Samuel D. Rose - Life afterwards

I got home about midnight and went to the back door and knocked and hollered for the folks but no answer. My brother Charles lived across the road and down a little. He and Margaret heard me and came running over in their night clothes to tell me Mom and Dad sold the place and the man who owned it was in L.A. We sat up talking and drinking coffee the rest of the night. After sunup they took me to Dads ranch out at Taurusa where we ate and talked some more. I had 60 days leave so I went to Seattle and got Ruth Sullivan and we were married in Visalia on the 5th of July 1945 with a lot of help of friends especially the Brandts who acted as Ruth’s parents and Grandpa Riggs who gave her away. I had to report in at Santa Monica the 12th of Aug. The army had taken over the Del Mar Club and the Edgewater Hotel for processing POWs. We stayed in the Del Mar on the beach and about three blocks from Aunt Naomi's house on the beach. Jim Goff got married a week after we did and came to Santa Monica too, he had a car, we polled our gas stamps and drove his car.

While at Santa Monica I bought a 38 Plymouth coupe for $850. The 31st of Aug. we had to get out of the Del Mar Club and go to Fort MacArthur in San Pedro for final disposition. I called the mother of an army friend, I went to visit a few times when stationed at Victorville. She lived in San Pedro with her daughter and had room for Ruth and I.

Mrs. Polemus and her daughter Caroline were Edward Polemus family whom I got well acquainted with in June and July 1942. We stayed there about a week and then got orders cutting me loose and I went. I had two months and sixteen days leave time built up so my discharge from active duty didn't come until the second of Dec. 1945. In the meantime Ruth and I went to Williams Arizona to see and help my Uncle Luther on a cattle ranch he was foreman of. On the way our car got a leak in the radiator so we stopped at every water hole. At one station we paid ten cents a gal for water. About dark we passed Needles and ran out of water so I went to the river and found a can and filled the radiator. The next time it ran out we were outside of the town of Oatman so we stopped and ate some oranges we had bought for supper and had no way to wash our sticky hands. We threw a blanket on the ground and lay down to sleep we thought all
by ourselves but all night trucks and cars kept stopping. Before sunup we got
up and had neighbors all around us. We eased into town and a station for water.

We got an extra can and took with us. We got to Williams and asked for Slim Kite and the way to the Bar Heart Ranch. The ranch started at main street and went South for several miles. The ranch house was ten miles south but Slim wouldn't be back for a few days so we went on out and made ourselves at home. Slim came in later and knew we were there because he stopped in town and information was passed around freely there. My little brother Findley was working for Slim and they came in together.

We stayed about six weeks and helped with the fall Round Up and pushed the cows on south to the winter ranch. After that Findley didn't have anything to do so he came back to California with Ruth and I.

Before we got to the California check station we stopped and picked up a young couple with a flat tire. We got the wheel and tire in the back of our coupe, the couple in the seat by Ruth and me and put all six feet two inches of Findley up behind the seat. When we stopped at the check in station they couldn't believe all that came out of that front seat. We stayed a few days with the folks in Taurusa and then went to Seattle for a year and stayed with Ruth's folks, because places to live in were none existent. Terry was born there after which we bought a place in Taurusa and moved back to Calif. when Terry was six weeks old. We farmed and carpentered there for seventeen years then swapped the ranch for an office building on main street Visalia. Jack was born six years after Terry, in Exeter, California. I stayed in the Air Force Reserve for a little over twenty years. Retired 30 June 64 and started getting a small retirement payment 7 May 1980. It turned out to be 1/2 my social security pay so at age 62 I started to get the rest of it.

While in the reserve we trained in the old Farm bureau building in Visalia and up stairs in the Odd Fellow Hall. Later we went to the old Fresno Air Port to train. We took two week active duty training in the summers at Long Beach or Sacramento. I always took the family with me and called it a vacation.