Garland Bailiff
How We Went 'Round & 'Round in the West and Came Out Here
We were in North Dakota from 1914 to 1928. We left Dakota on account of my mother's health. From there we went to Oregon - Mother, Dad, and my brother and I. My older brother, Silas, did not stay in Oregon. He went back to North Dakota and he is still there. We worked some at farm work - we never farmed much of our own. We more or less worked on the road.
We were in the Willamette Valley with a range of mountains between us and the Pacific Ocean. We were between two ranges of mountains. That is south of Salem about 18 miles. I got married there in Oregon. Then my wife and I and her people went to California. We were there about a year and three months. It was hard times and everything was getting tighter all the time. You couldn't buy, borrow or steal a job down there. We were where Disneyland is now. Grace's grandfather had a nice orange orchard there near Anaheim south of Los Angeles. It was just like everything else in 1929 and '30, you just didn't do nothing then.
We went back up to Oregon. We were there when Jim was born. When he was about a year and a half old I had an aunt in Colorado. She was a homestead owner of a big sheep ranch there. She kept writing and wanting us to come there. So we went there. I and my wife and Jim went to Colorado. That was about 110 miles northeast of Denver in the northeastern part of the state. Then the folks they came in the spring after we went there. Along that next fall my aunt had a stroke. After she had this stroke she died. She was my dad's sister. She was an old maid - never married. Of course everything had to be sold. We went on the move again. In the meantime my wife here and I went back to Iowa and stayed one winter where I was born. I was not born in North Dakota. We stayed one winter back there and Mary Lee was born. Then we went back to Colorado and we farmed for a year after that before they got the estate settled.
We drove through to Arkansas. We had an old 1924 Dodge and we pulled a 4-wheel trailer. The biggest objection to that was we went down through Kansas and got into some of them dust storms. We were driving along there one day (in 1934) and my dad, of course, got to talking with a guy that was going to the Ozark Mountains there and he got to telling him what a great country it was. I don't think he'd ever been there. We got there in Kansas going down through there and by golly you couldn't see. It was like a blizzard. I finally said to dad, "We might just as well stop over at some cabin camp. We can't see for the dust." So we stopped over for a day. The next morning the wind had let up and we went right on then.
Through Kansas we never run into anymore of that. Of course we knew what it was because it was that way in Colorado at times, too. Mother had a cousin in the northern part of Missouri and we stopped and seen them. That is where we started for first. We went down into this part of Missouri where this guy said he was going and we never found him. Apparently he didn't find what he wanted and he went on. So we went on down into Arkansas.
My cousin's wife's sister was down there in that town of Rogera, Arkansas. Well, they'd been there long enough so I guess they didn't seem to mind it. They liked it there. Well, we rented a place and we stayed and tried our luck farming. Boy! I never got into such farming in my life. Horse farming, that's what it was. One horse threw stumps and stones. They raised corn and tomatoes and string beans and stuff like that. It was during the drought and we never had a good crop in all the time we were there. They claimed they had had gone ones. I never did see one. We farmed about 25 acres altogether. Their ground was so poor. I think it was run and run and run and nothing ever put back in it. It probably had been farmed for a good many years. They did have some awful nice oak timber down there.
Finally dad just got to thinking maybe we'd better try to get out of there. Mattie, my sister (Mrs. Harry Meyers) - she'd been after us for years to come up here to Michigan. Then I built a truck. It was out of the old Dodge car - the front part of it. It had a '24 Model T cab on it and a '29 Ford truck back end on it with a truck rack and all. When I put those tires on there, I kept having flat tires and I couldn't figure out why it was pinching the tubes. But, it was because the wheels were not big enough - the rims weren't. They said there were I forget how many million flat tires that year that we come up here and I believe I had half of them on the way up here.
We were 28 days coming from Arkansas up here. That was about as long a ride as I ever took, I believe. We had the truck covered with a canvas that we would stretch out over the back end. We had it pretty good. Heck, it was warm yet then until after we got here in Michigan and then it began to cool off. We camped in farmers' yards or schoolyards or something like that all the way up here. Once in a while there would be a night that was a real nasty night, why then we would hunt up a cabin camp - cabins were only a dollar and a half or two dollars a night - a lot different than it is now.
We made 14 miles one day. I had a flat. I rolled that tire better than a mile to a filling station, pumped it up, rolled it back and got it back on the truck and let it back down and it was flat again. And then I was doing the same thing again and rolled it the other way clear there and back. Until we got into Jefferson City, Missouri and got out of Jefferson City to a little town and started having tire trouble and a guy in a filling station there said, "If you'd go and get you some wheels to fit them tires it would stop your troubles."
I said, "Do you know where to get some?"
He said, "Yeah, back to Jefferson City."
"Yeah, but", I said, "that's quite a ways back."
He said, "I'll take you back." He took me back to Jefferson City and bought the wheels at discount price and he only charged me a dollar for doing it. You couldn't find anybody who'd do that today for you that way. After that we had pretty good luck the rest of the way up.
Down in Indiana I had a rod go out of it. It was the old type rod where the bearing was separate from the rod. You could slip them right out and slip another in. People were real nice along the road. We stayed in a cabin camp that night and I was going to pull it off right out there in the yard, pull the pan, you know.
A guy was a farmer and he had a nice tool shed and he said, "Why don't you drive that thing around to the shed and put it in the shed? After I get my chores done I'll come in and help you and we'll pull the pan." And we pulled that pan and got the rod out that night and went down to the wrecking house next morning and got a bearing for fifty cents. He come out after he got his chores done and helped me put it back together and wouldn't take a penny. That was in Indiana. I couldn't tell you the names of any of those towns anymore.
There was Three Rivers and a lake and we stayed in a cabin camp there. Somewhere out this side of Three Rivers there was a cabin camp beside a lake and that's the only place I can remember outside of Jefferson City there where we stayed all night.
But how I come through some of them big towns with that old truck I still don't know. I even come right through Bloomington, Illinois down there and all I had for brakes was the old type Ford mountain brakes. There was a brake on the outside. They hooked onto the foot pedal too on the old Dodge. Boy, it scared me to death for years afterwards to think about it how I come through them big towns. It wouldn't idle good and I didn't have no hand feed on it - the old Dodge used to always have a hand feed you know you could set 'em. Grace always rode in the cab with me all the time. And when we'd come to a stop sign and it was idling, she'd work the foot pedal or gas feed. And when we'd want to take off she'd step down on the feed and I'd release the brakes. And, away we'd go.
It was worth the experience. As far as anybody making any money in those times there were very few unless they had a farm or something of their own. There were a lot of funny things. We stayed in a cabin camp down there in Indiana or a park where they could drive in the park and camp. And, I saw a guy there with a Montana license. Of course I thought if he was from out in our country, I'll go over and get chummy with him. I went over and went to visiting with him and I said, "I see you are from Montana."
He said, "No, I'm from Indiana but I've been in Montana the last two or three years herding sheep." He had a wife and I believe five children.
I said, "What in the world took you out there herding sheep?"
He said, "I couldn't get a job here and I saw an advertisement in the paper they needed sheepherders and I went out there and got a job - $60 a month and that was big pay."
It was big pay. But he said, "You know, I couldn't take my family out there with me sixty miles from town." He'd go out there and he'd stay all summer herding them sheep. All he had was his two dogs and his wagon. He said, "I think I'll quit."
I said, "What was the matter?"
He said, "You know I could look out over those sheep and see all kinds of faces that I knew."
I've been kind of lucky since I've been in Michigan. I don't believe I've ever been out of a job since I've been here.
Down in Arkansas there were strawberries but I didn’t do much of the strawberry picking. But, my wife did. I never was very good at it. There was a little race on and Grace picked 130 quarts one day. You get a kick out of those "Arkansawyers". But, they got that long drawn out voice. Johnny came over and was visiting with me and he says, "You know, I'm going to beat your wife picking strawberries tomorrow."
I said, "You are?"
He said, "Yeah."
I said, "How many did she pick today?"
"Well", he said, "I think better than a hundred and I just got a hundred. Tomorrow I'm gonna beat her." Next night he came over. They had a cow in our pasture and he came over and did the milking.
I said, "Well, Johnny, did you beat her?"
"My LAN', no", he said. "I didn't beat her. My, that woman," he said, "she picked 130 quarts today." But they did have, anyhow when we were down their, awful nice strawberries. There were no great big fields - four, five and six acres of strawberries. They were all sold in Jolin, Missouri and Springfield. The guys trucked them in. They had a good market right there in Rogers but in those days there was nothing that was worth anything, that was the biggest trouble. Of course, I suppose, it was the same way everywhere in those depression days. Grace got 1 1/2 cents a quart for picking. When we worked in the canning factory we got 10 cents an hour but I and, now mind you a school teacher - he was a real good teacher, he had a good education - we worked for a guy setting out strawberries for 5 cents an hour and I said to him, "Bruce, what in the world are you doing down in this part of the country setting out strawberries when you could be up in Kansas where you used to live a teaching school?"
He said, "I was sick of it and I don't want to do it any more." But he did. He went back to teaching school and before he took sick this time he got to be the postmaster there. He had a good education, but I don't know, those that have it don't want to use it. A nickel an hour and we carried our dinner. We didn't get any dinner or nothing out of it either - boy!
But you could go to town then and buy a sack of flour for 75 cents too. Well, you know I didn't get any big wages when I first started to work here - $9 a week. Of course they furnished the house. But then it seemed like pretty darned good wages too because there was alot of them that worked for less.
There were snakes in Arkansas. Jim was just a little snot then. Dad was just a fooling and hiding something. Dad went in the corncrib and Jim was going to go in but the old dog went in ahead of him. And, by gosh, there was a copperhead in there and he got him. The dog got bit in the process but you know we thought sure as heck the old dog was going to die. Those old Arkansawyers down there, they'd come along - he's old head - it got him right in here on the jaw - his old head was swelled way up and I thought, "Boy, if he ever makes it, it will be a wonder." They said, "Aw, don't worry. He's a going to be an awful sick dog, but he'll be all right in a day or two." And he was. But he killed the snake.
But, you know, I never happened to run onto any. Oh I see 'em but I always see 'em when I didn't have nothing to kill 'em with and I wasn't about to walk through the brush looking for something for fear I'd run onto another one. They never seemed to be in the strawberries. I never heard of anybody killing any in the strawberry patch. When we went huckleberrying we always wore high rubber overshoes. Outside of that we were lucky, I guess.
In all the time we were in Colorado I never saw but one rattlesnake. There was alot of them but, I don't know, I never happened to run onto them. I talked with a guy that I worked for part time there. They dig out a big place and cement it for a water supply for cattle and there was a prairie dog town right in there where they were digging this next to a windmill. And, they killed 22 rattlesnakes while they were digging that thing. I said, "It would have been about the second one you killed, if I'd a been working with you. You would a had one less man 'cause I wouldn't been there." They told that if you'd go out in the spring of the year in prairie dog town on the first few nice days when the sun was shining nice, you'd find them. My cousin and I went all through one and we never found any.
My dad's people went. He had two brothers and two sisters that went to Colorado and homesteaded when they opened up homestead there. My aunt and one brother was all that ever stuck it out. The other ones, they couldn't take that homesteading, it was too tough a life for them. My uncle said that they raised pinto beans. They called them homesteaders and that's what they had, mostly too, they just had beans to eat and jack rabbits. They told that the jackrabbits got where they had boils in 'em, you know, in the older ones. He said they just got to where they couldn't eat them. One day in the spring it was nice, he said to the boys, "If you fellers will keep still, I'll go out and get a young jack and you won't say nothing when you get ready to eat it."
"Oh, no!" They wouldn't say a word. He said his wife fixed that all up nice, fried it. He said the second boy, the first piece that he picked up, he said that piece got a boil in it. He said that done it. He couldn't eat it. I had quite a little relation out there for a long while and I guess that just the one cousin is all that is left there now, unless there is some second cousins left. One cousin went there for asthma. That's a great country for asthma. He got over it. There was one thing about Arkansas and I heard my dad say that a good many times while we were down there that nobody could point their finger at you and say, "There goes a poor devil." 'Cause they were all just alike, poor as could be. And I'll tell you another thing. There was a road that went into a little town down there. We had to go down through a valley and up to a little town. There was a big spring that came out of a cave, an old big cave. I never had nerve enough to go in it but the other boys had. Oh it had a heck of a flow of water and there was quite a space covered on the road and they had a plank there for you to walk across. I was going to town one day and a young feller came from the other way and I waited until he came across. He got a little anxious and it was cold, in the wintertime, and he hurried a little and he slid off and stepped in the water. I said, "Boy, it's awful cold to be getting a wet foot, I'm sorry that you hurried so." "Oh", he said that it didn't make any difference. And he took off his shoe and there was a big hole for the water to run out. So, I'm telling you, they talk about poor people now! That boy came from a family that lived way back in the sticks. The mother had died - they had seven children and they had a house that was built out of logs. And they put a peaked roof on it and one end of it was closed and the other end was open for light. That's all the light that they had. They didn't have any windows and only a door. In the wintertime when it got real cold they'd hang gunnysacks over that opening. They said that the one boy had infantile paralysis when he was a little feller and he had one leg that wasn't right and one arm, and they said that all he had for clothes one winter was gunny sacks and flour sacks with holes cut in for the arms and his head. I guess we've been pretty lucky at that when you stop to think about other people.
as told on tape by Garland Bailiff
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