This past week we had a very pleasurable time presenting a program to 100 students from Anderson New Technology High School who are studying World War II. Jeff Carr and Ron Zimmerman’s classes were so very well-behaved and it was such a pleasure to present a program to the students and show them our exhibits. We all should be very pleased and honored to have such fine young men and women attending New Tech.

One of our main concerns was how to accommodate so many visitors, but it worked out fine. Our president, Jack Faulkenbury, is very knowledgeable about our exhibits (especially our military exhibit), so he led the students on a tour of our Museum. Marie Carr Fitzgerald and I spoke about the effects the War had on our small community. I covered impacts on business and she covered rationing and the effects the shortages during the war had on the community and people’s lives.

We had very few businesses, outside of general merchandise, and gas stations (which also sold tires and oil if they could be obtained). There was a number of grocery and meat markets, general merchandise stores, one hardware store and many restaurants. Anderson then also counted one hotel, some barber shops, Moltzers plumbing, a drug store which also had a great ice cream fountain, a couple of medical doctors, the Diamond Match Lumber Company, Anderson-Cottonwood Irrigation District Office and a number of bars and pool halls. In previous articles many of these have been named.

The ranchers and farmers from outside of our town area were the main supporters of all the businesses. We did have the Tomales Bay Cheese Factory from 1938 to 1944 where the farmers brought their milk to be processed for Monterey cheese. They had a cold room were they left the cheese to ripen. Many farmers used the whey that was produced from the milk to feed their hogs, which in turn were sold at the Farm Bureau hog sale at the Fairgrounds. Many of the hogs were driven down to the sale from as far away as the Inwood and Shingletown areas. In 1944, Carnation Milk Company purchased the cheese factory and continued to purchase the farmers’ milk.

Animals, fruit, nuts, olives, and other produce were raised by people in the Olinda-Happy Valley and Balls Ferry area and shipped by train to areas outside of Anderson. The Southern Pacific Depot was still in existence and stopped for passengers twice a day here and the express mail train would grab the mail sacks from an arm on a metal pole that extended next to the tracks as it sped through town. During the war many troop trains would be stopped on the rail siding across the highway from our grammar school where kids would visit with them through the fences. Long lines of troop convoys in trucks would pass through Anderson also.

The Air Force training base was across the river at the location of Redding Airport, where they trained fighter pilots. They even had a bombing range. The pilots would fly up and down the river to learn hedge hopping and loved to buzz the farmers has they were in their ladders picking fruit, pruning trees or working in their fields. Some of the men who were stationed there assisted the farmers in harvesting their crops. Our local ladies from the Olinda area was manned the airplane observation station.

So many men where gone from the area during harvest season that the schools would let the students out to help the women harvest the crops.

Many items such as oil, gas, shoes, sugar and tires where rationed. Silk stockings were collected for use in parachutes and scrap iron was collected by the truckload for the war effort. The women prepared bandages and other items to be shipped to the service men.

Life went on, but we only received minimal information about the war from the radio broadcasts and newspapers.

We do invite you to visit our free Anderson-Historical Society and Museum at 2330 Ferry St. and view our military exhibit and other new exhibits.

I very much surprised at how few of the students realized we have a museum in our community with a large library of family histories, historical maps and information of the South County dishes of the past, Indian artifacts and many research articles and maps. We are open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.