Christmas 1936

Doris Wilson had graduated in May and was doing housework for Dr. and Mrs. Robert Osborn in Dexter, Iowa. Dale and Darlene were 15 years old and in 10th grade, Danny was 13, and Junior 11. The boys had been hunting with their dad, they wrote in letters to their older brothers who were in the Navy. 

Delbert (age 21), still on the crew of the USS Chicago based in Southern California, had been home on leave the month before. He and his uncle, Willis Goff, rode as far as Omaha with a friend, visiting his Goff uncles while he was there. Clarence Goff was in the heating and cooling business, with two more Goff brothers working for him, making 60 cents an hour.

Not everyone during the Great Depression was struggling. Clarence drove his nephew Delbert and brother Willis to Dexter. In Dexter, Willis boarded a bus to Detroit to pick up a new Chrysler Royal touring sedan. Before driving it back to California, he drove his sister Leora and Delbert to Guthrie Center, where Willis had graduated in 1923. They had lunch at the Parrish Cafe (owned by Leora’s aunt and her husband), and talked to a former Dexter coach at the high school.

While still on leave, Delbert wrote Donald about enjoying Iowa’s clear cool weather and watching the Armistice Day football game at Redfield. Brother Dale played most of the game and Delb reported he was good at blocking. Delbert had been hunting with his dad and younger brothers “down Bear Creek,” chasing a fox and shooting two of the five squirrels they brought home for supper. He was hoping for a good tracking snow since “the fox are thicker’n flies in a cow barn when you’re milkin’ by hand.”

Donald (age 20, still in the navy) had been selected for a naval Electrical Interior Communications course on the East Coast. When the class was over, Don borrowed money from Delbert to come home on leave in time for Christmas, but by then, Delbert was back aboard their ship. 

Clipping: The Sentinel, December 20, 1936–”Donald Wilson of Bellevue, D.C., came Sunday for a three week’s furlough from the navy in the parental Clabe Wilson home. When his vacation is completed he will go to the west coast, where he will again join his brother Delbert on the USS Chicago. Donald has been in the east for several months in school at Bellevue College, Washington, DC. “

You may find more Depression Era stories of the Wilson family in Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression.