The Pittsburgh Press (January 8, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
ALBUQUERQUE – During these recent three months of vegetating I did manage to get in a couple of trips.
In September, on a whim, I flew with some friends out to Los Angeles, stayed four days, saw the “Ice Follies,” spent all my money, and had a wonderful time.
Then in November I took a flying trip to Washington to arrange for the winter’s Orient trip which never came off. Washington was hectic, and almost killed me.
On the way back west I stopped off in Indiana to see my Dad and Aunt Mary. My Aunt Mary cried and said she was so glad I came; she said she’d had a feeling that now since my mother was gone I would never come home again. I don’t know what made her think that.
My father is well, but he had a bitter year. His two remaining brothers died within a month of each other. It seems to him that he had more than his share in 1941. He feels the loneliness that comes of being the only one left.
But he is going on about his days, and he grieves only to himself.
Furthermore he has gained eight pounds. He now weighs 124, which is some 15 pounds more than his strapping son weighs.
My father kept putting off his big trip all summer, but he didn’t give it up. We discussed it at great length when I was home, and finally got it all arranged.
Dad’s, aunt’s trips planned
The plan was that in January (just about now) he would get on that airplane he’s wanted to ride on for so long, fly out here to Albuquerque, and then on to California. He thought he’d stay on the coast most of the winter, if he didn’t get too homesick.
We discussed Aunt Mary’s trip too. She sort of leaned toward staying at home this winter and taking her big trip next summer.
But then after I came on west she suddenly decided she’d go to Dallas, Tex., to send the winter with some friends. Aunt Mary has the air bug too, so she planned to fly from Chicago to Dallas.
I sent them air-line schedules, and everything was all set. They were already beginning to pack their things a month ahead of time, and then – came Pearl Harbor.
And before you could blink an eye the word came that they’d both called off their trips on account of the war, and were just going to stay at home. I’m damned if I don’t think they were both relieved.
There was great perturbation in our farm community when I was home, which was before we got into the war. It seems that some civic go-getters had got from the government a decision to build an immense $33,000,000 powder plant there on our arms.
When I was home, the government had not decided whether the plant should go north of Dana or south of Dana. That left everybody in a stew. People couldn’t talk about anything else. Rumors were thick and wild. Our neighbors said some of the older people were actually going crazy worrying about it.
Simple community seen doomed
For a great defense plant anywhere near us means the end of the close-knit, kindly, simple, honest community that I and my father and my grandfather knew in those fields and woods and houses of the Dana area.
It means that people like my father will have to sell and move off the land they have trod a lifetime; suddenly they will take up their things and go forth to they know not where; they will become refugees, bewildered and sad.
The government has now decided to build the plant north of Dana, which means that our own farm has escaped. But the community has not escaped. The whole country will be changed for miles around. Little Dana will suddenly become a boom town, roaring, crowded, strange, with a face and a manner that ill befits a Dana.
Strangers will open juke-joints; prices will skyrocket; elderly women in their cars will be afraid to venture into the thick new traffic; farmers for the first time in their lives will have to lock their houses against the 3000 “foreigners” who will swoop in and devour our community.
Our farm home, in the nearly 40 years of my memory, has never had a lock of any kind on it. I know of no house in our neighborhood that has a lock. But now the farmers will put locks on their houses and their cribs.
To me that one little gesture is the symbol of a tragedy – the planned and necessary execution of an old community.