Aunt Sadie

Before he died my Uncle Lloyd Lawry put together a collection of stories and family history. I was blessed to have been given a copy of his collection. This is the story he wrote about Aunt Sadie.

Aunt Sadie 

by Lloyd Lawry

Aunt Sadie, Grandpa and Grandma Lawry's first child was born March 20, 1887, and died December 24, 1973.

As the family was desperately poor, she had to have a job as soon as she was able to find one. At that time a High School Graduate could go to "Normal School" for six weeks and qualify to teach school. Aunt Sadie did this and started teaching school in 1905. She probably got $40 a month for teaching a one room school which could consist of all grades, 1 through 8.

We have a school directory for 1925-1926 which shows her salary at $65 a month for the 8-month term.

By 1910 she was able to have the house on the oId home farm remodeled to a five-room cottage. It remained until the place was sold after her death.

She always worked very hard but expected everyone else to work hard too on jobs she wanted to be done around the farm. She raised chickens and kept cows, selling eggs and cream. She always made poor Grandma work so hard that the family was upset with her. Daddy always dreaded going to see her as she always had a hard job for him to do.

She was a life-long spinster, but apparently she fell in love with a young man in Western Kansas while cooking for a farmer one summer. He was to come to Bronson in the fall and marry her, but it is thought the farmer, she had cooked for, turned him against her and he never came. She was always bitter toward men after that.

She taught school until she couldn't get a position because she couldn't play the piano. She was always bitter about that too.

She had a heavy portion of the Lawry pessimism and depression. If one of her hens died, she would say, "all of my chickens are dying."

She lived alone after Grandma died and finally went to a nursing home where she died. She was mad at her brothers and sister because none of them would take care of her instead of sending her to the nursing home. None of them wanted to put up with her bitter, pessimistic personality.

She left all of her possessions except some furniture to George N. Lawry's boys. She left the furniture and personal possessions to the Ermel girls, Mary's children. Uncle Johnnie was bitter about that.

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Sadie Lawry, in the back seat behind the driver, owned a Motel T Ford and drove it weekly to Bronson, Kansas from her home southwest of town. Edward Swink was a mechanic in town and kept her car tuned to perfection. She asked him to drive it for the Governor's Day Parade in 1965. Bill Avery, Kansas Governor, and his wife, Hazel, are also in the photo.


For more of Uncle Lloyd's Scrapbook, click here.

Lloyd Lawry

L is for Lloyd Lawry.  He was my uncle, my Daddy's half brother. When he retired he moved to Mena, Arkansas and lived there until he passed away.  I loved my Uncle Lloyd and enjoyed spending time with him.   He loved to play dominoes and we often played 42.  He was a serious Bible student and we spent many hours discussing the Bible.

One of my favorite memories if him involves wallpaper.  I knew that he had put up some wallpaper in his house, and I was wanting to wallpaper my daughters bedroom.  I asked for his help and he agreed. As I applied the wallpaper he gave me tips and directions.  Even though he didn't actually apply any of the wallpaper, he said several times, "I would never do this for money, only for love."

Uncle Lloyd had a number of interesting sayings.  If something was quite long he would say that it was longer than a well rope.  If someone was determined to do something he would say that they would do it if it hair lipped every goat in Texas.

Shortly before he passed away he compiled family stories, genealogy, obituaries, birth announcements, and some of his Bible studies.  He placed them in a notebook and gave me a copy.  In this notebook was a short life history he wrote.




LLOYD
written by Lloyd Lawry

I was born at my Aunt Cody's (Cora Hixson) June 9,1919. From one of Mama's letters I learned we lived in Mildred, Kansas in 1920. Daddy worked at the cement plant there.  We lived in Yates Center where Daddy ran a restaurant in 1924.  I remember living in Chanute, Kansas at some time with Mama when she and Daddy separated.  We all lived together in Wichita, Kansas where Daddy worked in an oil refinery, but by the time I was 6 they had separated. Mama and I were living alone by the time I started to school.

Mama told me some things I did when we were in Texas visiting her relatives: One time there was a jar of jalapeno peppers on the table and I kept asking for one thinking they were pickles. When I persisted she gave me one and I ate it without blinking an eye (when she knew it must be burning me up).  Another time there was a Ku Klux Klan parade, all of them in their white robes. I kept hollering, "which one is Grandpa", because I knew he was in the parade. Yet another time an old colored lady who had worked for the family for years shook hands with me and I looked closely at my hand after she shook it. She said, "Bless your little heart honey, it won't rub off."

Mama and I lived in Wichita, Kansas from just before I was six until she died shortly after my ninth birthday. For some time she worked as a waitress in a restaurant on 21st street. She made $12 a week, and got all of her meals and two meals a day for me. We lived in several different apartments, and after she married Marion Doyle we live in two different houses.

In the second grade I had a little red-headed freckle-face girl friend. We were so small we sat in one theater seat to watch the silent movie. Mama offered to give us an ice cream cone if I would bring her in the restaurant, but I wouldn't do it because I knew they would tease me.

One Christmas I was in a program where I had to say, "These grapes from far Italy's vine the children of Italy send, and greetings as glad as of yore they keep for their Christmas friend." Mama bought a huge bunch of grapes thinking I would bring them home after the program and we could share them. However, I ate them all as I watched the rest of the program.

For Christmas 1927 Mama made an imitation fireplace with cardboard, box and spread my presents around it. Among other things she got me the books Little Women, Little Men, Penrod, and Penrod
and Sam. She said in a letter to Grandma Lawry that I had read them and understood them.

When it was obvious to the adults that Mama would soon die, Daddy came and got me and took me home with him to Buffville. This was just after school was out in the spring of 1928. I had a good time fishing and swimming with the boys in Buffville, but one day Daddy came down to the shale pit where we were swimming, took me in his arms and said, "Mama's gone."

My sister Opal was a tiny baby and Daddy needed to get me to Wichita for mama's funeral, so he arranged with my Aunt Cody to put me aboard the train she was taking to Wichita. He took me to Yates Center to put me on the train, but she wasn't on it! He finally put me on the train anyway and I went to Wichita by myself . We later learned the train I was on was a special train and the one Aunt Cody was on came a little later. When I got to Wichita I tugged my heavy suitcase to the taxi cab and told the driver the address. He took me to the house where Mama had died.  I never did like Marion Doyle but my heart went out to him at Mama's funeral, because he cried as if his heart was being torn out of his body.

I went back to live with Daddy and Hazel at Buffville. For many nights I cried myself to sleep mourning for my mother.  Hazel was real good to me, but I wasn't very nice to her for several years.  I was happy fishing, swimming and hunting with the Buffville boys, but then when I was 12 we rented a house on a farm and it was quite lonely with no one to play with.

We continued to rent a house on some farm as long as I was home. After I graduated Glen Boyer and I hitch-hiked to Western Kansas and shocked wheat for several farmers. We would be out in the field just as the sun came up and didn't quit in the evening until the sun went down. We made $2.00 a day, and I got home with $13.

I joined the Civilian Conservation Corp later in the summer of 1937 and spent 23 months there.  I got $30 a month, $5 in cash and the rest sent to my foIks. After 13 months I became assistant leader and got $36 a month.  After I got out in June 1939, Toby Boyer and I hitch-hiked to Colorado looking for work. We couldn't find any so hitch-hiked back home again.

Connie Schultheiss and I hitch-hiked to Dumas, Texas hunting for work but couldn't find any so started to hitch-hike back to Kansas. We were standing in a sleet storm with cars flying by us when I bet Connie a chicken fried steak dinner the next car would pick us up. He took me up on it and sure enough the next car picked us up and took us all the way to Wichita, Kansas. The only bad part was I had to sit in the back seat with a huge German Shepherd dog!  At least I got the chicken fried steak dinner.

We hitch-hiked home from Wichita. In the early spring of 1940 Connie and I drove his Model A Ford to Riverside, California taking the famous "Route 66" highway. He found a job picking oranges, but I couldn't find one. I hitch-hiked up the coast of California and through Oregon to visit Uncle Johnny Lawry.  I would buy a bus ticket and ride all night, because it was cheaper than a hotel. I finally hitch-hiked back down to Riverside and Connie and I started up the coast in the Model A, but it burnt up.

We decide to ride freight trains back to Kansas. Going out of California we were about 5 cars back of the engine on top of a car when we went through a tunnel. The smoke almost smothered us, so after we got out of the tunnel we moved farther back on the train. We got off the train on one side of Las Vegas, walked through town and caught another freight train on the other side of town.  We got off in Ogden, Utah and spent the night, then rode another freight train to Omaha, Nebraska. We hitch-hiked home to Kansas from there.

The family moved to Poplar Bluff, Missouri, where we lived with Jessie and John Borton in a three-roomed house.  In early 1941 I hitch-hiked to Altoona, Kansas and then to Cooper, Texas where I stayed with Eileen and Charles Wright until Doris and Bill Robertson came and took me to Dallas with them. This ended my hitch-hiking days.

Since my employment with Braniff International covered all but eight months of the period from March 1941 until June 1981, I felt that an account of my tour of duty might be of some interest.  I went to work for Braniff Airways the last part of March 1941 for $70 a month. Since the only other job I had worked at was as an elevator operator for $12.50 a week, I felt that f had it made.

I almost lost the Braniff job because I missed one day, occasioned by the loss of the badge they gave me to get in the gate. They were already tightening security in anticipation of World War II.  I was living with Dorris and Bill Robertson at the time, and we decided that their colored maid must have taken the badge.  When I went back the next day Braniff gave me another badge and all was well.

I had to move to a boarding house when I was assigned to the 12 midnight to 8 A. M. shift. It was a miserable time for me because it was in the middle of a hot summer. I had only a little 8 inch noisy fan to keep me cool while I slept, so I never got much sleep.  The boarding house landlady fed me three meals a day, but the lunch she sent for me was a half of a sandwich and some cookies or fruit.  I worked at the main stock room by myself, my main job being to take parts to the line service stockroom when they requested them by telephone. Between times I filed purchase orders, often falling asleep on the act of filing one. One night I left the windows down on the car used to carry parts to the line service stockroom and it got soggily wet from a hard rain.

When I got on the day shift it was easier. I established a financial plan where I paid the landlady $15 every two weeks for room and board, bought a two weeks supply of streetcar/bus tokens, sent $20 a month home to the folks, and blew the rest of the $34.65 I was paid every two weeks.  Streetcar/bus tokens were 5 cents a piece. I rode the street car to downtown Dallas and transferred to a bus for the ride to Love Field. We would, in 1941, go by cotton fields between downtown and Love Field.

At that time Braniff's main office was in Oklahoma City and our pay checks were often two or three days late.  After Pearl Harbor many of the men I worked with volunteered or were drafted into military service. I was 4F and didn't have to go. Braniff began to hire a bunch of new people and I began to serve a sort of supervisor role (without any pay increase).  I especially had to help the women fit into our work routine.

In 1944 the work schedule for July was posted showing me working Sunday for the second month in a row. I told my boss I wouldn't work it. I didn't, but had to quit to avoid it. He told me I did fine work, but he didn't like my attitude. The personnel manager told me I would never work for Braniff again. Boy was he wrong!

In the next few months I worked for Air Associates, carried U. S. Mail, worked for a sporting goods company, and for Devoe and. Reynolds Paint Company.  In March 1945, I went back out to Braniff with a sort of a "hat in my hand" attitude and told my former boss I would like to go back to work for Braniff. By that time good help was so hard to get that he went to the personnel manager and persuaded him to re-hire me. This time the job was permanent, as it lasted to June 30, 1981.




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Kansas

K is for Kansas. My Dad grew up in and around Altoona, Kansas.  He still has lots of family in the area. Last weekend he went back to attend a cousins 50th wedding anniversary. Here he is with the group of first cousins who were in attendance.

While he was there he was given a story written by my second cousin, Toni Ehrardt. The story takes place during the Great Depression and centers around two little girls. Here is a photo of those two little girls today.

                                  IRENE AND HENRIETTA


Mother's Christmas Program
by Toni Ehrardt

My mother,Irene Dannels Woolery was born in 1925 on a small farm near Altoona, Kansas. Times weren't easy at the Dannel's Place nor most other places for that matter. I remember my mother telling me that most of the time, the family had a nice Christmas dinner of baked chicken, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, hot rolls and pumpkin pie. Possibly, they had gingerbread, fudge and mady taff. I'm just guessing they had milk, water or home-made cider to drink.

For Christmas, the kids, (my mom and her sisters and brothers), usually got a nickel, an orange, and some gift my grandparents made for them. For example, my grandpa made little tractors out of spools and rubber bands and my grandma made rag dolls or teddy bears and made outfits for them.

The family went to cut down a Christmas tree and decorated their tree with popcorn, little ornaments they made at home, church, or school and possibly with little pieces of ribbon or bits of lace. They went to school and church programs and especially enjoyed those things as well as big family dinners with lots of cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Times, of course, got even rougher in the 1930's. I remember my mother telling me that my Grandma Zenella Reeve Dannels, had one dress and one pair of overalls. Naturally, the girls didn't have many clothes either but somewhere around 1939 when my mom was about 14, my grandma promised the girls (My mom, Irene and my aunt, Henrietta, who were still in school that she would make them both a nice Christmas dress for their Christmas program at Buffville School.

My mother always loved clothes and shoes, so she was in a rush to get home from school that day to see the dresses that my grandmother, an adequate and basic seamstress, had made for her and Etta. So the two girls hurried in on that cold Winter day anxious to see their new dresses.

The girls ran to my grandmother and asked, "Where are the dresses you made for us for the School Program? My grandmother replied, "I'm sorry, girls. I simply didn't have the time to make any dresses for you. You'll just have to do with your best dress this time. I'm sorry."

My Aunt Henrietta didn't get so upset but my mother was absolutely devastated. She had imagined a new red velvet dress and she was practically sick that my grandmother hadn't made dresses for them. She was mad too, because my grandmother had definitely promised the girls new dresses for this event, which was one of the most important programs of the season.

About that time, the girls heard a car coming and a car horn honking, honking, honking. They ran to see who it was because they weren't expecting anybody and they also had to hurry to get washed up and primped for the program. They were a little surprised to see their oldest brother, Walter Dannels, and his cute young wife, Stelline (Hoobler) Dannels, coming in the door carrying boxes.

"Are you two coming to our Christmas program?" my Mom asked.  "Sure are!" Walter said, grinning. "Now you two girls better hurry and get all fixed up so I won't be so embarrassed that you're my little sisters!" "Come on," Stelline told the two younger girls. "Now get in there and I'll help you fix your hair!"

All three of the girls crowded into the girls' bedroom and my Mom asked, "Hey, Stelline, what's in the box?"  "Never you mind. Just get your school clothes off and hang them up. And you need to hurry. I've made some sandwiches and cookies for us to eat".  Then Stelline started opening the boxes. She pulled out two of the prettiest dresses my Mom and Aunt Etta had ever seen.

"Oh, Stelline, Thank you! Thank you! We had no idea you were making us Christmas dresses! Oh, they're so pretty!"  "I just love mine, too. They are so cute and stylish. Thank you!"  "Now stop blubbering and get those dresses on," Walter hollered.

The two girls got the dresses on, and they fit perfectly. Stelline also whipped a comb and brush through their hair and sprayed on a tad of Evening in Paris perfume. "You two girls will be the belles of the ball" she told them smiling at their happy excited faces.

About that time my grandparents came in with some eggs and a milk pail to leave in the cellar. "You two girls sure look nice!" my Grandma said. "Wasn't it nice of Stelline to make your Christmas dresses when I really couldn't find the time."

My Grandpa Earl Dannels said, "You girls look dandy. I'm really going to feel proud tonight!" "Oh Stelline, you've made this the best Christmas Program ever!" the two girls said, smiling widely.



Note from Toni Ehrhardt: My Aunt Stelline (Hoobler) Dannels passed away in 1968, much too young. She had a special talent of looking at a dress and the person who wanted it and sewing it up in no time. Everything she made looked like it came from Vogue. She also was a very good cook. I remember especially that she made wonderful Turkey Pie. She is sadly missed by her children and family.

Stelline Elizabeth Hoobler was born November 30, 1916 in Jasper, Alabama and died May 13, 1968. She was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, El Centro, California . She married Walter Louis Dannels December 4, 1935 in Erie, Kansas. He was born April 24, 1914 in Altoona, Kansas and died August 19, 1998. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, El Centro, California.

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My Grandpa Reeve by Shannon Welch

This story was written by Shannon Welch and posted on Ancestry .com


My Great Great Grandpa Reeve died when my mom was 17, but I heard a lot about him from my mom. He was tall and very handsome, and he was married to Edith Lewis when they were both very young. She was a maid in a "RICH HOUSE" in Chicago, and he delivered milk there with a horse. Prior to that Grandpa Reeve's parents worked for the railroad and had a boarding house for railroad men. His mom used to make great noodles and pies--and a lot of them.

When he was a kid, she made pies and put them on the pie safe for lunch and she never used to figure how she would have missing pies. The mystery was finally solved when she caught my Grandpa and his friends and cousins stealing pies from the pie safe and running into the woods with them!

As an older man, Grandpa was a little grumpy with the boys. They used to borrow his dominoes and they'd tell him they lost his Double 6 and he would holler and chase them. Since it happened repeatedly, I think he was just having fun with the silly boys. 

Grandpa farmed and worked for the railroad at different times. Grandma and Grandpa got married, moved to Kansas from Illinois, and had eight children who lived and a couple who passed away in infancy.

Grandpa moved to Arkansas when my Great Grandmother, Zenella, was 15. They went in a covered wagon with horses from Altoona, Kansas, to near Mena, Arkansas. That was in 1911. According to my Aunt Lola, the whole family would have starved to death if they hadn't killed and roasted wild pigs and other animals. She said Grandma Reeve thought God would rather have them eat pig than starve to death. She was an Adventist, but Grandpa was not.

Grandma Reeve died in 1959 and Grandpa Reeve went to live with his daughter, Alma and her husband, Winfred. Then he attended the SDA Church every week with Alma and seemed to embrace it. He passed away in 1963.

Aunt Opal's Memories - Chapter 1 - Part 3

In winter we got books from the library and Mom would read to us in the evening.  Daddy worked at the alfalfa mill. Mom and the boys raised lots of vegetables and we sold them door to door. Mom picked four hundred quarts of wild blackberries one summer; we canned some and sold some. We lived in a tiny two-room house and a screened in back porch. I had my cot there during the summer. That year we lived in the two rooms. Delbert, Bob, and I slept in one bed and Daddy and Mom in the other. I was in the eighth grade. Next year I went to Enterprise Academy with Vera and Viola.

Grandpa Reeve built another room on the house. Daddy worked at the alfalfa mill. We couldn't get the 1933 Pontiac over those muddy roads so had to trade it for another Model A Ford. We didn't have a radio until Delbert bought them a battery operated one in the late forties.

We got electricity just before I was married; in fact Je'sus Vega put in extra outlets for them. We had a pump and an outhouse and a happy childhood!

                                                     
After academy I worked at the Boulder San in Boulder, Colorado. I worked in the diet kitchen an enjoyed it very much. Then Delbert and Ivan had a problem at EA and left money there that couldn't be taken out so I went back to EA for a year. Mostly because my boyfriend, Clayton, and best girlfriend, Lillian were there. I took sewing, music appreciation, voice and piano. It was all  a very big waste of time and money as I didn't do well in anything.

Then I went to Joplin where Vera was teaching school and stayed with her and looked for work but couldn't find anything. Friends of hers were going to Madison College to visit and let me ride with them. Lillian and Clayton were there. The people I came with got sick and couldn't go back so friends persuaded me to enroll at Madison. It was a self-supporting college so I could work. I took household arts. After two years I met Je'sus Vega. He was taking Lab and X-ray. I changed to nursing. Two years later we became engaged. Je'sus spent that summer colporteuring in Texas and Mexico. (We met some of the same people when he was stationed in the army at Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas.)

That summer I stayed at home in Kansas. We were married that fall September 14, 1952, at our little church in Thayer, Kansas. Irene and Etta helped me plan the very simple wedding. I borrowed the dress and veil. Someone tore the veil during the wild drive Delbert took us on before going back to the house. Daddy bought a pretty three-tiered cake at the bakery for seven dollars. Daddy gave us one hundred dollars for a gift (we bought a refrigerator with it). Lloyd gave us a set of dishes and someone a table cloth. Vera and Tommy gave us two nights in a motel near them in Carl Junction, which we enjoyed and appreciated very much.

We took the bus back to Madison. Our first home was an expandable army trailer at the trailer court, with one toilet, showers, and a washhouse for all in another trailer.  He was called to the Army and we moved to Fort Bliss, Texas.

We borrowed three hundred dollars from my parents to buy our first car. Neither of us could drive so the man at the car lot drove it to our house. Je'sus had a few lessons from a friend at Madison. Then little by little he learned. We lived there one year and met many wonderful people, some in Mexico. Even watched them make tamales.

David was born while we were at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. From there Je'sus was sent to Germany. Teresa was 1 ½ years old and David was 3 months. I spent the time with my parents who had already planned to spend two years following fruit harvest in Washington and Oregon.  We had many good times with Viola and Harry and their children.

In Germany Je'sus met a doctor from Loma Linda who said he could go to Loma Linda if he went to SMC so his credits from Madison could be accredited. So when he came home we met at Southern Missionary College. He spent one year in Germany.  At SMC Je'sus needed more credits and David got sick.  Je'sus became discouraged and we went to Puerto Rico.

We only stayed one year in Puerto Rico. Keith was born in our Bella Vista Hospital. In those days we couldn't drive all way to Chinto's house. We had to walk about two miles. We also walked to church and caried our good shoes when we visited them.


CLICK TO GO BACK TO CHAPTER 1 PART 2 

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Daddy - written by Lloyd Lawry

In 1995 my Uncle Lloyd Lawry gave me a number of stories and articles he had written.  Among those was this story of his Daddy, my Grandpa.  This is the story exactly as he wrote it.

My Daddy, Bennie Eugene Lawry, was born February 15, 1895 near Bronson, Kansas. Evidently he wasn't too fond of the "Bennie". By the time I first knew him he had shortened it to Ben.

When he was small he must have had 2 brothers, 2 sisters, half-brother and one half-sister living at home. Grandpa Lawry lost his eyesight in 1888 so they had to struggle just to live.  He attended Stony Point School. I believe he completed eighth grade.

He said he farmed the home place the year he was 14. It was done with a plow and a cultivator that he walked behind as the horses pulled them. He never told me much about his early life.

I do have two tales of his experiences during his horse and buggy days. He had a "moon eyed" horse that ran him in a creek off a low water bridge, and one time he asked a girl if he could drive her home. She replied "you can if you have any harness that will fit me."

He married my mother in 1918, and they went to Santa Rita, New Mexico, where he obtained a job carrying samples of the copper ore from the mines. I think one of Grandpa Lawry's daughters by his first marriage lived there and found the opportunity of a job for him.

He told of an incident which made him think his guardian angel was watching over him. He was walking along in the dark when he felt that something had stopped him. He stopped immediately and lit a match. He was standing on the brink of a deep pit. One more step and he would have fallen, probably to his death.

They came back to Kansas after the war, and I was born at my Aunt Cody's (Cora Hixson) farm. It was a few miles northwest of Bronson, Kansas.

In 1920 Mama and Daddy were living in Mildred, Kansas. There was a cement plant there and Daddy worked as day watchman. He broke his leg getting it caught while stepping over a moving belt.

Daddy ran a restaurant in Yates Center, Kansas in 1924. I don’t know how long he had it, but I think he went broke running it. He fed the prisoners in the local jail and I was in awe of them when I went with Daddy to take their food.

I'm uncertain when mama and daddy first separated but I remember living in Chanute, Kansas when there was just mama and I. Also, I remember living in Wichita, Kansas with daddy and mama. He worked at the oil refinery. They evidently separated again before I was 6 because Mama and I were living by ourselves when I started school.

In March 1926 Daddy was working for a construction company building an addition to a salt plant in Lyons, Kansas. He worked in several places, finally coming to Buffville, Kansas to work in the brick yard. He married Hazel there September 3, 1927.

His job was shoveling shale into metal carts. I believe they were 1/2 cubic yard capacity. They dynamited the shale down and Daddy loaded it with a shovel, picking up big chunks and loading them by hand. He had to push the carts on a narrow gauge railroad track to the bottom of an incline ramp where they were pulled up to the place where the shale was ground. He got 25 cents for each cart he loaded and pushed up the ramp.

In a letter he wrote October 28, 1928 he said "there was two days that I made $6.90 a day each". In the same letter he told of paying $240 to pay off his Model A Ford. When he was thinking of buying it the salesman came out where he was working and helped him load shale all day to clinch the sale. Daddy didn't tell him until the end of the day that he had decided to buy the car before the salesman came out!

In October 1929 the brickyard closed, never to reopen. Sometime after that we moved to a farm east of Buffville where we rented a house with garden space and pasture for a cow. We lived there for several years. Our house burned when I was in the eighth grade and we moved back to Buffville until the owner of the farm bought an old house and moved it to the farm. Then we moved back to the farm again.

Later we lived on similar farms north of Altoona, south of Altoona, and east of Altoona. We also lived in Buffville again part of my senior year in high school.

Daddy didn't want to go on WPA, but finally did when our cash income one month was only $5. He went to broom corn harvest and followed the wheat harvest to North Dakota one year before finally giving up and going on WPA. While he and Grandpa Reeve were working in the Dakotas the old German farmer's wife where they were working had twin babies during the morning and yet got up and prepared their noon meal!

When we were living east of Altoona in 1940, Daddy decided to move to Missouri, so we loaded our possessions on a trailer behind the old Model A Ford and drove it most of the way to Poplar Bluff, Missouri. We lived with Jessie and John Borton in a three room house; ten people in 3 rooms.

Daddy and Uncle John worked for a man who owned a greenhouse for 10 cents an hour. I couldn't find any work so left home in early 1941, and hitch hiked to Texas.

One year while they lived in Missouri, Daddy took the family to Michigan to pick fruit. The family moved back to Kansas and bought 80 acres of farm land with an old house on it. They lived there for several years.

Daddy worked for the W. J. Small Company in Neodesha for 15 years. It was an alfalfa dehydrating plant. Daddy was in his late 40's and his 50's during these years. He sewed sacks and stacked bags of alfalfa meal. The filled sacks weighed 100 pounds and it was terribly hard work. The farm had several miles of mud roads between it and town, so these years of arduous labor were plagued by fighting bad roads and a car which often refused to start until pulled by their team of horses. Hazel and Delbert did much of the farm work while Daddy worked in town.

Daddy and Hazel went to Oregon to pick fruit and vegetables one year. They stayed all winter after picking was over, Hazel got a job and Daddy loafed all winter and read a lot of books.

In the late 60's Daddy and Hazel bought a farm and a few acres east of Altoona. They had a truck farm and raised tomatoes and strawberries as well as other vegetables.

After Bob's family moved to Arkansas, Daddy and Hazel also moved there. Daddy was happy with his chickens and his garden. He would say, "Tell the people you have been to paradise," when we would leave to go back to Irving. He puttered around the garden patch on the day he died.  He died December 2, 1981 of heart complications.

He was a kind, gentle, hardworking, loving man.  I have my Lord’s assurance that at some point in eternity I will again see him in heaven, as he used to sing, “Where they ring those golden bells for you and me.”

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Aunt Opal's Memories - Chapter 1 - Part 2

We lived with Grandpa and Grandma in Buffville for a while. Daddy and Uncle Pete made a living by driving to Joplin, Missouri, to buy fruit and vegetables to sell door to door. The landlord moved another house to replace the burned one and we moved back there. The first thing I can remember, ever, was there. I remember talking to Daddy and I think we were dressed for Church.  We did have a new Model A Ford. Daddy paid $600.00 for it. They made a platform of something and a bar that slid under the back of the car so they could haul more baskets of fruit.

Later we moved north of Altoona to a big old farm house and I remember a big empty silo. One Christmas Aunt Lola, Uncle Derral, Donald (his brother), Aunt Fay and Uncle Les, Aunt Jessie and Uncle John all came and had a wonderful fun time.  Some of the guys, in the night ate a pie and said it was Santa. They also tied some of the men's clothes in knots. 'We didn't have a tree but Mom gave me a small rubber doll. We had lots of hard Christmases. Daddy saved dimes so we would always have a little something at Christmas. To this day I have to have a little hard Christmas candy at Christmas. No one likes it and I have to throw most of it out, but it wouldn't be Christmas without it.

                     LLOYD, DELBERT, HAZEL, OPAL, BOB, BEN

We later moved back to Buffville. Grandpa and Grandma still lived there and a few other families and Fred's Store. We had a cow and sometimes Daddy would let me ride her when he took her to the shale pit for water. Bob was born there. We called him Bobby Bill as they couldn't decide what to call him-Bobby or Billy.We lived several places after that.

We never knew we were poor. Daddy worked anywhere he could, Hoeing corn or other farm work. Even on WPA awhile. After high school Lloyd was at the CCC camp (Civilian Conservation Corps).

We had a happy childhood, enjoyed our cousins and aunts and uncles coaxing us to visit. We also enjoyed wonderful family get togethers. I had many cousins I loved but I was closest to Uncle Pete and Aunt Osa's family. We went to church at the home of friends in Neodesha. We never had a preacher, just Elder Jones from Fredonia. Daddy was not an Adventist but usually went to church with us. Our other aunts and families that lived close were not Adventists at that time but did join later.

                                  BEN AND HAZEL LAWRY

Our happiest times were when we got to spend the night with each other. Vera and I were the same age and Viola a little older. Delbert and Ivan were about the same age and Leo a little younger. To me it was more fun at their house. We got to ride home in the back of the pick-up truck, go after the cows (which we enjoyed more than they as they had to do it all the time). We played in the water barrels, at the spring, and in the creek. Slid down the calf shed roof ate watermelon in the patch, climbed trees, and sometimes Aunt Osa would make us molasses taffy.

Once we started to get some molasses (they made their own) from a container outside the kitchen but someone or something had the lid off and a poor chicken had gotten into it. She was a sad sight but we rescued her and washed her off so she was as good as new. Once we begged to stay up till midnight and Aunt Osa let us, but it really wasn't that exciting.

They made their own molasses. They squeezed the juice in a big mill run by a mule walking round and round. Then they boiled the juice in a large pan about 3 x 10 with three divisions over an open fire until it was of the right consistency. Aunt Osa would pick wild mushrooms and fry a whole skillet in butter. Yum, Yum!

Daddy always smoked a pipe. But gave it up and joined the SDA church when I was in seventh grade. We attended meetings in Chanute and he became a believer.

When they were first married he went to the Methodist church. Mom would go with him and he would go with her. Lloyd didn't much like that. He never did accept Adventism, but after Jane Ellen was born when he looked at her said, “There has to be a God", so he and Aunt Kathy became Baptists.

                                    BOB, OPAL, DELBERT

When I was in seventh grade we packed all we could in a trailer hooked to our old model A Ford and started for Popular Bluff, Missouri. Uncle John and Aunt Jessie lived there and daddy could work in a greenhouse where he worked. Lloyd drove us. I remember him saying as we drove out of a service station, "If a fly sits on this load we'll never make it." But we did!

Lloyd didn't stay but went to Dallas, Texas, to some cousins and did well. He worked at several jobs then got on with Braniff Airways and stayed until he retired.

We stayed there that winter. We shared a house with Jessie and John, Leland and LeRoy. Tom was born that year. Delbert, LeRoy, and I went to school there (interesting to me, here in Collegedale I met and became close friends with the lady, Thelma, who ran the greenhouse back in Poplar Bluff and her sister was married to Uncle John's cousin).

That Spring Mom and Daddy decided to follow the fruit harvest (John and Jessie had done it.). We started out picking strawberries and went on up to Michigan to peaches, pears, apples, and grapes. Mom was really fast at it and the rest of us did what we could. I had to start school in Hollywood, Michigan.

While there I got my first perm. The curlers were on long electric cords. We got a different car and headed back to Kansas. Guess they did pretty well. They bought an eighty acre farm.


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CLICK TO GO TO CHAPTER 1 PART 3

Aunt Opal's Memories - Chapter 1 - Part 1

While I was visiting my Aunt Opal Vega for her 85th birthday celebration she let me have a copy of her Memories that she had written down. I am transcribing them to this blog so that as many people as possible will be able to see them.

Grandma Reeve, Edith May Lewis, was born in De Moines, Iowa, on July 19, 1877.  At a young age, her mother, Nancy Jane Swan Lewis went to take care of her parents for ten or twelve years.  Edith and her father, John Henry Vreland Lewis, were not allowed to go.

Her father came to visit his sister in Tennessee.  While there he took sick and died. He is buried in St. Elmo's Cemetery at the foot of Lookout Mountain. Aunt Lola and Aunt Fay (Reeve) Prowant looked it up when visiting Donna and Bill near Chattanooga, Tennessee several years ago. Many of us cousins have visited his grave.

Grandma went to school in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1891. She visited the Chicago World's Fair in 1892. She had three sisters (Jenny, Ella, and Ida), and two brothers (Frank and Charles). Charles was a state senator from the thirty-eighth district in California. He also owned several drugstores and became wealthy. He lost it all during the depression. He visited the family in Kansas when my mother, Hazel Reeve Lawry, was young.

My grandpa, William Urbin Reeve (always called Urbin) was born in Nicoma) Illinois, in May, 1875. He had two sisters and two brothers (Ida, Edith, Ira, Leslie, and Ivan).

Grandma and Grandpa met during his days of delivering milk where Grandma worked. They were married on May 24, 1895, in Canton, Illinois. Three of their children were born there (Alma, Zenella, and Robert). Robert only lived a few days.

In 1902 they moved to a farm east of Altoona, Kansas. Four children were born there (Orval (Pete), Hazel, Jessie, and Fay.

After moving to Wickes, Arkansas, more children were born (Lola, Dolly Fern, and Leslie). Dolly Fern lived less than two years. While there Grandpa Reeve was Justice of the Peace for that area. He performed marriages, etc.

When my mother, Hazel was about 18 years of age they moved back to Kansas in three covered wagons. This was in about 1924. They invested in the Petite homestead a few miles out of Thayer, Kansas. The house there was a Sears Roebuck pre-cut house.  Mr. Petite's daughter, Mrs. Frank Perkins, and family lived next door on a farm. They only lived there a short time as farming was not Grandpa Reeve's thing. They sold it to Orval and Osa who moved up from Arkansas when Viola (she was born on September 12, 1925) was about six months old.

                                            HAZEL REEVE

In a letter from Uncle Les Reeve---He said that when they moved back to Kansas they had comfortable beds in each wagon which Grandpa Reeve made in his black smith shop. They were three weeks along the way. They picked cotton on the way while in Oklahoma. They had a pet squirrel and a pet dog with them.

I remember my mother saying that one problem was there were no restrooms along the way. (From Derral Reeve's book, they stopped in Oklahoma and picked cotton for two weeks. So it must have taken three weeks to travel the three hundred miles from Wickes, Arkansas to Thayer, Kansas).

Grandma became a Seventh-day Adventist in her youth. Seems she never lived near a church but Aunt Fay said she gathered her children together every Sabbath morning and studied with them. In Arkansas they went to a community church. Grandpa was a Dunkard but as far as I know he never went to church. In his very last years he gave up his snuff and gave his heart to Christ.

Les said grandma insisted they move back to Kansas so the children could get a better education. Alma and Zenella had already moved back to Kansas and married. Jessie was a secretary. She worked at Enterprise Academy. Fay, Lola, and Leslie all attended the academy there. Jessie met Uncle John Borton while there and married him. Aunt Fay went to western Kansas to teach church school. While there two brothers, her students, lost their mother. She later married their father, Uncle Les Prowant. The two boys were Donald and Derral. Derral went to Enterprise while Lola was attending. They married. (Uncle Leslie Reeve went on to Madison College and became a nurse where he met and married Aunt Helen Lamberton Reeve from the state of Washington. He served in the Air Force then returned to attend Loma Linda and became a doctor. He was the only one of the family to attend college.

After selling the farm to Orval and Osa, Grandma and Grandpa moved to Buffville. Grandpa Reeve went to work at the brickyard. All the people who lived there worked at the brick yard. There was a small store and a rooming house. My father stayed at the rooming house.

                                             BEN LAWRY

Uncle Les told me this in a letter---He said that Mom and Aunt Lola delivered milk to the boarding house and Daddy began talking to them and then walked home with them and then would sit on the porch and talk. Les and Lola would crawl under the porch and listen, 'till Daddy caught them once.'

Mom and Daddy were married on September 30, 1927 . Daddy had been married before and had a son, Lloyd, about 9 years of age. His mother was raised by strict grandparents who wouldn't let her go out much. She really liked a faster kind of life than Daddy liked. Lloyd told me he tried to bring her back, but she did not want him. Later she was very sick and came back to his family. My mother said she sat and talked and cried with her and she told Mom she was thankful Mom could care for Lloyd. She died. Mom and Lloyd were always close. Daddy was eleven years older than Mom.

We lived in Buffville until the brickyard closed down. I was born there. We then rented different places and Daddy did whatever he could find to do, mostly on farms. Of course it was the depression years and no one had much.

We lived in a farm house near Buffville when Delbert was born. Daddy and Grandpa were in Colorado harvesting broomcorn at that time. Lloyd had to go to the neighbors in the middle of the night to call the doctor when Delbert was born. Lloyd said they got ice from the ice man and made ice cream a lot. Grandma Reeve was staying with them while Grandpa was gone. I guess that was why my mother was never crazy about ice cream and Delbert weighed twelve pounds. Mom said when Daddy came home he had a red beard and when he kissed me I said "stick you me" and he shaved it off.

                             LLOYD, DELBERT, AND OPAL

That house burned down while we were all away. I was bare foot and my shoes burned up. All the neighbors could save was a cedar chest Lloyd had made at school; in it were Delbert's baby clothes which were too small for him. I believe Jane Ellen has that chest now.


CLICK TO GO TO CHAPTER 1 PART 2

Happy Birthday, Daddy

Today is my Daddy's 77th birthday.  He was born in Kansas on the hottest day ever recorded in the state.  The official weather service temperature in Fredonia, Kansas on July 18, 1936 was 121 degrees. He was born just a few miles away.  I have heard stories from my grandmother about how they had to keep wetting sheets with water and drape them over the crib to try and keep him cool.

In honor of Daddy's birthday here are a few photos of him over the years.

Happy Birthday Daddy!!