The Paul Speer I Remember

by Darleen Speer

My Dad, Paul Speer Senior, loved to tell stories. He would tell me the same ones, over and over. When I'd say "Pop, you've told me this one before", he'd say "Yeh, well this time I'm going to tell it a little different!" (So this time pay attention, in other words) It of course would be the same. Even the whoppers he would tell would be the same each time. It was hard to tell, sometimes, which stories were really true, and which were the whoppers- the funny part was the more out-landish the story, the more likely it was to be true. Looking back now, I believe Pop kept telling me those stories, over and over, so I'd be able to remember them! I, unfortunately, waited until I am fairly old to write them down, but here they are Dad, I'll do my best to remember them right, so your great-great-grandchildren can know you too!

One of my favorites, was when he was twenty-two years old, and a "Cab" driver, here in Santa Rosa. You could go anywhere in Santa Rosa for a quarter. The cabs would "jockey"for position by the square at the railroad station. One time during prohibition, Dad had a little trouble. Not that he had clean hands, mind you. In fact he had told me many times about the "terrible tasting bathtub gin" that he actually made in the bathtub-only place big enough, that's why it was really made in the tub, and called "bathtub gin". Usually when a customer wanted a little drink, all they had to do, was ask a cab driver. For the 25 cent fee,plus cost, they would go and get it for you. Dad said that the"going rate" was $1 a bottle, for wine and $1.25 for the hard stuff. He said they would go out to Occidental, once a week, and get a couple gallon jugs of wine from the Italian's for $2 or $3 a gallon, which made a tidy little profit, especially when you watered it down into 5 quarts!

I have to admit, Dad said that somebody did tip him off earlier in the week, that there were "revenuer's"in town and he believed that some of his competetion tiurned them on to him. He had these two guys offer him $2 for a bottle of "tea". Now as you can see, this was way above the going rate. So that would have alerted him all by itself, and did. So, anyway he left, came back with this bottle and they gave him the two dollars, and then tried to arrest him. He goes,"What are you arresting me for?" They said for selling them alcohol, and he said "What alcohol, you offered me $2 for a bottle of tea, and that's what you got!" They tasted it, sure enough, it was tea, boy were they mad-not only did they miss an arrest, they were out $2, for a lousy bottle of tea! But the incident made his name among the other cabbies, don't mess with Speer.

My all-time favorite story, is about the trouble in third grade, when they were living in Lake County. He could buy pencils for 5 cents each or three for a dime. He would sell chances to the other kids for a penny a piece and raffle them off every five chances. So for every two he raffled off, he got one free, because he'd buy in bulk, three for a dime. Some of the boys, who never won, got angry when they realized they'd spent enough money to buy several pencils, and had nothing to show for it, so they told the teacher, teacher told the principal, and he had Grandma and Grandpa both down at the office to hear about it.

Now Grandpa, James Speer Sr., was strict, and you would get a good licking out in the woodshed with his belt, for whatever trouble you had caused, so Daddy knew he was in for it. But he never got a licking, he never even got told what a "bad" boy he had been. Grandfather did not do or say anything about it at all, and that's when Dad realized, Grandpa was actually proud of him!

I guess this is what started him on his sidelines, besides his "real" business, he had "punchboards" and "one-armed bandits". He used to tell about how they would call him to alert him of a raid, and then he would have to run down to the Forestville Club and get his machines out before the raid! He said he made more money on his machines than the competetion because he had his rigged to pay a high percentage back, so people played his machines more, because they were "lucky".

I guess someplace here, I need to start at the begining. Okay. My father was born Paul Tainter Speer, on the 19th of April, 1909, at the home ranch, in Forestville. He was the first of the family to be born in California. It's really a wonder it didn't kill poor little Gramma, trying to have him. He weighed 13 pounds at birth, because he had been in the "hanger" for ten full months!

Gramma was a tiny woman, she probably only topped 100 pounds when pregnant! She told the doctor that every night when she would lay down to sleep, she would have labor pains, but the baby never came. That had been going on every evening for a month! So the doctor decided to spend the night at their house, and said to wake him when the pains were strong.

Turned out, the baby was so big, his head would get stuck on her pelvic bone, and she couldn't deliever him-but with the doctor's help and a huge pair of forceps, they managed! They said he had those forcep marks on his head until he was two years old!

Apparently he didn't get named right away. In those days you didn't have anyone "hounding" you to fill out a birth certificate. In fact they never bothered, although everyone was "suppose" to. Father had to take his mother down to city hall to do it in 1935, when he was 26 years old. I knew something was amiss when the 1910 census listed him as "Baby" Speer, and he was 15 months old!

When he finially was named, they named him after a friend of theirs they had made in San Francisco, Mr. Tainter, I think his first name was Paul, also. This is the same friend who later talked them into buying the ranch up in Lake County where they lived while James Jr. went to High School.

San Framcisco is where they were living when my father "ran away from home". He was two years old.

The lady that found him took his picture, which we have, and he doesn't look too happy in it. I remember his telling me some of his earliest memories were hiding behind the broom when there was company or closing his eyes and believing "they" couldn't see him that way.

One thing that my father could never seem to do, was face someone who was mad at him. When he was dating Iris, she was coming over and was going to be really mad at him for something he had done, or more likely, had forgotten to do.

When she came over, he hid in the feedbox in the barn, and Uncle Jim had to come out of the house to talk to her. They talked and talked, which was unusual for shy Uncle Jim, but he knew how uncomfortable his brother, no doubt, was in that feed box, and he was enjoying it immencely! Well, Iris enjoyed it too, even though she didn't know that Paul was only a few feet away.

Paul thought he would never get to get out of that feedbox. When he finally did, Iris had decided that Jim was the one for her, and the rest is history.

The first Mrs. Paul Speer was a friend of Iris's named Vernice. My Aunt Bertha told me that Vernice was a real "bitch", and mean to boot! When she and Dad were living in the house behind the gas station,(later to be known as Speer's Market) she had been complaining about needing a new dress for Easter. Bertha brought over a dress that Grandma had just finished for her. Well, she got really mad that she wasn't going to get "store bought" clothes! She grabbed the dress from Bertha, and threw it in the fire claiming she "wouldn't be caught dead in it!"

As you might imagine, that marriage didn't last long! Dad always use to say, "I married her because I thought I 'had' to, and I divorced her because I had to stand in line!" He told me that he took her out for a drive the day the divorce was going to be final, so she couldn't go to court to stop the divorce.

The second Mrs. Paul Speer, was my Mom, and they met in beautiful, downtown Forestville. Dad had just finished working at Speer's gas station, and had come to town to eat at the "greasy spoon". But he had to cook his own hamburger, as the regular cook had just quit for the evening, to get ready for the big dance. So he was wearing an apron and standing in the doorway when she slid in under his arm and ordered a soda from him- thinking of course that he worked there, because of the apron.

Paul Speer always had a devilish sense of humor, so of cource he played along and fixed her soda. Since people naturally talk to the "counterman" , he found out she was divorced and was there with two other couples from San Francisco, who were going to the dance that night, on the "springfloor" on the second story of the Odd Fellows Hall.

As soon as she left, he dashed right home, bathed and threw on his Sunday best, and boggied on down to the dance. He found someone who could properly "introduce" them, they had a good laugh over her thinking he was the cook. Mom was quite flattered, they danced together all night, and he danced his way right into her heart, and she his.

They married on the 22 December, 1934, and lived first in a little house at 767 Beaver Street in Santa Rosa, which just happens to be the backside of the block I live on now. When their first child, Dawn, was born, they lived in Healdsburg. Sadly, Dawn only lived to be a few days old.  They also lived in Rio Nido, while running the store there.

Mom said that Dad, when he slept, would often get quite violent, sometimes slamming her against the wall in his sleep. He was pure nervous energy, and he also smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day at this point, sometimes having more than one lit at a time. I love the story of how he quit.

He had to help two guys move a stove in Rio Nido, which took several hours. He had run out of smokes but couldn't "bum" one because neither of the other guys smoked. So he had to go without. When he got another pack, he ripped it open, was just about to light the first one, and he thought to himself-I've gone for two hours without a cigarette, can I go another five minutes? Everytime he wanted a cigarette, he would tell himself-- five more minutes. Finally after a year, he quit carrying the pack in his pocket. But if you asked him if he'd quit, he say no, he was just waiting another five minutes.

They lived in Hollydale,Feb.3,1940, when my brother, Paul Jr., was born. My half sister B, mother's from her first marriage, got to live with them then, and go to Analy, which is where Dad had gone to high school, and
Paul and I would go later.

He had ridden the electric train to Analy High School from Forestville, and he broke the records in the high jump. He never finished High School, but he went on to business college. But while he was still in High School, riding the train, he had this interesting experience. There was this young man, who was in a math class at the business school who couldn't solve this math problem, he explained the problem to Dad and Dad solved it.

Several years later, when Dad was in Business College, he had the same problem in math class. The next day, the teacher was amazed that he had gotten that problem right. The teacher said that only one student had ever gotten it right, and he'd admitted some kid on the train told him the answer!

Daddy was never more proud of me, than when he gave me that same math question, and I too got it right. He, of course, could remember it exactly, because he had a photographic memory. He said, to his knowledge, we were the only ones who had ever solved it!

When I was born, in 1941, we lived in Santa Rosa on South Davis Street. About this time Father was bedridden with TB. He ran his business the best he could from bed, he put away every cent he could save into war bonds. Mom went to work and B took care of us after school. I have a couple of memories from there even though we moved to Spring Street when I was Two. One was learning to climb the steps inside by myself, and the other was going to the park with Paul &B.

Dad had a sadistic sense of humor sometimes. I remember on Spring Street when he was in bed, telling me to stick the hairpin in the electric plug. What a jolt I got. He laughed so hard. He use to drag us kids around by our feet on the rug until our elbows would bleed from rugburn. Mom used to say that he didn't know how to show love any other way. Loving Dad hurt, but oh how we loved him!

When I was four or five years old, we got the boat that we kept at Tomales Bay. Dad just loved that boat. We would go down to Marshal, where it was docked, usually Dad would go out by himself, to fish. Paul and I would usually stay on shore and catch crabs, or perch fish from the dock, or just run around on the beach while Mom dug for clams.

Dad used to say that fishing was the only way he could get his mind off of business and relax. He would talk to himself (out loud) whenever he was driving. It was very dis-concerting. We went on the boat too, sometimes. I think that the chances are hot that we made too much noise to go on the boat regularly.

I remember fishing up the coast with Daddy. This one time in particular, I kept stepping on twigs that would loudly break, he kept saying if I couldn't be quieter then he would never take me fishing again. He renigged on that though, he took me fishing again, twice, but that was about twenty years later.

The movies were the same way. He took me to see Peter Pan, of course I had to earn going, by memorizing all the states and their capitals. He told me I was being too noisey and I was never going to the movies with him again if I didn't be more quiet! I was too noisy, but he took me once more, about 15 years later.

One of my favorite things would be when Mom dropped us off at Daddy's "shop" while she shopped. Dad's business was pinball machines and jukeboxes that he ran in bars and resturants. Later on he had the small bumper pool tables too. He would have us pick which pinball machine we wanted to play, my favorite was the bingo game ones, and then he would rack up 300 games for us to play-is it any wonder I'm a game- addict today?

His business use to "pay off" on the pinball games, which of course was illegal. I remember the headlines one year in the mid fifties, they bull-dozed under Dad's machines-showed a picture and everything, on the front page of the paper!

He had some income tax problems after that too . I remember about 1958, he had to hock everything he owned to pay the back taxes the government had hit him for, which was several hundred thousand dollars. But he had all his properties paid off again with-in five years. I remember how angry he'd been because the banks would only loan half of what he had paid for property, rather than half of what it was worth. Let's face it, his property was usually worth at least twice what he paid for it, often more, because he had bought it years before. He had the creedo that if you couldn't pay cash for it, you couldn't afford it.

The most impressive thing about him, to me, was his mind, and how it worked. He was an highly intelligent, self-made man, whose main two enjoyments were, fishing and making money. His other passion was to fight city hall and win. He liked to buck the establishment, he literly fought "city hall", and he often won. It got to be almost a joke, they groaned when they saw him coming.

Even tho' he had not finished High School, he did business College, and he really believed in higher education. He became an avid reader, besides reading the Wall street journal, relegiously, he started collecting, and reading, history books and journals of the settling of the west, the Civil War era, and whatever interested him. His library became extensive.

He added to it by buying alot of "estates". When someone dies, often their heirs either didn't want the things, or just would rather have the money. So the estate would be auctioned off. Dad would make an offer on everything, if there was just one thing he wanted, he would listen to people before the auction, to see what they were interested in, then after he bought "everything" for a lump sum, he would offer out pieces to whoever wanted perticular items, usually ending up selling off enough of it to pay for the whole, leaving himself with the items that he wanted for free, and leftovers would just go into his friend Tony's 2nd hand-store to sell.

During the last years, Tony's store was in Dad's shop. Some of his antiques he also acquired that way, the dinning room set I had in Forestville, for instance. But most came from the Antique store that he had set up his girlfriend, Hazel, in.

Hazel was Dad's girlfriend for close to thirty years. We didn't know about her, he never let that part of his life affect Mom or us kids in any way. He never let me meet Hazel until a year or more after Mom's death.

Hazel told me years later, after he had died, that it was actually my Grandmother's fault. She claimed that when I was about 2 years old, my Grandmother told my father that he wasn't to have sex with my mother anymore--that Mom was afraid to talk to him herself, but that she didn't really like it anyway, and that she was too old to be having anymore children, it was libal to kill her if she had more after 40. And that was that.

I know my folks had separate beds when we moved into the Forestville house, in 1945. Separate rooms too, when we moved into the big house on Anderson Road in 1957. But Hazel's revelations came as a shock, to me.

Wow, reading this it sounds as if my father not only wasn't likable but not a very nice guy either. It couldn't be further from the truth. We basked in his glow. He was witty, and downright funny, could mesmerize you with his stories, and was a terrible tease. That was the only way he could show that he really cared.

At the Anderson Road house, there was a beautiful swimming pool. We got alot of use out of that. Some of my best memories of Dad are centered around that pool! He use to get this kind of beer that had "rebus" puzzles on the inside of the bottlecaps, and we would figure them out. Rebus puzzles, are ones that letters and pictures are substituted for the words, usually of a saying or the name of something.

I would actually have a beer, just to get another bottlecap. Or he would have riddles to solve. Always something to make you use your brain. One that I liked was, if I'm 40 years old and my friends daughter is 10 years old, then I'm four times older than her. In five years, I'll be 45 and she'll be 15, and I will only be three times older than her. In fifteen more years, I'll be 60 and she'll be thirty, I will only be twice as old as her. So how long will it be before we're the same age? Now, I finally came up with the answer, 30 years, because your friend is going to have you shot for messing around with his young daughter!

Dad had two serious operations on his back, leaving long uneven scars around his shoulderblades. He always told the grandchildren, and any one else gullible enough to listen, that they were the scars from where they had removed his "angel wings", because they were uneven! Could've been.

The first operation had been in 1957, the doctor talked him into doing it before he got older, and needed it. When I was little, Dad had Tuberculous. It was never "cured", just "graped up", which was a process by which they were able to collapse that part of the lung that was infected. That kept it from spreading or causing any other problems. So this operation, was to remove that part of the lung that had been collapsed, fifteen years before.

The other operation was for a "hiatal hernia". Now how are you supposed to look words like that up in the dictionary when you have no idea of how to spell them? I spent some frustrating time looking for that, finally asked my husband, Armer, who knew. Amazing! He knew rebus too, not that it's so hard to spell, but who knew what the word for it was? Armer, that's who.

Dad spent his Sundays "up the hill", usually with my son Paul, whenever he could. They were the cutest two peas in a pod that you ever saw. Dad just worshiped that child, and he him. Although, Dad's devilish sense of humor did get him in trouble with little Paul once. Little Paul had to go potty, while they were up there, and Dad told him to wipe himself with these leaves. Well, they were poison Oak leaves. The child was only two years old, and just out of diapers. He was swollen up so badly for a week, the doctor said it might affect his being able to have children when he was grown-thank god that was not true. I was so mad at my Dad, I couldn't even spit!

He never believed in doing your family history, "What if you found yourself related to Benedict Arnold?" he'd say. He told me that this old guy in Idaho with whom he use to fish, confided in him that he had been a Spanish American War deserter. He had looked over his shoulder all his life, worried that someday his secret would come out, and that his family would all hate him for it. I think it just makes for more interesting reading, myself!

The funny thing was, I discovered a connection to, guess who, old Benedict Arnold 's Grandfather of the same name, in my second husband's line. And this happened on Dad's birthday! I felt so close, just like he was laughing at me and saying "told you so!"

Daddy had to have this heart operation, in 1980. They gave him some special medicine he could only take for two weeks, it made him like he'd been years before, full of it, fun ,laughing, a big tease, it was wonderful. We were talking one day, a month or so before the operation, He told me that he really felt that he could last until Christmas without the operation, but he knew that he would not see the new year. With the operation he had a chance of living for many more years, so it was a calculated risk. He asked me what of his I wanted. I told him the only thing I'd ever wanted was for him to say" I love you" and he did, right then and there! I have Hazel to thank for that because she's the one who taught him how to say it!

The operation was a success, unfortunately as the old joke goes, the patient died. He lived for a while, he made the medical history books. They found he still had live Tuberculous cells that his heart had sealed off in a sac. He got what they refer to as icu syndrone , where you think the nurses are conspiring to get you. He would try to pull out his breathing apparatus, every chance he got. He would spit his pills out past his toes. He got as violent as he could get in his condition. They sedated him. It was just flat once too many times for his liver to handle.

The autopsy showed his liver to be dryed up, they had no idea his liver was that fragile. He was cremated, his ashes supposedly dumped over the ocean. Not! He would have loved the fact that the guy actually dumped them in the Sierras!

P.S. One of his best stories was about his pet catfish....I would hear this story, almost every time I would catch Dad "chubbing" fish. "Chubbing" is when you feed fish a form of food that you later plan to fish for them with, that way they think it's safe, it's good, and it's familiar. When he was just a young lad, living in Lake County, he first learned how to "chub" for fish. He would go down to the creek, every day after school, and feed the catfish in the creek whatever vegatables that had been put in his lunch. This one catfish and he became good friends, as it was a lover of greenbeans, and he had plenty to give it as they had a bumper crop that year! The catfish became tamer and tamer, until it would eat right out of his hand! So, Paul started putting the greenbeans just out of reach and darned if that catfish didn't come right out of the water for it! Paul would put those beans just a little further away each day, and still that catfish would crawl out of the creek on it's fins and get those beans. After a while that fish seemed to learn how to breathe air, because he started to follow Paul around, each day going further and further, and staying out of the water for longer and longer periods of time.

By Summertime, that fish would follow him around all the time, never going back to the water at all, Paul would just wipe him down with a damp cloth, occassionally. Well one day, when they were crossing over the bridge of the creek, they stopped to look in the water, to see the other fish, and darned if that catfish didn't jump in after those yummy greenbeans and drowned..."