The Story of a Family

1927 – 1929

by Helen Erwin Campbell

In 1927, Charles A. Lindberg made his historic flight across the Atlantic, Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs for the New York Yankees, the Charleston was still in vogue, Henry Ford produced his fifteen-millionth Model T Ford, and I was in the third grade.

That was the year we moved to the town of Lamont, Kansas because Dad decided, again, to give up farming and work the oilfields. Lamont wasn’t a very large town, but we were used to the country, and the farm, and probably were noticeably “farm kids.” After being “teacher’s pet” for two years, I found myself in the unenviable position of being teased and picked on. One girl a grade or two ahead of me decided I was a good subject for her attention, and she made my life miserable for a month or two until she moved on to another victim.

There was a boy named Claude in the school who stood out as an incorrigible. He wasn’t accepted by the town kids, but he wasn’t harassed either. He was larger than most of the kids in his grade, due to his having been held back more than once because of poor attendance. Claude chewed tobacco. Mary and I were familiar with chewing tobacco because Dad used it, but we’d never before known a boy so young who chewed. As almost everyone knows, when you chew tobacco you also have to sit frequently. In the classroom that’s a little difficult, but Claude solved the problem. He wore bib overalls, so, on the days he came to school he would carry a tin can tucked in behind the bib of the overalls. When he needed to spit, he’d tuck a thumb over the bib to hold it away from his chest and spit into the convenient can. I feel certain that the teacher was a little relieved on the days that Claude didn’t come to school.

Mary and I were forbidden by Dad and Mom to play with Claude, but if we happened to meet him down by the river a short distance from our house, we didn’t hurry away. One day Claude had a pitchfork with which he was trying to spear fish, but with little success. He did spot a water moccasin, and started to tease it. Somehow, he managed to spear the snake with the pitchfork and then got the idea of trying to tie a string on the angry snake’s darting tongue. While Mary and I took turns holding the pitchfork with the imprisoned squirming snake, Claude improvised a string with a loop on one end. He intended to get the loop on the snake’s tongue and then pull the loop tight. Of course, that didn’t work. The darting tongue was lightning fast, and the string was soft and flimsy.

One of us began to wonder about the moccasin’s mate. What if the snake’s mate came looking for it and then attacked us? We began to worry and decided to leave while we could. Claude pulled the fork up, the snake slithered away into the water, and we ran like mad away from the river bank. We didn’t mention this adventure to Mom and Dad.

Many years later I did tell this story to Dad. “Was that snake really poisonous?” I asked him.

Dad looked at me soberly and, after a moment, answered very quietly, “Oh, yes, it was.”

Although our house at Lamont was close to town, we still had the freedom to wander the oilfields, with certain restrictions. We were to stay away from the pumping stations and the rigs. There was one pumping station for three rigs, the rigs being connected to the station by metal rods which moved back and forth horizontally. They were just the right height from the ground to be a great temptation to me, but I was told to stay off them. One day when Mary and I were out walking we came to those metal rods going back and forth, back and forth. I couldn’t resist.

Mary said, “You’d better not.”

I looked around. There wasn’t an adult in sight. So, I sat down on the rod and was moved back-and forth with it,

but only for a moment or two. No one would know, or so I thought. That night Dad looked at me across the room.

“You were on those rods again,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“No, not me,” I said, trying to look innocent.

“Oh, yes, you were.”

I decided to let well enough alone and said no more. I’m still not sure how he knew.

Clifford, my oldest brother, had his first job in Lamont. He had his own team, and he and Dad worked for the oil company. The jobs lasted six or seven months. They each were paid seven dollars per day for self and team. Clifford had become a man. Clifford didn’t receive his wages; Dad saved them for him until the end of the job, when Clifford was given fifty dollars for a down payment on a 1925 Model T Ford roadster. Clifford paid the remaining one hundred dollars in twelve payments.

Clifford told of an incident that took place during this time at Lamont, although neither Mary nor I remember it. Our neighbors, the Carlisles – also teamster – lived a little way down the road from us, and one day Buddy was over there playing. Dad yelled for him to come on home, but three-year-old Buddy didn’t pay any attention to the summons. Dad spotted Mary and me in the yard and said us:

“You two go over there and bring that boy home.”

Mary and I tried to do his bidding, but Buddy just wouldn’t come. Dad again yelled at us:

“Come on, bring him on. Come on home!”

So Mary and I, one on each side of him, started dragging Buddy towards home, while he dragged his feet and kicked and squalled all the way. Dad, hearing the ruckus, picked up a switch and came towards us. We must have thought that Buddy was really going to get it for disobeying, because after all, Mary and I were just following orders. But when Dad reached us, he started using the switch on us. Just then, Mrs. Carlisle came rushing out to our defense, saying

“You’re getting on the wrong ones!”

But Dad said, “They must have been tantalizing him or something.”

But Mrs. Carlisle was adamant in her defense of us. “If it had been me, he’d a gone home under his own power. I’d a used that switch on him instead of the girls.”

According to Clifford Dad stopped switching us then, and I’m sure we were both grateful to Mrs. Carlisle.

Dad and Mom kept several dairy cows during this time in Lamont, and sold surplus milk to a half-dozen or so customers. I can remember going along in the car -with Dad or Clifford driving – carrying the quart bottles of milk up to the front doors of the customers.

It was that same year, when I was in the third grade, that I discovered reading. My favorite spot was the apple tree out in back of the house. When it was in full-leaf I could hide out with my book on one of the upper limbs, and if anyone called for me, I could just ignore them, since I couldn’t easily be seen. Unless, of course, it was dinner time, or unless I knew of a planned trip to town. But for a “Come help with the dishes” kind of call, I just scrunched back and pretended to be part of the tree.

I can remember some complaints that started about me about this time. One was “You’re just like Flossie … always got your nose in a book.” I did read everything I could get my hands on, but books weren’t so easy for me to come by if school was not in session.

Another criticism, this time from Mom, was “You’ve always got your feet higher than your head. Why can’t you be more of a lady like Mary?”

Another complaint was, “You have a tear in every one of your dress tails. Stop climbing trees.” I would have been better off in jeans, but little girls always wore dresses then.

But the world was a pretty good place back then, at least from where I was viewing it.

In 1928, Herbert Hoover was elected President of the United States, Walt Disney made his first Mickey Mouse film, George Gershwin wrote An American in Paris, penicillin was discovered, and Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. That year the first Model A came on the market, Thompson seedless raisins sold for twenty-five cents a pound, a leg of lamb for thirty-three cents a pound, a package Royal Gelatin for ten cents, and I was born March 7.

The family moved to a little three-room house in Madison. There was a place at the back of the property for the horses, plus a hen-house and small yard for Mom’s chickens. She had twelve Rhode Island Red laying hens, and usually they would lay ten to twelve eggs a day. One day she came back to the house with a pleased smile on her face. She’d gotten thirteen eggs that day from her twelve hens.

At one point, Dad got a job with the Jacereka Manufacturing Company. According to Clifford, Dad worked for thirty-one days with Bess and Queen, unloading a car-loads of pipe. At the end of that time the company offered him a job as yard man, and as such he would have had to measure and sell pipe. But Dad didn’t take the job. He felt with his limited education he wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Soon after Dad had sold his team Bess and Queen to a farmer, but still had a team of buckskin horses named Mac and Jack. One night when Dad was home, I remember hearing pounding on the door and adult voices, but I went back to sleep. The next morning, I found out Dad’s team had gotten out, and a neighbor four houses down, a Mr. Donaldson, had alerted him in a not-too-friendly manner.

Dad had not liked this man Donaldson. He was a deacon in the local Methodist Church, and in that capacity passed the collection plate to the congregation on Sundays. On Saturday nights, according to neighborhood gossips, he got drunk, but every Sunday morning he appeared in church, piously passing the plate.

Walking home from school. that day with my sometime playmate Maryanne Donaldson, I asked what caused those large round indentations in her father’s small but heretofore perfect front lawn. She looked at me with a little disgust.

“Your father’s horses did that.”

“Oh,” was all I could think to say.

I felt that she was putting my father down, and I wanted to say something equally denigrating about hers, but I couldn’t think how to say it. The moment passed and I said nothing.

Times were becoming more difficult for the Erwins. Dad and his brothers had been trained to work with horses, but the world was gradually becoming mechanized. Jobs utilizing their teams and wagons were becoming increasingly hard to find. Part of that year Dad had a job grading a portion of the road between Hamilton and Madison. He was paid $4.50 a day. In 1912 Dad earned $2.50 a day for himself and his team. In 1917 he was paid $7.00 a day, in 1918 the wage was up to $10.00 a day, but by 1928 it was down to $4.50.

Dad quit this grading job, as he still seemed to think that the grass was somehow always greener someplace down the road, and it was not long afterwards that the county bought mechanized graders. The importance of the work horse, and the men who worked them, was waning.

It was this year also that Dad, Clifford and Uncle Jim got jobs at Yates Center, a small town south and east of Madison, working for a road contractor who had about fifty head of horses. Dad, had a team named Mac and Jack, and he bought another small black team. The road contractor agreed to use Dad’s teams as well. Dad didn’t move the family to Valley Center right away. He and Clifford used Clifford’s little Ford roadster to drive back and forth. Those weekly trips were almost the end of Clifford’s little car. They worked there about six months, until trucks and tractors took over and made the muleskinners obsolete.

After the job ended, Dad and Mom, with Mary, Buddy, and me, went to Oklahoma to Grandpa Hayworth’s homestead near Fargo. Mom’s sister Alpha and her husband Lon Stoner were farming Grandpa’s place then. We stayed most of the rest of the summer living with them, while Dad hauled wheat.

I have pleasant memories of those weeks in Oklahoma. I remember the mulberry trees lining the driveway. Their fallen fruit stained our bare feet unless we were careful where we stepped. The huge water tank served more than one purpose. There were goldfish in it, the horses drank from it, and sometimes we kids jumped in to cool ourselves off on hot afternoons.

Dad was completely disapproving of our swims in the tank. He said the horses shouldn’t have to drink the water where we had been, and that his own horses would refuse to drink there. Uncle Lon, however, didn’t care, and neither did his horses, so we continued to take occasional dips in the tank along with our cousins – but never when Dad was around.

I seem to remember Aunt Alpha played the piano, was interested in different crafts, and could “tell fortunes.” There was a Ouija board available that we and our cousins played around with. Mildred was close to my age, and Snooks (her real name was Daphne but no one used it) was about fourteen. She was at the boy-crazy age then and particularly interested in a boy working for Uncle Lon. Most of the questions we asked of Ouija had to do with Snooks’ flirtation with this young man: Would he smile at her? Would he hold her hand? Would he kiss her that night?

Snooks was definitely the leader of our little group that summer, and I have good memories of those weeks spent there. But Mary remembers that summer as being one of the worst she had ever experienced. Snooks made her the butt of her jokes and Mary was often excluded by Snooks from our activities, whereas Mildred and I followed the stronger leader. I didn’t remember that part of it, and this revelation from Mary left me with grown-up feelings of guilt for my lack of family loyalty.

Goldie and John also came down to Oklahoma that summer and Flossie was there for part of the time, but I was looking at the world from an eight-year-old’s viewpoint, and my memories do not include much about them. At the end of the summer we returned to the little house in Madison, and Mary and I started that September in the Madison school; Mary in the fifth and I in the fourth.

It was also in 1928 when Grandma and Grandpa Erwin bought the house in Severy in which they lived out their lives. They had been living on a rented farm a few miles from there where Grandma had raised 1,000 White Leghorn chickens. From the sale of those chickens came the $200 they paid for the Severy house.

Grandma often said she paid for the house, but Grandpa hauled water for the chickens and raised milo to feed them. In addition, he jacked up the house to remedy several dips in the floors, and built on the covered torch that went around two sides of the house. For many years following, their house was the scene of many family get-togethers, with lots of good food and many lively conversations. Those family reunions were about the only time we got to play with our many cousins. On the other hand, I also remember that it was not unusual for at least one of the uncles and his family to be absent because someone was not speaking to someone else.

Grandpa died in 1953, and Grandma was almost ninety when she passed on in 1960, but she was able to care for herself, and the old house, almost to the end.

Clifford recently drove by the old house where we spent so many pleasant Sunday afternoons and found it to be now derelict-windows broken and roof falling in (probably around 1980-Ed.). A sad ending to the house, but the memories live on.

It was in 1929 that Herbert Hoover became the 31st Presi­dent of the United States, the book All Quiet on the Western Front became a best seller, silent films gave way to talking pictures, popular songs were Stardust and Singin’ in the Rain, and October 28 was labeled “Black Friday,” the day the United States Stock Exchange collapsed and a world economic crisis began. It was also in 1929 that Flossie graduated from Madison High School in June, and married Oran Austin in August.

Dad still often worked away from home whenever he could get work. He sometimes had trouble putting food on the table. He often went hunting, and many times our main meal consisted of wild rabbits his rifle had brought down. It was reported at the time that some of the wild rabbits were diseased and not good for human consumption, but Dad decided to ignore the warning, and none of us had any adverse effects from eating the rabbits.

Mom had her chickens which produced eggs for our consump­tion and for sale to neighbors, and we also had a cow for milk, butter and cottage cheese. I don’t remember. ever going hungry.

Goldie and John lived just a few blocks away from us on Standpipe Hill at this time. John was working for the Madison Post Office; the depression did not affect his job until four r five years later. Goldie took her position of big sister seriously, and she often provided small things that made life better: a new book at Christmas time, occasional new dresses for Mary and me, sometimes material for Mom to sew.

In a large family there is of necessity a lot of give and take, and mostly I liked being part of the group. But size and age did have a lot to do with the pecking order in our family, and I was the number six child.

Bub was always quiet and easy going and was a willing helper if Mom asked him for an errand like fetching wood or a pail of water, but Clifford was a tease. I can remem­ber getting up early on Sunday morning and hurrying out to retrieve the Sunday paper so I could read the funnies. Clifford would come strolling into the kitchen and, by vir­tue of his superior size, take them away from me.

“But I got them first,” I’d wail, though not too loudly be­cause Dad might be still asleep.

“Well, I got them last,” and Clifford would calmly take them over.

Bud remembers Clifford sometimes used to hang him on the doorknob by his overalls Clifford would loop the sus­penders of the overalls around the knob and walk away, leav­ing Buddy dangling with his feet a few inches off the floor. Sometimes Bud could get off by twisting around, but mostly he’d just holler. He decided it was easier to just yell, real loud, and someone would eventually rescue him. It earned him the nickname “Crybaby,”but it was easier.

That was something I’d learned a few years earlier; just cry for Mom. I was often called Crybaby too, but it stopped some teasing.

Flossie graduated from high school that spring. She wanted very much to go on to college, and several of her friends were going. She could see the economic situation at home, and she was well aware of Mom and Dad’s attitude towards education. She knew there wasn’t a chance for her.

Soon after graduation Flossie started going out with Oran Austin, a young man she had first met when she was a high school freshman at Hamilton. It was a two-month court­ship, and they were married on August 8 at the Eureka County Courthouse, with Goldie and John as witnesses. A little less than four years before, Goldie and John had been married at the same location. After a brief honeymoon trip, Flossie and Oran started their married life in a small house in Hamilton.

One Sunday in the summer of 1929 our family went to visit Grandpa and Grandma Erwin in Severy, Kansas. A nice­ly-dressed, attractive lady about Dad’s age was there, and she and Dad greeted each other like old friends. They started reminiscing, and Dad asked her about “White Lightnin’.” They talked of mountain trails, bucking horses, saddles and spurs, and fording a river. Clifford remained quietly in the background for several minutes, but finally curiosity caused him to ask what the conversation was about. He was told that the lady was Dad’s cousin Sarah* they were talking about their families’ move from Arkansas to Kansas in the summer of 1897.

The families lived in Carroll County, Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains, where both our father Odes and our grand­father Mike Erwin were born. The wagon trip started at Green Forest in Carroll County, and ended in Longton, Elk County, Kansas, where Grandma Erwin’s older brother lived. The trip was in the planning stage for several weeks before they left.

As Dad told the story, he had a two-year-old colt to ride, and his Dad had bought him a new saddle. Grandpa, at that time, had three sons: our father and his younger brothers, Dale and Tom. Dad was nine years old, and, as the eldest son, was expected to help drive the cattle.

Cousin Sarah* was eleven years old then, and she listened with interest to the to the plans for the trip. She was on incur­able tomboy, she had grown up around horses, and as a rider she considered herself the equal, or superior, to any of the boys around.

The day before the trip was to start Sarah finally asked which horse she was to ride. The men started to laugh at her. It was then that she found she was not to ride at all. She was expected to walk alongside so as not to overload the horses pulling the wagons. After all, she only a girl, and that’s what girls did.

Sarah was hopping mad, and she protested. The men only laughed more, but she became louder and more insistent that she would not walk. She demanded her own horse to ride.

She put up such a howl that one of her uncles said,

“Okay, there is another two-year-old colt and a small saddle and spurs. You can ride, too.”

The next morning, the morning they were to leave, someone saddled the colt for her. It was a bay pony, weighing about 900 pounds. Sarah asked what the colt’s name was and was told “White Lightnin’.”

Sarah said, “When I heard that name “White Lightnin’, it was as if a light came on in my head. I knew something was not quite right. But I’d gotten this far, and I wasn’t about to back down.”

Sarah continued the story, saying that she started to get on the horse, it started bucking, and she hit the dirt. She climbed back on and was thrown again. She would not give up, and each time Sarah was bucked off, she immediately got back on the horse. She was thrown six times before they even got started, ten times the first day, and about twenty-five times in all on the trip.

After she’d been unseated a few times, someone told Sarah to pull the horse’s head up and rake her with the spurs. Sarah found that if she didn’t let White Lightnin’ get her head down between her front legs, she couldn’t buck off her rider.  Sarah began to learn all of the horse’s tricks, and to use the spurs to her own advantage. After that she managed to stay in the saddle most of the time. There were two covered wagons and 99 head of cattle. They traveled west from Green Forest into Oklahoma Territory, crossed the Grand River at about where Grand Lake is now (also called Lake of the Cherokee), and on west and north into Kansas. When their wagon train reached the river, the spring rains were over, at least temporarily, but the river level was still high.

It was a unanimous decision to wait for the water to go down enough to make the crossing less hazardous. The women, by that time, were very willing to stop for a day or two, and, taking advantage of the warm sunny weather, they washed clothes and aired bedding. The men looked after the cattle and horses and checked the harnesses and wagons. All the children, in­cluding Odes and Sarah, had to help, but there was plenty of time for play, too. In the evenings there were the gatherings around the campfire and the stories to listen to. It was like a long picnic for the children.

When.it was decided the river was safe to ford, the men told Sarah to ride across in one of the wagons, and one of them

would take her horse over. She looked at the water and watched some of the others plunge their horses into the river.

“No,” she decided. “If they can ride their horses across that river, I can, too.”

There was a lot of noisy activity, and everyone was very busy. The cattle were being herded into the water and the wagons being made ready for the crossing. No one was paying any attention to Sarah.

Sarah continued her story: “I’d made up my mind, so I jumped White Lightnin’ into the water and we swam across with the cattle. The water was cold and it was scary, but I held on tight to White Lightnin’. When we got to the other bank I was soaking wet, but was I pleased with myself!”

Clifford asked how long it took to make the trip and was told they traveled about fifteen miles a day, and the trip took nineteen days, including the stop at the river.

“And,” Sarah said, “when we reached Longton, White Lightnin’ and I. marched proudly down Main Street with our heads held high.”

Grandma Erwin told a further story about White Lightnin’.

After the families reached Longton, she and Grandpa Erwin moved on a farm south of town close to Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tom Stilwell. Sarah and her family lived about a mile further south. When they had been there about a month, Sarah’s moth­er happened to run short of milk. Sarah, riding White Light­nin’, came over and asked Grandma if she could spare some. Grandma got a pitcher of milk, and, after a short visit, Sarah got back on the horse with the milk.

The horse, having had a rest, was feeling frisky and started bucking, but Sarah, holding the reins in one hand and the pitcher of milk in the other, stayed in the saddle. Grandma said White Lightnin’ was still bucking as far away as she could see her. Sarah reported later she got all the way home without being thrown and without spilling a drop of the milk. It was a year or two later when Sarah’s family moved into Oklahoma and the families no longer had close contact.

Dad asked her, “What ever became of White Lightnin’?” Sarah answered, “I had that horse until she died some twenty-five years later. White Lightnin’ produced half a dozen colts, and she still had scars on her sides from those spurs of mine when she went to her grave on the ranch in Oklahoma.”

*Clifford could not remember the name of Dad’s cousin. To simplify the telling of the story, I have called her Sarah. Author

Note: Genealogical research by Donald Erwin some thirty years after the above story was written suggests that the Sarah* remembered by Clifford Erwin was most likely Essie Virgie Erwin (1887-1959), the then eleven-year-old daughter of Joseph Johnston (Joe) Erwin.