One from the Least and Disappearing Generation- a Memoir of a Depression Era Kid

Copyright 2003 Clarence G. Oliver. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Oliver, Clarence G., 1929-

       One from the least and disappearing generation : memoirs of a depression-era kid / Clarence G. Oliver.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-4120-0924-3

ISBN 978-1-4122-1540-4 (ebook)

I. Title.

CT275.O44A3 2004   920.71Ό973   C2003-904219-7

TRAFFORD

This book was published on-demand in cooperation with Trafford Publishing.

On-demand publishing is a unique process and service of making a book available for retail sale to the public taking advantage of on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing. On-demand publishing includes promotions, retail sales, manufacturing, order fulfilment, accounting and collecting royalties on behalf of the author.

Suite 6E, 2333 Government St., Victoria, B.C. V8T 4P4, CANADA

Phone 250-383-6864   Toll-free 1-888-232-4444 (Canada & US)

Fax 250-383-6804   E-mail sales@trafford.com

Web site www.trafford.com    TRAFFORD PUBLISHING IS A DIVISION OF TRAFFORD HOLDINGS LTD.

Trafford Catalogue #03-1293    www.trafford.com/robots/03-1293.html

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

Contents

Dedication

1   The Depression-Era Generation

2   The House on Sixth Street

3   The Span of Family

4   The Years of Survival

5   Learning About the Mind’s Eye

6   School Days, School Days—

7   The Neighborhood Churches

8   Lessons Learned in the Neighborhood

9   Murder of a Neighbor

10   Twice Born—Same Room

11   The Growing Up Years

12   Newspaper Boy

13   On Two Wheels

14   Be Prepared!

15   My Personal Hero—Oscar Cantwell

16   A Time of War and of Peace

17   First Flight

18   Wild Wacos and Other Jobs

19   Love—Early and Forever

20   Miles to Go Before I Sleep

References

About the Author

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

—Isaiah 40:31, KJV

Dedication

To Vinita, my wife, my love, my best friend; to our children, Paul, Mark, Shirley and their spouses; to their children and their children’s children; to all the family—past, present and future—that all may know what life was like for my generation—the smallest generation—and one that is rapidly disappearing.

The world was changing rapidly in 1929.

On Wednesday, July 24, 1929, the day Clarence G. Oliver, Jr., was born, The Ada Evening News reported that President Herbert Hoover had proclaimed a new peace policy that was endorsed by Japan; the Chinese and Russian governments were attempting to resolve a railway controversy; the Curtis Condor transport biplane, carrying 18 passengers at 130 miles per hour, was hailed as the Pullman of the skies; and because of the speed of ships crossing the ocean, plans were being made to open stock brokerage offices on luxury ships in the Atlantic Ocean.

The population of the United States had reached 121,767,000, the median price for a new house was $7,238, the annual per capita income was $652, the average cost of a new car was $643, milk cost 14-cents per quart, a loaf of bread cost nine cents, and steak cost 52-cents per pound.

A full-page advertisement in the Ada News announced a three-day sale at the C. R. Anthony Co. store, with men’s summer suits offered for $9.90 to $14.75, and women’s silk dresses were $6.90 to $9.90.

Rube Walberg pitched the Philadelphia Athletics to a 4 to 1 victory over the Cleveland Indians in the American League.

Clarence G. Oliver, Jr. birth announcement mailed to parents’ friend, Miss Nina Cox; and first photograph. (July 1929)

1 

The Depression-Era Generation

People and events remembered from childhood days are sometimes part fact and part perception. The people existed and the events occurred. The blending of reality with the thoughts and impressions left in the mind of a young child become the memories of an adult.

These are the memories that are shared in the stories and reflections that come to mind several decades later; and, such is this book—memories of days of childhood.

The generation of children born just before and during the years of the Great Depression was the smallest of recent generations, approximately 20 million fewer in number than the generations immediately preceding and following. This truly was and now, in the early years of a new century, is the least and disappearing generation.

In the book, Generations: the History of America’s Future, 1584-2069, researched and written by William Strauss and Neil Howe, this cohort of people which is my generation was described as being the Silent generation. My generation is that of people who were born mostly during an era of depression. Strauss and Howe wrote that the Silent were the product of a birthrate trough. They later became the only American generation to have fewer members peer cohort than both the generations born just before it and just after it. (Strauss & Howe, 1992, p. 234)

During the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression, the population in the United States grew by only seven percent, the lowest growth rate in American history.

My generation, those born during the last half of the 1920s decade until the start of the 1940’s, totaled only 49,000,000. My parents’ generation, born during the first two decades of the century, was 63,000,000 in number. The generation of our children, and others who were born of the Depression-era youth who became adults, are the Boomers. They are 69,000,000 in number. (Strauss & Howe, 1992, p. 97a, fig. 6-6)

Childhood experiences of life during the nation’s time of massive economic difficulties, followed immediately by a world-wide war which impacted every family in the land, left indelible impressions which, even in adulthood, affect the beliefs and behaviors of those of us who lived through those years.

The memories recorded on these pages are the reflections of one person from among the least and disappearing generation—a depression-era kid.

2 

The House on Sixth Street

The house on West Sixth Street was in the area known as the Original Ada Townsite, clearly relegated to a position of being the other side of the tracks in a city that took note of such things.

It was a good neighborhood, though.

Virtually everyone living in the area was poor—financially, not otherwise—but most of the children didn’t realize it, at least not in the early years. Later, when meeting children from other areas of the city where affluence was more common, those of us who were from the northwest quadrant of the city realized that success in life probably would be found in other places—not in our hometown.

Some remained there and tried, ultimately disappointed. Others of us eventually left, often the result of personal effort, or, at times, as the result of circumstances of such things as college or military service.

I did not realize it at the time, but my steps were directed, for I was destined to leave that hometown in which I was born, where I received much of my education, and where family roots were deep.

For the time of my birth and the years of my youth, the house on West Sixth Street was Home. The modest, single-wall, frame house at 521 West Sixth Street was built in the early 1900’s, not long after the time when Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory were united to become Oklahoma.

The man I remembered at Grand-dad Roberts, a kind and gentle man who, with his wife, Selena, adopted my mother, Jewel Americus Dyer, when she was only six months old, built the house for his family after their earlier family home, located just a block east on the same street, was destroyed by fire. According to my mother, the family lost virtually all their personal possessions in that fire.

The house contained four square-shaped rooms of about equal size, constructed in a T-design. Across the front on the north side was a covered front porch. Each of the front rooms had a door that opened onto the porch. The other two rooms were connected in the center of the crossbar rooms, and a small back, or side porch, was located on the east side of those two rooms. Side doors provided exits from those two rooms. And, another door connected the front rooms to the two back rooms of the house.

Two windows were located in each room, to provide cross-ventilation of air during the spring, summer and early fall months. The single walls were of rough wood, uninsulated, and covered on the inside with paper. The roof had wood shingles, common for most houses of that era. The exterior of the house was covered with lapping boards. For most of my childhood, the house was unpainted and the wood turned gray as it weathered. The dividing walls inside the house were similarly single-board walls, constructed using wide oak boards, also covered with paper.

During winter months, the uninsulated exterior walls let through wind and cold. The open flame gas room heaters inside the house, combined with the cold walls, resulted in walls and windows sweating most of the winter. Water from the condensation on the windows and walls required frequent clean-up with towels and mops.

Initially, the only utility service to the house was a natural gas line. Small, open-faced gas stoves located in each room heated the house.

Electric service was available in the neighborhood since corner streetlights were in place at each intersection on the streets that crisscrossed the city. Our house, though, did not have electric service during my early childhood days. Natural gas lights provided lighting for the house through a single fixture in each room. The fixture was a simple gas valve, mantle and globe, suspended on a black metal natural gas pipe from the center of the room.

The source of water for the household initially was a hand-dug well, about 30-feet deep, which Grand-dad Roberts dug, probably assisted by his son, and into which was installed a four-inch pipe from the water level to the surface. A slender water bucket, with a trip device that permitted the bucket to be filled with water when the bucket was down inside the well, was used to retrieve water from the well, via a rope and pulley, mounted on a wooden frame above the well. Water was pulled to the surface, a gallon or two at a time, released from the slender well bucket into another bucket at the surface, then carried by hand to the back porch and the kitchen. The well was located at a distance of about 30 feet from the house.

None of the rooms in the house contained closets or storage space. The room selected for a kitchen, and doubling as the family dining area, did not have built-in cabinets. A stand-alone cabinet, with work counter, was a piece of kitchen furniture. A small ice box provided a way of keeping milk, butter and other perishable foods cool.

The icebox was a simple but effective way of providing temporary storage of perishable food items. Blocks of ice, in 12-1/2 pound or 25-pound sizes, were placed in a galvanized metal ice container at the top of the icebox. The coolness drifted down inside the food section. Water from the melting ice was routed to a drip pan at the bottom of the unit. The dripping water accumulated in the drip pan and needed to be removed daily. When a family member failed to take care of that task, the cold water spilled over onto the floor, causing additional consternation since an over-full drip pan usually resulted in a larger spill when a person attempted to lift the pan and carry it to an outside door to dump the water.

Ice was delivered daily in the neighborhood. Several ice plants were located in the city. This was an important industry and provided a valuable product for businesses and homes. Placing orders for home delivery of ice was a simple process. Each family had a square cardboard sign that was placed in a front window or on the screen door of the home on the day an ice delivery was needed. The sign alerted the ice route deliveryman. The typical sign had four numbers, 12-1/2 lb., 25-lb., 50-lb., 100-lb., printed on the surface. The number displayed at the top of the card indicated the amount of ice being ordered that day for that particular home. Simple, but effective.

The deliveryman, the iceman, drove the route in either a horse-drawn wagon or a small truck, with the ice stored in sawdust and covered with a heavy tarpaulin. As he stopped at each house with an ice-order sign in place, he hand-chipped a block of ice, used ice-tongs to lift the ice into leather and canvass carrying case, and delivered the ice into the kitchen, placing the block of ice in the icebox.

Small slivers of ice usually were left in the wagon or truck bed, and the iceman usually handed ice slivers to neighborhood children as a special treat on hot, summer days.

An alley, a narrow, single-lane, grass-covered service road, ran along the back of the lot. This passageway between the homes and lots in most neighborhoods divided the back of properties on a block, and gave easy service access to the backside of properties. At the back of the lot at our home, adjacent to the alley, was a small barn, with a loft. Nearby was located the privy or outhouse, which served as the family’s outdoor toilet. Improvements were made to those privies in the neighborhood during the mid-1930’s when the Federal W.P.A. (Works Projects Administration) program constructed concrete base units for the privies located behind those homes that had not been modernized with bathrooms connected to underground sanitary sewer lines.

Later, when the city, probably with some federal assistance, installed underground sewer lines and water lines in the neighborhood, our family house was modernized, at least by 1930’s standards.

A water line and a sanitary sewer line were installed to the house to serve the kitchen, located in the back room of the house. The water well, which had provided the family with its water supply for three decades, was closed, the pipe removed, and the hole filled with dirt.

Somehow, during this same mid-1930’s time span, the family was able to accumulate enough money to obtain an electrical service connection to the house. The natural gas lighting was replaced with electric lights—a single light bulb in each room. The electric light was suspended from the center of the room, with a string attached to the switch at the side of the single bulb socket, dropped from the ceiling in the same location where the natural gas pipe and mantle light had previously hung.

Most of the work to install water, sewer and electric service to the house was completed by my father.

The outdoor privy remained in place—and in use. The house still did not have a bathroom. There wasn’t a room, not even a closet, available in which to place the indoor bathroom.

Personal hygiene was given careful attention by family members by using wash pans for daily washing of faces, hands and other parts of the body. Baths for the family became a major production, even after the water supply to the kitchen brought water inside the house. The family bathtub was a round, No. 10 galvanized tub, moved to the center of a room—usually the kitchen—for bath time. Buckets of water were poured into the tub and then warmed by pouring in hot water that was heated in a kettle using the kitchen range.

Others in the family left the room to allow privacy, and the individual taking the bath then crawled into the tub, bathed, dried off with a towel, and then dressed. The used bath water was emptied outside the house, a new supply of water was provided, and the next family member repeated the process. Once-a-week bathing was common for most people.

Finding money to make improvements to the house was difficult, almost impossible, during times when my father was unable to find full-time employment. Food for the family was the first priority. Other family necessities had to wait. So, inconveniences simply were accepted. Things would get better. The nation’s new leader, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, brought some optimism into the minds of people, who soon began to believe the message of the popular Happy Days are Here Again song.

Things did get better—at least, a little bit better.

My father was able to accumulate enough cash to buy a few building supplies, and began a project to provide a bathroom and indoor plumbing for the house. He hand dug a trench and