The Branin Family

by Herman Branin

I was born in Hemet, California, June 19, 1921.  My brother was born in Everett, Washington in 1918 and I don’t know when my parents came to California.  The Warners and the McManigals were in Hemet at the time of my birth and I believe Herman and Johanna Johnson were in Hemet although they may have come at a later date.  Clarence Johnson lived on Whidbey Island, Washington.  He never married and would come to visit his parents once every two years.  Edgar Johnson lived in Everett, Washington and had one child, Richard, born in 1926.  The family came to visit in 1931 when I was ten years old and that was the only time I saw them until Ed and Dick came on a quick trip in 1939 or 1940.  The McManigals didn’t have any children so my only first cousin was Richard.

My growing up years, outside of my own family, were, therefore, spent with my four grandparents and the McManigals.  The McManigals both worked.  He was the Santa Fe station agent in Hemet and she was the clerk and telegrapher.  My brother and I could always count on a very nice gift from them on birthdays, Christmas and other special events.  I remember when my brother graduated from high school Pearl and Charles gave him a Remington electric razor which was a fairly new product.  I thought this was an outstanding gift and wondered if I would get one.  I did.  Up until the time my brother and I started spending so much time in the store they would be the ones to take us places such as Oceanside on Sundays during the hot summers.  They had a vacation cabin in the San Jacinto Mountains near Idyllwild and I made many trips there.  Pearl and Charles in the hot summers quite often drove there after work in order to get a cool place to sleep.  We were also always welcome at the depot and usually the conductor, Homer High, would put us in the combination chair car and baggage coach and we would ride to San Jacinto and back, a round trip of about seven miles.  When I was about five my brother and I were on one of these excursions and after a short stop on the route we started up and there were several explosions like gunfire.  Homer came rushing into the section where we were seated shouting that we were under attack.  My brother and I dove under the seats causing great merriment for Homer and the brakeman, Dunbar.  It was some time before I learned Homer had put torpedoes on the track.  All in all Pearl and Charles did a lot for my brother and me.  When I was about eleven years of age Uncle Charles took me on several deep-sea fishing trips out of Oceanside, San Clemente and San Diego.  After I left home I would usually visit them when I came to Hemet.  My father was living with and supported by them at that time and the four of us had a lot of wild 500 (not rummy) card games.

During my first seven or eight years Ed and Olive Warner probably gave more assistance to my mother than I realized at the time.  Olive had a shop on the east side of the theater and as mentioned in another story she either gave it to my mother or sold it very cheaply.  The Warners lived in the northwest section of the town and their house was only about three blocks from the business center.  They had two lots on Inez Street and a small house.  As I recall it had a living room, one bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom with only a tub and a basin.  A pit toilet was located in the southeast back corner of the lot the house was on.  There were two sleeping rooms on the other lot.  One had wood sides from the foundation up about three and one half feet all around and a very heavy canvas was stretched over the roof rafters and the side framing.  It didn’t have any windows.  When my father lived with his mother he usually had this building for his quarters.  It was probably about twelve feet by fourteen feet.  The other sleeping room was about eight feet by ten feet.  It had a concrete floor and a wood frame over which was stretched a lighter canvas than on the other room.  It was lighter and airier than the other building and my father sometimes slept here on hot summer nights.  I presume it was also used as guest quarters.  The Warners had a boy, Jesse Garcia, living with them for a few years prior to my knowing them and they may have put up the sleeping rooms at that time.  Also on the second lot was a large cat house.  The Warners always had angora cats and they had somewhat elaborate quarters.  The cat house was about six feet long, three feet wide and six feet tall.  A floor had been put in at the three-foot level so it could be used as separate quarters for two cats.  Each level had an enclosed box for sleeping.  The pen was enclosed with chicken wire.  My brother and I had a number of friends in the area and when we visited we usually spent a good deal of the day playing games in the street.  Olive didn’t like hot weather and in the summer she would go to Oceanside.  She first started by putting up a tent on the beach near the pier and using the public facilities nearby.  Then with help from her daughter and son-in-law she began renting near the beach which soon turned into a permanent year around home.  Ed would drive to Oceanside every Sunday to see her until he retired following my junior year in high school.  My father lived with his mother in Oceanside and I presume was supported by his sister.  When Ed retired my father returned to Hemet and began living with the McManigals in a room attached to the garage.  When I was maybe fourteen or fifteen Olive had a stroke and never got out of bed again although the doctor said she could get up any time she wanted to.  She also never spoke again.  Pearl hired a woman to take care of her until Olive’s death in 1943.  Ed took my mother, brother and me to San Diego once when I was quite young.  We went to the amusement center at Mission Beach and to the Navy Field at North Island.  As I remember he had to surrender his gun when we entered.  He always carried a gun in his car.  I presume this was from the days when he was the City Marshall in Hemet.  He took my brother and me to our first professional baseball game between the Los Angeles Angels and the Hollywood Stars who were both members of the old Pacific Coast League.  Also my brother or I could go to Oceanside with him on Sunday, depending on which of us was not working.  I last saw him in 1947 when Ted Smith and I were driving to San Diego State in my Model A open roadster and we got into a terrible rainstorm in Rainbow.  We stopped at his house in Oceanside to dry out before going on.  Since Olive moved to Oceanside permanently when I was about twelve years old I didn’t see too much of her from that time until her death.

The Branin family came to the United States from Ireland in 1707.  They settled in New Jersey east of Philadelphia.  Later generations gradually moved west and my grandfather, Ezra, and one of his brothers finally got to the West Coast.  Some time in the 1800’s Ezra and his brothers got involved with the railroads.  Ezra married Mary Olive Van Winkle who was Dutch.  They ended up being Station Agents on the Northern Pacific in Washington.  Ezra died in Washington in 1897 so I never knew this grandfather.  One of his brothers became a telegrapher sending news dispatches all over the country.  He was known as the fastest telegrapher in the West.  Some of the Branin family still lives in New Jersey.  I don’t have any information on Ed Warner except that he was the engineer on locomotives for the Great Northern Railway.  Olive taught both her children telegraphy.

I believe shortly before I started kindergarten my mother came home one afternoon packed our things in the car and drove over to her parent’s home with my brother and me.  This became my home until I went in the service.  The Johnsons had five acres with apricots, peaches, and walnuts.  The house was small.  You entered the front into a screened in porch which ran across the width of the living room.  From here you entered the living room.  It had one bedroom at the side of the living room, a kitchen behind the living room and a dining room beside the kitchen.  The bathroom was between the bedroom and the dining room.  The house also had a small back porch.  I believe originally the dining room was a bedroom.  When we moved in my mother, brother and I slept in the front bedroom and my grandparents set up a bed in the front porch.  They set up a canvas curtain around the bed.

The garage had a second floor and a stall across the back for a cow or horse.  Shortly after we moved in my grandfather built a lean-to about eight feet wide next to the garage so that our car would have some shelter.  The kitchen had a wood cook stove, an icebox and a small table where we ate breakfast.  We had a hot water tank in the bedroom closet.  The back end of the closet was close to the wood cook stove and the water pipe ran through the cook stove and heated the water.  My grandmother did have a piano.  There was no electricity so our lighting was from two kerosene lamps, one in the living room and one in the kitchen.  In the winter we set up a wood-heating stove in the living room.  They did not have a radio or washing machine.  Shortly after we moved in my grandfather built three large chicken coops over a period of two or three years and started keeping five hundred laying hens.  With the orchard, the chickens and the store we made a living.  When I was seven or eight years old we had the house wired.  Electric service was 100 yards away at the nearest cross street.  The electric company which also sold appliances had acquired a second hand electric cook stove and told my mother that if she would buy the stove they would bring the service to the house.  My grandmother didn’t want any part of it.  The old wood cook stove was what she was used to and she didn’t want anything else.  She agreed, however, in order to get the electric service and from then on we had both stoves in the kitchen.  My grandmother would sometimes use the electric stove on hot summer days but most of the time she used wood.  After the stove our first major purchase was an electric washing machine.  Prior to this my grandmother had a large copper kettle which she put on the kitchen stove on Monday morning, filled it with water and dirty clothes.  She had a stick that she poked at the clothes with to get them clean.  After she thought they were clean she moved the clothes to a large laundry tub on the back porch where they were rinsed.  She had a hand turned wringer attached to the laundry tub, which was a great aid.  After wringing the clothes they then went to the clothes-line.  On Tuesday they were ironed and in those days just about everything had to be ironed.  Prior to having electricity the irons were heated on the cook stove.  A handle was removable and could be moved from one iron to another.  The next acquisition was an electric refrigerator, which was nice but I was waiting for a radio.  I previously mentioned we had an icebox but this was only used in the summer months.  It was in the kitchen and was made of wood with a metal box to hold the ice.  The iceman came around twice a week.  We probably used it from May to October.  Most of the food was kept in an outdoor cooler.  This was a wood frame with four corner posts and the dimensions were three feet by three feet and five feet in height.  It had four or five shelves.  A fine wire mesh was put on the frame and this was covered with burlap and cotton sacks.  These sacks were dampened every day and the breeze blowing through this framework would keep the food quite cool.  This cooler was placed under a tree where it was always shaded in the hot weather.  Each leg was placed in a can filled with water so that the ants and other bugs could not get at the food.  This arrangement of course meant there were a lot of trips outside to either obtain or put away food.  The outside cooler was not used much after we acquired the fridge.

Pat Holmstrom was the local Dodge dealer and also had the sales agency for Philco radios.  He and his wife were great friends with my grandparents.  A couple of times when he visited I heard him talking to my grandfather about a radio.  My grandfather finally gave in and when I came home one day there was a radio on top of the record cabinet we had in the living room.  The Johnsons had always had a hand wind record player.  Most of the stations we got were out of Los Angeles.  KFI was the most powerful but we also had good reception for KNX, KHJ, KFWB, KMTR and KMPC which became a music and sports station.  We got KFSD out of San Diego and in the evening KOA Denver and a station in Salt Lake City.  In those days stations were only located in the larger cities and it wasn’t until the late 30’s and early 40’s that stations began opening up in the smaller communities.  My grandfather Warner had always had a radio in the store and the McManigals had one in their home so it wasn’t that I had been completely deprived.  When I was about eight years old I began listening every morning to a western show and got hooked on country that has lasted to this day.  By high school KMPC played a lot of big band music and most of our friends tuned it in.  Al Jarvis had a three or four hour show every afternoon except Sunday which he called “Make Believe Ballroom”.  That’s where the men’s expression “I’ve got on Al Jarvis shorts” came from.

When I was about ten years old we made a major change in the house.  We took off the back porch and put four rooms on the back of the house.  It was two stories.  My brother and I had a bedroom on the second floor, my mother had a bedroom on the second floor with a walk-in closet and dressing table and my grandparents had a bedroom on the first floor.  The other room on the first floor was for the washing machine, iron, laundry tubs and cellar door where we had access to where we kept the eggs until they were packed.  Across the back of this room we put a shower and bathroom.  It was all single wall construction and had no heat but it was a wonderful change from what we had before.  I believe the cost was $500.00.  We left the hot water heater where it was.  The front bedroom became a sewing room and guest bedroom.

I mentioned previously that my grandfather started raising chickens to add to the family income.  The chickens were mainly for egg production but there were also side benefits.  The raising of chickens also led to work for my brother and me, as we became older.  My brother was three years older and we didn’t start doing the same tasks at the same age.  If for example my brother was expected to be able to do a certain job at ten years of age I was expected to do the same job at seven years of age; therefore, I was introduced to work at quite a young age.  My grandfather would buy a thousand baby chicks each spring and this was before the time of sexed chickens.  We could expect an even number of females and males.  We were only interested in keeping the females.  After a few weeks they all had to be vaccinated for chicken pox.  At about seven years of age I had my first experience with this job.  My grandfather would do the vaccination.  My grandmother would hold the chickens that my brother and I would catch.  My brother and I would spread one wing while my grandfather would put the needle through the skin.  We would probably do the whole flock in a couple of evenings.  We would raise the roosters until they were fryer size and then they would be sold to a commercial butcher.  While we were waiting for the roosters to all get to fryer size we would have fried chicken three or four times a week which I never got tired of.  When the females got old enough to lay eggs they all had to be checked to see if they would be good layers.  This was done at night as the chickens were all on their roosts sleeping.  My brother and I caught the chickens and my grandfather checked them.  We also went through the whole flock at this time and culled out the older ones that had declined in egg production.  We seldom kept a chicken past its third year.  When the hatcheries learned how to tell the sex of a chicken from the egg my grandfather started buying only females and cut his purchase to five hundred a year.  Usually we would only have thirty to forty roosters out of this five hundred so my chicken dinners were reduced.

When I was fourteen years of age my grandfather fell from a ladder in the walnut grove and broke several ribs.  When this happened my brother and I started feeding the chickens in the morning.  My grandmother collected and processed the eggs and my brother and I cleaned one chicken house each Saturday morning.  My grandfather returned to his normal duties within a couple of months but he never cleaned the chicken houses again until I left home.

The only work I did with the peaches was to help burn the prunings.  When they were ripe a couple of brothers who had a fresh produce stand on Hwy 60 in Pomona would come and buy most of the crop and they would do the picking.

My grandfather did most of the work with the apricots, picking and pruning, but again I would help with burning the prunings.

The other job in the orchard that took a lot of labor was the walnuts.  The trees were large, thirty to thirty-five feet in height.  My grandfather had an extension ladder which went up to twenty feet and a pole of about twelve feet with a hook on the end to go over the tree limbs.  Grandfather shook the tree limbs, my brother and I gathered the nuts in buckets and dumped the nuts at the trunk of the tree.  All walnuts have a hull which covers the shell of the nut.  Using a special knife that was made to cut this hull my grandmother would sit by the hour hulling walnuts.  We had several hulling knives and when not picking up walnuts I would help hull.  The hulls would leave a stain on our hands and those of us that worked in the walnuts would go to school proudly showing our discolored fingers.  I started working with the walnuts when I was seven years old.  We would do most of the work on Saturday but I would also get in an hour after school during the week.  My grandfather would shake the trees for about one half day on Saturday and my brother and I would work industriously picking up because if we got done we could listen to the football game which came on at 2:00pm.  When the walnuts were hulled they were carried to the second story of the garage where they were spread out on the floor, as they had to dry for three or four weeks before being taken to market.  After the major part of the crop had been harvested I still had to go over the ground a couple of times a week and pick up the nuts that had fallen voluntarily.  These usually fell out of their hulls and we retained them for the next years baked goods.  The year my grandfather was injured we had to hire a man to finish the shaking and I did a lot more helping my grandmother hull, and getting the nuts ready for market.  By the time I was fourteen I would go to the store on Saturday and during the summer after finishing the chores at home.  Because of the store my brother was usually going there to work after school.  The chickens, walnuts and store were pretty much my working life from age seven to nineteen.  My grandfather passed away in 1943 when I was home on furlough from the service.  My grandmother passed away in January 1952.

My grandfather Johnson came to the United States from Sweden when he was four or five years old.  The family settled in Minnesota.  He met Johanna who was born in the U. S. also of Swedish parentage.  They had four children.  A daughter died as an infant.  My grandfather mainly supported the family by employment in the lumber mills.  When two boys went to Washington the parents and sister followed.  When my mother moved to California her parents followed.  My grandmother felt her daughter would need them.  My grandmother was an excellent cook, seamstress and housekeeper.  She had a piano so we sometimes had music but nothing modern.  My grandfather was quiet, seldom spoke to me, and was very even tempered.  I never heard him ever say a sharp word to his wife.  He liked to read.  About 9:00am every morning except Sunday my grandfather would drive into town and buy a five-cent cigar from Ed Warner.  He would pick up any items his wife needed and when he got home he would sit on a box in the back yard and smoke his cigar.

My father was almost a non-entity in my life.  I can’t remember him being around in my pre-school days and I believe my mother left him before I was five years of age.  My mother married him in Washington in 1916 or 1917.  My brother was born in Everett in 1918.  My father was trained as a telegrapher and usually worked nights.  At the time he came to Hemet there were no telegrapher jobs there.  Our first home after I was born was on Hamilton Street on the west side of Hemet.  This was a small house and I remember we cooked and heated with kerosene and I didn’t like the smell.  I still don’t.  The only work he did that I know of was as a night irrigator in the alfalfa fields.  Perhaps he did some odd jobs but I never heard of any.  This is probably why my mother went to work in her mother-in-law’s store.  I know he never worked as a telegrapher after coming to Hemet.

When I was four we moved to a five acre place with apricots at Yale and Crest Drive in Hemet.  My mother had apparently made enough to buy a 1924 or 1925 Overland so we had transportation.  I remember my first ride in the car.  My mother was driving, my father was in the front seat and my brother and I were in the back seat.  We drove through town and went west on Florida Avenue which was the main street and Hwy 74.  About a mile out of town we had to come to a stop, as there was a car across both lanes of traffic.  Apparently a man was teaching his wife to drive and they wanted to turn around.  Instead of driving to an intersection they were trying to turn on the narrow road.  Anyway when the woman was turning to face into town she didn’t straighten out and kept in her turn until she ran into the side of our car.  The man said he would pay for the damage and my mother obtained his address and where he worked.  The man didn’t answer the request to pay the damages so my mother wrote to his employer who owned a new car agency in Los Angeles.  The money was soon forthcoming.  To get back to our new home it was an unbelievable house to me.  It was two stories.  The bottom had a living room, dining room, kitchen, bath and bedroom.  The second floor had two bedrooms.  There was a large wood stove in the dining room for heat.  My brother and I and my mother slept in the bottom bedroom and my father had a room upstairs.  I was too young of course to realize what this kind of sleeping arrangement meant to a marriage.

One day my mother had gone to work and my brother to school.  My father was pruning the apricot trees.  The stove had had a fire in it in the morning, as it was rather cold.  I presume it was around noon when I became hungry and was getting cold.  I looked for my father but couldn’t find him.  His pruning ladder was outside the back door but he was nowhere about.  It had started raining during the morning so I thought he might have gone to his room but he wasn’t there.  I went out to the garage and he wasn’t there and I never did know where he went.  I found a box of raisins and started eating them but never got anything else until my mother came home.

Another incident was the one that probably ended the marriage.  One evening after dinner my mother was in the living room ironing and she and dad were having a frightful argument.  Suddenly my mother put down the iron and went into the kitchen.  She came out with a butcher knife in her hand.  My brother was out the back door like a shot and I was right behind him.  My father was behind me and we all ran around the chicken pen.  My mother quit chasing and went back in the house.  In a few minutes she came out and called to us to come in.  She had regained her composure and nothing further happened.  The next day she came home, packed up and we moved to the Johnson’s.  After I became of high school age I realized that we could never had bought that property and Warners must have financed at least the down payment.  My dad was totally incompetent to handle the orchard and soon left it and moved to the Warners’ home.  I never knew him to work again.  He was in his early forties at that time.  He lived with his mother until his stepfather returned and then he moved to his sister’s home.  In 1950 he became eligible for Old Age Security and this relieved the McManigals of support.  When the McManigals went to a board and care home he had to get independent living arrangements.  Pearl found a small apartment for him on State Street in Hemet where he survived on coffee and cigarettes.  In 1959 I received an urgent call from Pearl that I would have to do something as he was being evicted for setting fires in his unit.  I went to Hemet that afternoon and found that he would put a paper down on the stove and not remove it when he wanted to heat up a cup of coffee.  I went to see the local judge to find out the procedure for having the county institutionalize him on the basis of he was a danger to himself.  The judge told me he would make a call to the County Hospital in Riverside to let them know I was coming.  I picked up my father and turned him over to the hospital in Riverside.  In about two weeks there was a hearing and he was ordered to be placed in Patton State Hospital where he passed away in 1961.

My brother, Earl, was three years older than I was.  He was also small for his age.  When we were both twenty-one he may have gotten to five feet seven inches, while I never got past five feet five and one-half inches.  At our full growth he was twenty pounds heavier than I was.  He was dark like the Branins and I was fair like the Johnsons.  He became interested in sports at a very young age.  In 1926 I was five and my brother was eight and we listened to a World Series game on a Saturday in my grand-father’s store between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Philadelphia Athletics.  This was the first sports event I took an interest in.  From this time on sports became a big part of our lives.  Probably more so for my brother.  He didn’t do too well in school.  I believe it was the fourth grade that he was held back a year.  I believe the problem was that he didn’t concentrate rather than not having the ability.  On things he liked to do he did very well.  Our first play interest at an early age was toy cars about an inch long that you could get in the “Five and Dime” for ten cents.  We had a lot of them mainly provided by Pearl and Charles.  We would make roads all over the yard and it kept us busy for hours at a time.  As we grew older we started playing ball more in the back yard.  Once we put on a track meet in the orchard.  My brother and I spent a week in the evenings making ribbons.  We invited several boys over on Saturday and had a great time.  Anyone could participate in as many events as he wanted to.  We lived a little over one half mile from the hills south of our home and in the Fall, Winter and Spring boys would come out from town on non school days and we would run in the hills all day.  In the summer there was too much danger from rattlesnakes.  As we approached the age of thirteen more of our time was required in the store and recreational activities at home ended.  When we had a disagreement about something we would bet a can of dirt as to who was right.

As my brother had many friends two years older than he and I had friends two years younger than I was my circle of acquaintances ranged over an age group of eight to nine years and throughout my life many of these friendships continued.  I never remember a time when the older boys didn’t want me around.

As my brother got into high school he got involved as manager of the various sports teams.  By the time he was a junior he and Mart McCloy (who you will hear more about later) were picking all-star teams from schools making up the Riverside County League of which Hemet was a member.  These were usually published in the Hemet News and Riverside Enterprise.  My brother probably should have gone into journalism and become a sports writer because of his deep interest.  After graduating from high school Earl entered Riverside Junior College.  He had a lot of illness and difficulty with tonsillitis.  He finally quit school, had surgery and finished up the school year working in the store.  He and Mart McCloy spent a lot of time attending the high school athletic events to pick their all star teams.  The following September he entered Pasadena Junior College.  I think my mother felt he had too many acquaintances close to Riverside and also Pasadena had a good reputation for academics.  I entered my senior year in high school and was aware that I would probably not be going to college after graduation.  I was somewhat upset.  Earl completed two years at Pasadena and apparently did all right.  He joined the Navy before long and I later wondered if this was his means of getting out of the store.  Anyway it didn’t deter me from starting college in the fall of 1940. Earl found his niche in the navy as a medical corpsman.  He advanced to petty officer.  He married in 1943 to Gloria Donna Hurd who was the niece of a very good friend of ours.  He and Donna had five children, two boys and three girls.  The youngest girl, Linda, passed away in 1958 at age two.  Robert, Donna, Herman, and Marion are still living.  During his service years he left the Navy and went to the Army believing that he would take his family to wherever he was stationed.  He left the service after serving somewhere between fourteen and sixteen years.  He left his wife in 1957 and took up with Regina Leibach who he met in Pomona.  She was from Kansas City, Kansas.  He and Regina had four children all of whom were born in Kansas City, Missouri.  Earl’s main occupation after leaving the service until his retirement was working in civilian hospitals.  Although he came to California occasionally the latter four children all grew to adulthood in Kansas.  They were Kevin, Theresa, Timothy and Christopher.  All the children from both mothers grew up to be fine adults.  Earl died in November 1988 at Lawrence, Kansas.