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The Cleveland family, circa 1919. |
Named, in part, for his grandfather Edgar Maximilian von Fingerlin Büsching, Edward was the eldest son of William Alfred Cleveland (nee: von Fingerlin) and Jeanette Krause. He was born 25 February 1907 in Trion, Chatooga County, Georgia and grew up in the southern United States: Hartselle AL, Florence AL, Corinth MS, Beaumont TX, San Marcos TX, San Diego CA, and Los Angeles CA. He retained a slight "southern accent" which I once acknowledged when US/Canadian border guards questioned my affected English accent. As proof of my US citizenship I offered, "My father is from Georgia and he says 'arnges'." (for oranges) In his youth he was called Eddie and then grew into Ed. His mother, who was Jewish and a recent immigrant from Bohemia spoke High German, and called him Knubluch, I think affectionately. For the duration of this account, I will call him Daddy, most affectionately. |
| Daddy liked to tell stories and everybody liked to listen. I took a few written notes along with the mental notes, but if anyone out there finds something here to refute or add to, please send your recollections along. One story took place in Alabama, when he was a boy and the family had gone for a drive in their friction-drive Metz, a rather skeletal automobile, I gathered. After some miles, someone finally noticed that Daddy's sister Katy (Katherine) was no longer with them. Apparently a bump in the road had bounced her out and they had to turn around and retrace their travels. Fortunately she had been taken in by a farmer and his wife and there was no serious injury and Daddy thought it was terribly amusing and if you had heard him tell it, you'd think so too. I think the question "Where's Katy?" always brought back an image of that incident to Daddy... As a boy in Mississippi, he cut his leg on barbed wire and the resulting infection turned into a condition he called "erysypalis" and he walked with a crutch for a year or so... As a boy in San Marcos TX (age 12) he quit school and worked in the drygoods store of a local character (This character appeared in Ripley's "Believe It Or Not" newspaper feature as a would-be politician who lost a great number of elections, yet was the mayor of a town that never existed. Daddy recalled seeing him give a stump speech in 1919, just after WWI, slandering Germans. Not realizing that his town had a large German-American population, the would-be politician watched his audience quickly disperse). It was for this employer that Daddy painted his first car, and my impression was that it was not at the employer's behest. In 1919 automobiles came in only 3 colors: black, brown, and Brewster green. So it was quite a surprise when Daddy painted the car red with a paint brush, and before the paint had dried, drove the car into town on a dirt road, arriving at the drygoods store, brush strokes, soil and insect texture, crimson and all. | |
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.. After his grandfather Edgar M von Fingerlin died in 1919, Daddy was sent to live with his grandmother Henrietta in San Diego CA. I believe he said they had an apartment at the corner of 4th Street and ? At the age of 15 or 16, in about 1923, he bought his first automobile in San Diego, a 1918 Maxwell touring car. He worked as a roustabout on the historic Miller and Lux Ranch just south of Gilroy, California in 1925 1926. Miller and Lux was a huge outfit of some 250,000 acres and Daddy said that at one time it contained so much land that cattle could be run from Canada to Mexico and the cowboys would sleep on their ranch land every night. Daddy's job as a roustabout included "riding fence," mending same, and slaughtering and butchering cattle... Also in the 1920's he rode his motorcycle up Highway 101 to Scotia CA, where he worked briefly for the Pacific Lumber mill until he sustained a hernia. Daddy enjoyed motorcycle dirt-biking with his pal George Truman (USAF Reserves Major George Truman also flew one of the first 2 planes - "City of the Angels" - of less than 100 hp around the world; the plane is currently suspended in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum)... My father and his brothers contributed a good deal of their paychecks to build the family home. To be specific, of his $23.47 per week paycheck, Daddy gave Grandpa $20 to help build their house at 367 Leslie Way in Highland Park... My cousin Linda told me that Daddy and Aunt Katherine (Linda's mother), being handsome young folk, would dress to the nines and frequent Hollywood nightclubs where they would be taken for movie stars. |
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1937. Halcyon days for Ed and Marie |
In 1937 Katherine worked with Marie Chapman in the cosmetics department of a drug store in Hollywood and thought she would introduce Marie to her brother Eddie. I guess it was magic. Looks like it, over there on the left. Although I heard that some of the dates consisted of the boys playing cards in one room, while the gals chit-chatted amongst themselves. They married on the 19th of June 1938, in Tijuana Mexico. Mom was 19 and Daddy, 30. I never heard that their age difference presented a problem, but Mom told me that when they were dating, she found out that Daddy had previously been married, and that fact split them up for a brief while... |
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1942. No Jane Marie yet. |
And
then there were 5: 1. Donna Lee: 22 Jul 1939 2. Edward Alfred: 11 Dec 1940 3. Jane Marie: 22 Aug 1945 |
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In the 1930's and 1940's Daddy worked at various automobile dealerships and repair/paint shops, mostly as a spray painter but also as the automobile painting manager at the Nuckles Bros Body Shop and at the Allen Gwyn (?) Cadillac-LaSalle dealership in Glendale CA. During World War II he painted camouflage on the roofs of aircraft factories and hangars in the Los Angeles area. In 1949, Mom and Daddy picked a major highway junction on a map, packed up the kids and moved north to Ukiah, Mendocino Co, CA, where they operated a produce stand and then the Forks Ranch Market 3 miles north of town, where hwy 101 intersected with hwy 20. There were 10-pound bags of oranges hanging from rough log columns out front, big tubs of watermelons, lots of olives and comic books, backlighted honey jars, and everything else a grocery store should have. The Forks consisted of a couple of gas stations, a couple of motels, a couple of cafes, a handful of residences and us, surrounded by Parducci vineyards. In the summer Mom and Donna operated the Orange Box, an orange juice stand with those colorful metal chairs shaped like upsidedown qustionmarks and green umbrella'd tables. Mom and Daddy worked 363.5 days a year, taking half a day off for Thanksgiving and all day Christmas. The hours were long too. They leased the store to Earl and Flora Lasater for 5 years and Daddy went to work for the Cadillac dealership in town, while Mom worked at the Palace Dress Shop. In 1962 we moved 14 miles north to 160 acres in Redwood Valley where we were surrounded by wooded hills, and the occasional bear and mountain lion. After selling the market in the mid 1960's, Daddy hauled produce from the South San Francisco wholesale market to independent grocers in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties. Then there was a period of time that resembled retirement: Lots of cutting of firewood, gardening, manicuring the forest and upkeep, upkeep, upkeep. Ed was 5 feet 10 inches tall, had dark
brown eyes and wavy hair. He resembled "Tennessee"
Ernie Ford and some acquaintances would call him "Ern."
He had a dancing girl tattooed on his arm and he was missing
a finger from a tire explosion in the 1950's. His blood pressure
was so low it made his doctors nervous. He was mostly very easy-going
but he also had a fearsome growl. He acknowledged reading only
3 books in his lifetime; one was a biography of Mohammed Ali;
another a biography of Henry Ford. He was well-loved by friends
and family, and had a knack for bestowing nicknames like Thube,
Tooker, Termite, White Stuff, Skeeter, Mouse, Thermos Jug, Double
Ugly, Johannesburg, Pieta Creek (he pronounced it pie-eat-ee
creek), Myrtle Creek, Bear, Icherpots, Marcowitz, Booger Red,
Guerlitz, Stick Willy, Patuschka, Possum, Poopdeck, Heidi Doody,
Yoyo, Rickety Rack, et al. His language was also laced with his
Jewish mother's German, a little Spanish and an occasional list
of Chinese vegetables. The word schmutz got tossed around
a lot; the kids were accused of schmeikeling to gain favors;
and we were often told to get off our touchases. When
he would let out a sigh it would come out as "Oh, lonesome
me!" (from the 1958 Don Gibson song title) and when he bade
you farewell, it might be "Take it easy, take it light,
Regal Pale" (from the advertising slogan of Regal Pale beer).
Other words and phrases that he coined or adopted include: His sister Katherine had just died from a heart pacemaker failure when Daddy was stricken by a stroke in November 1989. His speech and mobility were affected but he was able to break even with me in games of dominoes. When he died on 25 March 1992, he went out with a good many more pinnochle wins than losses. |
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