Okie Boy-The Great Depression and World War Ii
By Gene Ralston
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About this ebook
Not everyone who lived on an Oklahoma farm during the 1930s, the time known for the dust bowl, abandoned their farms and headed for California. Although many suffered crop failures and financial ruin, there were just as many or more who were able to make it through. The dust bowl, coupled with the Great Depression which struck America at the same time, resulted in hardship and suffering, both for the farmers who went looking for a new life, and for those who were able to stick it out.
This book is a story about a family who stuck it out. Gene Ralston tells the story of the lives of a family of seven who lived in a two-room house, scratching out their lives on a dry-land farm, running a few cattle and several hundred White Leghorn chickens. Without running water, electricity or a telephone, the family existed on a survival level, gradually growing out of it as their fortunes improved. Having survived the dust bowl, the family was dumped into the rationing and shortages we all experienced during World War Two.
This book is about people. Real live people, some with real, live problems, such as one epileptic brother, another who was an alcoholic, some real characters, such as the real live cowboy, Genes Uncle George Ralston, larger than life and a legend in his own time. This book is filled with these people, and tells the inside story of them and of Gene and his family.
Gene Ralston
Gene Ralston was born February 16, 1933 on a farm just outside of Binger, Oklahoma, the fourth child of five children. This family of seven lived in a two-room farmhouse, and Gene and his younger brother Jerry attended school in a one-room schoolhouse for two years. During this period, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and for the next five years the family experienced the shortages and tribulations that all farm families suffered, including the rationing of sugar, gasoline, tires and shoes, and price controls on almost everything considered life necessities. Gene survived these adventures, graduated from high school. He enlisted in and served honorably for thirty years in the United States Navy, during which he earned and was awarded a Bachelor's degree in Government from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He retired from the Navy in March, 1982 as a Commander. With a seemingly inexhaustible memory, Commander Ralston writes with great detail the physical description of this one-room school and its associated equipment, the subsequent schools he attended, the details of farm life, including laundry day on the farm, the butchering of cattle and swine, and the canning of beef, pork, fruits and vegetables. Gene and Carolyn, his wife of 55 years, reside in Lemoore, California.
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Okie Boy-The Great Depression and World War Ii - Gene Ralston
Okie Boy -
The Great Depression and
World War II
A NOVEL
BY
Gene Ralston
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© Copyright 2008 Gene Duain Ralston.
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CONTENTS
PREFACE
MY EARLIEST MEMORY
MY MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS
GRANDPA OWENS
GRANDMA OWENS
MY PATERNAL GRANDPARENTS
GRANDPA RALSTON
GRANDMA RALSTON
MY FATHER
MY MOTHER
EARLY LIFE OF PETE AND FLOSSIE RALSTON
THE SAGA OF LITTLE ROY
JACK
HOPE
WICK
GENE
JERRY
THE HOME
LIFE ON THE FARM: BUTCHERING FARM ANIMALS
CANNING DAY
SLEEPING OUTDOORS IN SUMMER
HOUSE COLOR
HOME LIGHTING
CROPS AND LIVESTOCK
SOIL CONSERVATION
EATING HABITS
FOOD STORAGE
ADVENT OF ELECTRICAL POWER
HOME REMODELING – VOL I
HOME REMODELING – VOL II
DAYDREAMING EXPERIENCE
WILLOW CREEK SCHOOL
COTTON HARVEST
HARVEST VACATIONS
ITINERANT FARM LABORERS
SWELTER-BELTS
ROOSTER FIGHTS
BONNETS FOR BOY CHILDREN
NEIGHBORS
THE HAMMERMILL
FOUND A FIRE AND WATCHED IT
LAUNDRY DAY ON THE FARM
MY UNCLE GEORGE
HACKAMORES AND MARTINGALES
WORLD WAR
CHICKEN FEED SACK CLOTHING
RODEO ON THE FARM
PAPER LUNCH SACKS
AFTERNOON DELIGHT
SICKLES SCHOOLS
PEANUT FARMING
SATURDAY AFTERNOONS
BROWNIE
NAUGHTY LIMERICKS
CHICKENS & EGGS
CORN SHELLING MACHINE
CAT HARVEST
WASTING OIL
RADIO PROGRAMS AND BOOKS
PLAY PARTIES
FOR TEENAGERS
A SURPRISE IN THE SEWING MACHINE
GAMES PEOPLE PLAYED
FINIS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOOTNOTES:
PREFACE
JOHN GRISHAM, ONE of my favorite authors, deviated from his usual writing style—spy stories and courtroom dramas—a few years ago to write a book he titled A Painted House,
subsequently made into an award-winning movie. This book detailed the adventures of the life of a seven-year-old boy growing up in an Arkansas farm family in the nineteen-fifties. The title came from the father’s desire to have their small house painted. This house had not been painted when it was built, and had never been painted since.
As I read this book, I was struck with how similar the daily life of this fictional boy and his family was to my life, which took place about that time in Oklahoma. We lived on a 160-acre dry land farm growing cotton, wheat, and other crops, while running a few cattle. We had no river to flood the farm, as did the family in the novel and the movie, but we had other things that threatened our prosperity as well as our survival.
In a letter to TeenReads.com, a branch of AOL, John Grisham wrote, "A Painted House is not a legal thriller. In fact, there is not a single lawyer, dead or alive, in this story, nor are there any judges, trials, courtrooms, conspiracies or nagging social issues. A Painted House is a work of fiction. It was inspired by my childhood in rural Arkansas. The setting is reasonably accurate, though historical accuracy should not be taken too seriously. One or two of these characters may actually have lived and breathed on this earth, though I know them only through family lore, which in my family is a most unreliable source. One or two of these events may indeed have taken place, though I’ve heard so many different versions of these events that I believe none of them myself. Sincerely, John Grisham"
Reading this novel [A Painted House], or watching the movie by the same name, which I highly recommend for everyone, has inspired me to recall and write down some of my personal experiences. One difference between Mr. Grisham’s writing and mine is that no part of my writing is fiction. My characters are not imaginary, they are (or were) all real people, and the events really took place. Those I did not witness personally were told me by people who were actually there and told them to me.
Gene Ralston, Lemoore, CA, September 6, 2006
MY EARLIEST MEMORY
THE EARLIEST MEMORY of my life involves my younger brother Jerry and my mother. I was born two years before Jerry, and my first memory is of a Jerry without much hair and dressed only in a cloth diaper, toddling across the floor. I imagine that he must have been between 9 months and 1 year old. Anyway, Jerry seemed as proud as a peacock about his newly-discovered ability to walk,
demonstrating with a grin from ear to ear just how adept (not very) he was as he teetered, first on one foot and then the other, as he made progress across the linoleum-covered floor of the combination kitchen-living room-bedroom.
As I remember it, it was at this point that the relatively large package he was carrying in the back of his diaper chose to loose itself and fall onto the floor. My mother, noticing this, came running across the floor and slapped him down. In later years, I wondered about this memory and asked my mother why she would have done such a thing. She strongly denied that she had ever hit any of her children, much less slapped a toddler off his feet for such a non-mistake. Reconsidering after living over 74 years on this earth, I honestly believe that she didn’t do it. Since this is true, I wonder why I remembered it with such intensity. It is very possible that I dreamed it. My mother was a sweet, loving parent, and I do believe her. I just wanted to share my earliest memory with you.
MY MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS
(Please see endnote number one at the end of the narrative.)
MY MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER was Minnie Adolaid Chappell Owens. Minnie Adolaid Chappell was born in Stone County, MO January 10, 1873 to William Robert Alexander and Mary Florida Smith Chappell. She was the third of eleven children (six boys and five girls) born to this couple.
My maternal grandfather was Arthur Anderson Owens. This couple had three children, all girls. The oldest, Marcia, married a farmer named Charlie Thomas, and they lived their lives on a farm east of Hinton, Oklahoma. The youngest child, Beulah, married Marcia’s husband’s brother Ray, and they lived their lives in or near Minco, Oklahoma. Interestingly enough (to me – gr), Marcia’s children and Beulah’s children enjoyed a unique relationship with one another. They were what we called double-cousins,
being cousins by the fact that their mothers were sisters, and also cousins because their fathers were brothers, therefore they were cousins for two reasons, or double-cousins.
I believe that only in Oklahoma that this could be a condition of any great significance. Arthur and Minnie’s middle
daughter, Flossie Delpha, my mother, was born Nov. 12, 1898 in Baxter, Missouri. After moving to Oklahoma, the Owens lived on a farm in Grady County near Minco.
GRANDPA OWENS
MY GRANDPA OWENS passed away when I was still very young. The only things I remember about him are a couple of photographs that my mother kept her entire life. My memories about him are mainly from the stories my mother told me as I grew up. One story I remember her telling was that her father spanked her only once in her life. According to her, when my mother was about six years old, she was swinging in a rope swing attached to a tree branch. Her father called for her to come to him to run an errand or for some other reason. He called Come here.
She, not realizing that he meant, "Come here right now’,’ said that she had told him Wait a minute.
Her intentions were honorable; she had meant to go there
just as soon as the cat died.
(This is a process where the swinger ceases pumping
the swing, allowing it to come to a stop in decreasing arcs until finally it stops, thus the cat had died.
) This must have been a serious error on her part, because her father gave her such a spanking that she never forgot it. It must have been effective, because he never found it necessary to spank her again. Also, to my knowledge, she never told him, Wait a minute
again.
Another interesting thing I remember my mother told me about Grandpa Owens was that he never bothered to learn the words to any hymn or song, although he loved music and was well-known for his beautiful voice. He was able to do this because, according to Mother, he never sang the words, only the notes. To demonstrate what she meant by singing the notes, I remember that she sang
a song for me that she remembered him singing frequently. I must admit that it was one that she heard him sing frequently, but it made no sense to me. I could not identify the tune, nor did the notes mean anything to me.
GRANDMA OWENS
MY MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER, although a tiny person, was a very strong woman. She lived almost 100 years. Her face, heavily wrinkled by exposure to the sun, showed the effects of the years she spent in the fields in her younger years. When I was about six years old, I drew a picture of her and my mother. In the drawing, two women were talking, one my mother, the other my grandmother. It was easy to tell the difference between the two women because in my drawing I had stressed the wrinkles on Grandma’s face.
My grandmother regularly chewed tobacco and even smoked a pipe on occasion. I remember several times when I was young; I would approach her for a kiss, to be gently pushed aside with the comment, Got backy.
She also dipped smokeless tobacco (which we called snuff
). She taught me how to construct and use a snuff stick.
A snuff stick is made from a matchstick-sized twig from a bush or tree branch, about four inches long. About one inch of the stick was frizzed
by chewing until the fibers of the wood splayed out. In use, the frizzed end of the snuff stick was moistened by saliva, and then dipped into the snuffbox. This picked up a certain amount of the dry powdered tobacco. Then, the stick was used to place the dip
of snuff at the appropriate spot between the gum and cheek of the user. Other snuff users would attain the same objective by simply pinching a small amount of snuff between their thumb and forefinger, depositing it in their mouths by hand.
Since I was too young for snuff, she taught me how very effective it was when used with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.
I was very young when my Grandpa Owens passed away, leaving his wife a widow, and I don’t even have any memory of attending his funeral. Upon his death, my grandmother sold the farm, using the proceeds to purchase a small home in Minco, Oklahoma, where she lived alone until her health failed. I was there when her daughters and their families helped her move into the house. As we were doing this, I remember thinking that it was quite strange that the previous tenants in the house, when they moved out, although they left the windows, took the window frames and sills with them. I still think so.
This house fascinated me. It had the following items, none of which we had on the farm: (1) water from the city water supply, which allowed her to have an indoor bathroom, (2) a large screened-in back porch, (3) a cistern inside that screened-in back porch, (4), electric lights, (5) a telephone, and (6) a detached garage. The cistern was the first one I had ever seen. The tank that held the water in this cistern was under the porch, but the crank and gear assembly that moved the small buckets of water to the upper level and poured the water out through the spout was inside the screened-in porch area. The water this cistern produced came from a rainwater collection system, which probably predated the city water supply. Interestingly enough, the water that was brought up from the tank below contained a considerable amount of cockroaches. I guess this water would have been okay for bathing and washing clothes, etc., but it would have probably required some sort of treatment before it could have been used for drinking.
The lights inside the house hung from wires running down from the center of the ceiling about two and a half feet to the lamp fixture. They were turned on and off by push-button switches on the wall near the doors to the kitchen and living rooms. The lights in the two bedrooms could also be controlled by a string running from the light fixture to the head of the bed. This string was the secondary control
for the lights; the main control was a unique (to me) switch at the door leading into the room. Each switch in every room was composed of two black push-buttons,
one, with a white circle painted the end of the pushbutton, was the on
switch. The white
button was to turn the light on. The other button, left black (unpainted), was used to turn it off. In the bedroom, if I wanted to read in bed, for example, I could have turned the light on by the wall switch as I entered the room. After changing to pajamas, (or, more honestly, stripping to my underwear) I could then read until ready to go to sleep, at which time I could turn the light off from the bed by merely pulling the string. All this was new to the poor little farm boy, and I spent hours in that house, just taking in these wonders of the modern world.
And, finally, wonder of wonders, the telephone! This was a party line
phone. The user could contact any member on that particular party line by turning the crank for a specified number of short
and long
rings. The subscriber could also, by cranking an extra long long
ring, reach the telephone operator (referred to as Central
) for assistance in placing long distance calls, for reaching someone on another party line in that exchange, or for information. This telephone was an upright model, with a hook extending from near the top on which the receiver was hung to terminate the call and connected one with the system when lifted from the hook. The telephone was connected by an electric cord to the control box on which the rotary ringer was located At my age, I am sure that I couldn’t resist giving the small crank on the telephone a twist or so each time I passed by. I say probably
because I remember being quizzed about such an action by my mother, who would look at me with a questioning look on her face, while first pointing to the telephone ringer box, then