BACK TO CALIFORNIA:
1929: THe BIG depression was just getting underway, and California beckoned once more, for whatever reasons I don't know, but I presume financial conditions seemed rosier inthe sunshine state. Picture this: A Model T Ford touring car, with side curtains, piled within a couple feet of the roof in the rear seat with blankets, clothes, and all possessions worth taking. Dad built a tall box with cupboard doors which was tied on tht driver's side of the fender and the dishes and cooking utensils were stashed in that. Jack and I took turns, one lying flat on top of the blankets, etc. in the back seat while the other sat in front with the folks. The trip took six days, and nights we stayed in cabins scattered along the way. I can recall narrow winding roads, some hugging the side of a mountain with sheer drops of thousands of feet on the cliff side, and sometimes long periods of time when we'd never see another human being. Finally, the day arrived when we drove into the driveway at my grandparents' property. They'd built a new house, so Mother's sister and her husband, Andy, plus their four year old son, Frank (or "Buster", as he was called) lived in the older house, next door. They all came bounding out the door to greet us, and Buster jumped up on the fender box, which promptly went crashing to the ground breaking a good portion of Mother's dishes. That calamity was soon forgotten, since it was just so great to be at the end of our journey.
First problem was to find a place to live, and that was accomplished in short order when some neighbors of the grandparents ofered to rent us their garage! It was a regulation-size double garage with partitions inside which didn't go all the way to the roof seperating the cooking, sleeping, and bath areas. We didn't stay in it very long, as Norma and Andy used our arrival as a convenient time to return to Los Angeles where Andy had a job as a street car conductor, so we moved into their house. That Fall I was in the third grade, and my teacher's name was Mrs. Brooks, whom I adored. Chino was a very pleasant little town, and we proceeded to grow and thrive on the friendly atmosphere. I neglected to mention that Dad found a job almost immediately after we arrived in Chino, at a meat processing plant between there and the nearby town of Ontario. He had been working there just one week when some federal inspectors arrived, and arrested everyone in the place. It seems they'd been processing meat that hadn't passed any inspection, but Dad hadn't been there long enough to know about it. Fortunately, the owner told the agents that Dad was innocent, so they let him go. Of course, that was short-lived job since the meat packing plant was closed forever. Soon after, Dad decided to into business for himself by buying into a meat market in Pomona, which took an over-abundant amount of courage, considering he didn't have much money, and markets were folding right and left in those early days of the depression. Come to think about it, he didn't have much to lose. However, that started a string of years when Jack and I saw very little of our father. He left for work before we were awake, and returned long after we were asleep. That was mostly seven days a week, as well, but living next door to our grandparents seemed to fill that gap somewhat. We lived in Chino for three years and I attended the third, fourth, and fifth grades there. I was completely unaware that millions of people all over the world were suffering as the result of that terrible depression. None of us had very much money, but I never saw any family actually go hungry, so I guess the best place to be in such a situation was a small town, surrounded by farms, where food is grown and dispersed locally. My grandfather always had a big garden and grew his own chickens. Gosh, how I'd run and hide when my grandmother went out the the chicken yard to round up a couple of chickens and proceed to wring their necks. Can remember sitting out in the back yard helping her pick off the feathers after she dunked them into a pail of boiling water.
About a block down the road from us some "rich people" lived, who had a swimming pool, which they generously invited the neighborhood children to share. All of us spent entire summers in that pool, and since it sported a wonderful slide at the deep end, most of the time was spent under water, and I can remember winding up one long summer with green hair. It remained green until it grew out enough to cut it all off, but I was hardly aware of it since I hadn't reached the age of caing about such minor details. I was not a child to play with dolls, or have tea parties, or even dress up in my mother's high heels, much to her regret. One Christmas, or I should say before Christmas, on one of our shopping trips to Ontario, and I remember it was in the Penney's store, I spied a baby doll that just enthralled me. However, the price was $5.00, far more expensive than I could hope would be spent on a present. However, just before we started home I saw Mother slip some money into Grandpa's hand and whisper something to him. Right then and there I knew I was going to get that doll, especially when he returned with just the right size box which let out a little cry when he tipped it while putting it in the trunk of the car. Well, I was truly thrilled to get that doll, but doubt if I played with it more than a half dozen times in all the years I had it. Mother used to take it out of it's little box once or twice a year to wash and iron it's clothes , and I s'pose try and inspire me to play with it, but I was always in the walnut orchard, across the street, climbing trees, or trying to join a boy's baseball team. It was great fun when "Buddy", our cousin fromSan Diego came, and "Buster", from Los Angeles, so I could tag along after Jack and the cousins. One day we were playing in the park, in downtown Chino, climbing on the slanted legs which held one of the swings. We'd climb to the top, then drop off. On one of my dropoffs my tongue must have been sticking out because I darn near bit it in two. As soon as I saw the blood I started howling, and the three boys started laughing, not realizing what a terrible would I'd suffered. I grabbed one corner of the hem of my coat and held it over the cut and ran the mile and a half home as fast as I could, knowing full well I would bleed to death before I got there! Well, the coat was a mess when I reached home, and when I was assured of living after a cold washclothe was put on the wound I finally relaxed. Sometime later the three boys arrived with a nice bouquet of flowers they'd picked on the way home in fields and people's yards, trying to show me how sorry they were abou laughing when I had such a life-threatening accident. Instead of smiling pitifull and accepting the flowers in the spirit in which they were proffered I threw them on the floor, stamped my foot and yelled them to leave me alone!

Soon after entering first grade we moved back to Centralia, where Dad had a job selling Essex cars. I vividly recall some events in that school. My teacher was very strict, ad one day I was talking when I was supposed to be listening so she marched down the aisle, yanked me out of my seat, turned me over the desk and spanked me. I was mortified, and terribly afraid that my parents would hear about it, so bribed my little best friend for weeks, until the same experience befell her on one of my luckier days. Needless to say, the lessons learned in that classroom were etched in my memory from that day to this.
The second grade found us "out in the country" where Dad was working in a slaughter house processing beef and pork. Jack and I were playing around near where Dad was killing hogs one day, when all of a sudden we heard a commotion and Dad yelling at us to get home right now. We ran out of the room where we'd been playing and just before I jumped into a pile of manure I could see out of the corner of my eye that Dad was crouched under the scraping table and a huge hog was on top of the table trying to get hold of any part of Dad that he could see poking out from under the table. We ran for home yelling at the top of our lungs, but before help could get back to Dad he'd managed to get hold of a big knife and slit the hog's throat, since the only rifle handy had been broken in two places by the hog when he stepped on it while he was circling that table in his frenzy of rage. Another time, one of the sows in the feeding pens, had given birth to a dozen pigs, but had killed all, but one, when my Dad found them, so he jumped into the pen and grabbed the remaining pig. He brought it home and we raised it in the house by feeding it with a baby bottle first, then scraps as time went on. When it grew too big to keep in the house Dad gave it to the yeast salesman, who called onthe small store next door, and became absolutely entranced with that pet pig. he promised over and over hat the pig would always be just a pet, and would never be eaten.
The two-room school house that Jack and I attended was certainly an unique experience, for sure. Our teacher's name was Katie Peters, and just the fact that I remember her name says a lot. There were five grades in her classroom. Jack sat in the first row, since he was in the first grade, and I sat in the second row as I was in the second grade. We had lots of spelling tests and if you received 50 perfect spelling tests you were invited to choose a book out of a large trunk she had, full of all kinds of books. Also, each time you received a 100% on the test you could go outside for thirty minutes and play on the swings. Spelling was always very easy for me, and I was always out there, all by myself, trying to convince myself I was having fun. That year I was awarded two books and the ones I chose was a music book and a small red New Testament, each inscribed as follows: Presented to La Verne Boone for fifty perfect spelling lessons by K Peters. My first awards duly noted.
Miss Peters had a habit of taking out her large black lunch box from her desk about thirty minutes before we got out for lunch, and she would proceed to eat with great relish in front of thirty starving pupils. One day, when she opened the lunch box, a rather large snake crawled out of it. I think it had been put in there by some of the older boys from the other classroom, because when the screams and yells brought them to our door the investigate some of them seemed to be trying to stifle grins.
I'll have to back up a bit for sometime in the preschool era, probably when I was about three, or thereabouts, we came to California for a short period of time. Dad brought my maternal grandfather to the Pomona-Chino area. He was seriously ill with asthma and his doctor advised him to get out of the rainy northwest. They decided to settle in Chino as my grandmother had a sister living nearby. Dad went back to Washington and gathered up his family to head south once more. We lived in Victorville, California during this time, where a friend obtained a job for Dad in the cement plant. Apparently that type of work didn't appeal, or perhaps Mother and Dad missed Washington, anyway, it was rather a short stint, and back the trekked. For awhile we lived in Chealis, then came the short move to Winlock, followed by another to Centralia, then, came the move outside of Chehalis where Jack and I attended the country schoolhouse. Is it any wonder that I have the sequence of jumping from place to place a bit out of order? From now on the old memory will be a bit sharper, I hope.

Another small recollection was a short period of time that my parents were in partnership with another man in a candy-making venture. Apparently Mother spent a lot of time helping in the production, since Jack and I played in the building, where the work was going on, a good deal of the time. I remember playing hide-and-sek amongst the barrels of chocolates, and when it was my turn to "seek" I found that if I was patient I'd discover where Jack was hiding by watching for a little hand reaching over the top of a barrel to sneak a chocolate. There was an empty building next doo which had an open connecting door to our building. The previous tenents had been a soda fountain, and possibly a drug store. Anyway, the fixtures were still in place at the soda fountain, and still contained various flavors of syrup, which Jack and I made good use of by concocting all sorts of drinks. Between that sweet syrup and all the candy consumed during those preschool days, is it any wonder that I wound up with thirteen fillings in my teeth at the age of seven?
Another event which sticks in my mind was something that happened when we were living in the two-story house , in Centralia, and this was the period when Dad was selling Essex cars. One night, after Jack and I had gone to bed, a friend of the folks showed up, very drunk, and he was seeing snakes crawling all over everything. He caused so much commotion that we awoke and stood at the top of the stairs to watch this unusually exciting "show". Mother was hurriedly trying to make a pot of coffee, and Dad was trying to calm the man down. At one point, the man grabbed a butcher knife and was going to chop the snake he thought was crawling on his leg, until Dad managed to pry it out of his hands. When the folks spied us taking all this in they ordered us back to bed, but we kept inching back down the stairs to watch. This went on for quite some time, then the man looked up at us and told us if we'd go back to bed he'd give us each a dollar. Well, that did it! We'd never had a whole dollar in our lives, so off we troted. Naturally, the man never remembered that he'd promised us a dolar, and I never forgot that promise unkept.

La Verne Estelle Boone was born in Chehalis, Washington on March 24, 1921, the first grandchild in the Martin and Margaret Boone branch of that family tree. Martin died some six or seven years previous, and Margaret had continued raising their eight children on the family ranch, on the cowlitz prarie, outside of Chehalis. Margaret was in attendance at the birth of her first grandchild to Harry Neal Boone, her third eldest son, and his wife, the former Gladys Winifred Roughton. The birth took place inthe apartment where they lived, and was attended by a midwife at 7:30 a.m. I'm told that Dad's seven brothers and sisters all arrived soon after to get a look at this latest red-headed addition to the Boone clan.
When I was a few months old the little family moved south to Hood River, Oregon where Dad purchased a filling station, since his greatest ambition was to be in business for himself. Unfortunately, that first winter it snowed so much that cars were useless for five months and five days. So much for the filling station business. Finances must have been very lean, since they couldn't afford to put a rug on the floor, so I never crawled. (I don't recall feeling deprived.) There was no such thing as welfare benefits, unemployment benefits, or whatever, in those "good old days", but all survived somehow.
When I was 16 months old, Jack Martin Boone arived to complete our family. With the addition of a boy, my Dad celebrated for days.
My first recollection was visits to the Boone ranch, where Jack was born, and my Uncle Dan and Aunt Pearl now lived. There was no electric lights and no running water, but no end of fun things for children. While the men would be milking cows, we could jump into the stacks of hay in the barn, feed the chickens, and gather eggs, watch baby chicks being hatched, or gather vegetables from the huge garden.
My next recollection was living in Winlock, and entering first grade there. Mother and Jack walked to school with me that first day, then Mother cried all the way home because her firstborn was starting school. (There was no kndergarten then) Jack cried also because he couldn't go to school too. They must have made quite a picture! A few years ago, when we visited up in Washington Walter and I drove into Winlock and I found the street that we lived on, but couldn't pick out the exact house.