Harry, Herman and Frank Shooster 1943 Notice Harry’s pants a clipped at the bottom
During the Second World War, the coun- try started rationing. Most of the time we were just plain out of gas. At other times, we would get a load of gas and cars would line up three blocks long. Emotions ran high when people couldn’t get fuel, but we could only give them what their sticker allowed. For example, a car with an ‘A’ sticker on the windshield was only permitted two gallons. Very few cars were entitled to more. We were not alone. All of the other gas stations only got occasional deliver- ies as well. One day a car pulled up to the station with the father of one of my best friends, Wilson Blaylock. That is when he shocked me with the news. Wilson was killed riding his bicycle. I was stunned. How could this happen? He was only 12 years old! Years later, Wilson’s sister, Molly, a beau- tiful girl, married a fellow named Colin Kelly. Kelly went to war and became immortalized as one of our first American heroes. The story I heard was that shortly after Pearl Harbor, Capt. Kelly caught a Japanese warship midway
between Hawaii and the west coast and sunk it by diving his plane, kamikaze style. Of course, in doing so, he died. Or so this was the rumor spoken of far and wide. It wasn’t until I was in my late 80’s that I learned the truth. The truth was even more chilling. After making a successful bombing run with his B-17 on the Japanese cruiser Nakori, Captain Kelly was returning to his base at Clark Airfield in the Philippines when he was jumped by Japanese flying ace Saburo Saki. Captain Kelly, stayed at the controls while his men bailed out with parachutes. With the men safely away, the plane blew up, and he and his co-pilot were ejected. The co-pilot, Lieutenant Donald Robins, survived with an opened parachute; Kelly’s never deployed. Every day at the station was another story. One time, Mr. Sugarman, a local real estate owner, and friend of the family pulled up for gas. I greeted him. At first, I couldn’t under- stand why he was so cheerful. That is when he proudly flashed for my eyes seven $1,000 bills! I had never seen anything like that before.
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