Life During the Great Depression
By
Gene
Guinn
I was the youngest of five siblings.
Virgie Opal was born in June, 1910; Foy was born in February, 1912 and
died in April, 1922; Earl Leon was born in December, 1916; an unnamed baby was
born and died in 1923; and I was born in March, 1928.
The name on my birth certificate is Jean DeWitt Guinn, but I never knew
that until recently. As a child I
was called Gene Dee. I later
dropped the Dee.
We lived on a farm in NW Arkansas. Virgie
married Andrew “Drude” Thurman when she was 16 or 17.
Her only child, Keith, was born in July, 1928. They lived on the Crawford place about half a mile east of
us.
Our nearest neighbors to the west
were Dick and Gladys Whitmire. Their
daughter, Onita, was near Earl’s age, and they both attended high school in
Farmington. I don’t recall how
they got to school; it was several miles to the east and would have been a long
walk. I don’t recall that there
were any school buses then.
Mrs. Whitmire was such a modest
lady that she wouldn’t even use the term “mailman.” She always said postman instead.
One day she really wanted to say something to Dad.
She accosted him as he drove up in his wagon and firmly said, “Listen
Guinn,” just as she was interrupted by one of the horses loudly
breaking wind. Dad calmly replied,
“I don’t have to listen to hear that.”
She was mortified.
The Whitmires built a new stone
house and cellar in the early 1930s that cost them a total of $650.
They were the first in our neighborhood to get electricity when it was
made available by the REA (Rural Electrification Administration).
They also had a telephone that was housed in a wall-mounted oak box. The mouthpiece was mounted on front of the box; the earpiece
was attached through a cord and hung on a bracket on the side of the box when
not in use. Two dome-shaped bells
were near the top front of the box. To
make a call, one turned a crank that generated an electric signal to the
operator. The operator then asked
for “number please,” and connected to the requested number.
Because most customers were on a party line, others could, and often did,
listen in on conversations.
We didn’t always have a car.
I can remember Dad making a trip to Fayetteville in his wagon.
He put a bale of hay in the wagon for the horses to eat while he did his
shopping. The wagon had no springs
on the axles. The “tires” were
steel bands around the wood wheels. Therefore,
the ride was pretty rough over the rocky dirt road.
Buggies did have springs and larger diameter wheels so they provided a
smoother ride, but we didn’t have a buggy.
The wheels were made of wood
spokes attached to curved wood rims that were attached to each other to form a
circle. The steel bands protected
the wood wheels from rocks, but these wood wheels would shrink in dry weather
and the steel bands might fall off. Dad
would drive the wagon into the river so that the wood wheels would absorb water
and expand to tighten contact with the steel band on each wheel.
Some of the older cars and trucks
also had wood-spoke wheels, but the spokes were shorter and more robust than
those on wagons and buggies. The
tires were secured on the outside edge with a steel band that fit in a groove in
the wheel. The steel band had a gap
that permitted it to be pried open for removal from the groove in the wheel.
These steel bands were dangerous because they sometimes flew off the
wheel during inflation of the tire.
Dad never bought a new car.
He evaluated each car by the way the doors sounded when slammed shut and
by the amount of “play” in the front wheels when he kicked the tires.
He didn’t look for a car that had been washed and polished because he
thought that would add to the cost without adding value. He probably had other
criteria about which I was not aware. Many
cars back then were oil burners and emitted substantial amounts of smoke, not
only through the exhaust pipe but also through the breather on the engine. Therefore, the inside of the car could become very smoky,
especially when climbing a hill.
It was not unusual to see a car
backing up a hill instead of traveling forward, probably because the fuel pump
was too weak to pump adequate amounts of gasoline up to the engine.
Headlights were often very dim before the days of sealed-beam lights. Older
cars didn’t have starters but had to be cranked by hand. If the spark was advanced too much the engine could
“kick” (i.e., turn backward) and injure or possibly break an arm.
Model T Fords had a manually
operated windshield wiper. A small
crank protruded through the windshield frame and the driver used the crank to
swing the wiper back and forth by hand. The
Model Ts had a transmission that was operated by foot pedals.
They had two levers on the steering column, the one on the left was for
the “spark” (ignition timing) and the one on the right was for the
accelerator. It was wise to retard
the “spark” before cranking the engine.
A magneto provided electricity for ignition.
It was very difficult to adjust the mechanical (pre-hydraulic) brakes for
uniform braking on all wheels. The
Model T and some other cars had brakes on the rear wheels but not on the front
wheels. Needless to say, they couldn’t be stopped very quickly.
Automatic transmissions, air conditioning, power steering, and power brakes were
unheard of in those days.
Dad raised oats among other
things. He had a binder that cut
the oats and tied them in small bundles that he then stacked, but he didn’t
have a thresher. (Combines probably
had not been invented at that time.) A
custom thresher traveled from farm to farm and separated the grain from the
straw. Power for the thresher was
provided by a large steam engine that scared me because of its size.
Power from the steam engine was transmitted to the thresher by a long
flat belt. Some of the straw was burned for fuel in the steam
engine. It was Mom’s job to cook
dinner (the midday meal) and feed the crew.
I did some pretty dumb things.
One winter I decided to lick the frost off of the steel rim on the wagon
wheel. My tongue froze to the rim
and it was quite painful to pull it loose.
I never tried that again.
Once when Mom and Dad were out of
the house, I found a box of chocolate Ex-Lax and ate the whole thing.
That, too, wasn’t one of the smartest things I ever did.
Another time, Keith and I were
playing on the bridge that crossed the Illinois River.
I climbed up on top and was walking along the railing when Virgie came
along. She told me to get down but
she didn’t stay to see that I did. Mom
was not happy with either one of us when she found out what had happened.
Keith and I sometimes amused
ourselves by grabbing the tail of a cow (or bull) and then hanging on for dear
life as the animal raced around the haystack.
Fortunately, we never got hurt doing that.
There were some chinquapin trees
on the hillside near our house. One
of them had a grapevine growing in it. The
end of the grapevine was hanging down within reach. I grabbed the grapevine, backed up the hill, and then ran
down the hill to swing out high above the ground.
That was so much fun that I tried it several times.
Eventually, however, the vine broke at the end of the swing and dumped me
onto the chinquapin burs and flint rocks. Unfortunately,
I was barefoot at the time.
Our barn had a hayloft.
There was a long opening in the middle of the loft floor through which
hay could be dropped into the feeding trough below.
The hayloft floor was very smooth and slick.
I ran on it and attempted to jump across the opening, but I slipped and
fell through the opening. My head
hit one of the 2 x 8” floor joists and I landed in a no. 3 washtub in the
trough below. I couldn’t remember anything for about a day or two after
that.
Once, when Virgie and Drude were
arguing, I commanded Drude to stop being mean to my sister.
Fortunately for me, he appeared more amused than angered by my audacity.
At least, he didn’t do anything to me.
A friend at school invited me to
spend the night at his house across the river.
There was a footbridge that was suspended high above the water between
two trees, one on each side of the river. One
had to climb a ladder to get to the footbridge.
I wasn’t strong enough to climb the ladder while carrying my bicycle.
A man came along and carried it for me.
The next morning, when I was headed back to school, no one was there to
help me get my bike onto the footbridge. I
tried to ride across the river but the strong current pushed me and the bike
over and I got soaked. It was
winter and my clothes quickly started to freeze.
I rode home as fast as possible to get warm, dry clothes before going on
to school at Prairie View (since demolished).
Before we ever had a sled, Keith
and I would use a scoop shovel to ride down a hill on the snow.
The shovel was wide enough to sit in with the handle facing down hill.
That worked fine until the shovel turned around and filled with snow
thereby turning our dry seat into one that gave us a wet, cold bottom.
Another time when I was riding
with Dad in his car, he started making strange noises, bouncing up and down, and
drove off the road and into the ditch. He
flung the door open, jumped out of the car, and started jumping up and down and
giggling. His actions scared me; I
thought he had lost his mind. And,
then a mouse dropped out of his pants leg and I realized what had caused all the
commotion.
Not everything that happened was
amusing or funny. Rabies was not
uncommon and was almost always fatal. We
had a German Shepherd dog named Max. One
day another dog, foaming at the mouth and acting very strangely, came down the
road. Max ran to intercept the
(apparently mad) dog. They fought.
Dad ran into the house to get his rifle.
He was able to shoot the mad dog, but not before it bit Max in several
places. Dad then took Max up and
over a nearby hill. Although they
were out of sight, I heard the gunshot. A
few minutes later, smoke appeared above the top of the hill.
Dad came down the hill without Max.
He didn’t say a word. He
didn’t need to.
The next day, I went to the site and found bones in the ashes of a
recently burned brush pile. I
sobbed like a baby as I grieved over the remains of …dear…, loyal…,
protective…Max.
Probably because of the difficult
economic times, some of our neighbors resorted to stealing.
When grading the road, the workers parked their equipment by the side of
the road at the end of the day. The
crawler tractor that pulled the grader had a diesel engine.
One morning we saw a car parked by the side of the road about half a mile
past the road grader. Apparently,
the driver had siphoned diesel fuel from the tractor and put it in his gas tank.
The car simply would not run on diesel.
One of our neighbors was sent to
the Tucker Farm prison. Prisoners
had few rights in those days. Cotton
was grown on the prison grounds and the prisoners had to pick cotton.
The carpels of dry cotton bolls have sharp points that can puncture
fingers of inexperienced pickers. Furthermore,
picking cotton is backbreaking stoop labor.
Each prisoner was required to pick a specified amount of cotton each day
no matter how long it took.
Some prisoners rioted in the
McAlester prison in Oklahoma. Some
of them broke windows and set their bedding afire. After the riot was brought under control, the officials did
not replace the broken windows or the burned bedding. The affected prisoners had to survive the rest of the winter
with the conditions for which they were responsible.
Drude, Virgie, and Keith moved
from the Crawford place to a house just off Highway 62 between Farmington and
Prairie Grove. Mom and Dad moved
into the house they had vacated. Soon
after that, Virgie divorced Drude because she though he was being unfaithful.
She got a job in Prairie Grove working for Dr. Mock.
Her pay included room and board at his house.
Keith came to live with us.
Summers were very hot and dry
during the 30s. Virgie asked Keith
and me to come visit her in Prairie Grove.
She arranged an electric fan to keep us cool in Dr. Mock’s house.
Compared to what we were accustomed to, we felt like that was living in
luxury because we had no electricity and, therefore, no fan to keep us cool in
our house on the farm.
Although we had no electricity, we did have a battery powered radio.
Transistors hadn’t yet been invented.
The radio had tubes which got very hot and quickly drained the batteries.
Therefore, we didn’t use it except for “important” occasions.
Several neighbors who didn’t have a radio came to our house to listen
to the Max Schmelling-Joe Louis boxing match.
Dad grew corn on the farm.
To conserve moisture he used an engine flywheel as a drag to smooth the
middles between the rows of corn. That
must have worked because he was able to obtain a fairly decent yield of corn
each year despite the drought.
One night it came a storm.
We raced out to the car (a 1934 Plymouth with an oilcloth roof) to go to
the Whitmire’s cellar. Then it started to hail and some of the hail was coming
through the roof of the car. We ran
back to the house and found that hail was also coming through the roof of the
house. The hail destroyed the
oilcloth roof of the car and made kindling of the wood shingles on the roof of
the house. Fortunately, the wind
didn’t do any additional damage.
Earl was attending a business school in Fayetteville to become an accountant. He was staying with a Black lady named Adeline Blakely. Ms. Blakely gave Keith and me each a dollar for Christmas, that we thought was very generous. She owned a Victrola and some records of classical music. That was the first classical music I ever heard and I wasn’t sure at the time that I liked it. Records then were 10 or 12 inches in diameter and about ¼ inch thick. They turned at 78 rpm (revolutions per minute) and one side, even of a 12-inch record, would play no more than 10 minutes. The needles were steel and would last for only a few plays. The records quickly became scratched and noisy. Most record players had to be cranked by hand and then slowed as the spring unwound during play. They didn’t have amplifiers or speakers, but just a horn that concentrated the sound from the needle that caused a small disc to flex according to the squiggles in the record groove.
The sound was very low-fidelity and completely lacking in
bass.
After his training in bookkeeping,
Earl got a job in Liberal, Kansas. One
evening Mom and Dad went to Fayetteville to pick him up at the bus station.
They left the house before Keith and I got home from school.
We were afraid (or at least I was afraid) to go into the empty house.
So, we laid down in the ditch and waited for Mom, Dad, and Earl to come
home after dark.
Virgie got a job as a housekeeper and nanny for the McElroys who owned a bank in Fayetteville. Keith and I were quite impressed with their large stone house located just south of the University of Arkansas campus. They were tolerant of us playing in their house with our toy guns. They took a vacation trip to Florida and took Virgie with them to look after their young son.
We sometimes went to visit Dad’s
relatives in Oklahoma. Grandpa Adam
Guinn and Grandma Rosa Robinson Guinn had a nice place close to Eldon (east of
Tahlequah). Although they didn’t
have electricity they had gas lamps. A
large steel tank was buried in the front yard.
They placed calcium carbide and water in the tank.
A chemical reaction then produced acetylene, a highly flammable gas that
was piped into the house. I was afraid the gas in the tank and pipes might explode, but
it never did.
They had a pitcher pump in the kitchen and a well at the bottom of the
small hill on which their house was built.
The pitcher pump had to be primed by pouring water into it.
If they forgot to save water for priming, someone had to go down the hill
to the well and get some water.
They had an Edison phonograph and
a few records. Instead of flat
discs, the records were cylinders. They
also had a player piano that used rolls of perforated tape to activate the keys.
As I recall, foot pedals on the piano were pumped to operate it.
One year we had the Guinn family
reunion at Grandpa and Grandma’s place. They
were the parents of four sons (Sherman , Elmer, Virden, and Noel) and four
daughters (Zada, Hattie, Elfie, and Dorothy).
Sherman was my father. All
of the sons and two of the daughters had children of their own so there were
quite a few of us. Dinner (the noon
meal) was held on picnic tables under the shade of a tree.
Beside preparing and serving the food, some of the women were kept busy
trying to shoo the flies away.
Grandpa had a Chevrolet car that
was built in the late 1920s. When
going up the hill west of Eldon, he would go as far as possible in high (3rd)
gear. He wouldn’t downshift until
the engine almost stalled, then he would shift into 2nd, pick up
speed and then quickly shift back into 3rd gear. He probably believed he was saving on gas by driving that
way.
Things were a lot cheaper then
than they are now. For example, for
five cents you could buy a bottle of Coke, a hamburger, a large candy bar, or
enough postage to mail a letter and two postcards.
For ten cents you could get a large hamburger with everything on it, a
gallon of kerosene (that we used in our lamps), or a loaf of sliced bread.
Gasoline was 11 cents per gallon and you could buy a ticket to a black
and white movie for 11 cents. For
89 cents you could get an overall plus a pocket knife as a bonus.
But, money was hard to get. My
first job was picking strawberries for 2 cents per quart.
Because money was so scarce, exchange by bartering was common. Dad traded potatoes for firewood. He also raised hogs, butchered them, and sugar-cured the hams. He loaded the hams in the back of our Plymouth and took them to various places to sell or trade. Although we had very little money, we never went hungry. In addition to hogs, my parents raised chickens, a few milk cows, beef cattle, fruit trees, and a vegetable garden. Mom was an excellent cook and always made sure we had enough to eat.
