Poopdeck: Nearly a century of adventure — Part 3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Poopdeck Platt, who lived in Homer for nearly half a century, was a married man in Montana by the age of 18. Early adulthood provided Poopdeck with some good times and some not-so-good times.

After his 1945 discharge from the U.S. Navy, Clarence Hiram Platt — known by this time as “Poopdeck” — returned to work with his now-former brother-in-law, Chap Thomas, on the same truck farm that the two men had started during the Depression years.

Early on, Poopdeck knew things were different this time. He got along poorly with Chap’s new wife. He had spent more money than he should have to build a house that was little more than a shack. And temporarily, he found himself altering his diet in a way he’d never anticipated.

“For a while,” said Poopdeck, “we were eating guinea pigs.”

Chap’s cousin was a next-door neighbor, who had been breeding guinea pigs for a nearby health-service laboratory that was using the little rodents, literally and figuratively, as “guinea pigs” to test a serum designed to protect humans against tick-borne diseases, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever. When the market suddenly dried up, however, Chap’s cousin found himself with “a whole bunch of guinea pigs” he couldn’t sell.

“And he was complaining,” said Poopdeck, “(that) he was going to have to knock them in the head and bury them. I said, ‘Well, hell, why don’t you eat them?’ I said, ‘They’re good eatin’.’ And he said, ‘Oh, hell.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘try them.’ (And) he said, ‘I’ll give you a dozen of them…. YOU can try them.’”

Neither Chap’s wife nor Chap’s cousin’s wife wanted anything to do with the guinea pigs. They refused to cook them or even take a bite of them. So Poopdeck helped prepare them and “made fried chicken out of them.” He invited friends over for the feast, informing them that they were about to partake in something they’d never eaten before. “Anyway,” he said, it was real good eating.”

The cousin gave him a couple dozen more, and they were kept, alive until mealtime, in a nearby shed. (Guinea pigs are more commonly eaten in certain South American countries, such as Peru and Bolivia.)

Family man and hard times

When he was about 17, Poopdeck — still known then as Clarence — began working for a farmer who was raising acres of strawberries. Clarence also had a girlfriend named Ethel Brown, who sometimes worked in the same strawberry fields. Ethel’s sister was dating one of Clarence’s buddies, so the four of them did “a lot of running around” together, he said. They’d swim in the nearby hot springs and go on picnics and attend Sunday School.

Clarence and Ethel dated for about a year before the luster on their relationship began to fade.

“Well, I was going to Sunday School pretty regular on account of my girlfriend,” Clarence said, “and durned if they didn’t elect me secretary of the class or secretary of the Sunday School … and I never did go back. I quit right there, and I’d always think up some reason that we couldn’t go…. (So) we’d have to go someplace else on Sunday from then on. Anyway, she and I split up, or she split up with me…. I was pretty much in love with her at the time … (and then) I met this gal, Bonnie Thomas.”

Clarence and Bonnie dated during the summer of 1922, using his Model T Ford to run around in. That fall, they ran off and got married in Shoshone, Idaho, in front of a Justice of the Peace. Clarence was 18. Bonnie was 17. Two years later, they were parents. Two years after that, they were a family of four.

Their first child was a daughter named Alice Louise, their second a son named Clarence Vernon. After that, Clarence said, “we decided that was enough children to have, no more money than we was making and no more home than we had.”

Before 1930, he said, “We were moving around from job to job and things like that, but jobs were easier to come by at that time than they were later. By the time the Depression came on in the 1930s, I had kids starting to school, and I was in bad order. I didn’t have a job or anything else for part of the time, and times was pretty tough for anybody that was working for wages…. I went into business for myself three times and went broke every time before I finally got one that paid off.”

Clarence worked as a lumberjack whenever he could. “I was a good enough lumberjack that anytime they had any work, they would hire me, and that saved my bacon.” When times were especially lean, however, even lumberjack jobs were unavailable.

One year, he made only $300. “That’s what we lived on, (and) I borrowed a little bit of money on my life insurance. I paid that back before I went to war, which was hard to do because dollars were just hard to come by…. I was working for 30 to 50 cents an hour, you know, and when I was working in the woods generally most of the time I (earned) 50 to 75 cents an hour.”

By August 1938, the cracks that had been showing in their marriage finally split it apart. According to a single paragraph in the Northwest Tribune (Stevensville, Montana), Bonnie sued Clarence for divorce. When he failed to appear in court, Bonnie’s request for a divorce was granted. They were permitted joint custody of the two children, aged 12 and 14.

Although Poopdeck, in his later years, refused to discuss his divorce, it appears that he may have been trying to protect Bonnie’s reputation.

When he was interviewed by his friend Bob Kanegis, Poopdeck admitted that all of the moving around and lack of financial stability had been hard on Bonnie. She “got tired of me,” he said, “and, well, I think she kind of fell for another guy, and I didn’t know it at the time. But that was what broke up our marriage. Because I never cheated on her at all. Never even acted like it.”

The divorce drove Clarence out of the woods and into the truck-farm business with Bonnie’s brother, Chap. Before long, he was no “Clarence.” He was Poopdeck Platt.

On July 16, 1942, Poopdeck, now 38, signed his draft-registration card. He was listed as 6-foot-and-one-half-inch tall, weighing 185 pounds. The following year, he attempted to enlist with U.S. Marine Corps but was rejected because of his age. The Marines accepted no new recruits older than age 36.

When he tried the U.S. Navy, he was accepted. Over time, he rose to the rank of quartermaster and became an assistant navigator, spending much of his time correcting charts of the South Pacific. In this capacity, he traveled to Fiji, Tonga and the Gilbert Islands, then to the Marshall Islands and the Solomon Islands, and finally to the Philippines.

It was around this time that Poopdeck’s daughter introduced him to a friend who gave Poopdeck a gift. The friend would eventually become Poopdeck’s second wife, and the gift would inspire him to go to Alaska, which would become his home for the remainder of his long life.

TO BE CONTINUED….