The Boy Scout Knife and the Liberty Ships

America really got into the war effort in the 1940's, the axis were running over evey one in Europe, and our friend England was really taking a beating. We were building tanks, submarines and ships. There were thousands of men to be moved, and millions of tons of equipment to move to the war zones, so we could help the allies supress the enemy.

Boeing was building bombers B-17's, B-25's and later on the B-29 and the B-52 super fortresses were built. Lockheed was building fighters such as the P-38 , the P-51, P-40 and other note worthy fighters. In california at the Mare Island Naval shipyard the Kaiser Ship Building Company was building the Liberty Ships. They werea light hulled transport ship for cargo and troops. Kaiser needed lots of men to build these ships as fast as they could in order to move the men and equipment to the war zone as fast as possible.

My dad, who was one of the Cox clan you read about in my other stories, went to Vallejo Calif to work building ships. I was about eight years old at the time, he would write letter to us every week to tell us how he was doing and that he missed us. He was not enjoying being away from the family,so by writing letters he felt he was stilla part of the family, and we did too.

Now you want to understand that in 1943 there were no computers, so if you wanted to communicate with your family you had to take time to sit down, take a pen and ink or pencil and write the letter your self. you will also note that ther were no ballpoint pens, (they had not been invented yet) so you actually had to use ink. This is what my dad did every week when he wrote us a letter.

ONE SMALL PACKAGE

One time my dad sent a small package, it was about the middle of April when my birthday is, it came to our p.o.box in Grass Valley. I just knew it was a birthday present for me, Mom said "no its just an accident it came on your birthday". But little eight year old boys have some sort of insite, especially on their birthday. Mom let me open the package, and inside was the most beautiful boy scout knife you have ever seen, and it was for me. It had two blades one big and one small, a screw driver, a can opener and a corkscrew. Wow, I could do any thing with a knife like that!

The best part of it was that the money he used to buy it was money he had earned building Liberty Ships for the United States Navy.

We will talk more about the Liberty Ships at another time.