I recently wrote a short piece on my Facebook page yesterday (November 20, 2012) about some of my memories evoked by watching Ken Burns' new project, Dust Bowl. For those who have not been around as long as I have, the Dust Bowl Era, sometimes call the the Dirty Thirties, began about the same time as the Great Depression. It included counties in the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas and the states of New Mexico and Colorado. Much of this area, thousands of acres, was dedicated to dryland farming. That is farming where there is very little water and grains are one of the most common crops. Becasue the Dust Bowl Era coincided with the Great Depression, it was "Three strikes and you're out", for a lot of folks. The land dried up and blew away, farmers couldn't produce crops and they couldn't borrow any money. But this was not the case in the northeastern part of Oklahoma where I grew up. My parents, Orville F. Harris and V. Muriel (pronounced Merle) Barnes met and married in Miami, Oklahom in April, 1929. Dad was 24 and Mom was 18. Mom was going to the Miami Business College to study bookeeping and Dad was working as a lineman on the Northeastern Oklahoma Railroad (NEO RR). I think he may have been going to the Business College also since being a lineman was not his long term plan.
While I am not certain of the year, it was pehaps in the Fall of 1931, Dad got laid off the railroad. The NEO was an ore hauling line, moving lead and zinc ore from the mines in Northeastern Oklahoma to the Eagle-Picher Smelter where the lead and zinc were extracted, made into ingots and the NEO hauled them to the two mainline railroads that run through Miami. Like everything else during the depression, the price of lead and zinc dropped, so some of the mines shut down or did less mining and thus the NEO had less work and so folks got laid off. Like many "Okies", my folks decided to go to California where Dad's mother and step-father, Anna and Harry Bachman, lived on a small farm in Watsonville. So they packed up their Model A Ford Roadster (the kind with the "Rumble Seat") and off they went to the Land of Milk and Honey.
Route 66, the Mother Road, was still being built but I can only guess that is the route they took since it was the pathway Okies and Arkies (folks from Arkansas) took to travel to California. Motels were few and far between and money was just as scarce. While I don't remember my folks talking about it, I suspect they did like many others, the slept in campgrounds or pulled off and slept alongside the road either in a tent or in the car. When they finally arrived in Watsonville, the were able to get work as crop pickers, picking peas and other crops. In the Fall, Dad picked apricots and Mom worked in a drying house where the apricots were prepared for drying. Dad used to say they didn't make enough to live on so he took their earnings to a nearby grocery store that had some slot machines and did well enough that they were able to mutiply their earnings.
Sometime in late 1932 or early 1933, Dad got notice that the railroad's business was picking up and he was offered a job. So, off they went to return to Oklahoma and my Mom was pregnant with me. In June 1933, I popped into the world at my maternal gransparents' home and the rest is history--so to speak. My brother Tom came along two years later in March 1935.
Between 1933 and 1938, my parents managed to save enough money to buy a bigger car, a Dodge Sedan (probably a 1935). It was in this car that our family took our first trip to Califronia. So off we went on our great adventure in the summer of 1938. I was five and my brother was three. You have to remember that cars of that era did not have air conditioning except to have all four windows rolled down. I don't remember whether we stayed in motels or not but I do remember sleeping in the car. We would pull off the road, and bed down in the car. I do recall one time when a large truck whizzed by us in the middle of the night and my Dad woke up screaming because he thought we were running off the road or was about to be hit. And I don't remember much about meals. I suspect we stopped at grocery stores, bought "stuff" and Mom made a lot of baloney sandwiches. We drove across the Mojave Desert at night and it seems to me that we got to California in about three days. I don't know about showers, bathroom breaks and all that--just too long ago. But I suspect that gas stations, which had the old glass cylinders at the top with gallon markings on them, did not have restrooms like they do today. More than likely they had a privy out back, complete with a crescent moon cut into the door and perhaps a Sears-Roebuck catalog for toilet paper.
I believe our next trip to California was in 1940 but it may have been the summer of 1941 when I was eight and my brother was six. We still had the same Dodge sedan and the four of us headed off to see my Dad's parents who still lived in Watsonville. As I recall, the trip was much like the earlier trip except that as we approached Needles, California the universal joint on the car went out. We managed to get to Needles and Dad dropped Mom and my brother and I off in a local park while he went to get the car repaired. I don't have a clue how he got the job done but expect he helped do the repair work since I suspect he didn't have a lot of money. Mom, my brother and I spent the day in a city park and I remember there was an old Civil War era cannon there, much like just about every park in the Nation. I have two other memories of that trip--one was about the large garden my grandfather had; it ran down the side of the hill and I remember being amazed at all the things growing there. He also had a large vineyard where he grew grapes for the wine he made each year. And the wine is the other thing I remember. Grandad had a large wine cellar where he kept wine in small oak kegs. Tom and I went down to the cellar one afternoon and at eight and six managed to get a little "likkered up" after tapping into one of the kegs! I also remember that my grandfather was a pretty good fiddler--the one song I remember is the "flight of the Bumble Bee". Grandad Harry played with great gusto and I understand that he played for square dances all over the place. Oh, I do remember one other thing about that trip. My grandparents raised rabbits and chickens--they were not pets--they were to eat. While we were there one of the doe rabbits had a litter of kits. I made the mistake of opening the cage and picking up the kits. The next day we were out at the rabbit cages and all the babies were gone. Needless to say, my grandfather was upset and he asked me if I had been "messing around" with the kits. I said I had been and then he told me that more than likely the mother had killed and eaten the babies because they smelled strange to her. He told me that I could have prevented that if I had first picked up the doe and left my scent on her first. I don't know if that is true or not since I have never raised rabbits and thus never had a chance to find out if his theory was correct.
Enough for this post...
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