CAT-APULTED: Clif Hastings of Rew has an amusing recollection
about one of those Victory gardens of World War II.

Clif remembers that Kendall refinery made a special effort to
provide gardening space for its employees, doing its part for the
government’s effort to promote citizens growing their own
vegetables.

The parcel of ground Kendall selected, however, was the Jones
lease which is at the bottom of Rew hill.

This land apparently had been harvested many years previously
but, at the time of the Victory garden, has sat idle for about 40
years. As a result, it was like trying to make a garden out of an
unworked piece of ground. Anyone who has ever tried that can
imagine what lay ahead – rock, tree roots, and thick soil.

To tackle the job, Kendall employed a big Cat 30, a type of
Caterpillar, with a walkalong behind it.

“My dad was a farm boy and he volunteered to help,” Clif says.
But he was accustomed to walking behind a horse or mule. An animal,
he adds, will automatically stop if it hits a rock or stone. Not so
with the powerful Caterpillar.

The results? “He got catapulted!”

And Clif’s dad was only one of several farm boys who got an
unexpected ride. They were trying to hold on, but “you’d see them
flying through the air.”

Still, Clif remembers the event had “a great turnout.”

“The community spirit was great.”

The employees and families worked the soil by hand, planting
potatoes and vegetables.

“But nothing grew! It was a flop,” Clif reports. No harm done,
though: Most of the employees already had gardens of their own.

No one in Rew, Clif remembers, had a farm tractor at that time.
But one fellow added a truck transmission to his hoopie, and a
harrow, and tilled up all the garden plots in town.

For those too young to remember, these Victory Gardens were
promoted by the government as a way to replace certain foods that
were being rationed as part of the war effort.

Even The Era encouraged at the time: “The country is looking to
you – yes, you, who are reading these lines, to grow more leafy
vegetables, more yellow vegetables, more tomatoes, beans, beets and
onions.”

Americans were told: ” Food Fights for Freedom,” according to a
recent edition of the Landmark Society newsletter.