6th Journey

Journeys with Paw Paw #6
A Tale of Five Country Kids – A Long Time Ago
By Dale Whitson 1991

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a family of 5 children living away out in the country in a place called FAME, OKLAHOMA.

This could be called a fairy tale.
This could be called a time warp.
This could be called a family history.

The kids and grand kids of these five children will find most of this tale hard to believe. THIS IS A TRUE STORY!!! This story is for the kids and grand kids of these five children. Kids and grandkids, if any of your parents or grandparents is any of the following: BILLIE ARREDONDO, JOHNNIE WHITSON, DALE WHITSON, VIRGINIA FLETCHER OR DORIS RICKERSON, then this story, this fairy tale, this time in history of only 60 years ago in 1931 is for you. Billie was 13 years old, Johnnie 12, Dale 9, Virginia 7 and Doris was 1 month old.

This is the way it was in the horse and buggy days, except these 5 kids didn’t have a buggy – they only had a wagon and mules. These 5 kids lived with their parents, Roy and Hesta Whitson.

We’ve come a long way, up to the age of space travel in only 60 years. What was it like out in the country and how did these kids live 60 years ago. What follows is the way one of the 5 kids, Dale, fondly remembers.

MEMORIES OF THE WHITSON HOMESTEAD – 1931
By Dale Whitson – Journeys #6

Our home is on a rolling hill by the side of the road. The town of Eufaula is nine miles to the southeast. Our general store is one-half mile down the road to the north, at the crossroads. Electricity and natural gas is nine miles away and butane and propane are not available here. Water comes from the hand-operated pump out in the front yard. We pump water for the 4 mules, 1 horse, 30 hogs, 100 hens, 7 turkeys, and for all of our household uses. The water is carried to everything except the mules – it goes down an old buried pipe that runs to two barrels in the horse lot. We have two water buckets in the kitchen along with a dipper for drinking and a wash pan for hands and face washing. For lights we have two Aladdin “mantle” kerosene lamps and two kerosene wick lamps. The outside lighting is a big kerosene lantern that we carry outside – mainly to the cow lot in the early morning to milk the 10 cows.

The cooking is all done on the big wood burning Home Comfort cook stove. Most of the heating is done with “heater” wood, which is larger than cook stove wood. We cut all of our wood from the “woods” down in the pasture. Sometimes we buy some coal from the strip pits and use it for heating in the “heating” stove in the living room. The heating stove is put up in the fall and comes down in the spring. The smoke goes out the stovepipe into the brick chimney in the middle of the house. We have a long crosscut saw, two axes, a wedge and sledge hammer for cutting and splitting our wood. We do most of the woodcutting on Saturdays in the winter months. Some times our cook woodpile get over 10’ high.

Transportation is by horseback or wagon and mules. Papa bought a new 1925 Model T Ford. It ran about 3 years and never moved again. The roads are all dirt and are plenty muddy when it rains or snows. We walk to the post office, general store, school, and to church. The school and church are both one-half mile east of the post office. That makes them one mile from our house.

We have an “ice box” to keep foods cool in the summer months. It holds 50lbs of ice that costs 20¢. Ice is delivered twice a week from town. Some times we cannot afford ice. When this happens we put the milk and butter in a bucket and let it down in the well that is about 30’ deep. The temperature is always about 70 degrees in winter and summer in the well.

Mama Whitson does all the clothes washing by hand in a washtub with a rub board. The water is heated in the big “wash pots” out in the yard by building up a big fire around the pots.

See Farm Diagram

The farm layout was just built little at a time as the need came up or as money was available to buy the materials. Out by the road is the blacksmith shop. Papa was the local “smithy” for repair and shoeing horses and mules. He had a big coal fired forge and blower for metal work and making horseshoes and so forth. The next building is the big old two-room log house. Billie and Johnnie were both born in this house but it is empty now. Next is our new 4-room home. I don’t remember when the new house was only a two-room mansion in which I was born. By the time I can recall it had been made into a 4 room “palace”. Virginia and Doris were both born in the 4-room house. We were all born at home. The seven of us fill up this house. The living room is 12 x 14 and so is the kitchen. The bedrooms are both 12×12. This gives us a 624sq ft house. We have a front porch 7’ wide all across the front and a 4’ x 12’ porch across the back. Mama and Papa lived in this house until the tornado blew it away in about 1956. Out to the north is the hen house and chicken pen. We keep about 100 hens and 5 old roosters to produce eggs and frying chickens. By the chicken house is a small turkey shed and pen. We keep 6 or 7 hens and one old gobbler so we can raise turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They will hatch out about 25 poults a year and we will raise about 12 of those. The hawks get some of our young chickens and turkeys every year. Out back of the chicken house is the barn and horse lot. We keep corn, oats, hay, and peanuts in the barn. The barn has a big shed under it for the mules and for the wagons when they are loaded with cotton or some other crop. Over the shed is the hayloft in the barn. We play in the hayloft sometimes. Back behind the barn is the cow barn and cow lots and calf pens. We milk 10 cows every morning and night. Nearly every cow has a calf and they are kept up in daytime while the cows are out in the pasture. When we go to milk we turn the cows in with the calves and let them suck one teat and then run them out into the pasture. Then we milk out the other three teats. The same thing is done in the morning except in reverse and the calves are put in the calf pen. We usually get about 7 ½ gallons and the calves get 2 ½ gallons. The milk is at least 5% butterfat so it makes a lot of cream or butter. We have a cream separator and we take the cream out of all the milk except what we keep for drinking. We sell the cream in a 10 gallon cream can. It goes to town on the rural mail carrier car and is shipped by train up into Kansas. All this is done without any cooling. It is made into cheese or sour cream butter. We raise the calves and kill one or two a year for beef and sell the others. Down east of the cow barn is the hog shed and pens. We keep 3 sows and a boar and raise about 25 pigs a year. We kill about 10 to 12 a year for our bacon, ham, roasts, pork chops, sausage and lard for cooking and for making all of our soap. We sell the hogs we have left if we are able to raise that many. Between the hog shed and the cow barn is the sorghum cane molasses mill. This is a mill for grinding up cane into juice. The juice is then cooked in a big 4’ x 20’ copper pan into molasses. This is the only mill in the community so we make molasses for everybody and we only get paid in molasses when we get through. We’ve got more molasses than Carter has liver pills. When everybody else gets thru with their corn and cotton plowing and gets to take a break, that is when molasses time starts, usually in the heat of August. It takes a big fire under the syrup pan to cook the juice down. That is hot in July and August. The mill is powered by two mules hooked to a big long crooked log that is tied to one of the rollers of the mill. The mules pull this around and around all day long to grind the cane. Around behind the house is the smokehouse. It is a little 10’ x 10’ dirt floor building for smoking our bacon, hams, and other hog meats. We hang the meat up in the top of this house and build a fire on the dirt floor out of green hickory wood. We keep this fire going on and off for 2 or 3 weeks. This gives the meat good flavor. Then we pack all the meat in salt in barrels to keep it thru the summer without refrigeration. We pay for some labor like cotton chopping and cotton picking with a lot of the meat we have packed in the barrels.

The cellar is out on the south side of the house. It is a room down under the ground below the freeze level that has two purposes. One is to get away from the tornados that come down across Oklahoma. The other is for storage for many of the foodstuff items that would otherwise freeze anywhere else except in the cellar. All the canned fruits and vegetables are lined all over the many shelves in the cellar. The potatoes that we grow are put in there to keep them from freezing, as are other things like apples and onions. It is really a big hole in the ground with logs covered over the top and then recovered over with dirt to keep the water from coming in.

The tent is out back of the smoke house. It is where Grandpa Whitson lives. His wife Martha died in about 1926 and he came and lived with us for 26 years. He comes in our house and takes all his meals with us. I go out and sleep with him a lot of the time. The old tent is a World War I with a dirt floor. He has a little wood stove in the middle of it for keeping warm in winter.

The water well is out in the front yard. It is a big 4’ square hole in the ground that is over 30’ deep. It was dug by hand and the dirt pulled out in buckets. We have an iron hand pump that pulls the water up with a sucker rod cylinder built into the pipe. This is better than a rope and bucket that most folks have.

The orchard is out back of the smoke house. We have apples, peaches, apricots, pears, berries, grapes and cherry trees.

The garden is down south of the cellar. We have something growing in it on a year round basis. We grow at least 15 different kinds of vegetables. Mama cans most of them as she does with the fruit from the orchard. Some of the things are dried and kept year round in a dried state. Beans and peas are dried. Apples, peaches and apricots are also kept in a dried form sometimes. Peanuts grown down in the orchard are usually plowed up roots, nuts and vines and put in the hayloft. In the winter we can go pick the nuts off and feed the vines to the mules or cows. We have corn in the barn and we shuck and shell it and take it to town where they grind it into corn meal for corn bread making. We pay them for doing this with one fourth of the meal

Money is hard to get. The nation is in a deep depression and many men have lost their jobs and have no source of income. Papa doesn’t have a job; he is a farmer and gets a little money from different sources. Cotton farming is the main cash crop. We plant it in the spring and pick and sell it in the fall. Cotton is real cheap at about 5¢ a lb. We grow about 10 bales a year of 500 lbs each. That gives us about $250 a year from cotton. We sell hogs, calves, eggs, cream, corn, butter and molasses. None of this brings very much. The main things we have to buy are flour, sugar, salt, kerosene and our clothes. Our grocery bill runs $5 to $8 a month. We grow most of what we have to eat. Papa also gets paid some for his shop work if the people have any money to pay him with. We don’t have utility bills like gas, electric, water, phone or gasoline. We don’t have taxes or house insurance. Papa does have $500 life insurance policy. We have a telephone – a box on the wall that is a hand crank. The line runs to Eufaula and there are 5 other people on the party line. When it rings every body hears it. Our ring is two longs and a short. You can just crank up two longs and one short and we will answer. We also have a Victrola record player that is hand wind up. We have a foot pedal organ like a piano keyboard.

We have a lot of company in that little 4 room “palace”. Mama does a lot of cooking and keeping. The preacher comes twice a month and he usually stays at our house on Saturday and Sunday nights. The unmarried lady schoolteacher stayed with us for two years during the school season. Mama kept Bobby Turner for about 4 years in the daytime while Aunt Mattie taught school. Bobby is two years older than Doris. We never had less than 7 or 8 to feed and care for. This was done without any of the kitchen, bathroom or laundry conveniences.

Our mail is delivered to the Fame post office 5 days a week by the mail carrier driving a late 1920’s touring car. He also handles the freight like cream cans and mail orders like Sears and Roebuck packages. At a time before I can remember we had a drug store, two general stores, a cotton gin and a doctor in Fame. We also had a high school that Mama attended before she was married. Now we have only a three-room schoolhouse that goes up to the 8th grade. Each teacher teaches 2 or 3 classes in the same room. Each room has from 15 to 20 students. We now have only one general store and that is also the post office. We have two churches. The Baptist is up by the schoolhouse and the Methodist is between our house and Fame store.

Our family is getting along pretty good. We all work at whatever needs to be done, like milking cows, feeding all the animals, farming, cutting wood, and gardening etc. We make our own quilts on a big quilting frame from scraps left over from making clothes. Our family is better off than many of our friends and relatives. This is a time when farmers are better off than folks who depend on jobs for a living.

Footnotes and comments:
1.We bought a kerosene-fueled refrigerator in 1935. It makes ice cubes. That is real progress!
2.We bought a gasoline fueled Maytag washing machine in 1936.
3.We got butane gas in about 1943.
4.I bought a 1932 Chevy for $50 in 1938.
5.Papa bought a tractor and equipment in 1941.
6.Electricity came in 1947. Jim and Virginia wired the house.
7.A tornado blew the house and about everything else away in 1961.
8.House was rebuilt in Mama & Papa in 1961.

PS Virginia traded one of Papa’s cows for a red Dodge truck in 1943.
PS2 Jim & Dad put in a bathroom and septic tank in about 1950.