The 1938 picture is of Mom, Dwight and me. I was born in 1935 on Wichita Street in Wichita. Soon after I was born, Mom noticed an advertisement in the paper for some to farm 80 acres about ten miles south of Wichita. She had been concerned for some time how we could continue to get by without growing a large garden and additional income. Also, I was a colicky baby, and the doctor had prescribed that I drink goat’s milk. Since Dad knew how to farm, he immediately agreed, so we moved to a farm and became sharecroppers in addition to Dad keeping his job in Wichita. We bought a goat for me and a cow for the rest of the family. Because Waco School was two miles away, Dad also bought a horse and buggy so Hugh could drive my sisters and himself to school.
My sister, Pat, has many stories about going to the Waco Grade School and riding in the buggy. It was a new experience for a city girl to go to school in a buggy. Hugh would get up early to hitch up the buggy and they would al pile in for a leisurely ride to school. Sometimes the girls would get bored riding and walk beside the buggy or take a short cut though a field. A farmer who lived across the road from the school agreed to let Hugh graze the horse in his pasture while they were in school. The school was a one-room school, even though it included all eight grades. It was heated by a potbelly stove, and some days the teacher would let the children bake potatoes in it.
All of the older children had chores to do, but Hugh an Pat had serious responsibilities for ten- and eleven-year-olds. Hugh would have to do the work of an adult. At that time many vehicles had to be cranked to get them started. Hugh was small even for an eleven-year-old and wasn’t strong enough to crank the tractor. He had to do much of the farming while Dad was at work in Wichita, so Dad would crank the tractor before he left for work and Hugh would plow or cultivate in fields. For young farm children to drive a tractor; I had a friend who learned to drive a tractor when he was six.
Planting, maintaining and harvesting a large garden was a family affair. In addition to raising our food, we had to raise corn and other grains for the livestock. Also, there was a lot of canning enough food for the winters and doing other jobs such as separating cream, making butter, cleaning, cooking, washing dishes and doing laundry for eight. All of this had to be done manually. Few farms had electricity before the Rural Electricity Administration was created in 1937. Our house had no electricity, plumbing or furnace, just a potbelly stove in the living room and a wood stove for cooking in the kitchen. We got our water from a pump just outside of the kitchen. We had an outhouse located at an appropriate distance from the house. At night we used what we called a slop jar. Some nights in the winter, we all slept in the living room. Life on a farm wasn’t easy in those days.
