In the previous post, I mentioned that we lived in Two Buttes during the school year and migrated to Kansas in the summer to farm. There were several towns around us, but they were ten or more miles away. Another place in the middle of a smaller nowhere. Not nearly as bleak though.
My dad farmed from when he was 14 years old until the year he died — 70 years. I’ll relate more of that history in the next posts. [Down on the Farm — Part One | Down on the Farm — Part Two]
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I’ve deduced that I don’t have any memories of migrating between Two Buttes and the farm until I was five years old. Like my memories of Two Buttes, they are just snippets. Some of them follow below, not necessarily in order:
Once, on the way back to the farm, we ran into a swarm of brown grasshoppers. So many smashed on the windshield that my dad could barely see to drive. Brown grasshoppers are locusts, and they sometimes form a plague. They eat everything green in sight. That’s what happened to the Egyptians in the time of Moses. In this case, it was just another aspect of the Dust Bowl.
I only remember our arrival in back in Kansas from one other year. I have no idea what happened during the journey itself. Perhaps I took a nap. My memory kicked in as we turned off the road to a path through a field of tall prairie grass. We were headed toward a house. I just now deduced how the path was formed. The traffic involved in putting the house there wore the grass down.
That place was a farm that my folks “rented” from Grandpa Miller. (One-third of the crops go to the landlord.) The house had one room. It was about 16 by 16 feet in size. The walls were not finished inside. Just studs like the inside of an unfinished garage. By this time there were five of us. We had no running water or electricity, but I think we had a well. There must have been an outhouse. But we were only there for the summer.
There was an old farmhouse there originally, and we had planned to live in it. The owners sold it to my grandfather as part of the farm. Grandpa Miller allowed them to stay there until we arrived. But they had other ideas. They insured the house and later burned it down. They did not understand that they no longer had an insurable interest in the house. Living there didn’t count. Those previous owners couldn’t collect any insurance; we didn’t have a real house to live in, and they narrowly avoided going to jail.
On one trip out to Two Buttes, I was riding with my dad and a friend of his. I can’t imagine why anyone would need a ride to Two Buttes, and I don’t know why my mom and siblings weren’t with us. They must have come later. We were towing a 4-wheel trailer that dad converted from a Model T Ford chassis. We had loaded it with all our household goods. I was in the back seat.
As we drove along I saw a tire rolling past the car. It rolled on past us and ended up in the ditch. It was from our trailer. But no problem. Model T tires were mounted on a rim that was a separate part of the wheel. It wasn’t unusual for them to come off. We jacked up the wheel, put the rim and tire back on and continued on our way.
The last thing I remember about migrating was loading that old trailer with all our possessions. We were moving back to Kansas for good. One detail sticks in my mind. We had a wooden stave barrel that we put clothes and bedding in. We probably had a Maytag Washer, wash tubs, and other household things. There was probably an astronomical telescope in there too. I don’t think we had much in the way of furniture.
Our destination this time was the farm that Dad grew up on. Frankie, his mother, wanted to move to town. Due to the Depression, Dad was the only one that had the money to buy it. I remember his mother, Aunt Lula, and a couple others coming out of the house to greet us when we arrived. I guess they went off somewhere, and we moved in.
That was the last time we traveled from Two Buttes to Kansas. The Depression was coming to an end. We now had enough farmland to make a good living. We had 160 acres at the “home place,” and 200 acres more at the farm that Grandpa Miller owned. A total of 360 acres. That’s about as much land as one family needed to live comfortably in those days.
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I found some nice videos about old-time farming — combines in particular — on YouTube. [Palouse, Washington in the mid-1940s – YouTube | To Till a Field: Man and Machine in the Palouse – YouTube]
Didit.Live 