1931 Part IV
- “B” - Early Spring Through Early Fall
In our modern era (1990's) the significance attached to
April 15, year by year, has to do with an all-important deadline, income
tax. This has now prevailed for decades;
and the IRS has become, in our daily affairs, something akin to a
dictator. It’s true that our employment
remains basic in healthy economics; but many are prone to “feel” that in our
quest for progress and prosperity, record keeping and compulsory reporting of
them has become all-consuming. Some of
us know that we actually spend more of our productive lives maintaining
detailed records and filing reports than we do in getting the work done. It is worth thinking about. Possibly the situation has a retarding effect
on our desires to “get ahead”. It could
be that our incentives to growth and development are somewhat stigmatized.
And we should not forget the other side of the coin. Consider the dispatch with which modern
buildings are erected. They seem to
appear “overnight”, whole new subdivisions “from right out of nowhere”!
Following our Civil War, whole armies of men were the
dominant feature as a needed thoroughfare from “sea to shining sea” was pushed
across the wilderness of our western
Following World War II it was a brand new system of
interstates, not only east-west but north and south as well. This time earthmoving machinery was dominant;
and the former armies of humanity with their tired muscles and sweat-drenched
shirts were glaringly absent. The older
concept of a “flanged wheel upon an iron rail” was considered to be quite
obsolete and more or less of a nuisance to the public.
This time I offer a reason for my ramification. Within my brief life span I have endured a
constant readjustment to continually changing situations and social
environment. Some of my earliest
memories center around family life while my father was employed in southern
After an intermission of a week or ten days I attempt to
resume my memories of 1931; and I am constrained to offer a comment or two. It
has been my intention that the focal points of my stories should be the
achievements, the problems, the success and even the failures of characters who
acted their roles in times now long gone. (Or is it “not so long”?) One of history’s chief attributes is its
enormous deposits of dust and clutter.
Relatives and people who then lived, labored and experienced the
vicissitudes of life have passed beyond the scenes or have otherwise gone over
the edge. Although the present
combinations are invariably different, and whether we want it or not, we are
compelled to recognize that we in our present “Utopia” still carry their genes
upon our chromosomes.
Readers will detect that at times I lean toward
discouragement, and they will also note that I am eager to acknowledge that
never before have “I had it so good.”
Let me explain a bit farther: I’ve been on Social Security since June,
1982. Prior to then my entire productive
life had averaged out to less than two dollars an hour. My first social security check was for $288 a
month and it still falls way below $500.
This has been my mainstay. In
other words, if money were the only available standard of success, my entire
lifetime could only be described as failure, a real “flop” by that solitary
measurement.
It 1982 there were at least three different collection
agencies “hot on my trail”. Close
friends were advising me to file for bankruptcy. At that time I learned some surprising things
about business and bill collectors in general.
Creditors who turned my accounts over to collection agencies were the
really big corporations, Chevron Oil, First Bank, etc. It had been explained to me at earlier times:
an incorporation can be so very impersonal!
These were the ones to whom I owed the least amounts. These unpaid accounts would at the time have
averaged out between $300 and $500.
Ultimately each “collector” received full satisfaction from me. I do not brag, but I never did resort to
going bankrupt. I developed a vicious
habit in those days toward those collectors.
Whenever they began to pressure me above and beyond what I could bear I
would promptly invite them to “go to hell” (Watch out for caged animals; they
can become desperate!)
By contrast, the company to whom I was most deeply
indebted, perhaps $1600, was patient and considerate on my behalf. In the long stretch they also recovered in
full my obligation to them; and they never resorted to turning over a heavy
percentage of my “bad” account to any “Vulture” known as a collection
agency. Like to know who the company
was? It’s my pleasure to oblige: Sears and Roebuck! You may well believe, they have retained my
lifetime respect and gratitude! I might
add, in the years since I have shied away from monthly payments, credit cards,
and maintenance plans.
Many basic hang-ups in the first half of our twentieth
century still shadow us. In the early
1930's our grade school teachers tried their best to explain to us the meaning
of inflation. Today we live with its
reality. A dollar back then had real
buying power; the problem was to get hold of one! Will the time come when it will take a
wheelbarrow load of the things to buy a loaf of bread? Modern people shrug that off, not worthy of
attention. Increase in population? Is that too mundane? Positive thinkers see vast new markers on
that horizon. But problems are
escalating and they are increasing in their magnitude. Men of science are confident however; these
problems can be solved! Things have
endured for endless time spans, they tell us. (of course, dinosaurs have
vanished!) Perhaps some impending
asteroid will zero in; that should certainly give us a new chance, say for the
next two or three million years! One of
our Oregonians, E. R. Jackman, prominent for years with the State University
Extension Service, wrote at one point, “Geology is one of the world’s most
useful sciences, but of necessity it is founded upon guesswork and
imagination.”
In many ways World War II was the big turning point, a
time of transition. Up ‘til then one of
our greatest threats was the air raids, whole fleets of military aircraft
raining devastation upon the cities over which they passed. As soldiers we were oriented to the
possibility of poisonous gas and how to protect ourselves if we should
encounter the stuff, there was talk of “biological” warfare in the future. Nowadays the topic is more likely to be
“nerve” gas. Some items offered hope, a
promise of better things to come.
Penicillin and sulfa drugs were but recently made available as the
miracle workers. DDT worked wonders on
pernicious insect pests. Air transport
really came of age as a more satisfying and efficient means of travel. We were scared out of our boots by the atom
bomb, and in the late forties there was wide spread fear that the entire system
of oceans could become contaminated by nuclear fission and its chain reactions.
In the half century since then we have witnessed nuclear
fueled production of electricity, and now we are concerned about safe disposal
of its waste materials, its by-products.
Early on microbes developed immunity to the wonder drugs and insect
pests did likewise in their reaction to their chemical enemies. Anyhow DDT would become outlawed because of
its threats to humanity. The medical
profession back then had preventive techniques and treatment for venereal
diseases. The problem could have been
brought under complete control; it now appears more rampant than ever. What a sorry observation! Ho Hum!
This week a significant drop in the stock market has
brought deep concern to the business world.
In recent decades this has happened before. Late news, last evening,
Regarding Grandpa Johnson’s new barn, in 1931 it could not
have been there very long, one or two years at most - compared to other
buildings on his farmstead, it was really quite impressive, and it looked
big! I have memories of only one or two
days during its construction. The first
day I was there the project was somewhat of a surprise on me. Its lower portion which would be used to stable the horses and the cattle
had already been completed. The
foundation walls were masonry laid up of native sandstone to a height of maybe
seven feet and bonded together with “mortar”.
At least I thought it to be sandstone!
This was common practice at the time and in the area. The ceiling of this ground level would be
supported by several timbers either round or sawed square, and placed at
strategic positions in the open floor space between the ends and the side
walls. These posts would also support the
floor of the upper part of the building; the rock walls would also bear a fair
portion of the overhead structure; then, too, there would be many tons of hay
up there. The upper portion of the
building would consist of timber framing sheathed with lumber both on its roof
and for its upright siding. And, of
course, there would be the wooden shingles, most likely sawed from cedar in
some distant mill. Local people
described the barn as having a “hip roof”.
In later years I would be contradicted on that, its correct name was
“gambrel” roof! Naturally, the new barn
would be painted red! (with lead paint!
This arrangement was quite typical of barn construction in
those days and it was no doubt recommended by the majority of state
agricultural colleges. There were other
new barns in the area which were bigger, but in proportion to Grandpa’s other
buildings it was “huge”, to say the least!
As to its nearest year I have already had trouble with its exact age. I now have farther frustration with its
timing in the spring of 1931. It could
have been as early as March, and it may not have been until April, or even in
May; but in the spring of 1931. This
fine, new building was to become a casualty of nature on one of her typical
rampages. There came a sudden,
boisterous windstorm, and the entire upper superstructure of lumber lay in
ruins. This country in previous years
had once been devastated by a vicious cyclone - not a tornado. What a mess, and what a loss! Grandpa was now past seventy; and when he
died in the following December, much of local conversation concluded that this
catastrophe had contributed directly to his “stroke”. The general opinion was quite unanimous.
I would again
offer tribute to the men of the day and their capacity to get the work
done. This first barn had been built
with hand tools: saws, hammers, squares, levels and such. Power tools, so essential to modern
“professionals”, were conspicuous by their absence. Come to think of it, I don’t recall that
carpenters of that day were ever branded as professional. That category was reserved back then for a
select group of pedagogues who qualified as “absent-minded professors.” Anyhow there was no electricity in the area
even for what may then have been available.
To help raise some of the heavier beams, etc, into position, Vic Kentz
had been there with an old Fordson Tractor. (on steel rims) With all the
cables, ropes, blocks and pulley rigging, the old plug-lug tractor had to
travel quite a distance on the ground to raise components to any significant
elevation. Now, in one short season the
entire portion had to be reconstructed, using the same hand braces and bits to
make holes and the same “arm strong” crosscut and ripsaws as had been in general
use for decades and even for centuries.
True, the lower ground level could be left in place, but all that
twisted and smashed lumber must be cleared away, not to mention loose hay
remaining from the previous fall.
And once again,
this second superstructure was completed and in use by Thanksgiving Day. A foreign immigrant craftsman was “retained”
to supervise this “second time around”.
He stayed right there, slept and boarded with Grandma and Grandpa in
their house until the job was done. His
name was Mike Sloverdeek, Slobernink, or something or other; (spelling
uncertain!) But Mike was a good man. His
English was on the order of a do-it-yourself deal, but he got the work
done. He had a reputation for repeating things
over and over. One of his favorites was,
“Make eet goo-ed, a-strong, a-solid”! To
my knowledge, this second barn never yielded in the least to the high
winds. However, along about 1940 or
1941, word came from Grandma that this “goo-ed, strrr-ong, a-solid building had
gone up in flames. Sometime during World
War II Grandma became bedridden, and as such she would spend the remaining
years of her life. This part of the
story has been recounted by cousin Jeanette.
Thank you Jan! And again it came
around to me by way of the “grapevine”: Another battle had been engaged among her
three surviving daughters - in close proximity to Grandma’s sickbed. History repeats?
If Grandpa Johnson
could have a new barn, it went without saying; our family at “the bluff” could
at least have a garage for our ‘27 Chev; and that spring-summer the story
developed along this very line. Sometime
in the spring I was with my dad over at Grant Little John’s. As you may surmise, Grant was one of several
Native Americans who had resided in the area.
Another who had lived a mile and a half farther north was Walking
Priest, near the
At an earlier time
a well intended government program had sought to get these aboriginal families
established as farmers; but as you have probably guessed, that was a
predictable source of frustration and disappointment. As a young adult my mother had been employed
for a time in the
There were a
goodly number of these “Indians” scattered throughout the state, not to mention
the various reservations. Other names of
theirs were equally descriptive or otherwise designed to attract
attention. There was a Red Eagle and
there was a Little George. In my
father’s army life, World War I, there was an individual
His-Horse-Is-Fast. Just for the sake of
it, Indians liked to trade and to dicker - for them it was more or less
recreation, just as many others go for card games, etc. In 1936 Dad traded the rear wheels and
differential of an old Hupmobile to one of these fellows for a guitar. It’s still around my old house, somewhere! It could tell plenty of stories! Over in
And so, among our
nearby neighbors, Grant Little John was just about the sole survivor of the government
sponsored Native American farming community, and he had no doubt hung on purely
because he had never taken farming too seriously to begin with. Anyhow, word had gone around that Grant was
needing a little money for whatever, and he was trying to sell his barn. Dad made a cash offer which sounded right and
the barn was dismantled. The used lumber
was then brought home (by horses and wagon) and it formed the “lions share” of
our new garage building. Sixteen feet
square provided ample space for the car along the left side, leaving nearly
half the area on the right for other things.
Early on Dad arranged to hang the harness for our work horses along the
right wall. I have memories of pulling
that heavy set of harnesses off those tall animals and then of putting myself
to the stretch to get it hung on that wall.
But I could do it! (eleven years old.)
There was ample material from Little John’s barn to build a loft over the
rear portion of the inside space with a built-in ladder for climbing up and
down; and just above the ground floor along the back wall there was also a very
fine workbench.
This building
project was really outstanding in my young life. It’s still worthy of recognition; how did
those hard working men back then, in just a short season, get so much
done? I did not witness the removal of
Grant’s barn, but I do know who erected the new garage. It was mainly our nearby neighbor, John
Kellogg, and my father. Did I get to
drive any of the nails? I don’t
“rightly” remember!
There is one other
feature connected with the Indians. We
all called them that! Likewise we had
nicknames for Italians and for Mexicans.
The name we commonly used in reference to our colored brothers from
The trail back
through the wilderness followed the crest of a typical sand ridge. After eighty rods or thereabouts it entered
an opening in the woods which represented Little John’s Kingdom. Midway along this trail there was a cemetery
of sorts. There were several mounds of
earth where those native people who had “passed on” were buried. All this was right there in the natural
woodlands. One of these had a wooden
railing around it, about as rudimentary as could be. It was a single course of one by fours nailed
to upright stakes made of whatever had been convenient. A legend circulated by local residents
claimed that for a time the bereaved would place a cup of coffee at the sacred
spot of the deceased. Invariably some
vagabond dog or other wild creature would in the process of curiosity or
investigation upset the beverage; and that would constitute positive evidence
that the departed spirit had returned for refreshment!
- End of Part B -
