Berkeley - 1946

On a Saturday afternoon we had been looking at houses in Oakland without much success. It was late in the afternoon and we stopped in a restaurant for dinner. I recall that when they served me I just could not eat the food. I really felt rotten and so we went back to Berkeley and I promptly went to bed. I knew that I had a fever but I did not know how high. I spent a very restless night and the next morning I knew that my fever was really high. Dorothy bought a fever thermometer and I found that I had a temperature of 104. She then started calling friends to try and find a doctor who would come and see me on a Sunday. Finally she found one and about four o'clock Sunday afternoon he came. After giving me all the tests he could think of he said that he did not know what was the matter with me. I had no sore throat, cold, or other symptoms of the flu. He took a urine sample and told me that he would let me know when he got the results My fever stayed high and I really felt miserable. The next day he called and said that the urine had puss in it and that I had either a kidney or urinary infection. For a week I stayed in bed with a high fever while they fought the infection with sulfa and other drugs. I finally began to get better. The doctor told me that my trouble was probably caused by sitting in the same position for so long a time without moving, on my trip out to Utah.

My cousin Kathryn Baer lived in Berkeley in a house that they were renting on Cedar street about three or four blocks below Grove. The man that owned it wanted to sell it and had offered them a real good proposition with a low down payment. They had some friends, however, that wanted them to go in with them and buy a duplex in Oakland and so were not interested in buying the house on Cedar.

I asked Leon (Kathryn's husband) if he would see if his landlord would sell the house to me on the same terms. The landlord finally agreed and so we decided that this would be the best solution to our housing problem. We completed the transaction involving a $1500 down payment and reasonable monthly payments. The Baers were'to stay there until the duplex was ready to move into and in the meantime I started work and slept in the basement. When they finally moved out, I refinished the home, painting the inside and sanding and refinishing the floors, before sending for Dorothy and the kids.


YEAR (FILE ) SUBJECT
---- ------- ---------------------------------
1946 (9115) Berkeley Home
1946 (9002) John Robert and Paul Griffin - Berkeley
1946 (9003) Marian Griffin - Berkeley

In July of 1946, Harry Dechant was the regional attorney (now attorney in charge) of the San Francisco office. I was sick on the monday I was supposed to report to work and so Harry came out to see me. He was a very nice person and I was sure that I was going to like my new assignment. Finally when I was able to go into work, Harry introduced me to the rest of the office staff and then took me into the library and told me that this would be my office, at least for the time being. I didn't even have a desk, but just a library table to sit at. It did not take long for me to discover that there was very little work for me to do at San Francisco. Most of the work assigned to me consisted of "make-work", that is, various old cases that had been hanging around for years. This was very discouraging but I tried to keep busy. At that time there were six attorneys in the office besides Mr. Dechant, and work for about four.

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