5 Cents to Spare - Prologue (by the traveler, my father)

Prologue

In December 1933 I graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Architecture.  It was a long 6 ½ year struggle for a Bachelor of Arts degree trying to make ends meet with small scholarships and part time jobs.

But now I was finished.  One may say I was ready to matriculate into the Great Depression where 20% of the U.S. work force was unemployed.  There was nothing for an Architectural trainee to do.  In a way, however, I was fortunate.  During the long period of study time, I had taken a year of engineering courses, had learned a little about land surveying, had become a good draftsman, and just as importantly had learned to work with my hands.

Almost immediately I found a part time job as a carpenter's helper in my home town of Grass Valley, California.  While building a staircase at the Nevada (County) Irrigation District office I overheard the Chief Engineer telling the district manager that he needed a junior engineer-draftsman-surveyor.  I was qualified!  I dropped my hammer, went across the room to the manager's office and applied.

I got the job.  It paid $110 a month, about 50 cents an hour, and it was steady.  In those days any job was welcome no matter what it was or how much it paid.  The gold mines in my home town were paying mukers $3 a day and miners $5 a day... if you could get a job.

If wages were low in those days, so was everything else.  Girauds in San Francisco served a wonderful French meal for 50 cents.  "I never ate so much before for the price", I wrote in my journal in 1930.  Fior D'Italia, also in San Francisco, served a "tremendously big meal for $1".  In August, 1930, I wrote that I had bought 5 pounds of tomatoes for 25 cents, 3 ½ pounds of fresh salmon for 42 cents, a quart of ice cream for 25 cents and a quart of milk for 10 cents.  In May 1931 gasoline had gone down to 14 ½ cents a gallon in Grass Valley... perhaps it was even lower in San Francisco.  Throughout all this depression period first class postage remained at 2 cents per ounce.

During my university days I had a desire to see with my own eyes the great masterpieces of architecture that I had been studying so diligently.  Now finally I had a job.  I was earning and saving money.  My desire to travel became an obsession.

A quotation from the philosopher, Morgan, had made a deep impression during my student days:

"Architecture is the printing press of all ages, and gives a history of the state of society

in which it was erected".

That statement became my goal to achieve.  It was the reason I gave myself when I decided to visit Europe in 1936.  I was 26 at the time.  It never occurred to me that I lacked the maturity, the wisdom and the time to achieve this noble purpose.  Such is the brashness of youth.

By March 1936 I had saved $1000.  It was the year of the Olympic Games in Germany.  German Marks were being offered at a 25% discount to foreign tourists.  I had an invitation to visit relatives in Germany.  What more could I ask?

 

I was ready.  This book is the result of a travel experience that took me around the world visiting 20 countries over a period of 10 months and 2 weeks.  What a trip!

Little could I have know that the world stood on the front steps of the holocaust of WW-II and that I would have the opportunity of seeing and talking to ordinary citizens who were knowingly or unknowingly preparing for this conflagration.

I did not advance the "history of the state of society" but I brought back in writing and in photographs a wealth of impressions of the people I met, befriended and traveled with and the countries in which they lived.

Enjoy my experiences.

Alfred H. Kramm

Long Beach, California

September 1990