In the early fifties we were fairly well established in my job with the Postal Service, our family was complete with identical twin sons and a beautiful little girl, Marlana Denise. As is evident in our family picture, taken in 1951, I was still in the process of trying to recover my health from the effects of my war experiences.
I am sure I mentioned this before, but I entered the Marines weighing 175 pounds and at one time before getting injured I weighed 180. Somewhere in the Pacific, in addition to getting injured twice, I contacted Dengue Fever, Malaria Fever and a couple of other fevers they didn’t have a name for. At any rate, in 28 days I went from almost 180 pounds to 135. I have always felt there were some other things at play in my system in order for me to lose that much weight in such a short time. At the time it didn’t matter much because, as the doctor told me, his job was to get me fit for combat, not to cure me.
I was discharged in 1946 still weighing in between 135 and 140. For years I was constantly dead on my feet and it was a constant struggle to stay awake when I sat down for five minutes. I have very few memories of ever feeling good until about 1967 or '68. To this day I have no idea what the problem was, except it seemed as the attacks of malaria became less severe I seemed to feel somewhat better. I gave up on doctors because they were just as confused as I was and so over the years I managed to overcome the problem. Today I have a little problem keeping the excess weight off. However, I don’t worry about a few extra pounds because I never ever want to feel the way I did for the first 20 years after the war.
My wife will tell you that I looked older at 25 than I do today at 76. I think that is a stretch but not much.
Shortly after I returned to the States after the Battle of Saipan-Tinian, Evelyn became pregnant and immediately developed some serious problems. Early in the pregnancy we discovered she was carrying twins and that there were problems. It wasn't so muich the babies as it was my wife. She was sick much of the time with numerous infections including Uremic Poisoning and severe anemia. Several times I was told by our Navy doctor that my wife had very little chance to carry the babies to term and, more importantly, that they had very little chance of surviving. On more than one occasion I had to have her rushed to the Naval Hospital where the doctors worked on her all night Each time she would come through with the help of some wonderful Navy doctors. I, for one, do not like to hear the Navy doctors critized because without them and the wonderful care they gave my wife we would not have had the twins.
The situation was very grave for us and knowing that in a few months I would have to return overseas for the invasion of Japan, which we all knew was coming, didn't help matters any. I couldn't imagine leaving my wife alone again, especailly if she lost the twins. It would be tough enough if they survived.
As I have recorded in earlier sections of the site, she survived and so did the twins, although they were over two months premature and looked terribly underdeveloped, which they were, of course.
In 1947 we started shopping for a small home we could aford to purchase and one located in a rural community with good schools and shopping areas. It wasn't our dream home exactly, but we found a two-bedroom with attached garage in a nice quiet neighborhood in the community of Lemon Grove amd made our first home purchase. We purchased the house in April and moved in in May,1947. The twins were almost two.
We felt quite proud at the time. We owned a 1938 Chevrolet, our own home was bought with no money down and $53.00 per month payments and I had regular employment. It was better than I expected, considering what we had during the worst part of the depression.
About this time my wife and I decided we needed a girl to round out our family and started making plans. As happens so often, the best laid plans have a way of not working out. Five years went by with no baby. It seemed we were not meant to have any more children, so we started saving our money to purchase a new car. It was to be our very first new automobile ever and we were happy that we could finally afford to buy one.
Again the best laid plans failed to work out. We had just gotten into the saving mode and Evelyn found out she was pregnant, so our plans were changed again. My wife was excited and happy and told the doctor she would only settle for a girl and wanted to have the test, which was very new at the time, to determine the sex of the baby. Of course the doctor advised her the test was only about 89% correct, so even though it showed she should deliver a girl, not to count on the test too much. She refused to even consider that the test could be wrong and told everyone she was going to have a baby girl.
Since we were not able to purchase a new car we did the next best thing and bought a used car, a 1941 Oldsmobile. When we were married we decided, if at all possible, we would visit our families each year and when the children came along it was even more important to insure they got to know their extended family.
With that in mind we gathered what money we could scrape together, packed our luggage and set off across country. It was now early November 1949
Our first stop was in Salt Lake City, Utah, where we visited one of my Marine friends, Glen E. Young, who shared many fox-holes with me during the war. He was also the one we named our twin, Ronald Glenn, after. There we spent a few nights with him and his mother, a wonderful woman who fell in love with the twins. She learned they loved to eat and she loved to cook so they also fell in love with her. When we left there the twins could not wear the new clothes we had purchased for the trip due to so much weight gain. Our next stop was Golden, Colorado, near Denver, where we visited Coila and Dale York additional friends from the Marine Corps days. He had worked for the Coors Brewery before the war and had returned to his old job. In addition to that he operated a Mink farm which turned out to be almost a full time job. I had noticed each time he went out to feed and attend the small little animals he always wore heavy duty leather gloves and wondered why. I soon found out when he asked me if would like to help with the feeding and cleaning of their pens. I do believe that beautiful little animal, pound for pound, is the meanest little critter in the world. They would bite through the heavy gloves and if you were not very careful, would take off a finger. I decided I didn't want a mink farm.
In Thorntown, Indiana we visited another Marine Corps buddy, Sgt. Lynn Putman and his wife Nova. He was the Company Sergeant and a great friend. He lived in a very large two-story home in the country and the kids really enjoyed all the room inside and out, where they had unlimited space to romp and play. About the second day there, my friend, who was very impulsive, decided on the spur of the moment that we should take a drive down through the Smoky Mountains where we would spend a couple of nights and then return home. I was somewhat concerned because it was now turning cold, my wife was pregnant and he wanted to drive his car, a French Renault, which was smaller than a Volkswagen.
We were all a little crazy, so off we went. How we managed to get six people in this tiny car, including my pregnant wife, I will never know. That was not even the worst part. My friend insisted on traveling in the back country to see the real beauty of the countryside. He was correct about the beautiful country, but on many occasions the road would simply disappear and turn into a cart path or cow trail. This was the infamous North Carolina Route 69. Several times we would come to a spot where the entire road was either washed out or there would be a giant hole in the middle. Fortunately, the car was so little we could pick it up and lift it around such obstacles. We were so far back in the hills that when we were able to find a gasoline station, the attendant who had never seen a contraption like the car we were driving, could never find the gas tank. In one instant, we found him putting gasoline in the cooling system radiator.
This turned into quite an adventure. We spent the night in Gatlinberg, Tennessee, in the Smokey Mountains. My wife, one twin and I were in one room, and Lynn Putman, Nova and the other twin stayed in an adjoining room. I don’t think anyone got any sleep because we were up all night, trying to either cool the room down or turn up the heat. It seemed to always be at one extreme or the other. The next day we discovered the temperature controls were cross wired. The control in our room affected the temperature in the Putmans' room, and their control affected our room.
The next day we headed back to Indiana, arriving late in the night. Actually, the trip had been quite wonderful. We enjoyed crossing the Cumberland River on an ancient ferry just above the Cumberland Falls, and got to be the first guests in the brand new camp grounds. The only trouble we had was with the tires on the Renault. They were two-ply tires and we suffered seven (7) flat tires during the trip. It was no fun changing and repairing tires in the cold weather of November in the Smokey Mountains. Arriving back in Thorntown safe and sound, we had a great laugh at our experiences and discovered we had driven 1,111 miles on roads that most likely don’t even exist today.
After another day we headed out on the next leg of our journey that would take us from Indiana through Missouri, Arkansas and into Texas where we would visit our relatives in Dallas. Nova wanted to visit her family in Paris, Texas, so she traveled with us and helped with the driving to that point. From that point on the trip was uneventful except for one incident. Somewhere in Missouri and in the middle of the night, Nova suddenly slammed on the brakes, tossing my wife, the twins and me all over the inside of the car to a rude awakening from a sound sleep. When I was finally awake enough to inquire what had happened, I noticed we were stopped in the middle of the highway and surrounded by a herd of horses. Where they came from and why they were in the road we never knew. She had driven through about 15 horses and managed to miss them all and that in itself was almost a miracle. After this little incident she lost the desire to drive any further so I took the wheel for the remainder of the trip. For the most part the rest of the trip to Texas was without incident.
Both Evelyn and I had relatives all over the state of Texas so the next several days were spent visiting with them. We broke these visits up somewhat with a side trip to Oklahoma where we visited our friends from San Diego, Jerry and Zella Holland, who had moved recently from San Diego. Jerry had been a Navy Chief when they lived in San Diego and had also been our neighbors. After a short visit with them we moved on to Muskogee Oklahoma and spent some time with more friends from oud days in the service, Goldie and Cliff Walden. Cliff had been in the Navy and was a very good friend and neighbor.
For the next few months, our time was taken up with making preparations for the new baby, Of course Evelyn, who was convinced it was to be a girl, bought all the neat little things a baby girl would need.
Well guess what!! She had a baby girl and was not surprised at all that she had been right all along. On May 8, 1950 Marlana Denise Duncan was born one week late. She weighed in at 9 pounds, 14 ounces and was 18 inches long. She was something else. She had no soft spot whatever in her head, was born with two fully developed front teeth and looked to be about two months old at birth.
She was a joy and pleasure and full of life. The first night home she slept through the night and continued to do so each night thereafter. She was a joy
and the twins thought we had her just for them. Our family was now complete.
As you can see they developed quite rapidly and soon were as normal and healthy as any child. We were well pleased and happy with our family. For the first couple of years after leaving the Marine Corps we lived in the same government housing we had occupied while in the service. It was very small and crowded with few conveniences and it became apparent we needed larger quarters.
We visited with the York's a few days while we toured the Denver area and then set off for out next stop which was Thorntown, Indiana..
From there we returned to Texas and completed our family visits after which we returned to San Diego.
The year 1950 meant the twins were entering Kindergarten and a new challenge was soon going to face us. The new challenge was the same as many others, money--money for school needs, new shoes once a month (they were hard on shoes) and clothes--six pairs of jeans each. For twins, everything purchased had to be doubled. There never seemed to be enough money, but somehow we always managed. Many people forget that the depression didn’t end with WWII, but continued for several years after the war. Although the salary was better than before the war, it was still very low. I remember my starting pay with the Post Office was 84 cents per hour, later to be raised to $1.04. My take-home pay was still less than 8 dollars per day and the cost of living far out stripped any pay increases.
Our grocery list always contained lots of hamburger meat, which was cheap at the time, beans and homemade bread. Our milkman called us the Duncan Dairy because we used twelve quarts of milk every other day. It was always necessary to shop for bargains and eating out was out of the question. Once in a while we splurged and bought six hamburgers for a dollar at Jack-in-the-Box. ( STOP) In 1950 war clouds started gathering over the world once again and it appeared the Nations of the world had not really learned anything from the horrors of Wprld War II. It wasn't long before the U.S. along with several other nations was once again mired in a seemingly endless bloody war with North Korea and China. About two or three weeks before the first Marine Detchments were deployed to Korea a good friend who was a member of the 11th Marine Reserrve Tank Battalion talked me into going down and enlisting in the Marine Reserve. I thought it might be a good idea because we could sure use the few extra dollars it would bring in and wouldn't take much of my time. However on the way down I started thinking about all the talk of war I had been hearing and I certainly wasn't in the mood for another war so by the time I arrived I had just about talked myself out of joining. After talking to the marine in charge I definitely didn't want to be in tanks so I said thanks but no thanks. About two weeks later the 11th Tank Bn. was shipping out and I was thankful I was not aboard.
CIVILIAN LIFE-PART FOUR
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