SKY WATCH AND THE SPOOKY ROOM

      It was 1953. Vake had  finished his apprenticeship as a plumber and wanted to open his own business, so he, Milly, and the two girls moved from Coos Bay to Florence. Johnnie and his family were already there, running the Western Auto Hardware store.

      To fit into the new community, Milly and Vake were recruited into “Sky Watch”, a civil defense project, right away.  A former army corporal, Don Bowman, headed up the venture. The was an abandoned house on the top of a sand hill, just off Highway 101, at the south end of town. (It’s the site of the Florence library today.) A telephone line was strung in, and each sky watcher would work a shift watching for airplanes flying over. When an airplane was spotted, the watcher would telephone Portland, OR, and report the sighting.

       Although there was a telephone in the sky watch house, there was no electricity, or at least no lights. The bathroom was dark, and Jon, Dean and Patty called it “the spooky room.” That terrified me, so I refused to use the toilet until I was absolutely suffering and couldn’t wait another second to go.

      The only plane that we ever spotted belonged to Bill Karnowski. Bill was an auto mechanic who had a garage on Bay Street where he also sold Evinrude boat motors, and he also drove the school bus. He was one of those people whom every kid in town knew and liked.  Bill’s airplane was a Piper Cub, and on a sunny day, he would take off from the Florence airport and buzz around town a few times before landing again.  The sky watchers would dutifully telephone Portland and report “Lima Pappa Five Five Black.” Except we called it “Lime-ah,” as in lima beans, instead of “Leema,” as in the city in Peru.

      Milly wasn’t impressed with the project and wanted to quit. When somebody mentioned Corporal Bowman, “I outranked him!” she snapped. Besides, she was pregnant with Mark, who arrived in June 1954, and that left her busy enough that she had a good reason to quit.

     Bill Karnowski’s mechanic’s garage is still standing on Bay Street, nearly underneath the Highway 101 bridge over the Siuslaw River. It has a rough, dark interior, and  contains posted newspaper pictures of Bill, but that’s where you can buy lattes and pastry and connect your laptop to the internet today.