Son of an Iowa Sharecropper
Cleo E. McCall
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 The Early Years……...… 5
Chapter 2 The Move to Climbing Hill…………………….. 31
Chapter 3 The Move to Bronson..... 39
Chapter 4 The Move to Lawton...… 50
Chapter 5 Grade School Years at Whiting…………….….. 62
Chapter 6 My Hobbies at Whiting.. 70
Chapter 7 The High School Years.. 87
Chapter 8 More Events With Relatives at Whiting…………...… 92
Chapter 9 To California, Back to Iowa, and Finally to New Jersey……………...…. 112
CHAPTER 1
The Early Years
My life began in a small farm house, one mile north of the little town of Sloan, Iowa. The date was December 13, 1941, just a week after Pearl Harbor Day and the start of World War II. My dad, Frank McCall, leased this farm, which was in northwestern Iowa in the Missouri River floodplain. He paid the rent of the land by sharing a percentage of his crops to the landlord.
The soil here was black in color and was good for growing crops such as corn, soybeans, oats, wheat, and alfalfa hay. The main crop for Iowa was corn; thus, the motto, “Iowa, the Corn State”. Our family consisted of my father, John “Frank”, my mother Emma, oldest brother Donald “Dean”, my other brother Darrell, and my sister Norma. I was the youngest.
Recently on a visit back to Iowa from my present home in Willingboro, New Jersey, we drove past that house. I took a photo of it and included it here.
I still have the first toy that I ever received after all these years. It is a cotton-stuffed rabbit that I will show next. Norma was given a similar kangaroo toy.
I still have both of them.
My earliest memory was when I was about 3 or 4 years old. My mom was taking me with here out to the barn yard to do some chores. She was wearing a light jacket, and put her hand in its pocket and brought out a Cherry Bing candy bar. It was a cherry nougat covered with crushed peanuts in chocolate. I had never even seen a candy bar before. She split it and gave me some to eat. I remember it was delicious! These candies were and still are made by the Palmer Candy Company in Sioux City, Iowa. When visiting Iowa, we still purchase a supply to bring home.
Living with my family a short time after my parents were married was Roy Sterling. Roy was the “hired hand” who worked for room and board and “spending money”. He remained with my family until I was ten years old, then returned to South Sioux City, Nebraska, where his parents lived. A rare photo of him follows.
Our family owned an old box camera and didn’t take pictures very often. I recently for the first time came across this earliest photo of me sitting in front of an old Willys car in 1942. One of my first pictures was taken in a photo booth in Onawa, Iowa.
The first memories of life on farms took place a couple of moves after the one at Sloan. My dad had rented a farm near Smithland, Iowa. It was in the same county, Woodbury, as was Sloan. We moved there in about 1945 and I started school in 1947. A school bus picked us up each day. On my first day, I was afraid and did not want to go. Dad walked behind me until I got on the bus, where I angrily walked to the back seat and sat with the big kids.
I recall one of my favorite memories. Saturday night had come at last! As an Iowa farm boy eight years of age, this night was always anticipated with glee.
It was the end of the week and time to take into town the fruits of our labor. The cartons of eggs I had gathered would help buy groceries for another week. The two pails of hand- separated cream from the cows my two older brothers milked would complete the amount of money needed to buy groceries. Enough would even be left over to buy my older brothers, sister and myself all the candy we wanted. I would have to wait a couple more years for my turn at milking cows by hand, but I had earned my reward from doing my own chores.
Candy, though, wasn’t the only reason I looked forward so much to the five-mile journey to Smithland. The town of about five hundred people had a weekly event every Saturday night of the summer. A free movie was shown on the brick wall of the only bank in town. It was great fun to find some friends from school, buy popcorn at the popcorn wagon, and watch a Hopalong Cassidy or Roy Rogers western.
A few years ago, I saw an old brick building in another town, Oto, where we also saw free movies. This was the next town north of Smithland and had a very small population. I took a couple of photos of the building that still has the painted screen on its side! We sat on plank benches in the lawn and a popcorn vendor was always present.
After the “show,” it would be time to go to the only grocery store within miles. My mom would always permit me to buy a box of Cracker Jacks to take home to eat later. What a collection of little plastic toys I was gathering! Mr. Mennin, the store owner, always called me “Cracker Jack.”
The Cracker Jack boxes always had a “surprise” in them to attract us kids. I still have many of them that I have kept in an old box over the years. Only the flat plastic toys in the following photo came from the Cracker Jack boxes.
It was a simple life, but a good one most of the time, at least. Times were difficult for my Dad and Mom. It was shortly after World War 2, and Dad had rented this farm of 300 acres. He did his farming with a team of horses and one old tractor that had seen better days. Dad raised corn, alfalfa, and oats, mostly. We always had pigs, cows, and horses and mules to feed, but most of the grain was sold for the main income.
The big event for the year was threshing time. The neighbors would join in to pitch oat bundles into the iron wheeled threshing machine. What an awful noise it made! I, too, had a part in the harvest. Bundles had to be gathered and stood together to make shocks. Horse drawn hay racks would be driven to them. The driver, walking alongside, would pitch the bundles on the wagon. When it was piled high with the golden bundles he would wait his turn to deftly pitch them into the roaring thresher.
At noon, a huge dinner was served by the wives of the farmers. Women and children ate last, hoping for some of the good pieces of meat to be left.
Dad occasionally would trade horses. Around this time, he traded his team of horses for a team of mules. He would later drive them in the Smithland Centennial Parade and took second place. He also would “break” horses to do teamwork together. He would follow the procedure of tying their feet with ropes and tripping them is they didn’t obey his commands. This was especially useful in training a spooky horse from taking the bit in its teeth and having a runaway.
When they were “broke”, he could even stand on their shoulder as they lay on the ground. I did not like to watch this training. I saw his own team get spooked by clothes flying on a clothes line and run with the wagon. This was before they were trained. Other farmers would sometimes hire him to train their teams.
We didn’t have a lot of money to spend in those days but were content with what we had. I still have some of my toys from the 1950’s. The following photo shows little plastic cars that we used to get in cereal boxes.
It was a lot of fun to get to go up to the “city” (Sioux City). We would shop in the Sears and Montgomery Ward’s stores for needed clothing and would always go to the two “dime stores” nearby. The following photo of the plastic car was purchased in one of them. I remember that they came in two sizes. The small ones were ten cents and the large ones were twenty-five cents. Many toys of that time were still made of metal, such as the boat shown below. The metal school bus was given to me as a Christmas gift when I was in Kindergarten. I was permitted to take it to school where I remember pushing it around on the short concrete wall surrounding the building.
There were a lot of happy times for our family. Picnics with all the cousins to play with were especially fun.
This photo was taken at Christmas time in 1951. The front row, left to right, is Norma, cousin Barbara Caulfield, cousin JoAnn Farley, and cousin Earlene McCall. The center row is me, cousin Ruth McCall, cousin James Farley, and cousin Fred Farley. The back row is cousin Henry Farley and my brother Darrell.
The following photo is of my cousin Homer Caulfield, myself, Norma, cousins Marjorie Caulfield, and JoAnn Farley. Marjorie was my mother’s niece. During hard times, one of my grandmother Emma Jenkins’ other daughters needed help raising her children. Marjorie, a twin, was taken in by my parents for several years before I was born.
We often raised up baby raccoons we had gotten from an uncle who hunted them for pelts and sport. Our dog, Shep and one of our raccoons entertained us often. They would spar with each other in the porch. It was hilarious whenever the ‘coon would jump on Shep’s back, grabbing his tail and flipping him off his feet. Knowing he was in trouble, he would then scamper up to the top of the screen door to safety.
The strangest pet that I ever had was a handicapped white rooster. We noticed when he hatched that he was different. His neck was twisted causing his head to look sideways. I took him aside and hand fed him, as he was having trouble eating. He did grow to an adult, but not without difficulties. Once, he got into a fight with another rooster and I rescued him from his bloody escapade.
Another time, I couldn’t find him anywhere. After several days, when I was collecting eggs from the nests in the brooder house, I heard a strange scratchy noise in the wall. This part of the wall was about three feet high and had a space of around four inches between it and the outer main wall. I peered down and saw my pet chicken trapped there. I pulled him out. He was almost starved and seemed light as a feather. Again, I nursed him back to health. I had him as a pet for about seven years. Whenever I would pick him up, he would crow repeatedly. So funny! He grew very old and eventually never reappeared, so I never found what became of him.
It was always nice to visit my grandparents. My grandmother Jenkins (whose name is Emma; the same as my mother’s) lived in a tiny town of about 50 people called Ticonic, Iowa. A couple of photos of her follow.
She passed when I was around eight years old. I think the year was 1950.
My grandfather, William Jenkins had passed before I was born, however Grandma’s father was alive when I was one year old. He lived to be 101 years, 1 month, and 1 day old! His name was Norman Allen.
Here she is sitting in her front yard, reading her Bible, as she often did. I don’t know which grandchild she was holding in the next photo.
My other grandparents, Henry and Florence McCall lived several miles away at rural Castana, Iowa.
I remember going over to their house quite often. Usually, all the cousins would be there to play with. My grandfather built this house himself. Not only a farmer, he was a skilled carpenter as well. Following is a picture of their fiftieth wedding anniversary.
I’ve included a photo of them on their 50th wedding anniversary.
Another photo taken on their farm follows. It is of my mother, my brother Dean, and my father. My cousins and I used to climb that ladder and play upstairs in the old shed.
The next photo is of my grandmother’s brother, my great-uncle Walter McClellan. My grandfather, Henry McCall is on his left.
Another old photo shows my Grandpa McCall, myself, and my uncle Herbert.
Herbert remained a bachelor until after both of my grandparents passed. He later married Jean Hull and they had a son, Henry. He is my youngest cousin.
They always had a few dogs. At least two of which were hounds that they used for racoon hunting in their woods.
They also kept geese and guinea hens, all of which made a lot of noise when we arrived down Grandpa’s lane.
We also would go out to Ponca, Nebraska to visit my Mom’s older sister, Jewell. She and my uncle, Harry Miller lived and farmed there. On probably their only visit there, shown in the next photo with Jewell and my Mom, are my grandparents Florence and Henry McCall who rode out with us for a visit that time.
Ponca was only a short drive from South Sioux City, Nebraska.
When Smithland had its centennial celebration, my Dad drove his team of mules in the parade, winning the second place ribbon.
He was pulling a Standard Oil tank here.
CHAPTER 2
The move to Climbing Hill
We lived on the Smithland farm for five years until the lease ended. The farm animals, machinery, and household goods were all taken to our next residence at a farm one mile north of Climbing Hill, Iowa. I was in the third grade at the time. It was 1950.
Again, on a recent trip back to Iowa, I photographed the house we lived
in, as well as a little church in town.
The church of the Nazarene at Climbing Hill was the church that Norma and I attended a two week bible school at when I was ten years old in 1952.
A farmer and his wife who lived a few miles from us would stop to pick us up each day. This was the only church attendance that I had until after growing up.
Following are the two plaques that we painted while there. They were made of chalk and we could pick any one we wanted. The one shaped like a shield is mine. I also still have Norma’s; the one shaped like a scroll
Our family had once lived on another farm near this one, but I was too young to remember it. Mom and some of her cats are shown below. We kept as many as sixteen, as I recall. Most were mousers that lived outside and slept in the barn. We always had plenty of separated milk after removing the cream for sale, so they were well fed.
I first learned to ride a bike here. It belonged to my brother Darrell. He also had a Red Ryder air rifle that had been passed down to him from an uncle. He gave it to me when I was about nine years old.
At the age of ten, I began one of my new chores; milking cows by hand. Dad gave me just one to milk and she was the easiest one as well. Other chores involved feeding the pigs, chickens, cows, and even the work horses at times.
At the end of one particular day, Dad asked me to feed his team which was in their stall at the barn. I carried my bucket of corn ears to the barn, but when I walked behind them, one was startled and kicked me backward against the wall. My only injury was a bloody ear that scraped a nail in the wall. I got up very angrily, continued around to the front of the stall and threw the corn at his head! I did feed the other one his five or six ears of corn. I later felt bad, realizing that the poor horse had been working ever since noon hour and must have been very hungry. His meal was where he couldn’t reach it.
I was allowed to drive the tractor at times when I reached the age of ten as well. We were threshing the oats one day at my uncle Earl McCall’s farm. My job was to keep the oats coming from the threshing machine leveled off in the wagon. When it was full, I drove it down the hill to the granary to be put into the bin with the grain auger.
As I was pulling the wagon down the hill, my tractor’s front tire dropped into a deeply eroded rut. I was panicked! Putting all my strength on one side of the steering wheel, seeing dirt being pushed aside, I was afraid everything was going to turn over. That could have been fatal, but I managed to get it under control.
Years later, another uncle, Herbert McCall, tipped his tractor over on a hillside and was crushed to death.
Always collecting things, I garnered a bunch of little pocket knives from the age of five.
Part of my remaining collection is shown in the previous photo. The folk-art knife made from army bullets was given to me by my uncle Herbert, mentioned earlier. He had made this knife while in World War 2 overseas. The other two were given to me by Dean and Darrell. Dean’s was missing half of the wooden handle, so I made a new one.
The little jack knife, below, second from the right, was given to me at five years of age. The round metal caps are some old survey stake caps from the 70’s.
The next photo is of several of my cousins and me. This was taken at my aunt Helen and uncle Farley’s house not far from my grandparents’ farm. Left to right are me, James, Fred, and JoAnn Farley, Barbara and Betty McCall (my uncle Jim McCall’s daughters).
My uncle Jim and aunt Velda and family later moved to Santa Clara, California before my sister Norma, and later Darrell moving there. I was to join them after High School in 1960. Jim drove me to the unemployment office where I obtained my first job.
These cousins were my playmates while growing up. Living in the country didn’t allow time or opportunity to play much with classmates, except at recess.
For a time, we not only raised hogs but also had a herd of about one hundred beef cattle that we were feeding for the packing house market in Sioux City.
One winter day that I will never forget, we had a terrible blizzard that drifted over the top of the barn yard fence. It became my job to grab an aluminum scoop shovel and dig a trench all the way along the fence where the drifts were. A few steers had already walked over the fence. It was cold, hard work, as I had to shovel the snow over my head as I removed it down to the ground.
CHAPTER 3
The Move to Bronson
Our lease on the Climbing Hill farm lasted two years. Our family gathered up the livestock, machinery and household items, then soon settled in on our next farm near Bronson. This town of about four hundred people was several miles from where we had lived.
As usual, Mom planted a large garden. Dad had prepared the ground with the old horse-drawn equipment, using his team of mules.
Now, in 1952, the tractor was doing most of the work instead of the teams of horses and mules.
The garden was always beautiful. Mom fringed the entire garden with rows of flowers. The rows were long and perfectly straight. Hardly a blade of grass or a single weed could be found in her garden. We enjoyed eating the tomatoes, radishes, onions, beans, carrots, cabbage, asparagus, corn, squash, cantaloupe and watermelons. Another garden by the corn field yielded many bushels of potatoes.
Much of the harvest was canned and put into glass jars to be kept for months in the cellar. There were also jars of cherries, apples, pears and other fruits stored away. Mom even canned some meat. Since we had our own milk supply, we never needed much from the grocery store. Mom baked bread frequently. We also had our own beef and pork to eat. Of course we, like most farmers, raised chickens for meat and eggs.
The previous photo shows Norma hoeing the weeds and loosening the soil between the rows of the large garden. Mom is standing in her garden shown next. Mom never allowed weeds or grass to grow in her garden. So we always kept busy doing something in the summers.
The following old photo shows my Dad putting corn into a crib. Walking along he had hand-picked the ears, tossing them, ear by ear into the wagon, as the mules pulled it forward, heeding his verbal commands to move forward or to stop.
I remember helping him pick corn by hand once or twice. The tractor had a belt that drove the elevator machinery.
We usually showed off Mom’s cats when being photographed, as seen by me holding one of them. We always had at least a dozen cats around. Few ever became house cats, though.
While living at Climbing Hill, Dean joined the Army, which he made a career of. He would retire in Killeen, Texas near Fort Hood years later. Here, at Bronson, he was on leave. Darrell is in the center.
Dean was nine years older than me and Darrell was six years older. Norma was four years older. This picture was taken in 1952.
Our dogs, Sandy and Blackie are playing in front of us. Sandy lost one leg to the hay mower once, but recovered well.
The photo here shows me holding a baby chicken while feeding him some bread.
In about 1953, I was holding one of our many cats here with my Mom and Dad.
We always had plenty of milk to feed our dogs and cats along with dinner scraps. I was still milking cows, as we always needed them to help provide for us. For a time, we had an extra six cows that we were taking care of for my uncle Earl McCall. I usually milked three and Darrell milked the rest. Sometimes he would have a date and wanted to drive to town early. He offered me a quarter to milk his.
There was one cow that I did not like. It was a white cow that for some reason we kept apart from the others. She wore a halter, which I would attach a rope to and tie her to a lone post in the barn yard. She would continually step sideways (even though I had the usual chains on her legs to prevent her kicking.
So, I had to move my pail and milk stool around the post in circles until I was finished milking her. I would get so
angry that I would hit her with my fist. That, not having any effect, resulted in my hitting her with my milk stool sometimes. Again, with no effect.
CHAPTER 4
The Move to Lawton
After living near Bronson for two years, we moved once again. Our new residence was just a few miles away near Lawton, Iowa.
Our place was ten miles from town and we were told the bus would not be picking us up. But there was a country school only a couple miles away. This prompted my Dad to buy me my first bicycle. I rode it to school one day, but that night the town school changed their mind about the bus. So much for country school, and I still had my bike!
Soon, I decided to explore the dirt road on which we lived. While riding on a section of the road that I had never been on, I came to the top of a very steep hill. I hesitated in fear, but foolishly, I started down. My speed picked up so much, my brakes had no effect. It was difficult to keep between the two deep ruts left from the last rain. Somehow, probably with God’s help, I made it safely to the bottom. Pushing the bike back up, I went straight home.
While living here, Dad purchased a 1946 Alice Chalmers tractor and then mounted a two-row corn picker onto it when picking time came.
Following is a photo of me hitching up the wagon to the corn picker. Darrell was the driver who would do the picking.
This is the tractor that I was driving when harrowing, turned too short, and almost got killed when the tire caught the harrow and threw it up over me.
Darrell was driving it but wanted to take a nap, so he allowed me to drive for him.
He got into trouble more than me because the harrow was broken and he had put me in danger also.
My Mom took the picture of the farm site from a nearby knoll.
That summer, I noticed some little red cloth flags tied to nails running evenly down the center of the dirt road. The County surveyors had been out preparing the road for grading and surfacing with gravel. I supposed the surveyors were done with their flagged nails, so I took a pair of pliers, pulled them out, and filled a whole bag. My parents were not very pleased with me stocking our tool shed with these nails. I doubt if the survey crew was either when they were called back out. Oddly enough, I was to become a land surveyor myself years later.
One dark evening, Dad was unloading a truck loaded with heifers. The two mules which my Dad kept around mostly as pets, were watching with interest. Seeing an opportunity to have some fun, they chased them out of the barnyard into the pasture. Dad shouted angrily at me to run after the cattle and bring them back.
Winter had come and the ground was frozen. In the dark I slipped on a patch of ice, breaking my elbow. The cattle were free for that night. It was a long, painful ride to the nearest hospital at Sioux City. It was the first time for me to see the inside of a hospital. (I was even born in a farm house). As the doctor was feeling my arm, he suddenly set it without warning. The doctor said, “you were a brave young man; you didn’t even yell out.” I replied, “I was gritting my teeth too hard to scream.”
I hated those mules. It seemed they were more important than me to my Dad. Once, I left a bucket of corn on the outside of their corral. I went about doing my chores, but they broke the fence down to get the corn. Discovering their freedom, they bolted down the road to a corn field ripe to harvest. We went after them in the old pickup, chasing them for miles. At various points, I was ordered to run across a field to intercept them. My lungs and throat burned as though on fire. We succeeded to tire them, turn them back, and penned them up.
The next photo shows my Mom sitting near some of her flowers. She always had a lot of them. If the new place we moved to didn’t have them, she would always plant new ones.
A long-time friend of our family was Phil Hane, shown next with Darrell. Dean and he were buddies until going to the service. Then Darrell and Norma hung out a lot with him.
Once, I was riding in the rear seat of his 1953 Pontiac convertible with its top up. He drove quite recklessly and hit a bump that bounced me up and I hit my head on the top’s bar. If the top had been down, I would have been thrown out.
Later, Phil became a Registered Land Surveyor as I was to become some years later. About fifteen years in the future we even worked together once in a while.
Around that time I made my first trip to Minnesota. My aunt and uncle William Jenkins had recently moved to a farm near Dexter. Our family took a rare vacation trip to visit them. Shown in the photo following are me, Shirley, Myrna, my sister Norma, and Audrey Jenkins.
The next photo shows all of us. Dad is between me and William. Mom is between Myrna and my aunt Anna. On the way home, we got to visit Mystery Cave which was very interesting.
The Jenkins family came to visit us at Whiting a few years later. Shown here is Shirley, Audrey, me, Darrell, and Myrna.
My grandmother Florence McCall had recently passed. Following is a photo with my grandfather shown on the right. Going to the left from him are me, cousin James (Jimmy) Farley, Norma, cousins JoAnn and Henry Farley and Darrell. They were visiting us at Lawton in around 1954 for Christmas.
We always had cows to milk, and that meant baby calves as well. After they were weaned, I would feed them separated milk in a nipple bucket, until Dad would sell them at a livestock auction. Since we separated the fresh milk to get the cream, there was always milk enough for the calves, dogs, and cats. I was now old enough to turn the hand crank of the separator myself. It was just another daily chore. Most of the cream was kept cool in a large cream can which would be sold later at the local creamery. This usually provided grocery money while in town. The creameries bought our extra eggs. They also sold baby chicks.
CHAPTER 5
Grade School Years at Whiting
Spring arrived again at Lawton and the landlord wouldn’t renew our annual lease.
My oldest brother, Dean, was now in the Army and Darrell had quit school to take a job, so Dad called it quits and held an auction. His older sons weren’t there to help farm and I was too young.
Fortunately, he found another farm for us to live on, rent free. We only had to take care of the buildings and watch the owner’s cattle herd. The owner was glad to have someone living there.
This farm was five miles northwest of Whiting, Iowa. We moved there in 1955 and I was in the seventh grade. We were to live there longer than on any of the other farms. I remained until graduation from High School in 1960.
The photo of my Mom and Dad shows some of the many flowers that Mom had always planted wherever we lived.
Mom kept the yard beautiful with her flowers as usual. Norma sits next to some that were placed in painted tractor tires.
During my first summer, I started “walking the beans”. We cut weeds from soybean rows sometimes a half mile in length in fields of eighty acres or more. This and other jobs such as helping with a neighbor’s chores and baling hay would provide me with money to purchase my school clothes and lunches each year until graduation.
When we moved away from farming, Dad still had his 1950 Chevy pickup, which he used to buy apples from farmers owning apple trees. He would then sell them to various grocery stores. That didn’t last long and he began selling twine bales to farmers for the hay-baler machines.
In a few months after our move to Whiting, Dad started selling commercial livestock feed for a company based in Des Moines. This became his business until he retired years later.
My Mom and Dad are posing with me in 1955 or 56 in the following photo.
I did some work on my Uncle Rex and Aunt Ruth’s farm near Sloan a few times. They are shown here on their farm near Ute, Iowa a few years earlier. Ruth was one of my mother’s younger sisters.
While we were no longer farming, we still kept two or three milk cows that I had to milk night and day, whether on a cold winter day or hot summer day.
We still had chickens, of course, too. The following photo shows me with one of my pigs and my dog. The chicken house in the background reminds me of what I thought was a funny event.
A storm came up one day and Mom told me to hurry and get the chickens into their little shed.
I chased all of them in except one rooster who evaded me. He got on the other side of the fence in the field beside the henhouse. He just kept running back and forth along the fence, which irritated me. I picked up a corn cob to send him back the other way. The cob hit him right in the head and knocked him out cold. So, I just picked him up and set him into a nest in the henhouse. He fell out onto the floor, so I gave up, closed the door and went to the house. The next morning when I went to let them all out again, I saw that he had recovered.
CHAPTER 6
My Hobbies at Whiting
We didn’t own a TV set at first in those days, so I found other entertainment for myself. I enjoyed doing artwork, for example. I did pencil drawings, some ink drawings and began to do oil paintings, all before graduating from school.
The first two shown here were done with a fountain pen.
I still have a large collection of my old drawings. Over the years, there was some improvement in them. I started doing a few oil paintings before leaving High School, as well.
I had entered some of my sketches and paintings in our school art contest. The horse head drawing was made in the eighth grade.
I liked to experiment, as shown by the drawing of a deer on a large poster board done entirely by a ball point pen. I don’t have any idea of how many hours that took to complete.
One of my first oil paintings was of an elk. I copied a picture from a shallow tin pan that my mother had.
I also liked to hunt and fish. We lived in an area surrounded on three sides by Badger Lake. It used to be a channel of the Missouri River, which had changed courses many times over the years. My friend, Vernon Daniels lived a mile away, so we spent a lot of time together in the summers and on weekends.
One winter day we were hunting pheasants along the frozen lake’s bank. A rooster flew up in front of me along the bank, and I quickly brought him down with a blast from my shotgun. I yelled to Vernie, “ I got him!” He shouted back, “you got me too!” I glanced back from behind where I shot the bird, and sure enough, there was blood running down his face, right under his eye! One shot pellet had to have ricocheted from ice or a stone on the bank and struck him. We packed a snowball on it and walked back to my house. No one was there and we didn’t have a telephone yet, so we jumped on our bicycles and rode the mile to his house. His parents were home and drove us to the local hospital in Onawa.
The doctor examined him and recommended not to remove the pellet from the sinus area, as it would be more dangerous than leaving it.
Around that time, when I was sixteen, I took a course in taxidermy and proceeded to mount some of what we shot. My first specimens were a yellow- headed blackbird, a blue-winged teal duck, and a couple of pigeon hawks. Vernon’s dad provided me with deer antlers and feet also. I mounted the antlers on an oak plaque and made a few deer feet gunracks.
To get my diploma I had to show proof of my ability to mount bird specimens. I used the next photo successfully.
The coffee table was another project that I made in school shop class. It reflects the style of the 1950’s.
My neighbor was Vernon “Vernie Daniels” shown next. We were three years apart in age but enjoyed hunting, fishing, and target practice together. We also played pool at Whiting’s tavern.
We had to ride our bicycles to visit each other until I got my first car. One day we rode all the way to the Missouri River to fish. It was twelve miles away and we were pretty tired when we got home that evening.
Sometimes we would ride the five miles into town. Many of the roads at the time were gravel and they had little traffic.
I lived in an area surrounded on three sides by Badger Lake. It was once a channel of the Missouri River. The river meandered for miles before the Army Corps of Engineers worked on a flood stabilization project.
This was great for two boys who liked to hunt and fish! We both brought home a lot of game for our families to enjoy.
The lake had shrunk due to some dry weather once, exposing a lot of fishing lures and string exposed near the bridge where many had fished.
The mud was deep and similar to quicksand, so wanting to retrieve a lot of free lures, bobbers, hooks, and weights, we created an invention. We used 1” X 12” boards, sawed them to lengths of about 18”, drilled holes in them, and placed baling wire through them to tie on our feet. With these, we walked on the surface removing several large coffee cans of these items. We saw a few cars go by and the drivers must have been amazed to see us apparently (almost) walking on water.
Our families fed often not only on the delicious pheasants that we shot and the fish we brought home but cottontail rabbits and squirrels. We had many large jack rabbits on our farms. Our landlord paid me 50 cents each to shoot them. They burrowed holes in the pasture where he raised beef cows and their calves and didn’t want them to fall and break their legs
Vernon trapped muskrats as well as a few badgers for their bounty. I killed one fox for its bounty. We earned money in whatever way that we could.
Another friend was my classmate John Neldeberg, shown here with Vernon and me. John, unfortunately, was the first classmate to pass away just a few years
later.
John had a car of his own, so he would often take me with him to see a ball game at the school.
Archery was another pastime that I enjoyed. I had a nice target range set up that I used to practice in almost daily for a few years.
Darrell’s new brother-in-law, Gary Phipps was about my age. He also liked archery and had a new bow which was very powerful. It was hard to draw the bow string all the way back.
Once on his dad’s farm, he was showing me how high it would put an arrow into the sky. We watched it go almost out of sight, then start coming down. The wind had drifted in somewhat and it was coming right at us! We both jumped back at the same time and it plunged into the ground between us!
Pitching horseshoes was another sport I enjoyed. I eventually reached an average of 50 percent ringers.
In the following photo, I am playing the game with my uncle Bud King who was married to my Mom’s sister Charlette. It was taken in a park in Onawa.
The next photo shows another horseshoe game. My uncle Perry “Jumbo” Farley is on the left next to my uncles Herbert McCall and Rex White.
Jumbo was married to my Dad’s only living sister, Helen. Rex was married to my mother’s sister Ruth. I occasionally did farm work for him on his farm near Sloan.
Our landlord, Clarence Patterson, often would stop by for a while a play a couple of games, too.
A hobby that I started after first moving to Whiting was shooting pool. Kids were allowed in the local beer tavern/pool hall. Dad enjoyed playing cards there, so I often rode to town with him. Sometimes an elderly neighbor would take me in his 1917 Model T to town and shoot pool with me.
I continued shooting pool after moving to California when high school was finished. I purchased a hand-made cue and played in many billiard halls. I continued after coming back to Iowa, until after getting married when I decided to give it up for good.
CHAPTER 7
The High School Years
The third year at this farm, my uncle Herbert gave me two baby runt pigs. Runts never fared well in large litters competing for their mother’s milk, so hand feeding was best. These two were of a purebred breed called Landraces. When fully grown they become quite large and their bodies grow longer than other breeds.
One neighbor that I frequently did farm work for was somewhat hard to work for. He once had me stacking hay bales in a truck which had a mechanical arm to grab and toss them into the back. The problem was, he drove too fast and the hay bales would almost knock me off of the truck. In fact, the year before, a worker had been knocked off and broke his shoulder.
Then when we arrived at the barn, he would load them into a grain elevator for me to drag and stack inside the hot hay mow. I got overheated once, and he had me put my head under an outdoor faucet to cool down.
He had been a champion rifle marksman on the U.S. Olympic team. He let me fire his target rifle, which was fun. He was nice but just worked us harder than he should. Especially since we were just teenagers.
We were put in one of his soybean fields that were badly overgrown with weeds; some five feet high. He told us to cut out the weeds with our machetes and pile them between the rows. The beans were soaking wet from dew moisture. I recall my jeans getting soaked within minutes. My new pair of leather gloves soon were soaked, then holes wore through where I gripped the machete. Soon, I had blisters on my right hand. They broke, then I applied large, soft, buttonwood leaves around my hand. They soon wore off, but I kept chopping. The bean rows were a half mile long. By the time my friend Vernie and I returned we were hot and very thirsty.
Our boss had arrived to inspect our progress. He told us to “call it a day”. He said that he saw how bad the weeds were now, and he would just mow the whole field off and put it in the federal soil bank program. He would receive some compensation from the government for not planting a crop. This was supposed to regulate prices at the time.
Once while stacking bales of hay I came close to having a serious, if not fatal accident. The stack was almost complete. We were on the last row at the top. These bales, weighing about seventy pounds, were laid on edge. They were now thirteen tiers high. Each tier measuring two feet made the stack twenty-six feet high.
As I was dragging one of these bales, my hay hook slipped out. Taking a step back to regain my balance I found myself teetering on the very edge. The ground below was very dry and hard. By God’s grace, I didn’t fall.
I was a member of the Iowa Future Farmers of America as were all the class members of our school’s agriculture class. I’m in the back row, second from the left in the following photo.
One year, our FFA group got to go to the State Convention in the Auditorium in Sioux City. We all wore our blue corduroy jackets with the FFA symbol on them and our name sewed on it. I had earned two pins that were attached to it. One bronze and the other silver.
One of the feeds from Dad’s employer, the Tanvilac Company, was for hogs. It was a yeast based product that was used for making slop out of ground up oats. After it sat and raised like a giant loaf of bread, I would feed my two pigs. Mixed with the separated milk, they did very well on it.
In our agriculture class, we had to have a project of our choosing. Raising my two pigs was just what I needed. It was easy to keep the required records of expenses and later the profit from raising them.
When they matured, my uncle provided a purebred Hampshire boar for them. They both had large litters, which I also raised for the next year’s project. They started out as pets but resulted in a small business for me during the High School years.
Norma and I rode the school bus each day to school. She graduated in 1956 and worked for a while in Sioux City, then moved to Santa Clara, California.
CHAPTER 8
More Events With Relatives at Whiting
Darrell held various jobs and enjoyed working on cars. He was a good mechanic, having learned from my uncle Earl McCall, a farmer who was also a good mechanic. That’s Earl on the left in the next photo. Next to him is my cousin Chuck. Vernon Daniels, who was my nearest neighbor, and good friend sits next to him. Standing are Darrell and me. This was taken shortly before I graduated.
Darrell bought this 1934 Plymouth from a farm lady who had stored it in one of her farm buildings. One evening he brought me along to help tow it to our farm. He used a large rope to tow it with! I had to get in it and steer it. Fortunately, we made it home before dark. It had no head lights of course. The old mechanical brakes didn’t work the best either. Somehow, we made it, though.
I hated to see it go, for it was in such great shape with no scratches and with a nice interior after all those years.
The car I am sitting on was just another one that he bought, worked on, and sold for a profit.
Darrell had a couple of other newer cars before being drafted into the Army. The following one is a 1950 Studebaker convertible. He also had a 1953 Pontiac convertible, which was probably the first car that I ever drove.
He spent some of his time in the Army in Colorado, then near Tacoma, Washington. From there, he and his new bride, Donna Phipps, moved to Santa Clara where Norma and her husband Duane lived. Within about a year after he had moved to California, I joined him after graduation from High School in 1960.
My Uncle Jim McCall also had moved to Santa Clara before Norma, so now there were several relatives nearby.
Left to right in the next photo are Jim, my Aunt Velda, cousins Bill, Betty, Barbara, and Bruce at their home.
Dean had been stationed at an Army base in Germany for several years. He married Therese Betz from there. In between other places that he served in his Army career he would visit us while on leave.
The next photo shows Therese standing between my uncle Jesse Jenkins and me. My mother is holding Kathy, her first grandchild.
Dean and Therese went on to have four more children; Michael, Karen, Geraldine, and Bonita.
My uncle Jesse had lost his wife, Martha around this time, but remarried to Velda not long after. He continued his brush and deodorant business from his house in Marysville, Kansas. Tragically, some years later he and Velda perished in their house fire. The local police considered it arson but never captured the culprit.
Another old color photo taken later at the same spot is of me, Dad, Mom, and Dean. The four of us had only a few opportunities to be together at the same time.
I often helped Dad load his 1950 Chevy pickup with the fifty-pound feed bags to be delivered to his customers. He worked in western Iowa and some in eastern Nebraska. Many of his Nebraska customers did farming on the Indian reservation.
He became acquainted with some of the Indians as shown in the following photos.
One summer, we enjoyed a Pow Wow at the Macy reservation. I believe these were some of the first color photographs we ever took.
The Indians had their own local government system called a Tribal Council. Most of them lived in houses provided by the U.S. government. Many were unemployed. They all could have commodities of food, etc. provided by the government.
When I turned sixteen, I got my driver’s license. After earning some money in the summer, I purchased my first car. It was a 1949 Buick. I paid $100 for it. At that time, my wages for doing farm work was only 75 cents to a dollar an hour. Dad allowed me to get the car, as he couldn’t always drive me to the jobs or come to pick me up.
It needed some repairs before long, though, and it wasn’t worth spending the money on it. So it sat for a while in the corner of our yard. It is barely visible under the snow after a big blizzard had hit us.
The heavy snow required a wash job on the pickup as shown by me with a bucket and mop.
I climbed a tree in the following photo, cutting off a large broken limb above our driveway.
When we moved from Lawton to Whiting, I was in the seventh grade. It was time to get acquainted with new kids again.
I’ve included a couple of pictures of our Junior Class play. The name of it was “A Ready-Made Family”. It was about a man and woman who had lost their spouses and wanted to get married.
The children objected and both sets of children planned to create reasons for the parents to abandon the idea. My role was to play a crazy person as shown here with an ax in my hand, claiming to be the pirate “Blue Beard”. The ruse did not work, though, and they were married, and all the stepchildren were happy as well.
Even though it was silly, the play was very funny and a big success. It will be another memory that won’t be easily forgotten.
We had twenty-one members in our Senior class at Whiting Community School. Our K through 12 school had just finished adding a new gymnasium during that year.
As the editor-in-chief of the school annual, we had some fun with a camera. Three of my classmates picked me up and sat me in a trash can for a few seconds.
Following the photo of me in my gown is the shot of me preparing to leave for California.
When graduation came, I worked long enough in the summer to earn $100, then an opportunity arose for me.
Not knowing what to do with my future, I was informed by Norma and Duane that some friends of theirs who lived near them had been paying a visit back in Iowa. These friends, Fred and Billy Burka, had offered me a ride with them back to California.
The Burka’s wouldn’t take anything for bringing me to California with them. They paid for the motel, meals, gas, and everything.
CHAPTER 9
To California, Back to Iowa, and Finally to New Jersey
I moved in with Darrell and his wife Donna and baby Darcey at their apartment in Santa Clara.
My Uncle Jim drove me to the unemployment office in San Jose, where I was then sent to interview for a job at San Jose State College. It would be for the college print shop, operating offset presses, a graph-o-type, an address-o-graph and various other machines.
Being able to type at a quick and accurate pace in their test, the college administrator hired me right away.
The next photo shows me operating a Multilith offset press. I operated two at once many times.
I soon found a used car and for $50, was able to purchase a 1950 Hudson Wasp. That left me with $50 until my first payday.
It wasn’t long before my Hudson broke down. It had an aluminum head engine, and it got too hot and cracked. My next car was a 1957 Mercury, shown below. I paid $1000 for it. Darrell co-signed enabling me to get it.
The first weekend after buying it, I was driving it over to my sister Norma’s house to show it to her. On the way, an elderly man didn’t see my coming up the busy Highway 101 and pulled out from a stop sign in front of me. I swerved and braked the best I could, but his car was totaled and mine damaged along one side. No one was hurt, though, and I could still use mine until it was repaired.
One of my friends, Richard, is shown with me next. Unfortunately, he had leukemia and passed within a year.
Darrell bought a new car almost every year. He would even “soup them up” for more power. I often was riding with him when he would drag race other cars on the “strip”. Next is a photo of his new 1962 Mercury S-55. It was a rather rare car. This convertible had two four-barrel carburetors. He wore the tires out within a couple of weeks and traded it off for a different car.
Whenever I drove it, I started out in second gear to prevent fishtailing it. It had five gears and was the most powerful car I have ever driven.
I soon bought a small 1959 motorcycle called a Progress which was made in Germany. I had a lot of close calls in the heavy traffic and elsewhere with it.
Eventually, I traded the Progress in for two new Japanese motorcycle pickups called Diahatsus. Darrell and I kept these three-wheeled pickups for just a short time. Even though they were a lot of fun, they were more dangerous than driving a motorcycle.
Another car that Darrell bought was a 1961 Mercury Comet station wagon. I helped drive back to Iowa on vacation in it. The following photo was taken on the way in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. I am standing with his wife, Donna, and little Darcy.
I had no idea that in another year or so, I would be living in that area, working at Harrah’s Casino, in Stateline, California.
I eventually lived in a new house with the family of my good friend, Doug MacGillivray. They had recently moved to San Jose from British Columbia.
We met while shooting pool and became close friends. We took in the sights sometimes on weekends, such as Yosemite Falls and in the Pinnacles National Park. The photo with me showing how “strong I was” was taken in a cave at the Pinnacles where an old outlaw gang from Mexico had hidden out. It was so dark in there, that I had to light a match for Dough to aim his camera.
Mom and Dad made their first trip to California to visit all of us. We took in some of the sights with them, as in the following photos. I even gave Mom a ride on my motorcycle!
The last photo includes Norma and her husband Duane, who passed away a few years afterward.
After spending about three years in San Jose, I returned to Iowa. Mom and Dad were now living at a different farmhouse near Onawa. At the time, farmers were beginning to move from the older house sites as the owners were combining more farm land together. The small farms of the old days were becoming fewer and fewer.
Darrell and I had driven back together in his new 1963 Volvo. It sits in the background of the next photo.
I had sold my car earlier in California when I moved to Lake Tahoe, Nevada to work in Harrah’s casino for a short time. Now, I purchased a used 1957 Plymouth, shown in the following two photos.
A winter photo of my latest home follows.
Soon, I answered an ad in the local newspaper for a job at another newspaper in Holstein, Iowa. Since I already had experience in this, I got the job immediately. However, two weeks later, I was let go, because, they explained, the owner’s nephew needed a job.
After doing some odd jobs and helping Dad in his feed business, I obtained my first surveying job with Virtue Engineering there in Onawa, where I remained for eleven years.
One of my Dad’s best friends, Vince Woodward would often visit us. Once we went to his farm at Ticonic; the tiny town that my mother grew up in. These were his horses in the following pictures.
My parents had lived in this home west of Onawa for a year or two when I came back to Iowa. Now, they were moving once again. This was back to a farm near Whiting, but not the one that I grew up in.
I would remain here with them until I got married in 1968.
The next photo shows me sitting between Mom and Dad. I was wearing my surveying clothes.
Next, I am standing with Norma beside my 1960 Falcon. I have my pant legs rolled up above my ankles, which were badly affected by concrete poisoning.
I had to quit surveying for a time but got a license to sell life insurance and bought a new 1965 Ford to use in the business.
Following was the car in which I was nearly killed when one of our sales group member’s car almost slammed into me.
A temporary stoplight had been installed on the highway where construction was being done. Everyone quickly stopped their cars except the last one who skidded up to my bumper—backwards!
Within a couple of months, I had recovered enough to go back to my old job surveying. A couple of years later, I traded in the 1965 Ford for a 1967 Ford, shown next with Shirley and me when we were engaged.
The next two photos show us just before we were married.
After we were married, we moved into Onawa, then later, we moved around the country, pursuing my career in Land Surveying, now over five decades long.
For much of the time, Shirley worked as a Registered Nurse wherever we moved to.
Our final home has been in New Jersey, where I have my own surveying business called Apex Surveys.
Currently, our Son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter live nearby. Our Daughter, son-in-law and grandson and two more granddaughters also live fairly close by.
We have all finally settled in an area near each other and no one has plans to be moving anymore.
So, I have had what I believe an interesting life. Some of it was difficult, but by God’s grace, things always have a way of working out.
