When I was about nine my dad did something that he had never done before; he bought a piece of land. It was only thirty-two acres, but he was surprisingly proud to be a property owner. Perhaps at age fifty-four he thought it was time to tame his itchy foot. The property was located about three miles south of Madera, on the east side of the Southern Pacific Railroad and US 99. It had been a vineyard at one time, but all of the vines were gone. 

Dad was a good talker and always seemed to elicit trust in people. At a time when consumer credit was not all that common he seldom had any difficulty buying things “on time,” often with just a handshake. The farm cost $2250, and he put one hundred dollars down.

There was a well on the property but it had been drilled when the water table was less than one hundred feet below ground level. By 1942, the water table had dropped below one hundred and fifty feet, making the well useless. 

Dad was able to convince a local pump company to drill a new well and install an irrigation pump. He put one hundred and fifty dollars down and made payments on the rest. At first Dad had an old Buick automobile engine hooked up to the pump with a long belt, but the engine ran erratically, and he later replaced it with a conventional agricultural electric motor. As soon as we had water we moved to the farm, making numerous trips with a borrowed truck and a two-horse (cow) trailer. 

The property had a barn, but no house. We camped out for a couple of weeks or so until my father could build a little one-room cabin, probably much like the oilfield shacks that the family had known during the oil boom days in Oklahoma and Kansas. He later added a screened-in porch that served primarily as a sleeping area for me. We must have appeared pathetic to our neighbors about that time, but Dad had a smile on his face. It was the first time in his life that he’d actually put down roots.

Mom’s Country Kitchen – The day started on our little dairy farm about 5:00 AM. Both of my parents rose at this early hour. My mother put on the coffee, and my father, after a quick cup, headed for the barn to milk the cows. During the school months, the bus picked me up about 7:00 AM, so I didn’t have any assigned chores in the early morning and was thus allowed to sleep in until about 6:00 AM. Mom would prepare breakfast for me, most often a hot one, and when she was sure that I was ready for school she joined Dad in the barn to help with the milking. When the milking was almost finished – usually about the time the bus was picking me up – she went back to her kitchen to prepare breakfast for the two of them.

Dad would shed his rubber boots – often covered with cow manure – at the back-porch steps and wash up on the back porch. In the beginning we had no running water, just a basin and a bucket of water. We didn’t have a sink either, so when he finished he’d push open the screen door and toss the soapy water out towards Mom’s patch of morning glories. The flowers fared quite well, not seeming to object to the soapy water. By the time this ritual was completed, Mom was putting Dad’s breakfast on the table, and he would almost always start eating at once. Mom never seemed to mind that he didn’t wait for her, and I’m certain that Dad didn’t mean any disrespect. In fact, she was always one to be sure that everyone else was served before she would sit down herself. 

The little house that my father built had a front door, but I can’t remember anyone ever using it. The driveway came up to the back door and then down to the barn, and Dad always parked his car near the back porch. Visitors would just naturally park near his vehicle and head for the back door. Any visitor, friend, relative or stranger, was always asked in. Our little house was not much to look at, and the furnishings were very sparse, but there was always room at the kitchen table for someone to have a cup of coffee, a glass of Kool Aid, or a glass of ice water. Mom usually had a pie or some cookies to share as well. 

In the beginning Mom had no sink or running water in her kitchen, just a small table to hold two galvanized dish pans; one to wash dirty dishes and one for rinsing them. It was not long, however, before Dad picked up a secondhand combination-porcelain sink and drain board. Even though water had to be carried from the main pump to the kitchen for another year or so, she was in heaven. She was proud of that sink. 

Better Times – There were several changes on the farm during the next three years or so. Dad managed to get a used Farmall tractor about 1943. It was an older model with spiked steel wheels, but he managed to convince the Office of Price Administration (OPA) Ration Board to give him a Priority Authorization to buy new wheels and rubber tires to replace the steel ones. In addition, since Dad operated a dairy farm (considered essential to the war effort), he was allowed extra gasoline for his farm vehicles.

There had been gasoline rationing in the United States since early 1942, not because there was any shortage of gas but because there was a critical shortage of rubber to make tires. The OPA had set up a somewhat complicated distribution system. At the bottom end were ordinary citizens who re¬ceived two gallons of gas a week. At the top were politi¬cians, from local mayors to members of Congress, who got all the gasoline they said they needed. Ordinary citi¬zens got an "A" sticker, whereas congressmen and other important politicians got an "X" sticker. In between were those who were issued "B" or "C" or "D" stickers. "B" meant the car was being driven by some¬one essential to the war effort – somebody driving to work in a tank factory, for example. A "B" sticker was worth eight gallons a week. "C" stickers were worth as many gallons of gas as clergymen, doctors, and "others essential to the war effort" could convince the ration board to give them. "D" was for motorcycles, which got two gallons per week. A “T” gas ration sticker allowed farmers to purchase gasoline or diesel to run their vehicles, farm tractors and other machinery. 

Most people had “A” stickers, which meant that they parked their car most of the time, and some had a “B” or a “C”, but a “T” allowed my father to purchase most of the gas he wanted for our car and Model A pickup, as well as for his newly acquired tractor. 

About this same time Dad was also able to buy a new conventional Montgomery Ward refrigerator. I can still visualize the M/W logo on the door. My mother was ecstatic. Up until this time we had had a real “ice box,” one which had to be loaded with block ice a couple of times a week, and more often during the summer.

When my Dad decided to modernize by putting in a water pressure system, which allowed us to have running water, he included plans for a propane hot water heater as well as a shower in an adjoining little building that would always thereafter be called the “washhouse.” He even got Mom a new electric Maytag washing machine with a wringer. Mom was again very pleased; this meant the end of her old washboard and the need to boil the family clothes outdoors in a copper washtub. Mom’s new washing machine and her ironing board were also kept in the washhouse. An inside toilet, however, was not even considered. Even my mother considered an inside toilet as being uncivilized, and this was about 1944.

In the beginning my parents milked their cows by hand. They were mostly Holsteins, and each could produce up to six gallons of milk per day. Milking them was a big enough job when they had only fifteen cows, but the herd gradually increased in number so that by 1946, they were milking about thirty-five cows. Now milking cows by hand is not nearly as much fun as some of the old Hollywood movies make it out to be, with some bare-armed Nordic milkmaid sitting down next to a picturesque brown and white Guernsey cow. 

One must remember that whether there is one cow to be milked, or thirty, each requires someone’s attention twice a day, every day, for about nine months out of every year of their productive lives. That means getting up early, probably about 5:00 AM, to start the process. The first step is to let the first group of ladies into the milking barn and into the milking stalls. Then someone, probably the farmer-milker in a small operation such as ours was, places grain and fresh alfalfa hay in the feeding trough in front of each cow. Then he must use warm soapy-water to clean the udders of each cow, plus be sure the subject’s tail and rear area is free of excrement, known as cow shit in the trade. With the cow, munching happily on her breakfast, and hopefully having pleasant thoughts after the warm-water treatment, the milker then sits down on a three-legged stool on the cow’s right side, and with their head pressed against the subject’s flank to lessen the effect of the swishing (hopefully manure-free) tail, then speaks soothing sweet nothings to the cow to put her in an agreeable mood, and with the milk pail squeezed between the knees, starts to milk – with the first couple of squirts going on the ground to be sure the milk is clean. The milking process is then repeated for each cow. In the late afternoon, the procedure starts all over again.  

At one point my father tried to enlist my help but I never seemed to do a good enough job to suit him. If the person doing the milking didn’t get all of the milk at each milking the cow would slowly give less and less milk, and eventually “dry up” prematurely. Apparently, this was my problem, for Dad would have to “strip” the ones that I had milked. Finally, and much to my relief, he told me that I – as a milker – was “more trouble than I was worth.” 

My father, always good with animals, seemed to be able to communicate with them, especially his horses and cows. He named them all, and while most people would have been able to remember the names of the two or four horses or mules that we had in the early days of our Madera County farm, the cows would have been something else. At one point, when we had about thirty milk cows, one of my teachers stopped by to deliver a costume for a Christmas pageant that I was in. It was milking time, and I was at the dairy-barn helping my dad. She watched for a bit, and was impressed as Dad progressed through the cows, talking soothingly to each by name. She commented to him that he seemed to have them all named. Dad acknowledged that he did and proceeded to name the next ten or twelve cows down the line. 

“Amazing!” my teacher said, “I can’t even remember the names of all of my students.” 

“That’s because you don’t have to milk them twice a day,” Dad said with a straight face.

Shortly before the war ended, when my father was feeling rather flush because of the good economic times, he bought a mechanical milking machine. There were several brands available by then, but I remember that Surge was the brand name of the one he purchased. The main component of the milking machine was an air compressor. Airlines ran from the compressor to a socket in each stall, where a milking apparatus, consisting of four six-inch rubber-lined stainless-steel tubes, could be attached. At milking time, after hand-milking a couple of squirts from each teat to be sure they were clean, the four tubes would be placed over the teats of the cow, and a pulsing action supplied by the compressor would simulate the squeezing action of a human hand. Even though the cows still had to be “stripped,” the milking machine eliminated about ninety-five percent of the hand labor.

The acquisition of the milking machine came at a good time for my mother, for she was beginning to have a lot of arthritis pain in her hands and hips. From that point on Mom didn’t have to help with the actual milking, although she still hand-fed any baby calves that we had.

Inside Toilets – Ours, like many of the farms in the ‘30s and ‘40s, had no indoor plumbing. Water was heated on the kitchen stove, at first a wood-burning type. Everything about our little farm was primitive, and of course we had an outside privy. Members of my folks’ generation, especially those who had been raised on farms in the 1800s and early 1900s, pretty much took them for granted. I started the first grade at Easton School in Madera County, California in the fall of 1939, and discovered a wondrous thing…inside flush toilets. While it is possible that I may have been exposed to them at some point previously; it was 

during my first few days of school that I consciously became aware of them. I recall that I was amazed. They didn’t stink, they were clean, and the school even provided paper on a roll; at home, we used last year’s Sears Roebuck catalog.  

Dad eventually installed running water to the kitchen and wash-house but there was no thought of installing a “flush” inside toilet. Today one would realize that it would be a simple matter to install a flush toilet if one had running water, but in those days, for some strange reason, flush toilets were not a priority. 

The outside pit toilets, or “outhouses,” were smelly fly-ridden affairs, and even more so in the hot summer months. On the other hand, during the cold winter days the hard-wooden seat seemed as cold as ice, and the wind that whistled up from beneath seemed to be coming straight from the Arctic. The rough wood of the often too-large hole would scratch my tender seven-year-old bottom, and I would long for the clean restrooms at school. I recall that I once made a comparison between our outhouse and the school restrooms to my mother, but she just wrinkled her nose and said,

“Inside privies ain’t sanitary.”

Her reaction made it clear that she didn’t cotton to inside toilets, but since I wasn’t exactly sure what sanitary meant I didn’t argue with her, even though I knew that she used a chamber pot at night herself. 

Grandma Minnie Erwin was a little more direct. My brother Clifford recalled that on a visit to her house in Severy, Kansas he innocently asked Grandma – shortly after she and Grandpa had first moved in back in the 1930s – if she had any plans to install indoor facilities. She replied,

“Heavens no. Nobody’s agoin’ to shit in my house!”

Grandma Minnie was not one to mince words.

If one were to think about it though, the problem of where to “go” has been with man since he started standing upright and began living in close quarters with others of his kind. In the beginning, it is unlikely that he even thought about the human function of “going,” but as he evolved it is probable that at some point his mate remarked, 

“Wheweee! Next time, go outside the cave.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Man evolved slowly over millions of years, and into several species of humanoid beings. Over time, however, all but one became “endangered,” and eventually died out. Only the Homo sapiens species survived. Where was the Sierra Club?

Most of us would probably assume that the so-called civilized world used pit toilets, or “outhouses,” during the past several centuries...that is until some bright soul invented the flush toilet. History tells us that that is not so. Several ancient civilizations had plumbing systems that allowed one to “go inside.”

The Romans used continuously running water in a trough beneath communal toilet seats almost two thousand years before the water closet was invented in 1596, in England. Sir John Harrington, a godson to Queen Elizabeth, decided to make a modern “necessary” for the Queen and himself. He was successful, but he was so ridiculed by his peers that he never produced another one. He and his godmother, however, used theirs.

Almost two hundred years passed before Alexander Cummins would reinvent Harrington’s water closet. Two years later, in 1777, Samuel Presser received a patent on virtually the same design. A year after that Joseph Bramah patented a valve for the bottom of the tank that worked on a hinge, the predecessor of the modern ballcock.

The invention of the flush toilet is widely attributed to Thomas Crapper, a London plumber. In truth, however, he only patented a U-bend siphoning system for flushing the pan. He is best known for the slang use of his name. Legend has it that World War 1 doughboys were passing through England and saw the words “T. Crapper-Chelsea” printed on the tanks in the railroad station, and coined the word “crapper,” meaning toilet. 

So…now we know that “crap” and “crapper” are not dirty words, and that flush toilets have been in existence, albeit primitive, for about four thousand years. The next question that probably comes to mind is – why are some folks still crapping in outdoor privies?

My First Gun – My birthday in 1943 was great! I received a gift from my father that I still have in my possession; a Model 34 Remington .22 caliber bolt action rifle. I was ten years old, but I felt very adult to have my very own rifle. My buddy Steve Erickson, who lived on a farm about a mile away, got to use his father’s rifle, but it wasn’t his! I had argued for some time that I should have one, but I was nevertheless truly surprised. Dad had purchased it used from my brother Raymond for ten dollars. Two years later, on my twelfth birthday, my father gave me my first shotgun, a new Mossberg twenty gauge, which I also still own. 

My friend Steve and I experienced many happy times together shooting jackrabbits. Back then, jackrabbits were a definite menace, still are I suspect. Due to a recurring skin-ailment their meat is not edible and they are not modern-era game animals. Most of our neighboring farmers were glad to have us shoot them, for they attacked alfalfa and newly sprouted cotton plants with gusto and could cause many thousands of dollars in crop damages each year. Many thousands of the creatures lived mostly unmolested in nearby foothill areas, coming out of their burrows during the cooler times of day to forage in vineyard and row-crop agricultural areas, destroying far more plants than they consumed. As hard as we tried, however, it didn’t seem like we had any real effect on the jackrabbit population in Madera County. We were both very careful and responsible with our guns, and I can honestly say that neither of us ever endangered anyone, or any of the local livestock.  

In retrospect, it may seem strange that my father gave me the guns, especially at such an early age, but even though he didn’t personally have any interest in guns, he was of a generation that took them for granted. Responsibility was given to youngsters in rural areas at an early age. For example, I could handle a team of horses in some instances by age ten (but not the mean-tempered mules), and I had regular meaningful chores to do every day. Shortly after we got the tractor, I learned to drive it, and by age twelve I could probably handle it as well as my father. Dad was always more comfortable with his horses than with the tractor, but he did observe once that when the tractor was parked it didn’t have to be fed, and that it was not so with horses. I mentally added that one didn’t have to clean up horse manure where the tractor was parked either.

My Friend Bill – In the summer of 1943, one of my father’s big draft horses got into the alfalfa patch one night and pigged-out on the green alfalfa, causing it to founder. Dad tried to purge the gaseous buildup in the horse’s stomach with Epson salts, but despite his efforts the animal died. Shortly afterward he found a replacement and included in the deal was a fat little pony. Dad observed that “every boy should have a pony.” I was ecstatic! The previous owner had called him Bill, and somehow it seemed to fit. None of my friends had their very own horse, not even my buddy Steve. The land to the east of our little farm was, at that time, lying fallow. At some point parts of it had been dry-farmed but had not been planted for years. Beyond the vacant farmland were the Sierra Nevada foothills. I could ride for miles on Bill’s back, and he helped me exercise my itchy foot. 

During the next three years or so I spent countless hours “exploring” the fallow wheat fields with Bill. At times, I imagined that I was a mountain man; I even had an imitation coonskin cap, and at other times I was exploring new frontiers. I was pleased to discover that Bill would allow me to shoot my .22 rifle while on his back. I often pretended to be Buffalo Bill, and that the jackrabbits and ground squirrels were buffalo. My mother often worried about me getting lost, but my father opined that the pony could always find its way home. To see if that were true I experimented one day by not touching the reins, and by “giving Bill his head” on the way home. It worked just as my father said it would. Bill made a beeline for home and his feed trough.

About three years after we got Bill he became lame in his left shoulder. Our rides became shorter and shorter as his condition worsened. After a while he could hardly get around. My father had had a lot of experience doctoring horses, but none of his treatments seemed to work. Dad estimated Bill’s age at around eighteen, well past middle age for a horse. Dad said that he would have to retire. One morning, about two years later, we found him dead in his corral.

Shortly after we retired Bill Dad brought home a little pinto pony. It was another gelding, but this one was less than two years old. We named him Jack. Dad had been told that he was broken to ride, but I soon found out that this was really stretching it. He really didn’t like a saddle on his back, and he had learned to expand his belly when I cinched up the saddle. My father, however, had taught me how to wait until he had to let his breath out to give the final pull on the girth strap. To show his displeasure he would nip at me when my back was turned; in fact, all of his manners left a lot to be desired. My father thought it was funny until Jack threw him off on one of the rare occasions that he rode him. After Dad got up from the ground he whacked the pony across the side of his head with a board a couple times, and from that point on Jack was real meek when Dad was around him.

Jack, in contrast to Bill, would come unglued when I fired my .22 while astride his back; which was very disappointing. On the other hand, when he suddenly planted his feet and sent me over his head…now that made me angry, especially on one occasion when I had to walk home. Jack and I finally developed an understanding though; I wouldn’t shoot rabbits off his back, and he wouldn’t buck me off…very often that is. As I got older I rode Jack less and less, but we kept him until we moved back to Kansas when I was fifteen.

The Crash – One night, in the early spring of 1944, we awoke to the sounds of a tremendous roar and explosion. An Army Air Force B-29 bomber had passed low over our house and crashed about two hundred yards beyond, between the house and the railroad. It must have cleared the roof by only a few feet. The plane did not burn completely, and to the best of my knowledge there were no fatalities. I was about eleven at the time and I thought it was very exciting. I was the center of attention at school for weeks. 

It took the Army several days to remove the wreckage, including the smallest piece of debris. They even mended the barbed wire fence and filled in the hole made by the plane. I believe that Dad received some compensation, but he never talked about it, and it wasn’t something that I would have questioned him about. I found out years later that Mom never mentioned the crash in any of her letters to other members of the family. In retrospect this was strange, for she always wrote very newsy letters. I suspect that the military authorities told them to keep quiet about it.

My First Cars – I got my first car the summer I was thirteen. It cost twenty-five dollars, and it was a 1928 four-cylinder Chevrolet roadster that I bought from a neighbor. It was really a junker, and it would just barely run, but I thought it had great possibilities. The fact that I didn’t get a title for the car didn’t faze me at the time. My father was skeptical about my acquisition, but he allowed me to keep it. It soon became apparent, however, that the Chevy was beyond hope of rehabilitation, and I sold it for scrap for twenty dollars shortly thereafter.

There was a wrecking yard, which also sold used cars, about a mile down the highway from our farm. I would frequently ride my bike through the fields to this establishment and admire the cars that were for sale. I had been working weekends digging sweet potatoes for fifty cents an hour and I was feeling flush. Most of the cars were completely out of my price range, but there was a 1927 Model T light truck on the lot for fifty dollars. Now a truck wasn’t very sporty, but in contrast to the ‘28 Chevy, it would run. After several visits to the lot, much tire thumping, and much haggling with the owner of the lot, I put ten dollars down and promised to pay the balance in six months.

When I drove into the yard with the Model T I got a somewhat different reaction from my Dad than when I bought the Chevy. My father was not really a profane person, but he did have two or three favorite exclamations that he would use on occasion. 

After he got a good look at the truck he said: 

“Shit fire boy, what the hell do you want with that piece of junk?” 

Since I had not forewarned him or my mother that I was going to purchase another vehicle I expected some reaction, but his put-down of my great Model T truck was somewhat disappointing. Now my father had had a lot of experience with T’s, and after he cooled down he proceeded to tell me about their many shortcomings and deficiencies.

After a couple of months or so, and in the meantime paying the wrecking yard owner another ten dollars, I gave the truck back to him, in effect giving him twenty dollars to just take the truck off my hands.

Suddenly I’m legal – When I was fourteen I got my first driver’s license. Actually, I had been driving since age twelve, on short trips to the store and such. Up until 1948 my father had never had a driver’s license himself, so the fact that I didn’t have one didn’t concern him much. When he thought I could safely drive he began to let me drive his 1929 Ford Model A pickup on specific errands, and for a short time I had the T mentioned above. On one of my trips into Madera with Dad’s pickup, however, I was stopped for making an illegal turn. When I appeared in traffic court an understanding judge suspended the fine for six months to allow me to get a proper license.  This resulted in my getting what was then referred to as a “farm license.” At the time, this type of license was available in California, on a limited basis, to farm children as early as age fourteen.

During the summer of 1946 I had worked in the fruit packing sheds. When school was out in June 1947, Dad made me a proposition: he said that if I would help him on the farm until school started in the fall he would give me the 1930 Ford Model A Sport Coupe that he had recently traded his 1933 Chevrolet sedan for. The Model A was what every high school freshman would drool over…a sport coupe with a rumble seat. It was blue with black fenders. I immediately agreed when I learned that I could also drive it through the summer on Sundays when I was allowed a day off.

That fall, after a football game, I got drunk for the first time. There were four of us in my Model A, and we had some homemade “Dago Red” that one of my buddies had swiped from his father’s wine barrel in their cellar. I got terribly sick and threw up all over the side of the car. Fortunately, I made it home safely, and get into bed without incident. I didn’t really drink anything again, even beer, until I was twenty-two years old, and after being in the Marines for over five years.