4 destroyers lost, Japs say
Same total damaged and equal number of subs sunk or missing
…
The Pittsburgh Press (February 24, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
MENLO PARK, California – If there’s a family in America more thoroughly war-prepared than the Terramorses of Menlo Park, I’d hate to live with them.
The Terramorses are ready for fire, famine, dive bombers or tire thieves. They’ve got everything from water tanks on the roof to a new 30-30 rifle in the bedroom. It’s all wonderful and I admire it, so I’ll have to tell you about it.
Frank and Grace Terramorse live in a many-angled, highly comfortable one-story house they built with their own hands. It sits in one of these big California lots sometimes described as a “ranch,” behind a high hedge. It is a likable place.
Frank Terramorse is a traveling man. He covers all northern California in his car, selling heavy machinery to factories. I suppose the family is in what you would call the “middle income group,” though I’ve never known exactly what that was.
They have two cars, a 12-year-old son named Drew, and every comfort from a real fireplace to antique copper kettles on the shelf, but they are not flossy people. They still like to get up and have breakfast around the cookstove in the kitchen.
Frank Terramorse is “different” from other people. He is full of beans. He’s always thinking up something crazy. He says he’s the only salesman who has nerve enough to go around a mining camp in a derby hat. He gets a few laughs and plenty of orders.
And so we come up to the night after Pearl Harbor, when Salesman Frank Terramorse got to feeling “different” again. He was somewhere in northern California, listening to the radio about the blackouts and the expected Jap bombers, and he got worried about his family.
Begins work in a hurry
He stood it through Tuesday, and there were blackouts that night, too. On Wednesday morning he said, “To hell with the job. I’m going home.” And so he did.
Within two seconds after he stopped the car at home, the fur began to fly. In less than half a day he had bought plyboard and sawed it to fit every window in the house for blackout.
Next he built two ladders up the side of the house to the slanting shingle roof. From there he built stairsteps up the roof to the ridge, so you can walk right up.
Then he straddled the entire roofpeak – some 115 feet – with a catwalk about a foot and a half wide.
Then he got two 50-gallon oil drams, put one on each end of the roof, and filled them with water. On each one hangs a brand-new galvanized bucket. At three points on the catwalk stand large buckets of sand.
He solves attic problem
At each of two points there is tied a rope. If you follow this rope to the ground, you’ll find it attached to coils of hose, already screwed to faucets. Furthermore, a portable ladder is ready up there, to be hooked to the catwalk and let down over any part of the roof. Also, there’s a straight-bladed hoe for scraping off fire “leaflets,” if the Japs drop any.
But that isn’t all – oh, my, no. Mr. Terramorse’s greatest concern us that an incendiary will go through the roof and stop in the semi-attic, where it’d be harder to fight.
So – from the attic roof-pole hangs a 30-gallon drum of water. A special ladder leads to the attic. And in a few days the entire attic floor will be covered with an inch and a half of sand. And scattered all around will be tubs of sand, for throwing the bomb into.
Also, he has equipped two old chairs with asbestos shields, and put them on wheels. One of them will be up there in the attic, so that you can wheel right up to your incendiary behind this asbestos shield and deal it a death blow. In the shield he has inserted a glass plate out of an arc welder’s helmet, for seeing.
That still isn’t all. Outside the front door are huge sandbags, for throwing on bombs. And by the fireplace stand a new pick and ax. Tape is ready for taping the windows as soon as raiding becomes a probable thing.
Another 50-gallon drum of water stands on the garage roof. There is hose all over the place. There are three pumps in the house, in addition to the city water pressure. On tables lie booklets of bomb instruction, and boy, the folks have had to read them, too.
Mr. Terramorse did all this stuff so he could again set out on the road with some feeling of peace about his family. He has equipped Mrs. Terramorse and Drew with every known vehicle, device, precaution and arrangement the human mind could devise, and trained them to use it. So now if they don’t protect themselves probably disinherit them in disgust.
But did you think this was all? Why, we haven’t even got started yet. It’ll take all day tomorrow to tell the rest. My conclusion about Mr. Terramorse is that we should have had him at Pearl Harbor the last couple of years.