a windmill for domestic water with an attached water tank.
Grandpa's pumping plant, pumped into irrigation ditches directly. Most farmers in the region pumped water into reservoirs and then the water was channeled into the fields in ditches. I think that the difference may have been due to the type of farm Grandpa had. I believe that grandpa grew mostly barley and perhaps some wheat and those were dry land crops that depended upon rain rather than irrigation.
Tank houses were common in the area and they were wooden towers with a 500 to 1000 gallon water tank on the top floor. The tank houses were covered with wood siding just as the main dwelling house was. The ground floors of the tank houses were generally used as laundry rooms and sometimes as sleeping rooms. When they were used as sleeping rooms the lower siding was replaced with wire screen and thus cool evening breezes could flow through.
Water pumped into the elevated tank from the pumping plant supplied water to the main house and yard. This was an ideal system for the region. The water temperature from the well was about 56 degrees F. and was then contained in a covered and elevated tank so that the water didn't absorb as much heat as it would have otherwise. In the wintertime the water-containing tank allowed for the water expansion with freezing temperature and the arrangement was also slow to lose the daytime heat.
Temperature would sometimes fall to 28 degrees or so but seldom stayed that cold for very long.
The pumping plants consisted of a hand dug well perhaps 30 feet deep and perhaps 12 feet square with strait sides planked with wood planks. A centrifugal pump was placed at the bottom of the well over a cased well that was perhaps another 60 or 70 feet deep. Directly east of the well and at ground level the single cylinder stationary gasoline engine was placed and housed in a little shed. The engine supplied power to the centrifugal pump at the well via a rubber and fiber belt about 10 inches wide. The belt operated in a slot dug in the side of the well from the engine to the pump. The belt was twisted once in order to change the direction of rotation between the engine and the pump.
The single cylinder gasoline engine was larger than those we see today on oil well pumps in this part of Kansas and Oklahoma. I would guess that the cylinder bore may have been 8 to 10 inches in diameter and perhaps larger. The two flywheels were greater than 60 inches in diameter I am sure. The engine was cranked using one of the flywheels. The engine fired in the same manner as the present oil well engines. That is the engine fired intermittently and irregularly as was needed to maintain engine speed. Bang, chug, chug, chug, then bang and so forth.
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I found this engine picture on the internet. It is not the exact engine, but it resembles the pumping plant engine somewhat.
Even as a child the apparently higher cost of the engine and installation seemed out of proportion to the value of the farm. In my judgement now, I think that Grandpa, Uncle Elmer, and others in the region, may have been victimized by land developers. The picture that I've chosen doesn't quite help my arguement.
Those installations and so forth made me think that the farms had been moderately prosperous, but in my time they were in decline.
I can well remember Grandpa's last crop and it was a cotton crop. I believe that it was a dismal failure. When I asked Grandpa why he didn't grow more cotton he told me that the well went dry, which was true, but it was probably also true that Grandpa's place was not suited to cotton.
I don't think that it was very long after Dad and Mom built our house on land rented from Jim and Violet Howard that Grandpa's crop failed and he moved into the cook shack by our house.
I can't believe that anyone today would build a house on rented land.
I've mentioned before that Dad moved our house into Earlimart. I think it was about 1935. Mercedes hadn't yet started to school as I remember.
The process of moving the house went like this: Dad brought home several big bridge timbers that he had purchased from the county. Dad borrowed several railroad jacks from our good friend Bill Jones [Aunt Jones husband - more about them later]. From somewhere he got some house movers dollies, where I don't know. With the help of Grandpa, Uncle Mark, Uncle Elmer and me, Dad disconnected the plumbing to the house and using the railroad jacks under the house we raised the house high enough to slide the bridge timbers underneath the house. We didn't disconnect the electric service at this point because we were still living in the house. For a bathroom we used an outhouse.
After the timbers were in place, we placed jacks under the timbers so that we could raise the house and timbers high enough to put the mover's dollies under the timbers.
After the dollies were in place, Dad drove the Caterpillar 60 home. I assume that he had worked this out with the county, but I wouldn't bet on it. This was on a Saturday. Dad hooked the tractor to the dollies and he towed our house to our property in Earlimart.
We had a few adventures on the way. In some places we just barely cleared the power and phone lines. Crossing the Southern Pacific railroad tracks the weight of the house and tractor threw the railroad semaphore signals
Uncle Mark had previously poured a foundation for our house on our property. Dad maneuvered the house over the foundation and the jacking procedure was reversed until our house rested on its new foundation.
This is not quite the end of the story. Uncle Mark Bowen almost single handedly moved Grandpa's Cook Shack house in a similar manner into town and placed it next to ours.
Uncle Mark was living with Grandpa at the time. Uncle Mark, my mother's brother, was in my mind a mechanical genius and also a drunk. I'll have more to say about Uncle Mark later on.
Our house was a two-bedroom house, with kitchen, bath, dining room, living room and much later Dad built on another room over a partial basement. Our house had electric service, which was somewhat ahead of other rural homes in the area.
It was probably due to our location on the airport that we had electrical service.
Aunt Neva and Uncle Elmer didn't have electrical service at the time our house was built. The power supply line ended at the airport.
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Aunt Jack,Uncle Lincoln and Bernice.
Uncle Lincoln Titus was responsible for Aunt Neva and Uncle Elmer's getting electrical service.
Uncle Elmer had checked with the Southern California Edison Electric Company about extending the power line the ¼ mile from the airport to his house and he discovered that the cost to him would be prohibitive.
Uncle Lincoln was working at the time in Taft, California as a lineman for the General Petroleum Company so one weekend he loaded power poles on his company truck and drove to Earlimart. Uncle Lincoln, Dad, Uncle Elmer, and Grandpa erected a power line from the airport to Uncle Elmer's house. Uncle Elmer paid the G.P.Co. for the materials of course.
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Uncle Lincoln is in the driver's seat in the picture.
I can remember Uncle Lincoln climbing a power pole using climbers that he strapped to his legs while he strung the bare copper electric wire form pole to pole. To me that was a daring and marvelous thing.
It was not long after Grandpa moved into the cook shack and we were living in our new house that Dad built a combination garage, barn, and shop. It was not a very pretty structure, but it was very useful.
We kept one cow for milk and butter and so we needed to store hay for the cow as well as house the cow.
The garage was a place for our new Model A Ford Touring Car.
The shop was a place for a wood turning lathe and other tools that were needed.
By the way, the wood turning lathe had been constructed some time much earlier, by Dad.